Starting today, wireless carriers have to unlock your phone - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/starting-today-wireless-carriers-have-to-unlock-your-phone/ <comment><USER2> Personally I don't think they should be locked to begin with. We've already signed an agreement in which i've agreed to terms which include making payments until the cost of the device is paid. Given that contract there should be no reason why I can't use the device as I please so long as I haven't violated those terms.

People who travel with a locked phone know how useless it is. No one is stupid enough to want pay the ridiculous roaming rates. Locked phone prevents you from using a local service during your stay! #thisNeedsToChange

<comment><USER3> I know my point of view is really unpopular, but in my opinion if you value your freedom and privacy you should buy a phone. Just get one that is cheaper or a used one if you can't afford the latest greatest.

Would you take a subsidise laptop with a bunch of restrictions from your ISP?

<comment><USER4> Of course it is unpopular. You're treating freedom and privacy as a commodity. If I cared and spent enough money, could I also restrict other people's freedom or privacy? Neither should be a function of ability to pay. That being said, that is more or less how it is now -- you pay in cash/time/effort.

<comment><USER5> I think he was saying precisely that: when you take a locked-in phone with a fixed deal, you're treating freedom and privacy as a commodity.

<comment><USER6> Nope. They are lending you money (normaly with a huge interest), and taking your privacy and freedom away for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems pretty vague about what "unlocking" really means. For example, I had a Verizon HTC 8X which was "unlocked" (as are all Verizon LTE phones), but you couldn't edit the MMS gateway. Some older Verizon Android phones were "unlocked" but with no APN editor, so you couldn't get data service.

Does anything about this code prevent carriers from playing the "it's unlocked but good luck configuring it" game?

<comment><USER8> I'm fairly clueless about this topic, but I thought "unlocking" simply meant you can install a different OS if you want.

<comment><USER7> No, "unlocking" in this context refers to the baseband lock which prevents your phone from joining another carrier's network. This form of lock vastly predates phones with customizable OSes and was originally in place to prevent customers from receiving a subsidized phone, re-selling it for use on another network, and then breaking their contract, or trying to arbitrage a margin between early termination fees and remaining phone cost.

This guidance requires that phone companies allow their phones to join networks they are technically compatible with (i.e., have the radios and baseband support for). It's generally unrelated to the OS or bootloader, as this form of lock is often implemented at the baseband level.

The issue is that phones can be "unlocked" (made able to join another network at the baseband level) but non-configurable at the OS level, barring features requiring OS configuration, like MMS, from functioning. This doesn't seem to be specific enough guidance to prevent phone carriers from playing this trick, as they can continue to provide technically unlocked phones that don't work properly on other networks.

This doesn't really change much these days as the US market is gradually moving towards a financed (rather than subsidized) phone sales model where early termination fee arbitrage isn't possible and collections for broken contracts are more conventional. In general, carriers have less of an incentive to carrier lock their phones than they used to. Plus, some carriers (like Verizon) are already required to supply their LTE phones unlocked due to agreements made to acquire spectrum licenses, so this doesn't really affect them.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the explanation. I guess the confusion comes from "locked baseband" and "locked bootloaders." Unlocking is ambiguous without enough context or domain knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the AT&T page:

> All the device's service commitments and installment plans are completed, > and all early termination fees are paid in full.

I assume that means that if you got a "free" phone with a two year contract, you have to wait two years to unlock it.

[https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/#/](https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/#/)

<comment><USER10> In my country (Mexico) there was a law for them to sell you unlocked phones/unlock them on request. The biggest company had you fill a stupid request and you couldn't fill it if you had your phone for less than X months, something which was not allowed by the law, that ceased after a series of complains to some branch of government made to "protect consumers"

Anyway, I wonder if AT&T is kind of going with it and saying yes we'll unlock it BUT as a way to kind of cheat on the law, or if the law really allows them to do that.

edit: I guess I forgot most people here have prepaid phones, so really I ignore if that was the case for phones on plans, too.

<comment><USER11> > that ceased after a series of complains to some branch of government made to > "protect consumers"

Why the "scare quotes"? It seems like consumers were actually protected by that scary government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was reading about this upcoming milestone last week when attempting to unlock my old Sprint iPhone 5 for use on other domestic carriers. The consensus then was that it would apply only to Sprint devices sold _after_ this date; an old Sprint iPhone 5 will continue to NOT work on other networks.

<comment><USER13> As far as I know, that is an artifact of the hardware. The network compatibility of early (all?) iPhone 5s was divided across three models. Some can work on other networks, but not in other networks' LTE bands. Depends on your particular model and which network you're trying to move to.

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/4150856/bringing-your- ipho...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/4150856/bringing-your-iphone-to-t- mobile-better-think-twice)

Edit: better explanation at this link: [http://www.wired.com/2012/09/iphone5-lte- model/](http://www.wired.com/2012/09/iphone5-lte-model/)

<comment><USER14> My Sprint iPhone 4S worked fine on CDMA networks in the US, and it worked fine while traveling internationally on GSM / non-CDMA networks.

There's something going on in the baseband firmware that rejects domestic carrier SIM cards, but still allows international carriers when an international unlock is granted.

<comment><USER12> Yes, my newly "unlocked" Sprint iPhone 5 will work fine overseas. It's specifically on non-Sprint domestic carriers where it won't work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how this will work with used phones purchased privately. I bought a phone on craigslist that was locked to T-Mobile. It wasn't blacklisted so I'm able to use it on T-Mobile, but I don't know if the contract was paid in full, the original account is in good standing, etc.

<comment><USER16> I think, because, the contract is between you and the carrier you should be okay. Even if you sell your phone to someone else you're still obligated to pay your bill or terminate early.

Carriers aren't stupid. They sell you a phone at a quarter of the price because you will pay nearly if not more than $100/mo. and they have recouped their loss by the end of April.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can we please just get rid of carrier locking altogether? It is clearly anti- consumer and dangerous in the oligopoly ruled wireless market. So just outlaw the practice and be done with it.

<comment><USER18> Exactly, its a horrible policy. I can't believe it even exists. Imagine if Gas companies lock you into using only certain brands of cars. OR If your computer comes locked with Comcast internet access only!

<comment><USER19> Makes perfect sense. What if the gas company knocked 3/4th off the cost of the car but you could only buy their gas at an inflated rate? Same thing. After buying an unlocked phone at full price and using a pre-paid plan, I am never going back to the "buy the phone from the wireless carrier" plan. I am saving a ton of money, can easily use it internationally and I can easily resell the phone when I upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be nice if they were forced to unlock your bootloader on request too. I would love to install Cyanogen mod on my Verizon Galaxy S4 but it is impossible to do so as the bootloader is completely locked down with no recourse.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think these phones should be unlocked the day you sign up for a contract. What's the point in keeping them unlocked? You can't violate your contract. I can think of one downside for them carriers: they won't be able to charge you extra when you travel abroad, but then you have to ask if that's really in the best interest of the customers? Perhaps not.

<comment><USER22> You definitely can violate your contract. Just stop paying your bill. Or declare bankruptcy. The carrier will try to collect, but even if they do they'll end up with a fraction of the value.

<comment><USER23> Most phones can be unlocked. For an iPhone, the difficult part is to jailbreak it and doing it yourself can be a little painful, but that hasn't been a problem for many people. So somebody stops paying their bill, or declares bankruptcy. Do you think there's anything stopping them from unlocking their phones for pennies?

As an anecdote, I once stopped paying my bills to Vodafone and gave up on my contract obligations. At that time Vodafone demanded a 250 EUR interruption fee, which in the meantime became illegal in my country. Well, I told them to dare and sue me, because I have proof of unjust treatment and service disruption on their part and I did have that evidence. Basically they were assholes, they knew it and they gave up on any claims. I also unlocked my iPhone 3GS by myself and moved my business somewhere else.

Just like DRM, there is absolutely no valid reason for selling locked phones, other than lock-in, i.e. to prevent you from using other carriers while in roaming and thus suffer roaming charges. But even that is just annoying, because you can get unlocked feature phones for $30 without a contract, with a battery that lasts for a whole week and just use that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it common to need permission from the carrier to unlock?

I use a smartphone now (which I was able to unlock myself), but when I had a 'feature' phone there were any number of small mobile shops that would unlock for a few quid. This is in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER25> There are carriers that do much better than this, right? T-Mobile (my carrier) allows unlocking postpaid plans after much less than 2 years, and I had no trouble at all calling them and saying "Hey, I'll be in Europe, unlock code plz" despite not having paid off the device.

[https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-1588](https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-1588)

Surely someone's made a nice table of carriers and policies?

</comment><comment><USER26> In 2010, Brazil mandated that carriers had to unlock phones at customers' request for free. In 2012, it was mandated they stop selling locked phones altogether.

</comment><comment><USER27> All providers in Europe will unlock your phone if you spend enough credit or for small fee.

Also US devices have locked some features (voice calls on tablets).

<comment><USER28> In Poland all phones have to be sold without a simlock. Doesn't matter if you are on contract or not. The world still hasn't collapsed, people on contracts continue to pay for them, nothing has changed.

<comment><USER29> Also true in Singapore.

Some contracts can be nastier (e.g. no early termination, just pay the rest), but that may just be an unrelated local difference (I've seen the same thing with residential ISP contracts, where there isn't a SIM-locking equivalent).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Over the past week I've had no problems getting an unlock code from ATT for a GoPhone Nokia 635 bought on Black Friday for $40 (and never activated), and for a HTC One M7 bought outright from Best Buy last week for $150. It took a couple of days for each one but the unlock codes arrived in email after I submitted the info using their online form.

