I Was a Political Prisoner at Birth in North Korea - <AUTHOR> http://www.northkoreanrefugees.com/2007-09-atbirth.htm <comment><USER2> Recently, I went on a bit of a North Korea-related reading binge. One thing I read really stuck with me:

The first time I took the DMZ tour from the South, and on some tours since, the US soldier leading the tour would tell everyone we weren't looking at a real building. Instead the North's building was "a facade designed to look large and impressive, but is in reality only a frame a few feet (one meter) thick."[1]

...followed by a photo of the author sitting inside the very real, functional building during his trip to the North Korean side of the border.

It woke me up to the reality that North Korea is so opaque, that there is really no way of knowing the truth of what you read or hear about the country; the official line from both "our" and "their" sides is not much other than a steady stream of propaganda.

That being said, I believe Shin's experience (I originally wrote story, but felt that it was disrespectful) is authentic, and the continuing existence of concentration camps in this 21st century is yet another black mark on Humanity's record.

[1] Highly recommended: <http://1stopkorea.com/index.htm?nk- trip6-dmz.htm~mainframe>

<comment><USER3> One thing that's fun in this day and age is that you can actually check out the buildings from space!

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Panmunjeom,+Kaesong,+North+Ko...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Panmunjeom,+Kaesong,+North+Korea&hl=en&ll=37.956059,126.677991&spn=0.00349,0.006968&sll=38.003385,-79.420925&sspn=7.139614,14.27124&oq=panmun&t=h&hq=Panmunjeom,+Kaesong,+North+Korea&z=18)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shin recounts his experience in this incredibly touching and thought-provoking 60 minutes interview: <http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136263n>

Also, here are illustrations of a North Korean concentration camp by an escaped prison: <http://imgur.com/a/648Mv>. Incredibly alarming.

<comment><USER5> I find it sad that after being basically treated like garbage by North Korean society, "defectors" (I hesitate to use that term due to the negative connotation, but can't think of anything else) like Shin wind up isolated within South Korean society. It reaches the point where more than 1/3rd want to leave SK.[1]

That one cannot escape an accident of birth is a huge blemish on humanity.

[1] <http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20130207000854>

<comment><USER6> Well its sad but not surprising. I mean look at it from a young South Korean's perspective. There is a huge economic and many be now even a cultural gap between them and the folks from the north.

For somebody young in South Korea, a North Korean is somebody who shares his mother tongue in a different dialect- nothing much apart from that. By now North and South Korea are two very different countries, with many things being different and few things being common.

When a refugee arrives they may not think of him/her as 'one of us'. More like some troubled person from the neighboring country who will dilute/be a burden on our culture economy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's different to this one [http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped- from-a-nor...](http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a-north- korean-prison-camp-3549/)

The latter tells the story of how he betrayed his mother and brother. It is omitted from the posted link.

Also in the latter story, he discovered Park died before he escaped, not the other way around.

<comment><USER8> I just read this whole story, and I can scarcely comprehend it's real. I just don't quite know what to say. What are you meant to do when you read something like that?

<comment><USER9> One possibility is to inform yourself more.

FYI

The best resource I found so far is <http://www.dailynk.com/english/> . At least one more story like the OP's can be found here [http://www.dailynk.com/english/sub_list_last.php?page=1&...](http://www.dailynk.com/english/sub_list_last.php?page=1&cataId=nk02800)

There is an organization that tries to do something about this <http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/> . They have some videos as well that are worth watching <http://www.youtube.com/user/linkglobal>

<comment><USER10> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Hyun_Hui>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A decade ago I worked with someone with the most amazing personal story. He was born in a cattle car on the way to a concentration camp in WW 2.

He was a very, very religious Jew in all respects except one - he didn't believe in God. It was an interesting combination.

<comment><USER12> I don't understand, how is it even possible ?

<comment><USER13> Judaism it not a religion. It is a complex mix of culture, religion, language, history, nationality, and ethnicity each to varying degrees. Being a Jew is _never_ predicated on what you believe, athiests and believers - traditionalists and liberals - are both jews to equal measure. There is such a hodgepodge of viewpoints and movements that you will not have to dig long before you find observant Jews who are skeptical about the existence of god - or most likely just don't bother with that question.

<comment><USER14> Judaism _is_ a religion - it is the name of the religion of the jewish people. But you can be jewish without adhering to judaism. And I suppose you can follow the traditions and rituals of Judaism without believing in the existence of God.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is happening in North Korea can only be summed up as epic fail at human rights and people's right to free from an oppressive regime.

Maybe I don't quite understand how mass psychology works, but I know that the population of the country is 24 million people and that the current system probably doesn't benefit 99.9% of that population (the other 0.1% being the regime members, for whom the whole thing works out just fine). Sorry for pulling the numbers out of my ass, but I am trying to convey an idea here.

If that's the currently the case, then why wouldn't those 99.9% rise up and overthrow the regime that oppresses them? Even the soldiers are most likely normal people who have been conscripted at some point, why would they kill their own neighbors, friends and family members in the case of such an uprising? The people of North Korea have EVERY reason on this planet to overthrow their "government", what's preventing them from doing so?

Like I said, I may be totally misunderstanding how mass psychology works in dictatorships, but this kind of thing seems pretty logical to me, even a no- brainer. Is it the lack of critical thinking? Critical mass? Inability to build up that critical mass? If so, why? Do people there really rat on their neighbors and family members like we often hear?

If I were a more dismissive person I would just say "They're just getting what they're asking for", but I really want to understand how this works better, so someone please enlighten me.

<comment><USER16> North Korea is at the end state of socialism. Hayek wrote a famous book called "The road to serfdom", and this prison camp, and the way the rest of NK citizens live is the serfdom he's talking about.

Once you accept that you're owned by "society", and that everyone is "responsible for the greater good" this is inevitably what you end up with.

You ask if they lack critical thinking or a critical mass. Both of these are true, they've been indoctrinated to believe in this system, except maybe the ones like the writer of this story who were born in a camp and got less indoctrination.

The sad thing is, you can see this very same thing play out repeatedly in history. The way the germans let the nazis take over, even after it was clear they were up to no good. The way there was no revolution to overthrow the soviet state in the USSR.

You see these same mechanisms happening here in america today-- people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit.

And there's the error- they think "the rich" or "everyone else" is going to be forced to pay for their wellbeing, never realizing that they are calling for their own enslavement.

Pair the idea that you have a "right" to make others pay for healthcare (and other things) with the claim by these same people that you don't have a right to self defense (eg: own guns.) The latter is even in the constituttion.

You'd think this would cause a dissonance in their head, but the party ideology is so strong they never connect the two.

And when americans are being herded into camps, long disarmed, and forced to work "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs".... they will wish they still had guns.

Schools teach people to be compliant little sheep and have done so for over a century, there's a distinct connection between government control over schools and lack of critical thinking in the populace.

Unless things turn around soon, the US will end up in some sort of terrible state. Not likely like North Korea or Nazi germany or the USSR, but we already are suffering from the economic destruction of these kinds of policies (and like NK citizens told to blame the US for their poverty, we're told to blame wall street, germans were told to blame jews, russians were told to blame "hoarders", etc. etc. etc.)

<comment><USER17> > people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying > they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit.

No, it's saying that as a society we're not going to let people suffer and die in the street when we have the technology and resources to help them. Probably you'll believe in society a bit more if you're ever in a position where you can't solve your problems yourself.

<comment><USER18> I don't think that we can classify government programs as being charities. Many of us believe in helping those who are in need, but for this was can give our money and time freely to organizations that address certain issues. Governments take your money by force, and spend it on things for which you have no say. It isn't "society" doing it.

<comment><USER17> > "spend it on things for which you have no say"

Yes you do, you have a vote. Each party standing for election presents a set of policies some of which include spending policy. The elected party then has a mandate to spend as per the policies outlined. That's how democracy works (well, how it's supposed to work).

If you really had "no say" then that would be a dictatorship?

And let's think about this a little further. Let's say the government doesn't take any money off you and everyone has to fend for themselves. Now, some people with more money are in a position to manipulate those with less money, and we are suddenly ruled by unelected corporations etc. Some argue it's like that already.

This is all pretty standard left vs. right stuff.

<comment><USER18> >Yes you do, you have a vote. Each party standing for election presents a set of policies some of which include spending policy. The elected party then has a mandate to spend as per the policies outlined. That's how democracy works (well, how it's supposed to work).

The latter part of your statement is what I agree with. We all know the theory, but we live the _practice_ of democracy. And some of us have gradually quit buying into it.

>And let's think about this a little further. Let's say the government doesn't take any money off you and everyone has to fend for themselves. Now, some people with more money are in a position to manipulate those with less money, and we are suddenly ruled by unelected corporations etc. Some argue it's like that already.

I'd agree that it is essentially how things are already. The state-corporate partnership is quite a beast. Political influence is bought and sold as easily as stocks are.

>This is all pretty standard left vs. right stuff.

The left/right thing breaks down pretty quickly if you find that you loathe all of the major political parties our time. If you're a classical libertarian (or anarchist, depending on the term one prefers), for instance, there isn't a major party for you almost by definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Those who escaped from North Korea to China will be sent back by the Chinese government if found and possibly executed. They are literally the most miserable people on this planet. China could have become some west "North Korea" (China is at the west of North Korea) if American hadn't killed Chairman Mao's son during Korean War. For that I am really grateful to the US. Life is not easy but it could have been much worse.

