Another Ortiz case - <AUTHOR> http://www.wbur.org/2012/11/14/tewksbury-motel-owner-fights-property-seizure <comment><USER5> Repeating a comment from another thread:

Any time you read a story like "government attempts to liquidate real property to fund police department", your first thought should be "that's not the whole story", because (for the most part) that's not how the federal government operates. So, some issues with this story:

* This case is Sonya Rao, not Carmen Ortiz (though once again Ortiz oversees all the cases in her office).

* The hotel is, let's not sugarcoat it, a blighted flophouse. Don't take my word for it; here's TripAdvisor ("ROOMS BY THE HOUR: Hookers, drug addicts, drug dealers, need I say more") complete with picture: <http://tinyurl.com/ta-caswell> and here's Yelp ("Please don't bring your kids here.") <http://tinyurl.com/y-caswell>

* The owners of the hotel were warned repeatedly by local law enforcement and an intervention of local hotel owners; specific measures were suggested to minimize the problems at this place and weren't taken; the hotel had no security, and its drug countermeasures consisted of a list of persons not to rent to again.

* The hotel owners made no policy changes after a methamphetamine lab was discovered in one of their rooms.

* The hotel owners made no changes after the dead body of a heroin overdose victim was found in one of their rooms.

* Drug deals weren't simply occurring at the hotel; the Tewskbury PD repeatedly discovered drug dealers operating full-time out of rooms in the hotel.

* The owners of the hotel repeatedly admitted under oath that they had continuing knowledge of drug crimes occurring on their premises, and had no policies to investigate the use of their rooms.

There are places like this all over America and they're all neighborhood blights that need to be shut down (hey, by the way, still think there couldn't possibly be a difference between an apartment and a room up for temporary let on Airbnb?).

If all we're saying is that civil asset forfeiture is the wrong means to shut them down, I'm with you. But this case does not make my blood boil the way it does for some. Beyond that, I'm not sure HN is a great place to debate it.

<comment><USER6> > The owners of the hotel repeatedly admitted under oath that they had > continuing knowledge of drug crimes occurring on their premises, and had no > policies to investigate the use of their rooms.

Your entire comment essentially boils down to this. I reject the notion that there is something wrong with using drugs ... but even if you don't, do you really think the hotel owners should be Drug War warriors, enforcing the law, and turning their own _customers_ in to the authorities?

<comment><USER5> Yes, I think that business owners shouldn't be allowed to knowingly profit from having their property used as a staging ground for armed crack and heroin dealers, street-level prostitution, and methamphetamine manufacturing. I think that because all of those activities create externalities that impose terrible costs on neighbors and on the whole township.

<comment><USER7> Ding, Ding, Ding.

I was enraged at first but when I had this same thought, it changed my mind.

Truth is, it would be bad for business if Caswell took an activist approach towards cleaning up his property. Or at the very least, _he_ believes it would be bad or else you'd think he'd have done it by now. He does, after all, _live on the premises._

All this "behind closed doors." Sure, wink wink, nod nod.

Perhaps the gov't needs to build more of a paper-trail (assuming the news article I read was correct that this guy has not had any formal issues renewing various licenses and such) but yeah, you don't get to profit off of criminal activity and not expect the public to do something about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This quote made me stop: _"As he describes his job, he looks through the newspapers and looks at the Internet, looking for news stories of properties that might be forfeitable and brings them to the attention of the U.S. attorney," Caswell's attorney, Larry Salzman, said.

According to the agent's sworn testimony, he then goes to the Registry of Deeds to determine the value of the targeted property. The DEA rejects anything with less than $50,000 equity."_

Ouch. I knew about the US forfeiture laws but this still managed to surprise me. The agents seem to have left any connection with justice and are pretty open about their real goal: grabbing money.

<comment><USER9> So he's a real estate agent then?