</comment><comment><USER31> Damn. I just had to pay $80 to unlock a t-mobile hotspot I bought outright, because they claimed I needed to spend $100 on service before they'd unlock it. Wouldn't be so bad if I weren't job-hunting :/

</comment><comment><USER32> Verizon told me last week they will not unlock my iPhone 4S for other US carriers, and were adamant that they never will. I should try again.

</comment><comment><USER33> I hope this won't mean online unlockers don't vanish - we still need them in the savage wastelands of Canada.

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh drag I'm so going to miss those sketchy website in foreign countries that were doing this for me prior.</comment>


To the kid who tried to defraud me today - <AUTHOR>

Today, I received two consecutive emails about a "weird" charge in NC via walmart.com. I live in NJ and rarely travel out of state. One of the emails was from walmart confirming two orders totaling more than $600 and another from my bank asking me to look into the suspicious activity. One of the charges was for a God of War package (awesome game but >$300?!) and a samsung galaxy note (also > $300).
I'm not mad or frustrated or worried (maybe I should be?). I was able to have my bank take care of it within 10 minutes and sent walmart.com an email as a heads up and took off all of my personal info from that account.
I'm a web developer and an avid HN reader so I should have known better than to have left a merchant account with a credit card attached on such a weak password (for shame!). It is my responsibility to make sure that such an important item (credit card number) is always looked after.
Tonight, I'm going to audit every merchant account I ever could have possible had a transaction with and close all of them or at the very least remove all credit card info.
And to the kid/guy who tried to make those charges -
You have good taste. God of War is an awesome game and I've been thinking of buying the galaxy Note myself. I'm waiting for christmas to get an Xbox too. We probably would get along if it wasn't for the fact that you chose to steal. <comment><USER2> I recently had a card used at Walmart.com. The transaction processed through an old account there [Yes, I shop at Walmart] using a current card from one of the large credit card companies.

The thief purchased an online gift card and an electric razor sent shipped to our address.

Because it took several hours for the charges to work their way through Walmart's and the bank's systems to reconciliation, I suspect that the gift card was resold before it was canceled. Razor arrived a few days later and was returned.

My honey was upset. I didn't take it personally. She learned that Walmart is a common target. We had a new card in our hands by 8am the next business day.

</comment><comment><USER3> You mention that you're a web developer -- do you host websites on Linode?

They were recently attacked and, at least from what I've heard, some credit card details were leaked. You might want to check on that if so.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't use Linode but I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the heads up.</comment></comment>


Biggest Sci-Fi Weapons - <AUTHOR> http://scifi-weapons.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting list, but I violently disagree with some of their calculations.

I noticed that no one mentioned an anti-matter black hole, ripped from the core of a galaxy in an anti-matter universe. That's a pretty big "m" to put in front of c^2.</comment>


Generate memorable passwords using Markov Chains, Huffman trees, and Dickens - <AUTHOR> http://www.brinckerhoff.org/molis-hai/pwgen-3.html <comment><USER2> The "secure unless" list needs to include:

* Author of page is malicious.

* Operator of server is malicious.

* Anyone with access to the network between you and the server is malicious. (no HTTPS)

* Google or anyone who has compromised their infrastructure is malicious (has embedded google js on the page).

* Likewise for 'bootstrapcdn', 'jquery.com', or cloudflare.

OTOH, it uses window.crypto and doesn't silently fall back to insecure randomness like 95% of JS crypto that I've looked at...

:)

<comment><USER3> Um... certificate pinning?

Fortunately, my last caveat covers a bunch of these.

Also, I think you(I) forgot:

* You are in fact hallucinating at this very moment.

<comment><USER2> :)

Cert pinning does nothing when the page is plain http as it is here.

(and HTTPS's helpfulness is limited without HSTS; were it HTTPS I'd have a couple of other assumptions like none of the hundreds of CAs are malicious, and "no attacker is able to MITM between the site and any CA that does domain- validation.)

I didn't run off that list to criticize the site. The last bullet is indeed good. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is one of my attempts at a memorable passphrase generator, using Moby Dick as source material. It is interesting to see just how distinctive some works and authors are when you are doing this sort of thing:

[https://github.com/exratione/four-word- phrase](https://github.com/exratione/four-word-phrase)

clenched bakers detestable evincing

keenly eastern expertness presto

topsails existence self-created fittings

delusion brushed lockers discipline

seaman vintages cross-bones uncouth

furnished vanity copied invited

sea-captains cross-running engendered disastrous

freshet willingly lead-lined asserted

remarking repentance insert compendious

vice-bench equally imminent quadrupeds

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cute. But all of the presented passwords I got had lots of punctuation strewn about them (most commonly the " character), and the "words" were extreme nonsense. For example, I just generated a new set and I'm getting passphrases like

      firs." Neven," drifty-T

and

      is!" Mr. Look fore," oble)

Perhaps the best password to date is still complete gobbledygook:

      lon tunittory lippile

This has the benefit of at least being pronounceable, but it bears no resemblance to actual words.

All that said, I wonder how it would do with different source material, or source material with all punctuation deleted.

<comment><USER3> Things will definitely get a bit longer if you make the source more uniform. I sympathize with you on the quotation marks, though; I think it might be nice to toss just those. Lemme try that.

<comment><USER3> I tried it, and ... eliminating the double-quotes looks like a win. Average password lengths in the order-2 model don't increase measurably; it rounds to 20.0 chars for both models.

I've now deployed this.

Um ... I mean... what quotations? I don't see any quotation marks!

(Many thanks.)

<comment><USER5> It definitely looks better. I'm curious what the results would be if you eliminated all punctuation, but removing the quotes alone is a marked improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The [http://www.diceware.com](http://www.diceware.com) passphrase-generation algorithm is more straightforward to implement and analyze. It uses only whole words, so the result is easier to memorize.

<comment><USER7> Diceware is great, though the paper fairly points out that algorithms like that and [https://xkcd.com/936/](https://xkcd.com/936/) necessarily often choose very uncommon words.

I suppose the Markov model could just as well use whole words (as done in all sorts of other scenarios), at the expense of substantially longer passwords.

<comment><USER3> I took a look at whole words. Things got a _lot_ longer. Like, twice as long. Here, let me generate some. These are 56-bits each:

'(#" that looked up to Darnay: you not?\" \"Very willingly,\" pointing" #" that it was confirmed. \"He may not--thou wouldst rescue this is touched the child" #" that direction through his, and said Stryver, \"that, there! I" #" that criminal in Lombard-street, out at neighbouring streets that she" #" that he,\" said Darnay. Released yesterday. I.\" It was set, and--in a highly" #" that although Sydney Carton.\" This must have to finish that way" #" that Madame Defarge's wine-rotted fragments of his. \"Carton, idlest and its accessories" #" that every rapid movement, and, as the executioner showed a high grass and")

Really, I would not not like to type in "that every movement, and, as the executioner showed a high grass and" every time I opened my laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks like a fun project, although whenever something like this comes up I have to wonder if providing ways to make passwords more memorable is in fact a beneficial activity, since ideally people won't be remembering more than one password anyway (the master password of their manager). Of course there are exceptions, like login/unlock codes for PC and phone, but often in those exception cases a long string of characters isn't practical anyway. The cases where it is would normally be very few.

That said, I don't think I really believe my own argument. Anything that gets people thinking about better ways to handle their passwords is probably a good thing. Once the ball is rolling, they might even land on a password manager. Perhaps even through this comment!

<comment><USER9> I use a password manager, but I still use xkcd936 password for things that I have to type in often. Like the password to unlock my phone or computer, or passwords to mobile banking apps that I check often.

Copy-pasting out of the password manager on a phone is a multi-step process, most of which is all of iOS's new animation delays.

There's a world for both of these things, and xkcd936 passwords are very easy to generate:

        $ cat $(which xkcd936)
        #!/bin/sh
        cat /usr/share/dict/words | unsort | head -n 40 | xargs -n4 echo

<comment><USER10> Note that `unsort` uses the Mersenne Twister for its PRNG, which is _not_ cryptographically secure [0]. However, cracking Mersenne does require a significant amount of random bytes generated from the same seed, and a quick glance at the source reveals that it initializes the seed from /dev/urandom where available (unsort.c:169), which is good and probably obviates practical attacks.

[0] [https://jazzy.id.au/2010/09/22/cracking_random_number_genera...](https://jazzy.id.au/2010/09/22/cracking_random_number_generators_part_3.html)

<comment><USER9> What attack are you envisioning on me running that by hand and pasting one of those passwords into an online service?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is very cool. And now even more Racket on HN's front page. I will look at the code later.

For those interested, variable-order Markov chaining is different form traditional Markov models. I studied the latter in computational linguistics courses; they are a right of passage in stastical models for CL/NLP work. I was wondering how it was a good idea to model passwords, even pseudorandomly with Markov chains, but VO Markov chains are somewhat different.

For the uninitiated, like myself.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable- order_Markov_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-order_Markov_model)

<comment><USER3> Variable-order markov models do sound interesting; this tool isn't using them, though....

<comment><USER11> Is that not what order-3 Markov model means? I mean, I will not lie. I skimmed the article and searched DDG/Wikipedia for "order 3 markov" and that article is what I got.

Granted, my statistical comp ling course was ages ago. Perhaps it is time to crack open that book, but neither the article or Wikipedia article cleared up for me if order 3 or variable order are different or what is implemented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The default "choose a password" interface on our platform asks the user to set up a Pass Phrase (see [http://blog.codinghorror.com/passwords-vs-pass- phrases/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/passwords-vs-pass-phrases/) ) and also scrapes Yahoo News for three consecutive words once in a while, to provide suggests to inspire people. For example "and the horse" or "the car was" are suggestions.