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/books/escape-from- camp-14-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/books/escape-from-camp-14-by- blaine-harden.html?_r=0)

"In writing this book, I have sometimes struggled to trust him," Mr. Harden writes understandably in "Escape From Camp 14." Mr. Harden tries to fathom a cryptic, troubled and not entirely sympathetic young man whose circumstances lend themselves to exaggeration.

What's more, the new book uses dialogue borrowed from Mr. Shin's disingenuous 2007 version. "Escape From Camp 14" also includes simple line drawings (as Mr. Shin's book had) that give the most traumatic parts of his story — torture, imprisonment, maiming, executions — the look of action comics. The most benign of these pictures carries this caption: "Children in the camps scavenged constantly for food, eating rats, insects and undigested kernels of corn they found in cow dung."

(...)

Mr. Shin did not spend his imprisonment missing love, joy, civilization or comfort, because he had never experienced such things. As the spawn of a "reward marriage" — considered "the ultimate bonus for hard work and reliable snitching" — he had no real family ties.

The book says that he regarded his mother as a rival for food and was right to do so; she once beat him with a hoe for eating her lunch. As a young child, he saw schoolmates maimed or even killed for minor transgressions and he learned to obey the camp's totalitarian rules.

(...)

But "Shin's misery never skidded into complete hopelessness," Mr. Harden writes in typically plain, forthright style. "He had no hope to lose, no past to mourn, no pride to defend. He did not find it degrading to lick soup off the floor. He was not ashamed to beg a guard for forgiveness. It didn't trouble his conscience to betray a friend for food. These were merely survival skills, not motives for suicide."

</comment><comment><USER21> It doesn't seem moral that the world doesn't invade North Korea and put an end to the insanity.

<comment><USER22> More people would die if we did than if we don't. Seoul is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and it's extremely close to the border.

<comment><USER23> Yes. Only the South Koreans can make that call, as they have the most to lose. If they decided to invade, and asked for US assistance, I for one would support that, to the extent of volunteering to fight.

Alas, from an historical standpoint, North Korea is a relatively small aberration as long as it remains isolated and weak. The thing that I don't understand is how such a repressive regime could possibly have developed nuclear weapons. It seems somehow unfair, not to mention dangerous for the rest of us, that advanced science can be done in such an environment. I've always assumed that anyone smart enough to do such work would be smart enough to refuse to do it. But I guess I am wrong.

<comment><USER24> I guess the technology was a handout from the Soviet Union. I can't fathom that a country like North Korea would be capable of developing nuclear weapons on their own, when a highly advanced country like Iran can't do it in this day and age.

<comment><USER25> NK bought their nuclear technology from a Pakistani, who is currently living comfortably in a house in Pakistan, protected by the Pakistani state (because he also gave them nuclear capabilities). He stole a lot of the technology from European companies where he worked. This guy (AQ Khan) provided resources to Iran as well (directly and indirectly via NK).

The science isn't actually that hard (I'd feel comfortable I could design/build a gun-type fission weapon myself, given budget and resources, from open sources, with basic engineering education). The hard part is the smuggling, front companies, etc. to get the equipment and materials.

I'm pretty sure by the time NK was looking at going nuclear, the SU wasn't particularly happy with NK. NK was closer to China, and SU didn't really support Chinese proliferation (there were substantial divisions on the SU- China border, after all...)

China didn't really want NK to go nuclear, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google Tech Talk about Shin's story <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms4NIB6xroc>

</comment><comment><USER26> Side Bar: Can anyone provide some context/background/explanation about the north korean name / south korean name?

<comment><USER27> I wonder if the reason is related to the dialect differences between North and South Korean. I recall that the North Korean dialect is "older".

<comment><USER28> Not sure how much this explains about names in particular, but... [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_differences...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_differences_in_the_Korean_language)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a cool version. If the simple English was changed a little and the illustrations swapped for watercolor, this bone chilling tale could be packaged as a sort of pseudo-childrens book.

<comment><USER30> Something like 'When the Wind Blows' by Raymond Briggs (most famous for writing 'The Snowman'.) It's extremely powerful. Your idea is excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This version was posted a month ago, and discussed at length: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5091962> It contains some important details that are missing from the version above, although any version of the events is unverified.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies, I didn't realise that a more detailed version had been posted at an earlier date.

Thank you for sharing the in depth link.

<comment><USER31> No apology required; it's clearly a story of interest, or it wouldn't have made the front-page again. I posted the link to the other version of the story more for people to make a comparison of the two versions of events, and see the related commentary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Horrific story with what happens when you cross slavery and the holocost. That said, don't be so sure we're much better. Here's North Korea's perspective of what we're like.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NMr2VrhmFI>

</comment><comment><USER33> Contrast this to the brit tour guide who went to North Korea over 100 times: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18g7z1/i_have_been_to_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18g7z1/i_have_been_to_north_korea_over_100_times_ama/)

</comment><comment><USER34> The book is available from amazon here: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670023329/> It's been on my list since I saw his interview on CNN.

</comment><comment><USER35> Absolutely nothing I've read in the last decade exacerbates a feeling of complete helplessness as much as this article (and 60 minutes video mentioned) does.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wanna say "too sad; don't read". I can't read it right now. It was bad enough scanning through the torture and executions.

One day, these people will be free. And we may develop the technology to do it sooner than you think. I see the first wave of robots disabling their nukes. And the second wave disabling every fence and gun.

</comment><comment><USER37> This guy was eventually adopted by a US family: <http://www.northkoreanrefugees.com/2013-01-adopted.htm>

</comment><comment><USER38> I recently read Escape From Camp 14, I would highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER39> Humans are such _fucking sickening scum_. It saddens me to be part of the same human race as the monsters running North-Korea.

</comment><comment><USER40> How did he know to escape to China? How did he know how to get there? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER29> [http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a- nor...](http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a-north-korean- prison-camp-3549/)

Another version that explains more.

SPOILER: Park told him about China. He didn't know how to get there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "by the grace of God" Mind. Blown.

</comment><comment><USER42> The fact that these exist today are a giant pockmark on the face of humanity.

<comment><USER43> Usually tyrannies have a way of collapsing in on themselves. They weaken social fabric, breeding dissent and allowing other states/factor to jump in and conquer them.

<comment><USER44> > Usually tyrannies have a way of collapsing in on themselves.

Really? Pharonic Egypt lasted for 3000 years.</comment></comment></comment>


AppDotNetPHP - PHP Library for the App.net API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jdolitsky/AppDotNetPHP

<comment><AUTHOR> this is a project started upon the release of Alpha back in August. Since then, we've had the good fortune of working with several awesome hackers in maintaining the code base. Enjoy!</comment>


Optimizing Elasticsearch Searches - <AUTHOR> https://www.found.no/foundation/optimizing-elasticsearch-searches/ <comment><USER2> Anyone who is into Elasticsearch should spend some time reading all of the articles on Found's blog. Some really great stuff that covers ES better than most of the actual ES official docs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lucene-based search (i.e. Elasticsearch, CloudSearch, etc.) strikes me as overly complex from a dev's perspective. The indexing and search processes don't seem to have enough sensible defaults and that's to speak nothing of cluster configuration and management, memory issues, etc.

In general, there's too much of a requirement to understand Lucene's implementation details in order to use it effectively, and I'm just not sure why the process of building a search feature needs to be so difficult.

<comment><USER4> Good search is difficult! But, as there are more and more users, more and more information and documentation is available. And over time the documentation will also get better.

I learned a lot from this article, in just a few minutes I improved my searches to be more precise. And that's kinda cool for me who has absolutely no knowledge about Lucene :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sounds like the same principles as normal (relational) database query optimization. Filter as much as you can early to avoid unneeded calculations later.</comment>


The Founding Fathers: Smugglers, Tax Evaders, and Traitors - <AUTHOR> https://mises.org/library/founding-fathers-smugglers-tax-evaders-and-traitors <comment><USER2> Stunning read particularly the part about colonist cutting and selling trees marked for the government to smugglers and feathering tax collectors. America has always been the wild west and Americans have always been wild folks, they just civilised themselves somewhat mostly due to the immense wealth they got after world war two, hence the surprise I get when people are surprised they do things like Iraq and the whole middle east expedition or when people are amazed at their strong gun rights.

<comment><USER3> If only we Americans could be refined and civilized people like the British, the French, the Germans, the Indians or the Chinese, none of whom have any history of savagery or military aggression.

<comment><USER4> As a Spaniard I feel left out.

<comment><USER3> Lo siento, mi hermano.

<comment><USER5> Hey yeah, the Spanish Conquistadors were all up on Central and South America's grill and Conquistadors translates literally to Conquerors.

Why'd ya leave out Spanish Conquerors?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great read. I credit the mises.org web site for convincing me to get out of the US stock market in 2007 and I generally like their Austrian Economics outlook.

The article is full of humor, and I understand if other people in this thread don't like it. It would be a dull world if we all had the same philosophy of life and business.

I especially liked the opinions in the article around what motivated people to risk all to come to America.

<comment><USER7> Big difference between opinion piece and someone pretending they know something about history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel like this is a low quality article.