<comment><USER8> Ba-dum tsss. But seriously, suppose that this agency needs a new office. What stops them from finding some nice buildings, link them to owners and investigate them just in case? They would be doing their jobs, with the potential bonus of a free office. A true real estate agency.

Yeah, false slippery slope and all but is it really a false one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This story is outrageous. Outrageous. 14 crimes have occurred there in 15 years... And the government just wants to seize $1.5 million worth of property and keep the proceeds. That is itself a crime.

It's not the hotel owners job to do the job of the police. I don't want to check into a hotel and have them check my police record, ask if I am planning to have visitors, scan my luggage in a metal detector to see if I am carrying anything suspicious or illegal. Not their job.

If they see a crime occurring or something suspicious, call it in. Fine. But to hold private business owners responsible for the conduct of their customers? Ridiculous.

<comment><USER5> I think you are probably misinformed about the history of this property. The directly cited criminal cases in the evidence for the property spans a 7 page bulleted wall of text. Multiple people died there. They found meth labs there. On multiple separate engagements, retail drug operations were found running out of rooms in the property. And that's just the drug crimes.

The government can't just "seize" the property. They're suing the property in civil court. For what appears to be very good reason. The whole thing is receiving a full hearing in front of an impartial judge.

<comment><USER11> Sounds to me to be exactly the kind of property a town needs. Get all that bad shit in one place so the police don't have to work finding the perps. Just station some agents in the hotel and go fishing.

<comment><USER12> Governments tried something similar with various housing project initiatives throughout the later part of the twentieth century.

It was an unmitigated disaster, and public policy has now shifted 180 degrees (with the biggest change in policy coming from the passing of the Public Housing Reform Act in 1998).

Even DC, where I live, has been working to undo fifty years of bad housing policy, with the shuttering and redevelopment of projects.

While serving on a homicide grand jury, ~20 of the 100 or so homicides we heard occurred at Sursom Corda, one of the last projects in the city, which was finally closed down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I usually don't go in for commenting about the drug war because it's dumb and i'm over preaching to the converted. But I couldn't resist sidestepping the obvious revenue issue here and note that on any number of occasions I've stayed at perfectly straight hotels presumably run by upstanding members of the community that almost without a doubt had more than 15 felony drug offenses occurring just on that day!

If your standards can include 9 years of traffic and a baker's dozen of issues it seems like a vast majority of lodging would be in danger of a zealous prosecutor.

Now I'm sure this guy has in some way separated himself out in the states attorney's mind as compared to the usual econolodge, but that's faint comfort. Working for a time with federal investigators it became clear that pretty much 100% of the population is guilty of something if you're looking, usually something that can be finessed into a no joke federal rap.

It's very unusual that it ever becomes an issue - but you get the right combination of attention, timing and bad luck or malice and then suddenly your world turns upside down. It seems like this happens really often when you're a target or related to an investigation, they put together what they think is a solid case only to find out whoops they got it wrong you're obviously not their guy. At that point god help you if you're stealing cable or borrowing your brother's wifi or were growing a tiny pot plant in the basement.

I wonder what even the theoretical justification for something like this would be. If we seize the hotel then those junkies will stop shooting heroin because they cant get a chill hotel room in town?

</comment><comment><USER14> _"U.S. Attorney Ortiz said through a spokeswoman last week that the government wanted to send a message by going after the motel .... up the street Walmart and Home Depot have all experienced a similar rate of drug crimes .... attorney Salzman says there's one good reason Ortiz didn't go after them .... the U.S. Attorney's office, looking to make an example, picked on the smallest kid on the block."_

Where have we heard this story before? It seems as if the Judiciary Committee might have more than just the Aaron Swartz case to consider.

</comment><comment><USER15> If even an tenth of the attention that's been paid to Aaron and his case over the last week could be shined on the heinous violation of Due Process that is Civil Forfeiture, I'd consider that, alone, a victory.

<comment><USER16> Seriously.

As this case shows, it's an injustice that almost entirely hits the lower classes.