Do you see any obvious flaws in that? After the fact it's hard to scrape ALL of Yahoo news.

<comment><USER10> Basing passphrases off of a (since you've just mentioned it on Hacker News) well-known public source is usually a bad idea. Why not just pick random words (using a CSPRNG like /dev/urandom) from a dictionary? This is the "Diceware" approach, which is recommended because it is simple to implement and has straightforward provable security guarantees.

<comment><USER12> We do have a mode where the software generates random phrases like "the [noun] [verb] the [noun]" generating about a million possible combinations (100 x 100 x 100)

But the space of three consecutive words in Yahoo News is even larger, and frankly, most passwords are chosen from a small space anyway. And finally, the examples are just meant to inspire, so people don't select "password" as their password.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could someone explain how these passwords are secure? Given that some phrases are all lower-case letters with a single punctuation character, aren't they vulnerable to brute-force attacks? My understanding has been that stronger passwords use a wide range of character options: lower-case, upper-case, punctuation, special chars. So, #RedBum72! would be more secure than abigredbum despite each having 11 chars.

Is it simply the length of these passwords that makes them secure?

<comment><USER14> I think you have a misunderstanding of the mathematics behind password security.

If I choose lower-case letters only, then the password can have about 4.7 bits of entropy per letter, so a 16-character password would have about 75 bits, maximum.

If I choose from the entire set of non-control ASCII characters, I get about 6.6 bits of entropy per letter, which means that I can get 78 bits of entropy with only 12 characters.

The difficulty of a brute force attack is proportional to the number of possible passwords. So, you can make brute force attacks harder by using longer passwords, or you can use a wider range of characters. Strictly speaking, there is no need to do both, since either option gives you the exact same benefit.

The technique demonstrated in the article is significantly more complex, because the letters in the passwords are not chosen uniformly, but they are chosen to form words that fit the surrounding context according to a certain kind of statistical model (a Markov chain). This makes it harder to calculate how many bits of entropy is in the password, but the bijection shown in the article makes it much easier—when you have a bijection, you are neither creating nor destroying entropy, so we know that passwords selected uniformly from the right column (such as "buill to Sound thand exp") have the exact same entropy as passwords selected uniformly from the left column (such as "0fe5c363d354d7").

<comment><USER13> Thank you. That's very clear. Much appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Okay, but for 56-bits, you can also just have 3 quadruples of a-z, such as "envh zmds vrdq" (dropping the spaces for the actual password). I'm not sure random, punctuated text is so much easier to commit to memory.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seriously. Has someone already done this? Next gen peer review, anyone?

<comment><USER16> It's weird, but I actually had a very similar idea a few years back! I struggled implementing it and left it half done. I was trying to work directly with the letter frequencies; using a Huffman tree is much nicer. Instead, I tweaked it to generate random Sherlock Holmes paragraphs. It gave the best results with Markov state strings of size equal to the average word size.

It's great to see that it gives a really nice output. Also, your paper is a breeze to read.

I ended up making this[0], which is a Diceware-like with more words, and I just added substitutions to see what it would look like.

At entropy 75, here are five from Molis Hai:

look had can's asing his, nativa "Hemmer,'" Charactiour roopiaties more folks and conful never succepth myriage; by! Let taughter, any mind shu goost out uponsibing of?" "Your," rem

And five passphrases with 3 substitutions:

ov&rload grXas<proof investing Men,ts peartrees Yamages automata adVredGstudy/ng chloroformed exh>linYFassessable gGla rumbOs draughtBmanship

It is hard to determine which is easiest to remember, however. We should perform tests; maybe ask a large number of users to remember one passphrase, and send them a mail three days later asking them to input it. If that sounds like fun to you, I can help.

[0]: [https://github.com/espadrine/passphrase](https://github.com/espadrine/passphrase)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I did something similar using Markov chains and a dictionary - you can see it at [http://password.supply](http://password.supply)

<comment><USER3> cool... can you guarantee that every password is generated with equal probability?

<comment><USER17> I guarantee nothing, other than they look somewhat like English words :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it should read "row" not "column":)

</comment><comment> ryan-c Is it possible to get the source bits back from the password?

<comment><USER3> Yes, absolutely. 100% invertible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would still rather gamble with using :

It was the best of times.

Or

Please sir can I have some more?

</comment><comment><USER20> _Her watches, why him, fog_

A nice description why crypto.</comment>


Scalr: The Auto-Scaling Open-Source Amazon EC2 Effort - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/03/scalr-the-auto-scaling-open-source-amazon-ec2-effort/ <comment><USER2> I was disappointed to read that Scalr requires its own machine images. I'd prefer a generic component that I could hook up to my own existing images. (Which aren't even web servers...)

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like a good idea, but why isn't Amazon providing this by default? It SHOULD be part of the service they offer.

Also, how well does SCALR actually work?

<comment><USER4> I actually think this is a task better suited as a layer for the interim. As per their new features last week, Amazon is clearly focused on the really hard stuff. What they should probably be announcing next is a guarantee of S3 and EC2 placement within a specific data center. Then things get really interesting. Maybe Amazon could integrate this project in their services at some point... but for now, it seems best on its own.

<comment><USER5> Re: "What they should probably be announcing next is a guarantee of S3 and EC2 placement within a specific data center. Then things get really interesting."

This appears to be what their new 'availability zones' feature provides.

<comment><USER4> The availability zones do guarantee EC2 placement within specific data centers, but from what I've heard, do not guarantee S3 placement. Because so many web services are tightly coupled with EC2 and S3, this presents a dilemma. If I'm wrong though, please correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was wondering how long something like this would take to build. If you can configure something like this to be specific for say... media streaming, you can say "goodbye" to all those content delivery networks.

<comment><USER7> I thought half the benefit of CDNs was reduced latency, which AWS does not provide.

<comment><USER8> I keep hearing comments about AWS and latency, but I haven't used it (yet!) so I don't have any first-hand experience. I've seen that S3 can provide direct public links, but are there latency issues that make these too slow for general purpose content serving?

<comment><USER7> I'll elaborate a little. A CDN is supposed to serve content from a server very close to each user, like in the same city. Thus CDNs must have many servers in many cities. AWS does not have many locations, thus because of the speed of light it cannot have latency as low as a good CDN. This is not a problem with AWS; it wasn't designed as a CDN.

Do you need a CDN for "general purpose content serving"? Probably not.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the reply, that makes total sense. I suppose CDN services should be compatible with AWS anyway, so they wouldn't be mutually exclusive. Each for its purpose :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This could be one of those new layers of abstraction that accelerates the entire field.</comment>


We Can All Change the World - <AUTHOR> http://personalopz.com/blog/we-can-all-change-the-world/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a collection of notes that I took while listening to the wonderful Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture series that Stanford puts on.

The book is free but if purchased through Leanpub ([https://leanpub.com/we_can_all_change_the_world/](https://leanpub.com/we_can_all_change_the_world/)) all royalties will go to Oxfam America which is helping out in Nepal right now.</comment>


LibreOffice 5.3.0 - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.3 <comment><USER2> > Firebird has been upgraded to version 3.0.0. It is unable to read back > Firebird 2.5 data, so embedded firebird odb files created in LibreOffice > version up to 5.2 cannot be opened with LibreOffice 5.3. Since a future > version of firebird will have a backwards compatibility module, some future > version of LibreOffice (embedding this future version of firebird) will also > be able to open these older files.

> ODB files created by LibreOffice < 5.3 can be manually converted to > LibreOffice 5.3 format by using Firebird 2.5 to convert the data to archive > format, and replacing the database data within the ODB by the archive format > version. To do this, install a stand-alone Firebird 2.5, and use its "gbak" > tool to convert the file "database.fdb" to "database.fbk" within the odb > file. Don't forget to remove the .fdb file.

I don't use this feature so I don't know how popular it is, but it seems like this could cause a lot of problems for people. They probably shouldn't have updated to Firebird 3.0.0 until they had an automated migration process in place, instead of instructing end users to manually convert their old files from the command line.

<comment><USER3> Firebird was experimental in 5.2.x so it's unlikely there are many such files in the wild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have the fixed the missing grow/shrink feature in the GUI? [1] The bug that's now a decade old? No? Well that's disappointing... I'll keep using LibreOffice, but I still can't recommended it to my non-technical friends who seem to love that effect.

[1] [https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48918](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48918)

<comment><USER5> Not fixed. Just tested in 5.3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My complaint against openoffice/libreoffice is about their programming/scripting interface: it is a total mess to deal with.

A couple of weeks ago I had the task to dynamically update the value of two cells in a calc spreadsheet. I did it, but ended up using a library that build on a library that builds on ... that build on UNO or whatever it's called.

The api is a mix of C++ and Java, documentation is pretty much non-existing and code examples are incomplete and ridiculous.

If I had been using excel I could have been using the win32 com api and get it done in a couple of hours at most.

But don't get me wrong: when doing non-programming stuff it works great!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Linking to the release notes; downloads live at [https://www.libreoffice.org/download/](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/)

</comment><comment><USER7> So I want to like libreoffice, but its really terribly maintained. features come and go, practically at whim.

For instance, custom motion paths seem to come and go at whim (still not fixed in 5.3, and as this bug shows has been a recurring problem)

[https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76916](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76916)

It's hard to rely on it when basic functionality constantly breaks.

<comment><USER8> I would hardly call that "basic functionality." I've been using LO as my primary office suite through several schools and jobs, and never felt like it was broken.