> Why? What in Europe could have been so horrible that rational people would > risk their lives and their children's lives to escape it?

> Socialism. It wasn't called socialism in those days, but that is what it > was—unlimited government control and taxation of everything and everybody. > There were no free markets and no free enterprise. Regardless of how honest > or hard working a person was, it did him little good unless he was in bed > with the government.

I don't think this author understands what socialism is...from Wikipedia: "Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production."[0]

At that period in time, economies were run for those at the top (similar to the 1%). It was centralized control i.e. not a system characterised by social ownership. I feel like there are some people who think that if a society does not have free markets then it must be socialist (i.e. !free markets == socialism). This is not the case. You wouldn't call the current Russia political system socialist.... it's authoritarian.

I feel like the author is ignorant.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism)

<comment><USER9> It's written by and for parody libertarians / anarcho-capitalists. You shouldn't have any expectation of intellectual integrity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anarchist roads, rutted and muddy, are what can expediently be cut through wilderness.

Ideally, they lead to smooth and fast paved roads between and through populated places, paid for by fair contributions from all, for the benefit of all, at a reasonable price, as agreed to by the majority.

When unfairness arises, whether in the manner of compelling contributions, distribution of benefit, unreasonable price, or without majority consent, that'll be trouble.

We've seen the process and results repeatedly before, so why can't we do more about what's happening now? Where's the balance point? How do we find it and rest there instead of swinging wildly past it in both directions?

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the outlet that published the notorious "Stateless in Somalia and loving it" propaganda piece.

<comment><USER11> On HN we judge things by the article, not by the outlet, and certainly not by the lousiest thing an outlet published. Our cupboards would be pretty bare if we did that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The crucial advance was not just in understanding that laws should govern a population, but that they should also govern government itself. And not only that, but that this would take hold in a population to the point where they would put everything at risk to fight for it.

Hence, the US Constitution specifically enumerates the powers (rights) of government, and leaves the rights of the people unlimited.

<comment><USER13> Your crucial advance began with the Magna Carta.

The history of England is basically the story of how the Government of England became increasingly limited by the laws of England. (At least that was a central theme of David Hume's wildly popular 18th century "History of England".) And yeah, many people in England gave their lives fighting to progress that goal around the same time that the Americans declared independence.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely. This tradition is one of the greatest legacies that ties together the Anglo-sphere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This person clearly has no understanding of history for why people left no europe, nor an understanding of the word socialism.

Frustrating to read such BS.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Why? What in Europe could have been so horrible that rational people would risk their lives and their children's lives to escape it?

Socialism. It wasn't called socialism in those days, but that is what it was—unlimited government control and taxation of everything and everybody."

That is Mises.org in a nutshell you.

</comment><comment><USER15> >Socialism. It wasn't called socialism in those days, but that is what it was—unlimited government control and taxation of everything and everybody

What ?! Seriously ? Taxes = sociamism ?</comment>


Robot Cars: Getting from here to there - <AUTHOR> http://www.kmeme.com/2010/06/robot-cars-getting-from-here-to-there.html

<comment><USER2> I guess it's more than 20 years from now for a robot car to go off-road.</comment>


Startup School 2009 Talks [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/all

<comment><USER2> Is there anywhere I could download the full video from?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is Paul Buchheit's talk posted anywhere?</comment>


EBay and Microsoft Announce Cloud Computing Agreement - <AUTHOR> http://ebayinkblog.com/2010/07/12/breaking-ebay-and-microsoft-announce-cloud-computing-agreement-wpc10/

<comment><USER2> As someone who also has a company built on Azure, this is great news. I'm happy to see Azure gain some serious traction.

<comment><USER3> How has your experience been with Azure? I've been looking at a few solutions for a possible new company and haven't really seen it on anybody's radar yet.

<comment><USER2> We've had a great experience so far. Our company leverages their Queues and Worker Roles for our event processing.

Our biggest challenge was deciding between SqlServer or Table Storage. We were already familiar and comfortable with the 'relational' way of doing things in SqlServer but we knew we would scale past the storage limits pretty quick. So we decided to jump into the world of denormalized-key/value systems. Luckily, .Net lets you use LINQ with Table Storage and makes querying for your data VERY easy. The biggest 'gotchas' were when we realized that aggregate functions like COUNT, SUM, DISTINCT were not supported (yet?). But, we did find ways to leverage the schemaless nature of the tables to our advantage.

Deploying/Updating our ASP.Net MVC Web Application and multiple Workers is now a one click process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> of the big ecommerce sites Ebay always struck me as the one most likely to involve Microsoft. something about their culture, at least near the top.

<comment><USER5> And the fact that using anything Amazon is pretty much off the table...

<comment><USER4> good point! i hadn't considered that. yeah and they might also be afraid to host anything with Google, the other big cloud-ish behemoth out there. unless they thought it desirable and likely to be bought by them, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


How the Space Age Imagined 2014: Asimov's Predictions, Revisited - <AUTHOR> http://theappendix.net/posts/2014/7/isaac-asimovs-predictions-of-life-in-2014-revisited <comment><USER2> Disney's evolution of Tomorrowland/EPCOT reflect the three phases of futurism since Asimov's essay. In the early 20th century the future was about more fantastic machines- rockets, super-cars, better home appliance. The Tomorrowland Rocket to Mars ride embodied this. But young people became disenchanted with the pollution and militarism of hard engineering in the 1960s and turned their attention to the biological sciences on Earth Day 1970. The future was about ecology, sustainable living, commune type socialization, etc. The EPCOT dome ride embodied this vision of the future. Then came personal computers, video games, special effects movies, the internet and mobile. The future shifted to an information rich world. Now younsee lots of computer screen exhibits in Tomorrowland.

<comment><USER3> I've always wanted to put my finger on how futurism evolved. This summarizes it pretty well.

I wonder what the next shift will be?

<comment><USER4> The generation that witnessed the birth of the internet clearly put techno- utopia back on the map: private space flights, talk of getting to Moon again and Mars... The info-dense views parent suggests have come and gone (cyberpunk), in part because we got there faster than expected.

Our children will actually have to deal with the problems we're creating today (copyright maximalism, the failure of representative democracy, legislation scaling to worldwide dimensions etc) so I guess their futuristic visions will be again focused on how to get along on this little planet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the best inspirations you can get for what you could build to score a home-run is to read science fiction. The older the better in a way, because those ideas may be _just_ viable today. In general reading is a great source of inspiration but SF has a special place in that it is forward looking by definition and has/had some pretty creative people doing all the groundwork.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. To aptly quote Asimov: "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinded critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Prior discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6287340](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6287340) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6995644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6995644)

<comment><USER8> Just under the article title, there's a link called "past" that shows previous discussions.

<comment><USER7> Neat! Although this seems to be URL-based, linking to mostly empty threads, unlike the discussions I referenced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I _wish_ Art Deco was still a thing.</comment>


Google Tango – Research Update May 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YulYq5P3heo <comment><USER2> Here's a useful site to understand Tango: [https://developers.google.com/tango/developer- overview](https://developers.google.com/tango/developer-overview)

I found the room emptying and re-lighting demo to be particularly impressive.

<comment><USER3> Second this, room emptying looks impressive, any way to talk with developer or any open source implementing similar thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe their new standalone VR unit uses tango technology to map out the surroundings (WorldSense) thereby negating the need for externally mounted peripherals like those needed for by room scale VR.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems like Tango is successfully moving out of AR for video games/education and into general machine vision SDKs and tools for the industrial/enterprise realm. Good stuff.

2 questions: (1) will Google go back to selling hardware (Glass), and (2) will Google acquire Unity before Microsoft/Apple/Facebook does?

<comment><USER6> I would bet for Google getting back to consumer augmented reality hardware once timing is right. I think the wearables will be something where they want to produce their own hardware to manage all the details.

For me the biggest problem is how to build and market the product so that they don't end up with the same problems as with Glass. For example one quite obvious and useful feature would be recall information about people as you meet them, but it's not so easy to think about a product that enables this kind of functionality without creating a public backslash.

Google just has so many interesting pieces for the AR puzzle. Tango to make sense of 3d space and Google Lens about 2d. Knowledge graph gives information about world and from Gmail and Calendar they can mine my personal data. As always with Google, privacy will be issue for some people, but I think enough are going to accept the tradeoff between privacy and convenience.

Is there public information on how big share of Magic Leap Google owns? There were some reports that Google led one of the investment rounds, but I can't remember seeing actual figures.

<comment><USER5> Led the $542M series B, invested in the $800M series C:

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic- leap#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap#/entity)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I could see a swat team throwing one or more of these into a room and letting them report back its contents. Teach them to crawl and fly and you'd have a build mapped in no time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone got a Lenovo Phab 2 Pro? Worth getting one or waiting for a WorldSense headset?</comment>


Ask HN: What should I do with my slack app, Pixibot? - <AUTHOR> I built a slack app called Pixibot about a year ago
Currently I have about 400 users, acquired mostly through one Show HN posting, PH, and some time on Slack's 'New and Noteworthy' section
The app costs me $60/month to maintain (Heroku hosting, mostly). I didn't charge any of the users when they signed up, so I have no revenue, currently.
I'm running out of money to keep this app alive. Any recommendations on what I should do with the app? Thanks!
Website: www.pixibot.co Slack App Store: https://slack.com/apps/A0PH9KM9P-pixibot <comment><USER2> My random advice from the internet:

If it is a business, charge everyone to make money or shut it down because it is not.