It's not a conspiracy. There is even a certain logic to it: if drug dealers keep using a particular place as a meet up spot, you have to wonder if the owner isn't turning a blind eye to keep the business. But: this is a cheap motel. Of course it's going to be a hotbed for shady things. If you're up to something shady, where do you go, the Ritz?

But the forfeiture laws are completely insensitive to these facts. All they do is to work the taking of property from the poor just because by virtue of being poor (or serving the poor) crime happens in their midst.

<comment><USER5> The owner of this hotel was almost certainly turning a blind eye to keep the business.

The owners of the hotel aren't poor (the tenants obviously are, though).

Unlike many CAF cases, this one received a full hearing in front of a judge with evidence presented from both sides.

<comment><USER16> Very interesting post up top--I didn't know that.

You're right--even though I think civil forfeiture is wrong, I can see how this would not be a sympathetic case in front of a judge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The actual docket is here:

<http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=1823970>

You can help shine a light on what the DOJ and USAO are up to (and continue what Aaron Swartz started by downloading PACER) using this tool:

<http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/>

If you follow the directions, it doesn't cost anything.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have been following this case for quite some time. I think it is worth noting that the defence lawyers[1] are a pro bono libertarian law firm, initially funded by the Koch brothers, that strategically litigates media friendly cases. It has been said that "In pursuit of its goal of a radical laissez-faire capitalism, the Institute has initiated a number of lawsuits aimed at ending government regulation of business. While the lawsuits generally involve small businesses, often in communities of color, the goal is to set a legal precedent for the deregulation of big business in general."[2]

As a bit of silly trivia, in the movie "Invention of Lying" Ricky Gervais' character had a quicky fling set there where it was named "A Cheap Motel for Intercourse with a Near Stranger".

[1] <http://www.ij.org/massachusetts-civil-forfeiture> [2] <http://my.execpc.com/~ajrc/ifj.html> [3] [http://www.futuregamez.net/movies/inventionoflying/invention...](http://www.futuregamez.net/movies/inventionoflying/inventionoflying2.jpg)

<comment><USER19> If someone wants to demonize an organization they don't like, it's popular to accuse them of having ties to the Koch brothers.

Well, here's some other (obviously evil) organizations funded by the Kochs:

      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>
      - NYC Ballet
      - American Museum of Natural History
      - <USER4>
      - Lincoln Center

<comment><USER20> Dude, you're hurting the narrative. Not cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It is wonderful that these stories are coming up.

But is there a wiki somewhere that is tracking these so that when people go and look at Ortiz in more detail, we've got a quick way of educating them?

<comment><USER17> I think PlainSite is probably the closest thing. It lets you tag cases (if you sign up) and search by attorney or legal entity.

<http://www.plainsite.org>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Carmen Ortiz sounds like nothing more than a state-sponsored terrorist.

<comment><USER23> Prosecutors in general are professional conspiracy theorists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Civil forfeiture laws are the scariest government threat to American freedoms and rights.

Unfortunately they have been upheld by the Supreme Court. And oddly, the freedom touting Republicans have traditionally supported these laws as they are "tough in crime."

</comment><comment><USER25> Seems to me the whole gang in the Boston DA office need to go, starting from Ortiz and working swiftly all the way down.

Thomas Jefferson - "A government afraid of its citizens is a democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny."

</comment><comment><USER26> This seems like the physical equivalent of mega.co.nz, a "dangerous property".

The owner may be upstanding, but the people we expect to protect us (the gov't) see it as a nest of thieves, regardless of who owns it. But if that were illegal, it seems to me Vegas would have been plowed under a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER27> It occurs to me that Ortiz is having a spotlight done upon her office. She finally went too far, now people are questioning her actions.