<comment><USER7> to me custom paths are a basic function of making interactive/dynamic presentations.

<comment><USER9> I agree with both comments up the tree.

I use LO daily under Linux to produce handouts, simple screen based materials and spreadsheet models for teaching. My colleagues are blissfully ignorant of the fact that the materials they sometimes use where _not_ produced in MS Office on Windows.

I would really like a stable interface for creating interactive materials, but I'd settle for being able to export a full range of hyperlinked objects in Impress as a pdf file so that the hyperlinks work. That would get me 95% of where I would like to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Using it every day. Great product!

</comment><comment><USER11> OT; there's a recent Changelog podcast[0] that features the dev who translated LibreOffice to the native tongue of Paraguay.

[0][https://changelog.com/podcast/235](https://changelog.com/podcast/235)

</comment><comment><USER12> Did breeze-dark icons make it in?

</comment><comment><USER13> Great alternative to Office

<comment><USER14> I think anything is a great alternative to the Office at this point. In hindsight, LibreOffice's name must've been chosen by a fortune-teller..or a <strike>pessimist</strike> realist ;)

<comment><USER15> what's so bad about Office? I just switched from LO to Office and it's felt like taking a huge weight off my shoulders - all the weird little UI quirks and bugs are gone, and everything just works.

<comment><USER14> My apologies. My reply was an attempt at political humor. No connection to the LibreOffice software.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon's Next Big Move: Take Over the Mall - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602780/amazons-next-big-move-take-over-the-mall/ <comment><USER2> Uhh, I really want to drive to U-Village (aka traffic nightmare) to go to a bookstore run by Amazon, the group that can't figure out how to get above a 50% DOA rate on the hardware I've bought from them over the last 6 months?

This is like the grocery place they are opening up the street from me, right next to Safeway, but in that case I'm actually fearful their poor business practices will give me E coli covered veggies!

Edit: Reading the tail end of this piece, the abject lack of pricing hits me, who doesn't understand retail enough that they think price tags are unnecessary? Additionally, how has Amazon completely missed that bookstores need to have an inviting atmosphere, to ideally become your 3rd place (after home and work) if they want to drive decent volume?

Amazon doesn't understand their competition in the least, and that will be their downfall.</comment>


The beginning of the end of all-you-can-eat Internet access? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/comcast-internet-access-2010-11

<comment><USER2> Can some lawyer please just kill comcast instead?</comment>


I don't know that this will be sustainable, but this is my dream job - <AUTHOR> http://summerofrichard.com/

<comment><USER2> Wish you good luck, man.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.</comment></comment>


Cloakmy - Share a secure message - <AUTHOR> https://cloakmy.org

<comment><USER2> How this service works made me feel important - <https://cloakmy.org/r/8411bea9></comment>


Ask HN: Developers' jobs in Europe. Best cover-letter, cv practices. - <AUTHOR> Dear European HNers,
I was wondering is there any special requirements ( like stronger cover-letter OR no need for good cover-letter, 4+ pages CV vs. <4 pages CV, etc. ) to apply for web-developer jobs in Europe ( specifically in Berlin and other tech-hubs in Europe ), since I know that there could be a bit difference than what it is in the US.
I've recently read blog posts about "How to find a job in IT" but they are all specific for SF, NY and nothing about European Startups / Tech companies.
I recently applied with a cover letter, which inclues the company's logo created with CSS3, HTML by me @ codepen ( It looks like a trend now ), but I don't know if the HR team in Europe will think that this is unserious and will skip my application.
Can anyone suggest some best practices. Thanks! <comment><USER2> In London:

1\. Include a one to two paragraph cover letter that you wrote specifically for the opening you're applying for. Make the quality of English very high. Use simple letter-style formatting, address in the top right, company logo in the top left if you have a freelance brand that you're using.

2\. Include a two page CV. Simple formatting please (I am going to print it and write on it). Mine has worked well for me (though in retrospect is too wordy!), [http://hackerb.io/cantlin.pdf](http://hackerb.io/cantlin.pdf), you can get one from [http://hackerb.io](http://hackerb.io).

3\. Make both documents PDFs. Anything else is a pain for me.

4\. Include links to your web presence, if you want. They can be in the cover letter, CV or email. You'll be Googled anyway so it's best to be proactive, especially if you have stuff on Github, SO, etc.

5\. Companies vary, but be mindful of potentially needing to get your application through an HR department who at best will be searching for keywords from the job post.

6\. Startups are a different game. Your CSS3 logo is a good stab (though make sure you back it up with meat). If I were looking for a startup role today I would be focused on making connections through events, social media and the open source projects they use.

<comment><USER3> Might be worth noting if you're going through a recruiter they specifically want an MS word doc so they can remove your contact details and put their logo on your CV. The more shady ones will even add keywords and stuff to your CV.

<comment><AUTHOR> So what's the point in doing this, when employers can just google my name and make direct contact?

<comment><USER4> They strip out the details that can personally identify you. When the employer gets your CV, you are merely a reference number.

Think about it the other way. Search for a job and look at ads from recruiters, if you're lucky you will see a vague description of the industry.

<comment><USER5> Many recruiters are too lazy to change the job description of roles they recruit for. In case you find a role you are interested in that is with a recruiter, take out 7-8 words of the job responsibilities and do an exact search in Google. Moderate success rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am a developer and IT manager/director in Berlin.

I will say this: in most small to medium IT companies (in Berlin) a cover letter is not needed or even wanted in most cases -- speak with your work and your CV. The cover letter is just excess "stuff" that we have to read on top of everything else. Larger corporations may appreciate this more.

A CV should be kept VERY short and to the point (i.e. 1-2 pages). A "creative" CV is fine if you are applying for a creative position, but outside of that keep it simple and avoid being confusing. Note that Germany has its own CV format which often includes your picture, marital status, and so forth. Adhering to this is a plus in most cases!

Example projects you participated in (such as a URL to a site you developed) or code samples (i.e. GitHub) are an enormous plus that will put you at the front of the line (if it is good code, naturally).

If you are applying from outside the EU, it is important to stand out because of the extra cost and process (which is relatively quick and painless in Germany compared to some other countries, such as England) for your visa and residency. There is, however, a large shortage of talented IT professionals here and most companies regularly seek out candidates from outside Germany and even outside the EU.

In Berlin, you can likely get away with not speaking German, though it is a "plus." In many parts of Germany (i.e. Munich), the majority of positions will require/assume you speak German plus some level of English proficiency.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That's the most relevant (geo-oriented) answer to me. I guess I have to reduce the CV size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> European like continental or European like UK? There's a big difference. In my ~2009 experience rocking up similarly with zero local experience (as an Aussie), offers I gathered wound up at x _EUR_ on the continent vs. 2x _GBP_ in London.

However, living in London is expensive and basically sux after summer. If I were doing it again I would go to a city or town on or near the Mediterranean. For my weak and nerdy constitution, if it's not far southern Europe, it's too cold in the winter.

I did alright and had a few pages, I wouldn't worry too much about format. Remember being from the US you are going to tend to be subconsciously sterotyped as culturally ignorant, loud and egocentric so maybe try to consciously tone it down a bit.

PS. You perhaps should have mentioned up there you are in Berlin already.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, pretty much I'm aware of the salary. I'm not from US :) I just moved here and I'm trying to exit from the freelancing business that I'm doing since I can remember ( I miss team work ;) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Like what you can see through all the comments, there is no "European way of applying", even though there is officially a "European type CV", but don't know much about it.

I just went through the process recently (in France), and what I know is true for sure in mainland Europe is :

* No more than 2 pages. Make it 1 if you can (I worked quite hard to make fit everything I wanted into 1 page, but if you really had a lot of projects showing a wide range of skills, it can be hard). If you have less than 5 years of XP, I'd say only 1 page.

* Picture : This depends per country. In Germany, it's practically mandatory (except maybe in some more "international" startups, don't know about that). In France, it is not, but the latest trend is to put one. Reading elsewhere in this thread, in the UK, it seems you should not put one.

* Cover letter : in France it is highly appreciated (especially if there is an HR person/department) and you should put good time into it and definitely tailor it to the company you are applying to (you can still have pattern though, that helps to write them much faster).

* Github profile can help but that really depends on which type of company you're applying to I think.

* Degrees : That really depends. I guess (hope) in the startup world it is less important, but in "normal company" in France and Germany, they value it a lot (one would say too much) but of course, you can't change that. You can try to counterbalance it in your cover letter though.

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious, what possible use does a picture have in the hiring process? Doesn't it open up companies to accusations of discrimination?

<comment><USER8> I guess it does not otherwise they would not ask it :)

I guess it's just cultural. I'm not German so I can't answer more than that.

As for France (I'm French but I was not working in France for the past 6 years), I have the impression it's just a trend that comes and goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Xing is still very popular among German speakers, though linked in has been making quick progress.

A professional looking portrait photo is essential here in Switzerland, and age based discrimination is legal? and the norm, so not disclosing your age may waste everyone's time.

Here they also send around a cover letter and a bunch of documents from past employers, but they don't seem to expect that from foreigners.

</comment><comment><USER11> What kind of company are you aiming for? Enterprise or startup? They're worlds apart.

If you're looking for a solid enterprise CV, I've had pretty good results with mine at [http://michiel.trimpe.nl](http://michiel.trimpe.nl) (the picture and recommendations section are optional.) For big companies LinkedIn is also key and recommendations there are very valuable.

For blanket applications (e.g. submit on website) cover letters are a must and you must show that you have read about the business and explain in a few sentences why you feel your profile would fit well with the (goals of the) employer. As for format, the body of your introductory email message is often considered synonymous with your cover letter.