If it is a hobby and $60/month is not worth the pleasure it brings, shut it down and do something enjoyable.

For what it is worth, if you're shutting it down, just pulling the plug and walking away to avoid drama is o.k. in my opinion. Yeah it might put a few users out, but a providing a long wind down doesn't change the amount of work anyone has to do except you (and for you it is more). The analogy is leaving a workplace, life for everyone else will go on.

Good luck.</comment>


Bootstrapping a site builder to $6k in monthly revenue - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/pagestead-bd9c0f4f54 <comment><USER2> Just like the free and open source Microweber[1] , site-builders with a PHP back-end seem to be very slow [2].

I've asked the guys at Microweber about it and it's due to HTML parsing being slow with PHP.

I'm curious why no one chooses Golang or Elixir as a backend?

[1] [https://microweber.com](https://microweber.com) [2] [https://support.sbpro.io/forums/topic/how-to-lower- resource-...](https://support.sbpro.io/forums/topic/how-to-lower-resource- usage)

<comment><USER3> Probably because a PHP "app" can be installed in the vast majority of hostings' super easily, while Golang and Elixir would take a lot more effort for the average user (even if technically savvy).

<comment><USER2> If you'd know how to build a site builder using Golang or Elixir, you'd probably know how to make an installer as well.

<comment><USER4> My knowledge of Elxir is the little I learned at a 3 hour meetup showing how to build a basic chat app, I am looking forward to learning more about it, and similar languages.

I wonder if most shared hosting plans would ever allow these kinds of installers to run if they were made. I've been told on occasions by different hosts that we would need to move up to a vps to even change some settings with php ini and such.

Even with a VPS I have had hosts say that we can't run certain kinds of apps, and that we would be throttles with cpu limits and if they were constantly hit then we'd be given the option to move to dedicated server or move away from the host.

So I think a lot of the easy hosting out there may not be ready for things that take installers aside from some basic php things like wordpress (which gets us rate limited with some plugins / hosts)

I understand that it may be trivial for some people to spin up a DO droplet kind of thing and install dependencies, but even if newer web site makers can do these things, maintaining these systems with updates and security is not for the average one-click web site installer.

So it's a big issue for other reasons too I think.

<comment><USER2> Even with Wordpress, no shared host will allow you to have more than 1-2 page views per second without Caching active. This is due to CPU consumption being so high even with just 10 plugins.

When it comes to VPS, only the KVM based will allow you to use the full CPU cores since you cannot overprovision it, you can only assign the available cores until they run out.

With OpenVZ or LXC containers, you can have hundreds or even thousands of containers on a single server and have it overprovisioned. This means that you only need a few containers to use much CPU to run out of capacity.

There's certainly not much to it to have an installer make the install and maintain updates, even with bash this is just 5 commands at the most for updating a Golang app - not sure about Elixir though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unrelated to the actual project, I wonder how this guy manages to live in Thailand and openly discuss his earnings.

Plenty of "entrepreneurs" / backpackers / dive masters "live" in Thailand but all need to do visa runs, which is technically not allowed and certainly not while working there and probably paying no taxes on that openly declared revenue.

There aren't many options at all to work in Thailand as a freelancer for 10+ years unless you're dumping lots of money in to the country.

Not making judgements about right / wrong, just that it's most likely not legal.

Also - CodeIgniter is an interesting choice for such an app.

<comment><USER6> Maybe he had married a local and is now fully legal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is this different from [http://grapesjs.com/](http://grapesjs.com/)

<comment><USER8> That's like asking, how is "MS Word different than LibreOffice". Some people want to build their company on the backs of paid software. User preference really.

Pagestead also appears to have pre-built components for your users to build off of.</comment></comment>


The New Front in the Gerrymandering Wars: Democracy vs. Math - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/magazine/the-new-front-in-the-gerrymandering-wars-democracy-vs-math.html <comment><USER2> Or, you can implement STV (Single Transferrable Vote) to fix a lot of these issues. Problem is that the state governments get to choose what constitutes a democratic election.

As a EU citizen, I think it's embarrassing that the UK has a completely bonkers system with constituencies when their neighbor, Ireland, has a more reasonable STV system working right next door. Sometimes I feel like Brussels should step in and standardize STV to get rid of such madness, but I guess it's stuff like that which, had the UK not started the Brexit process, certainly would've made them do it anyway.

<comment><USER3> > I guess it's stuff like that which, had the UK not started the Brexit > process, certainly would've made them do it anyway.

Tbh, yes it really really would. There was a referendum on alternative voting a few years back, and (strangely) that result being overruled by the EU would probably go down like a cup of cold sick. I'd personally have had a pretty significant problem with that.

STV brings its own issues, obviously, and any change in structure is a decision that should be made by those people doing the electing.

I'm thrilled that you're embarrassed by the UKs voting system though. If that's the thing weighing on your mind life must be pretty damned good

<comment><USER4> > I'm thrilled that you're embarrassed by the UKs voting system though. If > that's the thing weighing on your mind life must be pretty damned good

A nations voting system is one of the most important things in any functioning democracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think where a lot of anti-Gerrymandering articles fall short is showing how districts should be proportioned. And that's because there is no way to fairly decide on district boundaries. E.g. Say district lines are drawn completely at random, so whichever party gets the most votes in a state is also very likely to win every district, resulting in a pure winner-take-all system. So any system will have to allow for some Gerrymandering just to make sure the opposing party gets some representation. Which really just means the system of single representative districts is broken, the only descent solution which is used by more than 60% of all democracies around the world is the use of Proportional Representation. But just getting rid of Gerrymandering won't produce a fairer system.

</comment><comment><USER6> Multimember districts need to be considered. In fact I'd like to see the entire house elected at large in each state. Maybe something like you can choose to vote for 50% of the seats, so a 10 seat state would allow voting for up to 5 candidates.

<comment><USER7> There are many multi-winner electoral systems worth considering and a significant body of work studying them (STV and List PR are two examples).

But I'd be very careful with off-the-cuff systems like the one you've proposed. Voting algorithms can behave in surprisingly unintuitive ways when people start voting strategically.

<comment><USER8> One such example:

With ranked-choice voting, if

45% voted Trump-Johnson-Hillary,

45% voted Hillary-Johnson-Trump, and

10% voted Johnson-(either)-(either),

then Johnson would have won, despite lacking wde first-choice approval.

<comment><USER7> Not so. Assuming by "ranked choice voting" you mean IRV (the term ranked ballots doesn't say which algorithm is used to aggregate those ballots into a group decision), Johnson would be eliminated at the first step as he has the least votes. A Condorcet -compliant single winner voting system would likely elect Johnson in your example, as he seems to represent the best middle ground given the presented ballots. In actuality, voter preference is rarely so linear (one dimensional).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To what extend do you all think state-wide direct democracy is a way to improve things? i.e. move a lot of the powers of the representative bodies that have gerrymander-able districts like this to systems where individuals can vote directly and the _people 's_ votes are counted, not representatives?

<comment><USER10> People can't be expected to track and understand the hundreds or thousands of issues faced each by their representatives who are in the "business of government". That's massively inefficient, and would result in people only voting for or against "pet issues". Extreme viewpoints on any particular topic would then "rule".

<comment><USER9> Good point. Maybe a hybrid then where by default everyone delegates their vote to a representative, but at any point you can re-allocate your vote to a different representative for any given issue, or vote on a single issue.</comment></comment></comment>


Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://samy.pl/pwnat/ <comment><AUTHOR> The really cool part about this is that the server does not need to know the client's ip address. Instead a new original form of ICMP hole punching is used to allow any client to punch the NAT so that the server can dynamically learn the client ip, and then regular UDP hole punching is used.

<comment><USER2> I'm sad that P2P never took off in the messaging world and now we are stuck with servers storing data even if it's E2E encrypted.

I use NAT traversal for Firestr ([http://firestr.com](http://firestr.com)) back in 2013 though this is still cool because of the ICMP hole punching. I'll have to see if I can incorporate that.

<comment><USER3> P2P messaging is a hard sell, in my opinion for a couple of reasons:

P2P requires knowledge of the peer's IP, which can be unwelcome depending on the messaging partner (and it's hard to make a config for do you trust this person enough to see your IP: yes, no, only if I'm on network X, not if I'm on network Y, etc)

P2P requires both nodes to be online simultaneously, so it's difficult to make work well for asynchronous messaging with smart phones or mobile laptops or desktops that are regularly turned off. Maybe you remember how Skype used to be?

So, I think you definitely want a server based store and forward messaging path to ensure delivery and for (optional) privacy from peers, and adding an optional P2P path is additional work, without a lot of gain; at least if it's text. When you start sending media, the bandwidth/storage savings from going P2P make it worth exploring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > This will work behind many NATs and firewalls, but not all.

While this is an interesting concept, the hard part in NAT traversal is getting it to work on all the possible NAT types. In particular, I believe that this method doesn't work for symmetric NAT devices[1], which are widespread in corporate environments. It's not a surprise that this idea from 2010 didn't take off, ICE/TURN are still kings.

[1] These devices assign a different port for each destination address, and this ICMP method doesn't help predict the port that will be assigned.