Transparency's a bitch.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are government buildings at risk when elected officials commit crime in them?</comment>


Denied Breaks, U.S. Poultry Workers Wear Diapers on the Job (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/poultry-workers-in-diapers-as-bathroom-breaks-denied-oxfam-says <comment><USER2> This is exactly the kind of thing for which (in my experience), libertarians of the type common in tech don't have a good answer.

Preventing this kind of abuse involves regulation, either directly or via unions (which themselves must have regulatory support in order to work.)

The free market can't solve all problems.

<comment><USER3> >The free market can't solve all problems.

No, the "free market" has decided that the workers have a value below minimum wage to the company employing them. Remove the minimum wage and the workers will get more breaks, but earn less overall.

> Preventing this kind of abuse involves regulation

Or it may be a side effect of what regulation exists such as increased taxes for full time employment or minimum wage?

<comment><USER2> That's just swapping one kind of abuse for another. It is already almost impossible to survive on minimum wage in many parts of the country.

Stated bluntly: there is nothing stopping the free market from abusing or killing people if the incentives align that way. If we decide we are better than that as a society, regulation is needed.

<comment><USER3> > there is nothing stopping the free market from abusing or killing people if > the incentives align that way. If we decide we are better than that as a > society, regulation is needed

Well, thats true. Any "thing" stopping the free market from abusing\killing people is a form of regulation. Just like you're not allowed to auction off your own organs, or collect and auction organs of others to pay off debts.In a "free market", you would have the ability to market your body too.

> It is already almost impossible to survive on minimum wage in many parts of > the country

Do you feel people should consider this while having children? If you're poor, most of the time your kids will grow up poor\min wage as well. Should you have kids?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> why-el A break should be law-mandated, and it is in VERY FEW states: [https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/rest.htm](https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/rest.htm).

<comment><USER4> Holy shit. I thought that all states (federally) had mandatory regulations for at least _unpaid_ rest breaks every certain number of hours worked, but this is horrifying. And only 20 states have mandatory lunch breaks! Even those aren't required to be paid. WTF. I've lived in two of those states my whole life so I just assumed everyone had that...

<comment><USER5> There are not paid breaks or lunch breaks in the federal government, either. On the other hands, smokers get breaks. The non-smokers in my office once took a single 30-45 minute "smoke break" on Fridays. Eventually, our supervisor's manager joined in, saying it made sense.

<comment><USER4> I mean paid or unpaid, people need to be given some kind (food, rest, or otherwise) of a break in a 6-8 hour period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like mandatory video records of the production lines is a necessary first step... reviewable by anyone at any time and with missing footage fineable (backup cameras are not prohibitively expensive).

Again, outside independent monitoring and a serious expectation of financial losses are the only ways corporations are made to follow their own statements and 'best practices'.

Additionally, this is potential malfeasance in the process of providing our food supply - there should be a higher standard here.

</comment><comment><USER7> Are you sure they aren't being denied _paid_ breaks? I thought being denied breaks was illegal, but some states let employers force employees to punch out first. You could argue against that, but it makes sense in jobs where the end product is objectively measurable and you're being paid for that narrow job. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER8> It's likely that if they're being denied paid breaks, taking an unpaid break would result in being fired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I worked in a seafood plant that wasn't this bad, but had similar policies.

\- During rushes, it actually made sense. You can't stop the line because someone needs a break.

\- You learn to regulate your fluid intake/output to correspond to the scheduled breaks. Eventually you adapt.

\- These are tough, grueling entry-level positions. There are many, many awful things about this type of work that you just accept.

\- Floor managers are often some of the dumbest people you will run into. Anyone smart enough is saving the money for another job/college. The people promoted to supervisors really don't want to apply themselves to another line of work. As such, they all have a mentality of wanting their floors to look busy, even if there is not a lot of work on hand. Having a powertrip over denying bathroom breaks is often part of this.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, this isn't something that should be accepted. The company should have adequate capacity to compensate for a body break. If they don't, then they aren't hiring enough people and they should hire more people. I'm sorry that you had to endure this, but you shouldn't. It's unacceptable working conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What else but a union could prevent this sort of mistreatment?