(P.S. This is based on the Amsterdam market. Europe is big and every country is different so advice from a German would be better still if you were looking for a job in Berlin)

<comment><USER12> Put a picture on your CV in the UK and it directly goes into the bin. No one wants to be liable for discrimination.

<comment><USER13> DON'T put a picture on your CV in GERMANY and it directly goes into the bin. :)

<comment><USER14> For what a software company would need a picture in a cv of a software engineer candidate?

<comment><USER13> In Germany companies just like it that way. I don't know why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A 4 page CV would just be thrown away in the UK. 1 page, unless you have 20 years of experience - then maybe 2.

A cover letter shouldn't have their logo on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That logo was a link to codepen, just a demo that I'm interested in the company. It was definitely not in my cover letter as attached image or smth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cover letters are not all that important here in Germany.

Your CV matters a lot more, according to my experience, but it should be no longer than 1-2 pages.

Projects are what matters, so show them the code (e.g. with a GitHub profile).

<comment><AUTHOR> 10x That's what I'm doing right now. Although there are some projects than I can't show them ( perhaps, in person I could, since they are copyrighted ) I have a good ~10 years experience and some open source projects I have participated.

<comment><USER13> Open source experience is great, when applying for a job at a startup! I think you will have good chances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Basic rule of keeping your C.V. short and sweet, because if every candidate is a 2-3 page C.V. and 25 candidates apply the person responsible for reading them is going to be in for a long, annoying day.

Cover letters are fine, don't worry about it too much though as they're normally just scanned over. If you're going for frontend have some work in a portfolio online they can view. Backend consider having some open source work on GitHub, even if it's just a few snippets of useful code you use every now and again.

</comment><comment><USER17> What about Prague ? Tech scene has evolved rapidly in past few years. (Skype, AVG, Avast, Red Hat, Geewa, Socialbakers, Good Data, Zoom International and many others...) + Startupyards,Node5 incubator + The Hub.

Check this article : [http://www.janrezab.com/prague-beats-berlin-with-its- tech-sc...](http://www.janrezab.com/prague-beats-berlin-with-its-tech-scene- could-challenge-london-in-the-future/)

</comment><comment><USER18> As someone doing quite some interviews for a Norwegian company a cover letter should just be a couple of lines describing some practicalities, like why you'd want to join my team over any other team in the company and from which office you'd like to work. Other than that I'll mainly look at online presence, GH, SO, etc. CV is not that interesting because I probably don't know the companies you worked before anyway.

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's what worked for me:

1\. I always prepared (exactly) 2 page CV.

2\. One thing, that paid off (I think) I always prepared CV for specific Job offer. Takes time, but exposes the best of you in paper for the position you are applying for.

3\. I have a belief that "If text looks good on paper - it will look good on screen", not necessarily otherwise. Thus I print my CV, read it loudly, mark and correct bits and pieces with pencil, edit the electronic form, rinse & repeat until I don't have anything to edit.

4\. I wrote cover letter twice in my life - basically it was among the lines of: "I would love to work at your company, because you are cool at something I am interested in working on and I think I have the skills you need (references to CV, showing my experience in what they needed)."

So far so good, through the years I applied to companies in Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden and UK (London) - I got offers from all of them. I applied for Software Engineer position in PHP or Python companies.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a web developer in London, who's moderately involved in hiring. Most advice you'll get is subjective, but here's my two pence.

A 2 page CV is the norm, though you won't get dinged for a page either way - especially if the content is good. A cover letter can help, especially if it's focused on the company - why you want to work for them, what skills you can bring & why they're relevant, etc. It's also a chance to show off any side projects or Github accounts; if it was a front-end job you applied for, the logo in CSS3 sounds ideal. Don't worry too much about formality of language; polite but friendly is fine. Aim for 2-3 paragraphs. I wouldn't include a photo; that's a little weird in the UK job market, though it's generally understood to mean "Oh, the candidate's from another country."

</comment><comment><USER21> I think that you should read this:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ResumeRead.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ResumeRead.html)

I have rewritten my CV according to this and it is working out fine!

</comment><comment><USER22> In my experience (living in Berlin but not looking for a job), you mainly need to have a strong GitHub profile, and need to show up in some relevant meetups and talk with people. There will be offers.

<comment><USER23> I guess that promotes no-value projects with the purpose of only to be mentioned in CV, thus polluting the open source world...

I mean, for various reasons, quite a lot of experienced engineers have nothing to show on github or bitbucket, and _really_ contribute to the open source world.

<comment><USER22> GitHub shows the projects you contribute to, not only the repositories you own.

I would also like to take exception to _polluting the open source world_. Having more code out there is a good thing. In any case there are already multiple libraries and widgets available for whatever purpose. Maybe some of these will come up with something new?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> European developer here having worked across 3 countries in Europe and also involved in hiring/recruiting.Here's my advice:

Sending your application If (bigger) startup has an internal recruitment/HR who will review you CV first. As sad as it may sound, make sure their 'keywords' match yours in the CV. Except for the internal recruiters with a technical background (close to none), they will just go through the list of keywords needed for the role. It's more or less a bulletproof approach to pass the first filter which is essential if you even want to be considered. It's a pity that persons who have almost zero knowledge about the technologies we use have so much impact and power on deciding whether or not you'll be good based on their criteria (again; keywords).

Most internal recruiters don't care about a cover letter at all, with a big part of them not even reading it. Therefore, keep it very short and rather invest time in a good CV.

You may need to adapt your CV specific to each role specifically (focussing on the role requirements), so be ready to have a CV that can easily be adapted to a specific role.

CV 2 pages is ideal (especially if you've held >2 roles), first block is your personal information, followed by your work experience (latest position first). Make some bullet points of what your tasks where at each role. Bullet points are always a win in a CV, always have readability in mind, no HR/Hiring Manager wants to get a long wall of text CV after having gone through 20 previous one's.

After that, you can always put your Github or SO accounts (more likely if startup), but I would rather talk about this with the Hiring Manager during the phone interview, and if they are curious ask them if you can send your account via email, this also gives you a good opportunity to add some extra details about you which can make you stand out better and get you 'remembered' longer and more positively if you are in their inbox. You would be surprised how many (older) technical managers still don't know SO or Github.

Then comes your education, just very short, only mention colleges/uni if so.

No profile picture

Always print your CV and look at it skeptically and ask yourself "Would I like getting a CV like this?"

My experience with places I've worked London Quite hard to even get a response, I think companies in London have an easy time hiring with many good candidates. Also no relocation packages or anything like that.

Holland Many tech jobs available and good chances to get hired when not native. Dutch people are quite keen on international employees.

Spain Good supply/demand ratio in favor of demand. From what I've seen tech companies in Spain have hard time hiring quality employees. Also pretty international (Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga).

Other I understand the question is more about the first phase of applying, but when you secure an interview at a company, learn as much as you can about them, you might be asked for it.

Basic flow of an interview in Europe is: Company introduces itself -> you introduce yourself -> Q&A specific for the role -> question round where you are free to ask questions. When they ask you to ask questions, do so! Company owners/Hiring Managers/HR love to talk about their company and it's a good way to find out about the culture, and it makes you interested in the company which is an advantage. Startups usually don't give you any tests or tasks during the interview, they usually stick to asking technical questions. Last but not least, if you are very interested in working at a company and have a interview at their office, make a short presentation. Especially for technical roles this is highly appreciated. Put some effort in this (5-15hours) and use whatever you can or is related to your role. The presentation should match the "you introduce yourself " part of the interview and go a bit deeper into your knowledge. Present it with confidence. When they like it, you will see the interview will get a lot more relaxed and if you've given a good insight in your knowledge/projects you've worked on a lot of the technical questions will already be answered or skipped.

The presentation part was twice successful for the 2 roles I ever applied for. I've also advised it to 3 friends of which 2 got hired, of which both the Hiring Manager said they were impressed by the presentation.

<comment><USER24> By presentation do you mean actual slides, or simply having a speech ready?

<comment><USER5> Presentation as in 'going there with your laptop'. Keynote is fine but if you're good with HTML/CSS and some UI you can make a more impressive and interactive presentation.</comment></comment></comment>


Htty is a console application for interacting with HTTP servers. - <AUTHOR> http://htty.github.com/

<comment><USER2> Two gripes.

1) If I hit Ctrl-D - it says " __* Type qui[t] to quit."

If you know what I want to do, DO IT.. don't argue with me. Why would you write special extra code that specifically recognizes what the user wants to do and then tell them to do it another way?

2) putting a character in [X] usually means X is the character to hit. The help text is difficult to parse compared to what's normal....

Oh - I like the tool BTW - very handy otherwise.....

<comment><USER3> 1) Agreed, that is a bit annoying, but I thought it less annoying than losing your entire session by quitting if you inadvertently type Ctrl-D twice to terminate input to the 'body-set' command.

2) The brackets are used similarly to their meaning in EBNF to denote optional elements. The expression 'r[euse]' means you can type 'r', 're', 'reu', or 'reus' as aliases for the 'reuse' command.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is also <http://github.com/cloudhead/http-console> which is based on node.js.

<comment><USER3> I'm a big http-console fan. It was the inspiration for my htty project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the site:

 _> Response codes between 500 and 599 appear flashing black on yellow to indicate a server error_

Note that flashing stuff is one of the major sins of UI design, on websites as well as console applications. Even on really serious errors, flashing text is just distracting and makes the oh so important information hard to read.

I strongly recommend to remove the blinking.