<comment><USER5> 2010? Samy (author of pwnat) is the person jailed for hacking MySpace using this Code. He write this code in 2005 or 2007 something, He upload to his site in 2010, but this code is very old, and I was the first one to compile it on windows back than. It works, but for limited devices back then. It is very respectable code in itself.

<comment><USER6> He didn't "[hack] MySpace using this code". He just used XSS.

<comment><USER7> He's still my hero though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is old technique from early 2000 and flawed as others have described. Outgoing ICMP is blocked in every corporate environment I have ever been to and never makes it to the Internet facing gateway.

<comment><USER9> I'm on a large corporate network right now and I get responses back from `ping www.google.com`.

But also this technique doesn't depend on ICMP that is just what the example happens to use. Pwnat itself uses only UDP for outgoing requests.

<comment><USER8> ICMP is used by the server in order to find out the IP of the client. Then they switch to UDP. This method does not work without ICMP. Now, of course you can use outgoing UDP in probe fashion instead of ICMP, but that's again most probably blocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a quick test, not working for me many previous comments about this script [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=pwnat](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=pwnat)

<comment><USER5> You will have better luck with IPv6 if needed why bother for NAT traversing . IPv6 just works without it.

<comment><USER11> Only because IPv6 doesn't need NAT theoretically. In practice, most people are stuck using it because the router doesn't hand a public-facing IP to most clients. When building an application, you still need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So is this a tool or an exploit? Or both? Is this something likely to get patched by the major software/hardware vendors? Would this be a tool that would be safe to use at home if I wanted to connect to a private network on AWS or GCP and did not want to poke a hole through my nat gateway at home?

<comment><USER13> NAT is an ugly hack to extend IPv4 address space that breaks the internet. There are numerous ugly hacks for NAT traversal to fix what NAT breaks, all of which kind of seem like exploits, and some of which are effectively standardized in RFCs and used heavily for things like VoIP. The whole thing is a hideous mess that IPv6 will hopefully eventually kill.

<comment><USER14> > NAT is an ugly hack to extend IPv4 address space that breaks the internet

Or to phrase it more generously, NAT is an ugly but simple hack that allowed the internet grow despite limited address space and without a gigantic investment in hardware to support an over-engineered replacement protocol.

<comment><USER13> It may have done that back when 128 bit addresses were actually expensive, but it also altered the evolution of that network from a more open peer to peer architecture to a closed silo mediated architecture. Things that should be simple and easy became complex and expensive. We are all poorer for it. You could say that instead of paying to upgrade we are paying for lost capabilities and technical debt.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure that wouldn't have happened anyway, just with firewalls. ISPs were not above port blocking regardless.

<comment><USER13> It's much easier to deal with port opening or changing than it is to deal with a fragmented address space. NAT reminds me of the networking analog of segmented addressing on 16 bit 8086 processors, but worse as it is not systematic.

<comment><USER14> Opening a port through NAT on your own setup is pretty much the same process as doing it on any firewall. I'm not sure how the address space being fragmented changes anything in this case, the user must poke a hole somewhere somehow.

<comment><USER13> Try writing P2P software and you'll see it. NAT is like 16-bit segmented addressing. Go find some old 16-bit C programs and see what a "near" vs "far" pointer is and that whole mess. IPv6 is like the arrival of 32-bit real mode addressing with the 80386.

<comment><USER14> P2P software wouldn't work too well without fiddling with the firewall anyway, is what I'm saying. I don't think circumstances would have changed much if we'd adopted IPv6 instead of NAT. P2P largely failed to take off outside of piracy circles because centralization is more reliable and efficient, that's all.

And yeah, I've dealt with segmented memory models, in C and ASM. I don't think the situation is very comparable at all, nor are segments as bad as people say, but that's neither here nor there. I mean, FFS, all modern systems use an MMU that remaps memory addresses between processes anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think you might have a typo in your FAQ.

"Does the server have to specify the client host? No!..... The server does need to have any unique prior knowledge about the client. "

Should that read, "The server does NOT need to have any unique...." ?

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool, I used to do this by spoofing udp packets from 220.127.116.11 from the client to the servers public up, but was unreliable due to anti spoofing filter. This way is better</comment>


Exponent – Build native apps in JS that work across both iOS and Android - <AUTHOR> https://getexponent.com/ <comment><USER2> I know lots of platforms-of-the-month come through HN, and it's hard to filter the signal from the noise...just wanted to add another voice that Exponent is indeed awesome. Built by one of the sharpest (and most humble) teams in the valley.

<comment><USER3> I suggest NativeScript as an alternative that's very similar in scope but far more mature, definitely not a platform-of-the-month. The latest version is built on top of TypeScript and Angular 2 instead of React Native like Exponent.

I wonder why we don't hear that much about them in HN.

[https://www.nativescript.org/](https://www.nativescript.org/)

<comment><USER4> A more apt comparison might be React Native and NativeScript--both are frameworks that bridge native APIs to JavaScript. In contrast, Exponent is a mobile environment of which React Native is one piece.

Before choosing React Native, we deeply investigated bridging native and JavaScript on our own and one of the ways was a NativeScript-like approach. When React Native was announced we looked at the beta and saw that it exhibited many characteristics we believe are important in a next-gen app framework.

We saw that React Native was designed for multicore phones by dividing work across multiple threads, namely application logic (JS), view and text layout (this is significant), and rendering. Other work like image decoding also runs on a separate thread. One reason React Native's multithreading is fantastic is because hardware manufacturers are adding more cores faster than they are improving the performance of those cores, partly because power consumption grows superlinearly with respect to frequency. The React team is also in the early stages of exploring incremental rendering, which may allow us to parallelize React rendering in JS as well as native.

So far we're happy we chose React Native for Exponent. There's a lot of interest and activity around it and it's on the right track in several ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tested out React Native on Android the other day and it was a real disaster. It doesn't compile for all the CPU ABIs (instruction sets) we have, so if you have native libraries for x86 or arm 64 in your app it immediately breaks it completely. You have to remove all your own libraries for unsupported architectures, then modify your build not to include them, then depend on those platform's compatibility features to run React Native's libraries built for older ABIs like arm v7.

Once you get it running despite their poor support for Android CPUs in their native libraries, half the examples and half the dependencies on the web out there crash immediately because they decided you have to import React and Component from "react" instead of "react-native" now. And there's no stack trace at all when it crashes for that error since it crashes before the normal source map functionality that provides them. My company has hundreds of files being used by React Native on iOS, but they are unusable due to this, even hours of search and replace cannot fix it because it is still crashing out, probably due to one of a dozen dependencies. Similarly if you try to use react redux 4 you are screwed, only 3 is supported. Woe be to anyone who upgrades that dependency.

As a Java programmer who is used to compile time errors when something is wrong, React Native where it crashes constantly at runtime due to poor platform decisions like forcing developers to use a different package from earlier versions is a tough pill to swallow.

<comment><USER6> Why is the top comment on every story a negative one? Is nothing good anymore?

<comment><USER7> Maybe it's because of:

> half the dependencies on the web out there crash immediately because they > decided you have to import React and Component from "react" instead of > "react-native" now.

That resonates for anybody who has done serious work with npm packages over the past few years. It seems like horrific breakage is the norm. Package authors break backwards compatibility for the stupidest "improvements."

<comment><USER8> So please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these papercuts the exact motivating reason for something like Exponent?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been building React Native apps since the platform was released. Exponent not only makes the process much easier and approachable, it makes it a breeze to share the final app with your clients or people who you want to test externally. The team at Exponent also contributes a ton to the RN ecosystem as core contributors to React Native and open sourcing a lot of awesome RN components. If you're looking at building cross platform mobile apps I highly recommend checking out Exponent!

</comment><comment><USER10> Exponent is super cool. Super simple to start building an app. I wish I could use it for every RN project I work on. The team is very responsive too. Totally recommend.

<comment><USER11> Can you elaborate on why you cannot use it for every RN project you work on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been using [https://www.decosoftware.com/](https://www.decosoftware.com/) and like it a lot, but I really like the documentation on the Exponent website.

Part of the allure of writing React Native apps for me is that knowing React would make me a more valuable developer. I'm curious to see how comfortable I feel saying "I know React" after using these IDEs long-term.

<comment><USER13> Deco is great! We'd love to get Exponent and Deco playing well together, we've discussed it with their team but haven't had the time yet -- it'll happen one day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been using exponent libs for almost a year now. They are doing such amazing work. Highly recommended!

</comment><comment><USER15> Hmm, they say you can buy an Exponent app through the App Store, and then you can push updates to it through them, and they show up the "next time the user opens the app without having to do through the App Store"?

I don't think downloading scripting or native code that changes how an app behaves from outside sources has been allowed on the App Store, so what gives?

<comment><USER4> A couple of years ago Apple changed the iOS developer terms to say it's OK to download and run JavaScript as long as it's run on the built-in WebKit or JavaScriptCore engine (section 3.3.2 if you're curious). Exponent uses the built-in JavaScriptCore on iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This looks very interesting, but I'd like to know that if I ever did need to fall back to native APIs, I could keep the code I've written using Exponent's APIs still (even if that means I couldn't use the convenient build tools anymore). Is this possible?

<comment><USER13> There are a few of ways to do this right now:

\- Fork the Exponent client and add your native API.