<comment><USER12> Laws with proportionate fines and regular inspections / reporting. But unions are really the best way

<comment><USER13> Such laws are usually _also_ a product of union activity, which involves more than just contract negotiations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like brutal work. Does anyone here have experience with this type of work? Is there a reason why processing poultry hasn't been automated? If we have automation systems that can put cars together, surely processing chicken is within the realm of possibility?

<comment><USER15> The car problem is considerably easier because it's predictable. Parts have tolerances. With poultry, you're dealing with a natural product with quite a wide range of shapes and sizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> de-regulation & free market will make right! Let's have the product labels indicate whether workers wore diapers and have the consumers decide the direction of worker conditions.

<comment><USER17> That is contradicting - such labels would be regulation. The best free market are small family run poultries where you can witness meat preparation yourself, no need for labels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a Scandinavian, the US really seems like a supersad nation.

<comment><USER19> Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. Such discussions are always the same, which defeats the purpose of this site.

It's not ideological like "taxation is theft" and whatnot, but overweening national generalization works the same way for practical purposes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thats meta. Start treating the workers as the poultry.

Next, feed them and force them to stay still, so they gain weight and spend more time taking care of the chickens.

</comment><comment><USER21> In order to read this article it looks like you need to subscribe to Bloomberg Professional Service. I fear that will lead to discussion here solely based on the title.

<comment><USER22> Based on the title, it doesn't seem to me that HN is a remotely suitable place for this. If the text isn't even open that pretty much seals it.

I like the generally open HN policy on topics as much as the next nerd, but folks, if the article is basically "You'll be SHOCKED At How Steaming Mad This Will Make You!" with no connections to SV or tech or any intellectual topic, it really doesn't belong here. If you want a steady stream of that stuff, goodness knows the challenge is more in _excluding_ this crap from your feed than getting more of it in our modern outrage-driven news culture.

(And for that matter even if you do have a connection to SV or tech and it's still just an "You'll be SHOCKED and OUTRAGED!" article, leave it off please.)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your best C/C++ profiling tool, hints and best practice? - <AUTHOR>

I frequently come across wanting to profile C++ on Linux. I have used perf a lot before but do not have vtune handy. I have dabbled around with poor man's profiler but that seems to get trickier with lots and lots of threads. What are your favorite outside-the-box approaches? How do you figure out contention or IO wait issues? <comment><USER2> HPCToolkit and TAU are good options for profiling C++ applications. They come from HPC so they are intended for use with parallel and highly concurrent applications.

[http://hpctoolkit.org/](http://hpctoolkit.org/) [https://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/tau/home.php](https://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/tau/home.php)

<comment><USER3> Threadspotter (paratools.com) and maqao.org might be of interest, at least for x86_64 GNU/Linux but I wouldn't know about C++ specifics.

[TAU is doubtless a good bet, but for what it's worth for general interest, the other common systems for HPC are openspeedshop.org, cube/scalasca (scalasca.org), and extrae/paraver (bsc.es). A good comparison of them all would be useful, but I've not found one.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any tips on profiling windows device drivers? I've tried xperf, but it doesn't allow you (or I haven't seen how) to change the frequency of the sampling, and can only do a system-wide profile.

I've also tried vtune, but it doesn't support stack-tracing (or things like lbr) for system-wide profiling, and it doesn't have a specific option for sampling drivers. You can attach to the System process, but then you're missing a lot of the your driver code, that runs in other contexts.

I kept thinking about implementing my own sampling profiler (using LBR for stack-tracing, and hardware performance events, like linux's oprofile/ freebsd's hwpmc), but I can't see how I could only profile my driver, and not the whole system, without hooking the Windows scheduler. I guess I will just profile the whole system and check if the program counter is inside my module.

</comment><comment><USER5> Before you start, determine what you are attempting to optimize. Throughput or latency? Improving averages, or reducing how often below-acceptable performance occurs?