Instead, you could rethink the color scheme. However, the current colors are working quite well for me, so I guess that simply removing the flashing will already do the trick.

<comment><USER3> I used blinking text not so much in the "Danger, Will Robinson!" sense but rather to suggest that the response is not idempotent. Repeating the same request could result in a different, non-error response.

User-configurable color schemes are in the works.

<comment><USER5> _> User-configurable color schemes are in the works._

That's great, but providing sensible defaults is more important than making them configurable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use <http://ditchnet.org/httpclient/> for an OS X HTTP client.

</comment><comment><USER7> earlier discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1667951>

</comment><comment><USER8> Holy crap, yes please! I literally need an interactive HTTP client like this RIGHT NOW. Thanks!

I've been dealing with a really hairy, picky quasi-RESTful API in Objective C, and it can be extremely hard to differentiate between a bug in my code and a bug in the API at times. Having an interactive console like this is going to save me a huge amount of time and hassle. Thank you so much for writing this!

<comment><USER9> What about telnet? (I did not downvote you, BTW.)

<comment><USER8> general ease of use, including highlighting, simple management of GET/POST/PUT/DELETE, cookies, etc.

<comment><USER3> Glad you like it. Please let me know if htty ends up causing you pain in the course of your API work. Either tweet me @get_htty or @njonsson or enter a bug or wish-list item at <http://github.com/htty/htty/issues>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it could make some things easier. I look forward to using it.

</comment><comment><USER11> is this something one would use to play with API requests?

<comment><USER12> Yes, it would be very useful for that as well as troubleshooting server responses (to test for things like caching, bugs, stuff like that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> sounds like a solution looking for a problem.

<comment><USER14> um yeah - what's wrong with plan ole http? curl has never come up short.

<comment><USER3> The aim of the project was to make htty an incremental advance over curl by layering aspects of a browser UX on top of it. What you get with htty that curl doesn't give you is primarily a session, and consequently a history. The other features are icing on the cake.

In the near future, the difference will be more striking. The ability to parse and build requests on various media types will make htty even better at the tasks of both API exploration and HTML screen-scraping.

<comment><USER14> definitely a cool project. Cool to experiment with UX on top of http. I guess the thing that rubbed me the wrong way initially is I really like seeing request / response. As a developer I learn alot from watching those; and anytime I have bugs in my http it's typically a header problem, so I like seeing those front and center.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


S&P downgrading US like Consumer Reports downgrading Coca-Cola - <AUTHOR> http://baselinescenario.com/2011/08/06/so-what-part-two/

<comment><USER2> If it is true that S&P is wasting their breath rating the U.S. government, then it is also true that some random blogger is wasting their breath commenting on S&P's wasting their breath.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair. Based on the excitement and carnage from the downgrade, its great that theres a dialogue going on about the politics behind the situation, including the S&P's errors and what the rating really means.</comment></comment>


Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0506E

<comment><USER2> Can someone make the rest of the article available?

<comment><USER3> <http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4916.html>

Not really worth the read, honestly - a lot of fluff

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "New research shows that when people need help getting a job done, they'll choose a congenial colleague over a more capable one. That has big implications for every organization—and not all of them are negative."

If by "new research" they mean my entire working experience and probably that of millions of others, or the design that led to LinkedIn's success, sure.

I've seen far too many people work themselves right out of a job because they were just impossible to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish I could push a _Report Spam_ button.

<comment><AUTHOR> d0mine, personality types affect the success/failure of any venture, its relevant and useful to this community.

<comment><USER6> His problem wasn't that the article was not relevant. His problem is that none of us can read it because its locked behind a subscription service.

This means that it either doesn't belong here (and is here by accident) or is spam trying to get us to sign up, which also doesn't belong here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm here is how I accessed the full article. I used my local public library's online magazine access. I don't have a personal subscription to HBR.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Norvig: The Odds of Finding a Set in The Card Game SET - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/SET.html

<comment><USER2> Peter, we need to talk.

<http://docs.python.org/library/itertools.html>

"combinations()" is a built in. No need to re-implement it. Also, nested [... for ... for ... for] is silly. Just use "product()", documented on the same page.

[''.join(card) for card in product('123', 'RGP', '@O=', 'OSD')]

They say that six months after learning the itertools module, people give up on Python for Lisp. Which would be hilarious, in your case.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've asked him about this, here is his reply:

"[...] about itertools -- I guess I got the impression that itertools is deprecated in 3.0, or at least that Guido doesn't much like it, so I have stayed away from it. And itertools.combinations is only in 2.6, so I think I will leave things as is, for those still stuck in 2.5."

<comment><USER2> Combinations is also in +3.0. Otherwise a valid concern. (Been burned by that one myself.)

I can't find the source, but there might be some confusion between map/filter/reduce and itertools. Guido does not like map/filter/reduce and wants to get rid of them.

Itertools is a huge part of Python 3.0. Everything is an iterator in the language. And the docs underwent a major rewrite with the 3.0 release. It is not going to be deprecated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The really interesting thing about set is that it has a very mathematical interpretation. You can think of sets as points in affine 4-space over Z_3. There is actually a very interesting paper on the whole thing:

<http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~maclagan/papers/set.pdf>

<comment><USER4> That URL was stuck for a bit for me, this newer one worked better: <http://www.warwick.ac.uk/staff/D.Maclagan/papers/set.pdf>

Thanks for the tip. Paper from 2003; amusing bit in the tail-end Acknowledgments:

 _We would never have spend so many hours thinking about the "set-Problem" without Joe Buhler's goading remark that it was shocking that two Berkeley students couldn't work out the answer. Josh Levenberg helped then by writing our original brute-force program, before we came up with a non-computer proof of "20"._

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> super relevant for me. I have been playing this game with my 6 yo daughter and was frustrated many times that we could not find a set even though the odds said that we should. Finally the mystery is solved.

<comment><USER6> There's a bunch of Set solvers online (like <http://www.stevenolte.com/set/set.html> ) for when you get really stuck.

Also, <http://3e.org/set/> is great for practice.

<comment><USER7> Is brute force the only way to solve the game? I only glanced over the rules so I'm not sure, but it seems like a solution would involve finding subgraph isomorphisms (which is NP-complete) or something along those lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a factor he doesn't mention, which is _which_ set is removed from the table. Norvig's code removes the first set it finds. Another strategy would be to identity all sets and remove one at random. And who knows how humans play? It's not obvious whether these are equivalent regarding the rate at which the table gets "worse".

<comment><USER2> I've seen moderately serious folk play. They will recognize multiple sets simultaneously and either go for the one closest to them or the one with three cards tightly clustered. And they move fast! Watching them play is like watching a mathematically inclined cobra fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The general reasoning for why the variation is so big isn't that hard.

Set asks you to look for cards that sit at the edges of the bell curve. Most combinations will be "mostly similar" or "mostly different" but not entirely one way or the other.

When you start with a 12-card no-set combination, that means that your first 12 cards were already of a low "quality" and sit in the middle of the curve; the 3 cards added can't push the distribution to an extreme by themselves.

Edit: to think of it another way, inverse the problem; Of the usable 12-card combinations, any number of cards could be added and they'd still have at least one set. Hence you're filtering most good 15-card sets when you do the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some more thought (can't edit below due to noprocrast :). As he suggests at the end, the distance between points (cards) on the table seems to be important. If we have some set with a given mean distance between point (or some better measure of clustering), and we choose a set at random, since there are more sets made of distant points, the remaining points will be on average closer together. This is our badness measure (closeness of points on the table) probabilistically getting worse. I'm sure he got that far. The hard part is choosing a distance measure that's amenable to analysis under random- set-removal, but you could probably get a weak result just on mean distance, no? Can't sleep, sorry for rambling.

<comment><USER8> Should read "If we have some _table_ ".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In this kind of "tough cards" situation it seems that there are two overrepresented categories (here, doubles and ovals). So the cards that counter those attributes (e.g. half-shaded singles) would be able to make many sets. But since a card can only make one set and take off two other cards, the ability of those cards to rebalance the tableau is limited.

So when you get in one of these situations where the next three cards are feast or famine, it tends to persist. Having a persistent cluster like that gives you a lot more chance to run into the no-set case.

</comment><comment><USER11> A while ago I was bored on a car trip and coded up a Set game in Haskell. Later, I converted it to a really simple CGI game. I had grand plans for a scoreboard and head-to-head play that fell by the wayside when I moved on to another project, but the original version is still playable:

<http://web.jfet.org/~kwantam/cgi-bin/HSetHTML.cgi>

If anyone wants the code for all this I can post it...

</comment><comment><USER12> I find the first example confusing.

The author says "A set is defined as three cards in which each of the four features of the card (color, shape of symbols, number of symbols, and shading) have either all the same value or all different values."

Then the first example of what _is_ a set shows color/shape/number different and shading as the same. Which contradicts the rule he just quoted.

What am I missing here?

<comment><USER13> For each feature, the cards have to be either all different or all the same. What you can't have is two cards of one color and one of another, or two cards of one shade and one of another.

<comment><USER12> Ah so, for each quanta, the quanta must be identical across all three cards, or different on each card.

All red, or only one red. all solid, or only one solid.

Thanks for explaining that me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love Peter Norvig's posts on stuff like this and I'm looking forward to checking out the code he wrote to do this analysis.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm going to study that python code. It's great.</comment>


IfIRanTheWorld I would.. - <AUTHOR> http://ifwerantheworld.com/ <comment><USER2> It seems that most people using it have missed the point about micro-platforms and micro-actions, to actually enable the ideas to be broken into tiny achievable steps and be implemented. All the suggestions that I saw on there were basically in the form 'If I Ran The World I Would... boil the oceans.'