\- Try to get a patch into upstream.

\- If it's not urgent, ask us if we plan to implement it and if it seems like a common enough use case we would add it to our roadmap.

\- Go into the Exponent source and copy whatever native code you need into a new React Native project.

We're also working on a way to "eject" from Exponent similar to the create- react-app eject command but easier to reverse and to keep receiving updates to Exponent, because it's not an "all-in" kind of eject, you can read more about that here: [https://blog.getexponent.com/answered-on-slack-ejecting- from...](https://blog.getexponent.com/answered-on-slack-ejecting-from- exponent-154bdca57dc1#.yr55mmqtc) (caveat: this feature is still in early development)

<comment><USER17> Does it support Bluetooth LE communications?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Finally, the performance and language design of JavaScript with the write- once-work-in-one-place of native development.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hi all! Thanks for the post! Here are some links to help you check out Exponent and get any idea what it can do -- all you need to do is download the Exponent client from the app / play store and you can open any of these:

\- Pocketgear - a pokedex app: [https://getexponent.com/@rncommunity/pocketgear](https://getexponent.com/@rncommunity/pocketgear)

\- A fun little app I've been working on for a few days for an upcoming talk: [https://getexponent.com/@community/growler- prowler](https://getexponent.com/@community/growler-prowler)

\- An IP Subnet Calculator: [https://getexponent.com/@levic92/ipcalc](https://getexponent.com/@levic92/ipcalc)

\- The navigation/routing library that we recommend to be used with Exponent: [https://getexponent.com/@community/ex-navigation- example](https://getexponent.com/@community/ex-navigation-example)

\- A work-in-progress showcase of animations that you can do with React Native / Exponent: [https://getexponent.com/@community/animations- showcase](https://getexponent.com/@community/animations-showcase)

\- Shared element transitions are possible too: [https://getexponent.com/@janic/shared- elements](https://getexponent.com/@janic/shared-elements)

\- A showcase of some of the components that you can use with Exponent: [https://getexponent.com/@notbrent/native-component- list](https://getexponent.com/@notbrent/native-component-list) (tap out the ^ icon in the top right)

\- "Floaty Plane" \- a simple game: [http://getexponent.com/@exponent/floatyplane](http://getexponent.com/@exponent/floatyplane)

\- An experiment to re-create basic Wunderlist UI: [https://getexponent.com/@mastermo/wunderlist](https://getexponent.com/@mastermo/wunderlist)

\- A pre-launch version of "React Native Playground" in Exponent: [https://getexponent.com/@rnplay/rnplay](https://getexponent.com/@rnplay/rnplay) (just sign in as a guest and go to the Explore tab)

\- An image gallery example: [https://getexponent.com/@community/image- gallery-example](https://getexponent.com/@community/image-gallery-example)

\- A Pomodoro app UI: [https://getexponent.com/@exponent/pomodoro](https://getexponent.com/@exponent/pomodoro)

\- A tab view component demo: [http://exp.host/@rncommunity/react-native-tab- view-demos](http://exp.host/@rncommunity/react-native-tab-view-demos)

The largest app on our platform right now is li.st for Android: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=st.li.listapp&...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=st.li.listapp&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm interested in the game example. How is that built exactly? Is the game built in React Native (I presume not) or is React Native just used for UI elements? If so, what is the game built with?

<comment><USER20> Hey! I made floatyplane. The source code is here: [https://github.com/exponentjs/floatyplane](https://github.com/exponentjs/floatyplane)

Here's a video of a talk explaining how the game works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_KV7Ha_gRk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_KV7Ha_gRk)

The game runs on Exponent and uses React Native for rendering (as all Exponent apps do). It uses individual `Image` components for each sprite. This gets choppy when you have a lot of sprites so we're experimenting with more performant ways of rendering for games.

<comment><USER19> Wow, thank you very much! Response from the developer with source code and talk. Couldn't wish for more. Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've ran through most of the intro doc, but I'm still not sure if Exponent supports invoking platform/system APIs? E.g. if I want to access clipboard contents, or wifi network configuration, etc, how can it be done with Exponent? With React Native, I can write corresponding functionalities using Java or Swift/ObjC, and then integrate it with the RN main app, but how can this be done with Exponent?

<comment><USER22> Hi-

Exponent exposes all of the React Native built-in APIs which encompass a lot of what you're asking about.

For example, here is the Clipboard API: [https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/clipboard.html](https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/clipboard.html)

Wifi network configuration is more complicated, but there are some things exposed like "NetInfo" which lets you know the current state of connectivity. [https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/netinfo.html](https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/netinfo.html)

The complete React Native docs are here: [https://facebook.github.io/react- native/](https://facebook.github.io/react-native/) and Exponent specific docs are here: [http://docs.getexponent.com/](http://docs.getexponent.com/)

For now, Exponent just lets you write things that only use JS, and we make that easy and reliable and straightforward. We actually think this is the best way to write most apps that can be built this way since the code is easier to maintain and works cross platform, and you can do things like instant updates much more reliably when all your code is JS.

We're looking at a way you can write Java/Swift/Obj-C extensions for Exponent, but that will take us some time.

<comment><USER21> Thanks a lot for the explanation. I'll try out exponent and see how far I can go without resolving to native :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Check out re-natal [0] if you are interested in using react native with clojurescript. Re-frame (cljs's redux?) and reagent (cljs's react wrapper) are a joy to use and clojurescript with REPL is something I'd pick over plain JS almost any day.

Give it a try! It's pretty solid.

[0]: [https://github.com/drapanjanas/re- natal](https://github.com/drapanjanas/re-natal)

<comment><USER20> ClojureScript along with re-frame/reagent/etc. can actually be used with Exponent too! "lein new exponent my-project" creates an exponent project, ready with figwheel for live REPL. The template can be found here if you want to just read it online: [https://github.com/tiensonqin/exponent-cljs- template](https://github.com/tiensonqin/exponent-cljs-template)

<comment><USER23> Interesting. Did you use this in the past? How does it perform vs re-natal without exponent?

<comment><USER20> It actually is based on the re-natal code but automatically saves and uses the devserver ip and doesnt need th ios/android native code because it runs in Exponent. Other than that the functionality is the same I think, with the same difference as plain RN vs. Exponent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Since native modules can't be used with this, what is the difference between this and, say, Appcelerator Titanium?

<comment><USER25> I think Appcelerator Titanium is more comparable to React Native than to Exponent. Here's a post by Brent about the differences between Exponent and React Native: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/39170622/what-is-the- diff...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/39170622/what-is-the-difference- between-exponent-and-react-native). You can join us on Slack if you want to discuss more! [https://slack.exponentjs.com/](https://slack.exponentjs.com/)

(I work on Exponent)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This looks cool. But are the builds happening remotely on the Exponent servers, or have I misunderstood that?

Edit - brentvatne just answered this: "we handle builds for you when you want to ship to the app store, before that you can just use the Exponent client".

<comment><USER25> Hey Joe. I work on Exponent.

When you're developing you can use Exponent's apps from the App Store/Play Store, so you can get started immediately and let other people test your app easily. Once you're ready to put your app in the stores you start a build using our CLI and we build it on our servers (see [https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/guides/building...](https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/guides/building- standalone-apps.html)). We want to make it easy for people on Windows and Linux to build apps so don't require you to use Xcode or Android Studio. If you don't want the builds to happen on our servers our clients are open source so you can do it yourself if you want ([https://github.com/exponentjs/exponent](https://github.com/exponentjs/exponent)).

<comment><USER27> Thank you so much for your work!

> We want to make it easy for people on Windows and Linux to build apps

Is there a Linux version of XDE? I can't seem to find it.

<comment><USER25> We don't have a binary for Linux yet (keep meaning to do it, want to get to it soon) but building from source works! [https://github.com/exponentjs/xde#build-from- source](https://github.com/exponentjs/xde#build-from-source)

<comment><USER27> That's even better. Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Without support for native modules, is it at all possible to use something like card.io with Exponent? Also, are there any plans to allow plugins that make use of native modules in the way the core SDK uses them?

<comment><USER25> card.io isn't supported right now, but it's definitely on our list! If you want to use it right now you can send us a PR or just maintain a fork of our clients.

We have some plans to allow custom native modules without forking the client but that's probably a few months out. If you join our slack we'll let you know about any updates: [https://slack.exponentjs.com/](https://slack.exponentjs.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does XDE run on Raspberry Pi? (Or if not, how difficult would it be to port?) It would be a nice hook to introduce people to programming if they could write mobile apps on the Pi.

<comment><USER22> I think it should? If you had Linux running on it and a monitor and keyboard hooked up, I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work.

If there are any problems, they would probably be easy to fix. The thing I'd be most worried about is just that some things might run very slow on the Pi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What's the preferred way to test an Exponent based app?

<comment><USER20> Also if you meant automated testing, here's an Exponent app that runs jasmine to test Exponent SDK API end-to-end: [https://github.com/exponentjs/test- suite](https://github.com/exponentjs/test-suite) This is useful for testing network requests, API calls, etc. in your app JS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> On the one hand I like this, as it adds in more shared functionality across both iOS and Android out of the box (maps for example). On the other hand, I believe this also breaks the ability to add in custom RN modules, which is part of the reason I enjoy it. Would love to see some of this getting folded back into react native core.

<comment><USER13> Hi there! I work on Exponent.

We intentionally chose to not let users drop down to native -- the idea of having an interpreted language that sits on top of a native runtime on multiple platforms is not a new one, and it allows for so many benefits that you lose out on if developers can add arbitrary compiled code with direct access to system APIs.

Additionally, there is a significant value-add of using Exponent in terms of upgrades. As great as React Native is, it also moves extremely fast and it can be difficult to keep up with new releases -- a change in React Native might cause several of your native dependencies to break, and you'll need to fork those libraries and fix them if the maintainer isn't keeping on the same schedule as you. Updates with Exponent are as simple as updating JavaScript, which has much less churn and breaking changes than the native side (the React API itself is very mature, the APIs for specific native components may change).

Another nice advantage of this is that you can work on an iOS app from Windows and Linux, because you don't need to compile your app with Xcode (we handle builds for you when you want to ship to the app store, before that you can just use the Exponent client).

We ship with a bunch of APIs out of the box and are constantly improving them and adding more. We have analytics tools like Amplitude and Segment built in, Maps, Facebook login (working on Google Login), and more: [https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/index.html](https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/index.html)

React Native is still very early, though, and Exponent is just a small team of seven, so we understand that we can't possibly expose every API that developers working with the platform might want. So, we are working on a way for developers to be able to still take advantage of the Exponent toolchain and layer on native code. I've written up our approach in more detail here: [https://blog.getexponent.com/answered-on-slack-ejecting- from...](https://blog.getexponent.com/answered-on-slack-ejecting-from- exponent-154bdca57dc1#.yr55mmqtc)

<comment><USER32> Interesting choice, and thanks for the detailed explanation.

Sounds like at the end of the day it comes down to Exponent being committed to the user never having to build their own app. I can see that being interesting a to a single dev, or a small app or someone new to mobile development, but to be honest I don't think I could justify using Exponent at a company. On any reasonably experienced team of developers, building an app when native components change or distributing it with something like hockeyapp is not very difficult, so I just wouldn't trade the flexibility of being able to do tricky parts directly in native code for not having to build the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks really nice. I have a question about React Native though. I was under the impression that React Native meant that you could just take your components from your website and build an app out of it. I'v realized that's not the case. What is the benefit of React Native if you can't share the components?

<comment><USER4> You can share some components, especially more abstract ones. For example, react-redux creates higher-order components that work with both React DOM and React Native. There's also a project called react-native-web that implements React Native's View components using React DOM's primitive components ([https://github.com/necolas/react-native- web](https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web)).

Components aside, you can share your models and data stores, utilities like Immutable.js and lodash, and other environment-agnostic JavaScript. In addition to code, you can share a lot of knowledge like how to write components, structure an app, use npm, and even just write JavaScript.

<comment><USER19> Well, you've convinced me. I'm trying this out. Thanks!

messutied, you're shadowbanned so I can't reply but thank you for your response!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How about vector icons, barcode scanning and playing sound? At the moment I'm using:

      react-native-vector-icons
      react-native-sound
      react-native-barcodescanner
      react-native-camera

and did not find docs on those features yet. This does look interesting but I'll stick to vanilla react-native for now.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's promising. I wonder how different is it from Appcelerator Titanium ? I used it 5 years ago and it converts the written JS into real native code. The downside is that if Apple releases a new set of APIs, you have to wait till the editor (Appcelerator) releases the JS bridge to those new APIs.

<comment><USER22> Some of the biggest differences are: (1) Exponent is a free open source project, and we don't try to charge developers to use it. (Titanium is open source now but they try to make money by charging people for premium features --which is totally fine, but just different from what we do)

(2) Exponent is based on React Native which is newer and people seem to like better (search Google for blog posts about experiences using React Native and then search Google for blog posts about using Titanium), though I can't actually compare them personally since I don't know that much about the inner workings of Titanium.

(3) You can do instant app updates with Exponent since the JS is run on the device rather than being cross compiled to native code. I don't think you can do this with Titanium (though I may be wrong -- they've added a lot of features since I last checked on it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The video says you support Linux for XDE but I don't see[1] a build for it.

[1] [https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/v10.0.0/introduction/i...](https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/v10.0.0/introduction/installation.html)

<comment><USER22> For Linux, you have to build it from source. [https://github.com/exponentjs/xde#build-from- source](https://github.com/exponentjs/xde#build-from-source) It's usually pretty smooth to do so.

<comment><USER36> I think it would make sense to provide pre-build packages for few popular distros (Ubuntu, CentOS, Arch). There are some tools that make it much easier, i.e. fpm ([https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm](https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm)).

<comment><USER25> We're planning on doing an AppImage for Linux since we're using Electron Builder ([https://github.com/electron-userland/electron- builder](https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder)). Just haven't had time for it yet!

<comment><USER36> Great, AppImage is even better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was following the Pluralsight course but it looks like Exponent had a big upgrade a while back. Are the old binaries used on the course still available somewhere?

<comment><USER22> One thing that we do that we think is pretty cool is that we figured out a way to include multiple versions of our SDK (and React Native) in a single binary, so stuff you build with old versions will continue to work.

Here are the docs for SDK 10 (based on RN 0.33.0): [https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/v10.0.0/index.html](https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/v10.0.0/index.html)

And here are the docs for SDK 9 (based on RN 0.31.0): [https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/v9.0.0/index.html](https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/v9.0.0/index.html)

You can use either one.

Also, all our stuff is open source, so just go back and find the old release tags on Github if you want older versions.

<comment><USER37> That's awesome. Will this work with your mobile application? I know that's delivered through the app-store so I assume only the latest version is available there?

Sorry I'm new to mobile development...

<comment><USER22> The apps in the App Store/Play Store support multiple versions of our SDK. The current versions support back through March. Not sure which SDK version the Pluralsight course is targeting. It might be easier to follow our docs here: [https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/introduction/in...](https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/introduction/index.html) which will always be up to date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Do you abstract the Bluetooth modules? How does it interact with adding something like the Facebook SDK?

<comment><USER25> Hello! I work on Exponent. We don't support Bluetooth right now but it's high on our priority list. We have docs for Facebook here: [https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/sdk/facebook.ht...](https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/sdk/facebook.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does this support iPad and Android tablets?

How about Windows tablet support?

<comment><USER25> We don't support Windows Phone - just iOS and Android.

Android tablets should work. We don't have native iPad support but we're planning on adding it.

<comment><USER39> I'm talking about Windows _tablet_ , not Windows phone.

<comment><USER25> Ah sorry, misread your comment. The dev tools will run on Windows 10, but the client apps won't. The client apps run on iOS and Android and the dev tools run on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> i'm not too familiar with react native - how much support is there for using languages other than javascript (i.e. a compiled-to-javascript language)?

<comment><USER4> One of my teammates working on Exponent was experimenting with ClojureScript and got it running, and one of our YC batchmatches wrote their app with ClojureScript and RN. It's still the very early days and I expect compiled-to- JS to get easier to use. Compiled-to-WASM might also be a good option one day.

<comment><USER40> i would be really excited about writing performant mobile apps in clojurescript! i'll see if i can find working examples on google now that i know people have done it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Does it allow recording video from the camera?

<comment><USER25> We support taking images with the camera but no video yet: [https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/sdk/imagepicker...](https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/sdk/imagepicker.html).

<comment><USER22> We want to add video recording support. It's on our list but probably a few months out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I second tablet support.

</comment><comment><USER43> Intriguing. But how does exponent make money out of this?

<comment><USER25> Hey! I work on Exponent. Basically, we don't make money right now. Our plan is to eventually help developers make money and take some cut of that. We're open source so you'll never be locked in if we start doing anything you don't agree with. We talk about it a little more at [https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/introduction/fa...](https://docs.getexponent.com/versions/latest/introduction/faq.html)

<comment><USER43> That's totally cool. You guys seem to do a lot of work for free. Hope you get the money you deserve.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ES-Checker, a feature detection library for ECMAScript - <AUTHOR> http://ruanyf.github.io/es-checker

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately this seem to be recording a lot of false positives. despite my browser not supporting let or const, they are marked as supporting some of the let/const behaviours just because they threw _any_ error.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good. I saw this news from Weibo...

Also you could submit it to geek.csdn.net and other Chinese HN products.

<comment><USER4> Are you chinese ? Do you guys have some HN that's for westerners but about stuff from China ? Also can you comment on how is it hard for foreigners to do SW/ SaaS business in China ?

<comment><USER3> Yes. I saw the news from @ruanyf's Weibo message. In my opinion, HN is not only for westerners, also for Chinese and other region users, maybe global in other words. But HN Chinese Clones have much focus on local IT news and articles share.

Last, I'm sorry to give none comment about sW/SaaS business.

<comment><USER4> Sure HN is global but mostly for english speaking people where your chinese clones are only for chinese people.

I wish your country would open more to people. The language and the writing system is just too difficult for foreigners to learn in any reasonable time.

<comment><USER3> > The language and the writing system is just too difficult for foreigners to > learn in any reasonable time.

um, Learning is always full of challenge.

> I wish your country would open more to people.

I am not in charge of CPP or PRC, but my country is becoming much more open just given a little patience :)

<comment><USER4> I wish but the CPP is going to introduce yet another internet censorship thingie :/. It's up to you people to do something about it. Easily said harder to to do I know.