<comment><USER3> You're right - we want to encourage people to take things they really care about and think about how to tackle them via initially tangible goals they can then use friends, networks, and the connections we can provide to achieve via microactions. We're working to address and rebalance this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Usability was great until I tried finding a listing of IfIRanTheWorld answers.

<comment><USER5> I'm the developer for the site, although I've only been on the project for a few weeks. The initial vision, as I understand it, was to not bombard people with what they _could_ do, but let people find it themselves. We've since gotten a lot of comments about just wanting to see an index, which we're put up at /action_platforms for the curious. This page is in the works, which is why there's no link to it.

<comment><USER6> i like this. some thoughts:

a) everyone i've shown this to clicks on the "fake" input box and initially ignores the "i'm game" link.

b) is the "i'm game" section supposed to overlap the newly posted statements? i'm using safari.

c) i wish i could use my browser's back button to return to the list of items based on my statement.

<comment><USER5> Yes Yes and Yes I agree with you on all those n_n

A&B - we have a redesigned home page to get rid of the wall of text and the confusing overlay coming very soon.

C- This is one of my least favorite things about the site. I'll +1 to this issue.

Thanks!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> funny how when people talk about changing the world they never want to get into the specifics of what THEY should be doing. it's always about what others should be doing. so, are we going to force others to go along with us? if we get 51% of the votes we should be able to enforce ourselves on the other 49% with guns right?

<comment><USER8> maybe - just maybe - that's exactly what this site is addressing? maybe you should have a look?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> To everybody who's commented so far - we really appreciate the feedback, the compliments and the constructive criticism.

Just to add to my team's responses below:

\- fulltime employees currently are 3: myself (founder/CEO/ business development/'customer service'), Jason our general manager who also operates as project manager and programmer, and Julia, programmer. Oonie has been working on user experience alongside her day job and joins us fulltime very soon. Sougwen our brilliant designer is currently on the digital media course at Hyper Island in Stockholm and works with us part-time. And Corey and Rachel at Pivotal Labs worked with us to build this while we were looking for full- time developers, are passionate about the venture, very much part of the team and we want to give them full credit for that.

\- we pushed IfWeRanTheWorld out in beta very much in 'minimum viable product' mode because we wanted a real-world, real-time test to garner exactly the kind of feedback you are kindly giving us below, so we could jump on user experience/usability issues pronto, and address and refine accordingly alongside our own development timeline (which has additional features and functionality being added on a daily basis, along with addressing IE issues).

\- you're quite right about the fact that while 'If I ran the world I would' is designed to inspire you to act on what you really personally care about, it's prompting users to think rather too big at the moment - we're jumping on that with some different ways of suggesting how you approach that, in order to turn big thoughts into tangible goals you (and everyone else helping) can turn into microactions that make them achievable.

\- we, and I personally, really appreciate everything we're saying and will be acting on it

\- I should just add that we are big fans of 'abnormal' - as in,doing things differently and coming up with innovative ways to achieve goals and be effective. Including where that, ahem, references the unusual instance of a startup team being female-dominated..:)

<comment><USER3> Whoops, apologies for typo, that should be 'we really appreciate everything YOU'RE saying..':)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This site is beautiful, obviously.

I also love the idea of challenging people to think big, like what they'd do if they ran the world. For me, this question involves ethical considerations, prevention of global conflict, the battle of hunger and poverty and the maximization of happiness.

I don't understand how their microactions relate to that question at all. They seem to be asking two questions at the same time. One is a hypothetical mindgame that makes people think about the challenges of the world and one is the very specific question of what each individual can do. As a result the answers they get are apparently either overly general or not relevant at all.

If anyone wants to discuss the big question, you can check out a thread I recently opened at HN :)

<comment><USER5> The idea is that you CAN do what you would do if you ran the world, if you had enough man hours to get you there. A little help here & there, and you can achieve it. All this is possible because you're likely not the only one who wants to do what you want to.

The workflow as we have envisioned it is that you answer the question, and we show you similar action platforms and microactions, so that you can get involved right now with the platform you care about. Or, if nothing matches what you have in mind, you can start your own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 7 employees and 2 of them guys, one a programmer. huh.

<comment><USER11> What's your point?

Granted, I have no idea what they're doing that requires 7 people (and only 2 coders ...).

<comment><USER12> His point is that's insane :). The general consensus on Hacker News is a good brand new start-up is 2-3 people, who are all coders. I tend to agree with this, except for exceptional projects like search engines. Most websites can be handled by a hacker or two at the beginning.

This site could be done by just one mostly incompetent programmer in short order. What the other six guys could possibly be doing is a mystery. They are probably just slowing down the one guy doing any work.

<comment><USER13> You folks may have missed the boat in assuming this is a startup. I think it's more about the idea/message/whatever.

These people have other (good) jobs. Cindy Gallop (Founder/CEO) is a (quasi)retired ad exec. Her last web experiment: makelovenotporn.com. She talked about it at TED last year. No revenue model there. Oonie Chase is creative director at Blast Radius. The list goes on.

Plus, not less than 3 people on the about page have the word "Code" in their job title, so uhh... fuzzy math.

<comment><USER14> You get it.

We also decided to launch this as an experiment as well to get input and feedback like we are getting here. Rather than try to make it perfect at launch, we'll get the minimum viable product out there and see what the world wants from it. We've already made some changes and are continuing to do so based on feedback from the masses.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, everyone, thanks for your feedback! I'm the dev for the site and we know we have a long way to go.

We launched the site a few weeks ago in the interest of getting it out there and see how people are using it and what they want. So yea, there's a lot of stuff that's not there/broken/weird. But that's kind of the point!

We didn't stick a huge beta icon in the corner, but we think people need to stop being apologetic about what they're putting out there and more receptive to feedback and real-world use cases.

So, please, if you have any ideas about what could make this more useful to you, let us know! You can ping me here, or on getsatisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER15> Strikingly beautiful design. Incredibly simple and interesting premise. This site has done a GREAT job of letting the user do one simple thing before enticing them to get more involved. Very well done. One of the best new sites i've seen in a while.

Oh, if you are the site creator, there is a bit of a bug in chrome&FF. the 'ok i'm game' button is placed over the 'x hours ago' line which I suspect is supposed to be above.

I hate to say it, but you loose some points by not supporting IE at all. Not supporting IE6 i can appreciate. But it doesn't take THAT much extra time to support IE7 & 8.

<comment><USER16> Ummmmm, on the point of beautiful design, are we seeing the same thing? This is what I see: <http://imgur.com/0Jk8I.png>

-Not high enough contrast for my liking,

-Bulks of text in low contrast = 'tl;dr',

-I keep clicking what looks like input field but it won't work. Oh, I have to click...

-...the 'I'm game' button below. That's practically invisible, due to being just outline, with the text hovering over another block of text.

Sure, it all goes away after you click the top layer off. But my initial reaction was 'What is this mess? What do they want from me? Why would I want to stay here?'.

<comment><USER14> Yep, we totally get that. We're changing out that intro page to something much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hey all, I'm the interface / visual designer for the site. Very appreciative of all your positive feedback, and especially your keen and insightful constructive criticisms.

It's been a truly unique experiment so far, and it's only just begun. Really pleased to hear any and all responses as we push interface / functionality tweaks, new updates, and new features!

</comment><comment><USER18> First I read the title as Iran something.

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting; it could be used like online petitions, but with actions instead of words. Hopefully most/all large tasks can be divided with such granularity that everyone can take part without major roadblocks.

</comment><comment><USER20> Fix your site so that it works oN the iPhone

<comment><USER5> An iPhone site wasn't in the works for phase one release (minimally viable product), but it's definitely in the works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> nice design

<comment><USER3> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Looking for a submission about buildings not being made as they used to be - <AUTHOR> There was a submission here long ago, months at lesat, where someone on their blog made a good argument that buildings aren't made like they used to be: THey are worse in pretty much every aspect, and the person gave arguments and tons of pictures to prove it.
By any chance, does anyone know which one I mean?
Thanks <comment><USER2> I'm sorry I was not able to find what you are looking for. The terms you used were too generic, not specific to the article I used google with building site:[https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com)

"building Worse" site:[https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com) and other terms with a 1 year cutoff but nothing with lots of pictures was shown on the first page. If you can remember more specific words, or cities then maybe I can narrow down the search Best wishes to you and your loved ones</comment>


Nokia Has Better Maps Than Apple and Maybe Even Google - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/the-forgotten-mapmaker-nokia-has-better-maps-than-apple-and-maybe-even-google/263150/ <comment><USER2> Nokia has (or rather _had_ ) Better-Many-Things, and absolutely no idea what to do with them.

They keep cutting trees but there's nobody in the forest to hear them fall, because they put huge signs all around saying "WE DON'T REALLY LIKE CUTTING TREES". A Microsoft (or why not, Facebook) acquisition is basically their only hope at this point, bar miracles.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft is not buying Nokia. They think it's better make their own (zune) phone. How hard can it be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My problem with Apple's maps hasn't been the quality of the maps but the quality of the search. I was looking for the Sea Dog Brew Pub last night. When I put "seadog" into iOS 6 maps, no result, despite it being only a few miles away. Google Maps nailed it. Both maps had a record of the POI, but only Google's had the basic smarts to handle the missing space.

More complicated examples are even worse for Apple, abs typically effortless for Google.

Unless Nokia has all that fuzzy match/page rank DNA, I'm not sure simply more accurate maps will help.

<comment><USER5> I've pretty much given up on search on iOS6. It seems more often than not entering an address like "123 Spruce" will take me to some landmark/town relating to the street name, a few states away.