Also yes learning is always full of challenge. But i just wish the writing system for chinese would adapt something like hangul.

Well another thing would be for China to dominate the world..then we would be forced to learn it anyway :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> cool

</comment><comment><USER4> Like the design :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Good work guys!

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool

</comment><comment><USER8> Good job.

</comment><comment><USER9> so cool

</comment><comment><USER10> cool

</comment><comment><USER11> well done.</comment>


AD – A Javascript implementation of common Active Directory tasks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dthree/ad/blob/master/readme.md/# <comment><USER2> I really appreciate the effort put in to a library like this, fantastic work.

However I would strongly warn anyone considering using it to do massive amounts of testing in their real production network. Implementing against the current version is easy, but lets remember: this is a protocol old enough to buy cigarettes. It not only changes in behavior between versions, it also has edge cases where things behave differently when the version you are running is an upgrade. Or an upgrade in progress. Or part of a forest that also has... etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure Microsoft had this 15 years ago. AD is accessible through COM. Anything that's accessible through COM is scriptable in JS and VBScript (if it still exists, it's been a while).

<comment><USER4> .. and Powershell. It's very, very hard to discover what this API is though.

<comment><USER5> Ops project or PowerShell?

<comment><USER4> COM APIs within powershell generally and AD ones in particular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://gist.github.com/Summertime/95cc7bec49d3948ce2f76ded0...](https://gist.github.com/Summertime/95cc7bec49d3948ce2f76ded0233dde4) An attempt to transcribe the examples to powershell cmdlets, in case anyone was wondering how much it differs to the tools pre-existing for the task

\- - -

I have to say, other than setup and lack of permission handling the js lib has, I would find myself preferring it

</comment><comment><USER7> I am not very proficient in javascript so excuse my idiotic questions but how does this work ? Does this need to talk to some low level api or nodejs supports this or ?

<comment><AUTHOR> You would download and run this on a Node server. It then uses LDAP to talk to Active Directory, and exposes a Javascript library to make that talk simple.

<comment><USER8> I don't think the server part is necessary. Regardless of where you run it, it relies on ldapjs to talk LDAP to Active Directory.

<comment><USER5> LDAPJS is neat. You can actually run an LDAP server in NODE. I haven't played with it too much, but that's one of those things I just didn't think I would see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let me get this straight. Passwords, including the password of a domain admin, are hardcoded as plain text in client side JavaScript files. Surely, I must be reading this wrong?

<comment><USER10> The authors are even aware of this! The admin password in their first example is "howinsecure".

<comment><USER11> A recent shared secret, I defaulted to "not very secure" for local dev/testing, but uses an environment variable in practice.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for the clarification.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Old-Timer reaction to newbies - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/

<comment><USER2> <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or > linkbait.</comment>


Warriors 'wearable' weapon? Devices to monitor players while on the court - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbssports.com/nba/writer/ken-berger/25203846/warriors-wearable-weapon-devices-to-monitor-players-while-on-the-court

<comment><AUTHOR> Really cool article. Talks about how wearables allowed a team to go from most injury prone to one of the least in a year.</comment>


Kai-Fu Lee (2008) and Hugo Barra (2013) on China's Internet - <AUTHOR> http://mailp.in/vvNAEX33 <comment><USER2> I understand Hugo's marketing effort. But most foreign companies cannot take a bite of their market because you need to accept the Chinese Communist Party's censorship first. Many foreign innovative apps are blocked and then cloned in- house with the censorship enforced. So their apps are not valued high outside of China and beyond Chinese as well.

<comment><USER3> Its not even that: China's laws are so unevenly enforced that western companies can't compete in China on content. You can find plenty of porn on Baidu, for example; Sina recently received a slap on the wrist for video content. Being "hen huang hen baoli" is how these companies make money, and the CCP mostly turns a blind eye. These are mostly protectionist moves by the government; censorship is also a big concern but not the primary one (freedom of speech is even enshrined in the Chinese constitution...).

Until China becomes a country that is really ruled by law, there isn't much foreign content companies can do.

<comment><USER2> Laws are weakly imposed for some companies because these companies recruited some prominent state leaders' relatives as their directors or cofounders. These relatives are greedy, but they are needed to negotiate cases of law enforcement.</comment></comment></comment>


Chengdu chef Lan Guijun: the new emperor of Chinese gastronomy - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/20f3d64e-27f5-11e4-ae44-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3BDnS03bj <comment><USER2> The author of this article Fuchsia Dunlop, has written a couple of fantastic cooking books that bring mainland chinese cuisine to a western audience. If you're at all interested in preparing some fantastic authentic Chinese food I heartily recommend picking up "Every Grain of Rice", available on Amazon.

<comment><USER3> New Yorkers: 5 star reviews

Ethnic Chinese person: _a very ordinary Chinese Cookbook trading on the talents and titles of earlier authors_ [http://www.amazon.com/review/R1Y6HWI3APK3CD/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R1Y6HWI3APK3CD/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0393089045)

My feeling after living in China for a decade and comparing her review with the photo evidence: similarly unimpressed.

Her other books get comments like "Repetitive, disjointed and boastful", "trite anecdotes and sweeping cliches, all exclaimed wide-eyed and breathlessly", "The recipes are different from the traditional Chinese recipes", "Her excuses for eating fancy food and endangered species were bogus". The ones you can _Look Inside!_ contain mentions of Mencius and Marco Polo, and describe 白酒 ( _baijiu_ ; a critically important class of alcohols in Chinese banquet culture _and_ cooking) as simply 'rice vodka'.

Fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bah. Sounds like simple food with overdone presentation for profit. I've been to a few of those places.

Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, a wealthy province that has been part of China since the Han Dynasty (~0; ±200years).

I live just next door in the next province to the south, Yunnan, which is far more geographically diverse, as well as culturally - as for the most part it avoided Chinese hegemony for another thousand to fifteen hundred years. As you'd imagine, frankly our general food standard is _far_ better than that of Sichuan: the population is lower, ingredients are more numerous, fresher and less likely to be adulterated, and we still have dozens of concurrent culinary traditions. There's a far greater appreciation on wild or non market-supplied ingredients. The flip side to this is that we perhaps have less ultra-rich, and therefore the market for showy restaurants is less developed.

If anyone is seriously in to Chinese food and/or considering visiting this restaurant, give me a holler in Yunnan and I'll show you some local culinary masterpieces at a fraction of the expense. To be honest, I like the food so much, I'm considering opening a restaurant myself: bitcoin appreciated! :)

(Note: 14 years as a vegetarian, many of which were in Yunnan, so I came to love and know intimately the variety of fresh cuisine. Fern, bamboo shoots, wild shrooms, marijuana seeds, mountain goat cheese, loads of weird fruits, etc... _yum!_ )

</comment><comment><USER4> It's nice to see a Chinese chef marrying traditional cooking with elements of international haute cuisine. Hopefully this will become a trend, and Ms Dunlop is the perfect person to observe it.

\- I managed to find some low-res photos of his dishes on this review site: [http://www.dianping.com/shop/5423060](http://www.dianping.com/shop/5423060)

The 3 reviews are actually all positive despite one of them giving low ratings. They praise the place's traditional & intimate ambiance, intricate presentation and plating, and of course the taste of the food. Price per person is about RMB450, or US$73 - very high for China, as the article notes.

\- I couldn't find evidence via Google that Japanese people are discussing the restaurant online, but maybe it's spreading via non-public word of mouth.

\- After sharing this article on Facebook, I have friends interested in visiting Chengdu. Let's see if this becomes a small phenomenon among the international gastronomic crowd.

<comment><USER3> Good job tracking down the dianping reviews. There's 102 photos, with [http://www.dianping.com/photos/23523792](http://www.dianping.com/photos/23523792) the only one showing a fully set table. It looks like there's a strategy of using slightly uncommon ingredients for the southwest ( _okra_ for example) and, predictably, the time-honored strategy of serving everything in tiny portions (very rare in China; generally the opposite is true), with perhaps slightly uncommon but not necessarily expensive Jingdezhen (景德镇) porcelain (FT author was clearly confused here). Silken tofu in whatever sauce is still silken tofu, pure and simple. I would have been more impressed to see hand- made tofu products, which Sichuan has significant history in, including famous derived sauces. I see at least two references to Yunnan cuisine: the banana leaf wrapped meat and vegetables (frankly doesn't appeal, Southeast Asia and Yunnan's _Tai_ (傣; _dai_ ) of 西双版纳 ( _xishuangbanna_ ; my home for 2.5 years) and 德宏 ( _dehong_ ) do it better), then some dragon fruit (火龙果; _huolongguo_ ). I feel the reliance on imported seafood shows the chef's strategy is more a poorly masked play to popular taste and business than a truly local tradition driven culinary exploration, as FT has presented it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, that's my hometown! Never thought I'd see it mentioned here, and about food, no less! Chengdu is almost regarded as synonymous with awesome food, and laid-back vibe in China. Oh and Pandas.

I'm going back there next week after two years, and I can't wait to get me some delicious, delicious Szechuan cuisine.</comment>


How to get a remote job as a C++ developer - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to find a remote job for a C++ software developer and I'm in need of some advice. Currently I'm an university student, following my Computer Science degree, and I've been working as a research engineer for a few months now. My qualities consists in :
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