I can count the number of times the search actually picked up on the fact that I entered an address on a single hand. Apple, this is me trying to make things as easy for your craptastic search as possible. I've taken the trouble to type the number and the street name. If you can't take it from there, _what the hell_.

I've also had the map place things in hilariously wrong places. These are shops with addresses (addresses that are correct on the detail pane!) that would somehow end up a block away or on the wrong side of the street. Worse yet, I've been redirect to a few no-longer-existent Starbucks by now.

This is in Manhattan too, far from an obscure location.

<comment><USER6> This is one of Google Maps' hugely understated strengths. I've never found another service that can take a partial address and understand what you mean as well as it does. It was one of my motivations to switch back to Android from Windows Phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nokia don't have perfect worldwide coverage though, they have nothing in Japan aside from outlines. (understandable as Nokia have zero market presence or ambition in Japan, but no good as an acquire)

<comment><USER8> That's not entirely true, since Navteq has a strong presence in the auto industry in Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> No, it doesn't! At least not better then Google. For example streets marked in Doha, Qatar's capital, are totally outdated in Nokia maps - years old and inconsistent even with their own satellite view: [http://maps.nokia.com/25.2835829,51.5508221,18,0,0,hybrid.da...](http://maps.nokia.com/25.2835829,51.5508221,18,0,0,hybrid.day)

<comment><USER10> From what I see, google has the same map for this crossroad, but a different satellite view.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, Nokia updated it's map in last two months. At the beginning of August it matched it's satellite view, and the funny part was that I relied on that map! I preferred Nokia maps because I found them to be more clear. But then on the spot I was like current Apple users with their Apple maps...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://maps.nokia.com/3D/>

<comment><USER12> Is there a reason Linux isn't supported? Silverlight?

Edit: There's a webgl version here: <http://maps3d.svc.nokia.com/webgl/>

<comment><USER13> This "webgl version" works for me, but seems to have no actual mapping data, it's just a highly zoomable satellite view with no labels or other markings of any kind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if Apple has lost more value from the map debacle than Nokia's entire marketcap. Apple's stock is down ~25-30B dollars since the the iphone 5 came out, and Nokia is worth 10B.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nokia sounds like it has great maps, also LOVE the layout of m.theatlantic.com. First article in a long time I could actually look at without feeling like I have ADHD. I'm going to start trying to add a m. in front of domains I read!

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe better maps, but no street view, which is kind of a deal breaker for me as an "urban pedestrian".

<comment><USER17> Street View is amazing, but it's currently not available in my country (Uruguay) nor neighbouring Argentina, and it's not available in any region of Brazil that I've visited (I hear it's now available in Sao Paulo and Rio).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> the problem with nokia is not it software. The maps are good and other software too. BUT smartphones are about the OS these days! and Symbian(i loved the old s60 version on my ngage) is dead... and windows mobile dont got the big thirdparty app market like android and ios got!

Yeah nokia has great maps but its like with Opera: "Opera the worlds best browser that no one uses"

<comment><USER2> no one in broadband-happy Western countries, no. In countries where 56k speeds are still the norm, Opera rules the mobile space (in a way, they really are "the cloud browser").

Unfortunately, ruling the low-end is a bad place to be in IT, especially in the fashion-influenced mass-consumer space. No wonder they're trying hard to be acquired at the moment.

<comment><USER18> on my Android i use Opera too! dont get me wrong i really like opera.

but on the Desktop i dont know why but at this moment Chrome is for me my favourite browser.

everytime when opera gets a new major release i test the version and opera next too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Depends on where you live - around Washington DC, it's Google Maps, OpenStreetMaps, Apple (at some distance below) and then a huge gap before Bing, Nokia and MapQuest round out the low end of the results.

I rather strongly suspect that the main consequences of Apple's move will be fragmentation as people adapt to the service which offers the best local coverage for them

</comment><comment><USER20> Here's the non-mobile link -> [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/the- fo...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/the-forgotten- mapmaker-nokia-has-better-maps-than-apple-and-maybe-even-google/263150/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm disappointed to see that the earth maps from Google and Nokia of my town are three years old. I saw the copyright 2012 and had heard they'd been updated through a Google posting a few weeks ago. But checking a few new construction developments, which cars are in my parents' & their neighbours driveways and its no later than June 2009.

</comment><comment><USER22> If Nokia has (supposedly) better map data than Google, how much money could be made by licensing that data?

Alternatively, how much could be made by creating a map application for the major mobile platforms, and sell it to the consumer direct? (bundled free with Windows Phone, no doubt) Probably not as much as a licensing deal, but still no small amount.

<comment><USER23> > how much money could be made by licensing that data?

Navteq still do license map data. But it's not as profitable as all that; IIRC they weren't breaking even when Nokia took them over. This seems fairly common in that industry; Ordnance Survey (who aren't fully commercial, but the same concept applies) are heavily supplemented by public money, for example. It's presumably even more expensive to do all the capture for Street View type data.

> Alternatively, how much could be made by creating a map application for the > major mobile platforms, and sell it to the consumer direct?

That seems like a pretty good idea to me, although I doubt it's going to dig them out of a €1.5bn hole. Still, Nokia don't have a lot to lose at this point, although I feel like they're still in denial about their recent lack of competitiveness in smartphones.

<comment><USER24> €1.5bn hole? Last I checked they had €4.2bn in the bank?

[http://press.nokia.com/2012/07/19/nokia- corporation-q2-2012-...](http://press.nokia.com/2012/07/19/nokia- corporation-q2-2012-interim-report/)

Edit: €1.3bn loss in Q1, €800ml loss last quarter. I guess that's what you meant. Still, not a "hole"... just driving straight into one :)

<comment><USER23> Sorry, probably not the right metaphor to use really. From the article, it suggested that division of Nokia was losing €1.5bn annually, and I don't think selling map software to mobile phone owners would make _that_ much when there are already plenty of free (beer) alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nokia finger race: <http://vimeo.com/28240021>

</comment><comment><USER26> According to Ars, it's not, and Bing Maps seems to be the worst of the bunch:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/replacing-ios-6-maps- ha...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/replacing-ios-6-maps-hands-on- with-mapquest-bing-waze-google-nokia/)

<comment><USER27> Not really. Nokia Maps is more than Nokia Maps on iOS. Downloadable/Offline maps is killer feature in Nokia Symbian/Meego phones (at least for travelling person from Europe). I guess the same solution is used in Lumia phones as well.

Since I don't want to buy Lumia phone when there will be no Symbians anymore I hope Android will have proper offline maps or EU will force reasonable price for data connection across Europe (what it actually does gradually).

<comment><USER28> I'm not familiar with Nokia Maps at all. How is its offline feature better than Google Maps On Android's offline feature? (You call it "proper" suggesting to me that you consider better than the way Google Maps on Android does it.) I don't have a smart phone, just a WiFi only Android tablet and I've fund the offline maps features in Google Maps perfectly adequate.

<comment><USER27> OK. I don't have any modern Android. I believe offline maps for Android is pretty new function. Right? I think in offline maps for Android you can download only selected region. Meanwhile with Nokia maps I can download map for individual country or state (in case of US).

<comment><USER29> For Android the regions you can select to save offline are severely restricted. In my recent vicinity I could select as much ocean as I desired, but no land.

The regions it is available in are undocumented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm curious as to how they found my exact address when I turned on the locator feature. Also, I wonder why Canada is not listed as a country for terms of use. Perhaps because the 3d features are not available here?...

</comment><comment><USER31> Because they own Navteq

</comment><comment><USER32> Are they stealth or something 'cause I've certainly never seen them

<comment><USER33> if you used mapquest, yahoo, bing, now amazon, any garmin device or any in car navigation system, you have seen them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Google should buy Nokia then, for it's maps.

<comment><USER5> I'd actually rather Microsoft buy them. God help us if Google becomes the sole provider of (competent) mapping services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The internet has a short attention span, I guess. Nokia bought NAVTEQ for 8 billion dollars back in 2007. They sure ought to have good maps, after that!

NAVTEQ might be receiving map data from many commercial fleets of trucks, but Google is receiving map data from anyone with an Android phone. I think GOOG has this one covered.

When Nokia finishes its slow motion car crash, and they start auctioning off the company's assets, they will easily find a willing buyer for NAVTEQ. Both Apple and Microsoft will probably be interested. I don't know if it will command 8 billion next time around, but it will definitely be worth something (unless they make the mistake of mismanaging it into the ground before the end arrives.)</comment>


Obama's CV - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/suchow/obama-cv <comment><USER2> Now I feel bad about my life. I'm really not doing anything.</comment>


Ducks - an HTML5/WebGL game with source code - <AUTHOR> http://statico.github.com/webgl-demos/ducks/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the source: <https://github.com/statico/webgl-demos/tree/master/ducks>

view.js is the bit that renders the game model using GLGE (www.glge.org). The logic is built with Backbone.

<comment><USER2> nice design!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some ducks start off screen for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's your screen resolution?</comment></comment>


An inside look at the DDoS attacks that hit Wordpress.com last week - <AUTHOR> http://barry.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/wordpress-com-ddos-details/

<comment><USER2> Barry is Automattic's rockstar ops guy. When I see him write "a rather large Distributed Denial of Service Attack" I assume he is still being quite humble.</comment>


Picsell.ia, the fastest image annotation tool - <AUTHOR> https://platform.picsellia.com/signup <comment><USER2> Link goes to the signup page (with French terms-of-service). Here's the homepage [https://www.picsellia.com/](https://www.picsellia.com/)</comment>