Write end2end tests that execises the application as close to what user would. Then, use a profiler with an API so you can start dump when test/app setup is completed (to avoid extranous noise/misleading data). I like gperftools combined with KCachegrind as a GUI. Used it very successfully for instance in MyPaint: [http://www.jonnor.com/2012/11/improved-drawing- performance-i...](http://www.jonnor.com/2012/11/improved-drawing-performance- in-mypaint-brush-engine)

</comment><comment><USER6> Your question is a bit all over the map - are you interested in reducing CPU usage, reducing time spent in locks, or do you want to talk to the kernel more efficiently? Are you targeting, throughput, latency?

That said, [http://www.brendangregg.com/flamegraphs.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/flamegraphs.html) is a nice introduction to a site that has lots of material.

</comment><comment><USER7> valgrind's got some good features along these lines: [http://valgrind.org/info/tools.html](http://valgrind.org/info/tools.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Valgrind is nice, however, especially with multi-threaded programs the virtualized execution diverges from a non-valgrind-VM run quite a bit so I am not a huge fan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very interested in this too

<comment><USER9> me too</comment></comment>


Princeton Blockchain Reading Group - <AUTHOR> https://blockchain.princeton.edu/ <comment><USER2> After years of debating, I still fail to see how the statements "Bitcoin is useless" and "blockchains have potential" can both hold true.

For a blockchain to be a blockchain, there must be a token to keep the incentive structure. Otherwise it's no longer a blockchain it's a simple database that will naturally be centralized due to economies of scale.

<comment><USER3> Blockchains can be run without incentives. They can be run internally by a large organization. Take the US military. I could see each service running a server to verify changes to a ledger of national orders. An effort to change the ledger would be possible but very difficult, demanding cross-branch conspiracy. Such a scheme could exist without incentives.

<comment><USER4> Why would a highly hierarchical, centralized organization with extensive infrastructure for distributing and authenticating orders suddenly blockchain it all up to solve a problem (cross-branch conspiracy) they don't at all have?

<comment><USER3> To protect against outsiders inserting false orders to one branch. Or to provide a record of past orders.

<comment><USER4> Right, but they seem to do that pretty well as it is. The Sixth Fleet rarely ends up in Antarctica because of an air force prank.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some good resources for beginner PenTesting? - <AUTHOR> Mid-level engineer looking to explore PenTesting. While I have a few years experience on the backend (and have dipped my toes into security), I'm quite frankly a noob, and would love it if you folks could recommend some good pentesting resources. <comment><USER2> Good starting resource: [https://www.hackthissite.org/](https://www.hackthissite.org/)</comment>


Amazon.com: Fun Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/stream/hotpicks/ <comment><USER2> I feel like this needs an explanation?

</comment><comment><USER3> My first impression is - they want their own [https://fancy.com/](https://fancy.com/)

<comment><USER4> Or [https://canopy.co](https://canopy.co), among dozens of others.</comment></comment>


Political Candidates Sued for Patent Infringement - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2012/02/everymd-vs-santorum-romney.html

<comment><USER2> That's fabulous. I can't think of a better way to make politicians aware that this has gotten way out of hand.</comment>


Turntable.fm Nabs Rights to Another 6.5 Million Songs From BMI - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/07/21/turntable-fm-nabs-rights-to-another-6-5-million-songs-from-bmi/

<comment><USER2> Turntable is how music startups should be done. Super impressed with these guys.</comment>


Ninite: Easy PC Setup and Multi-App Installer (from BaseShield, YC W08) - <AUTHOR> http://ninite.com

<comment><USER2> This is amazing and will probably result in Dell selling me a Windows 7 laptop about 6 months ahead of schedule, simply because I was not looking forward to doing a day of setup during which I could get no productive work done.

I seriously wish there was a convenient way to give you whatever the affiliate commission on a new laptop is.

<comment><USER3> Here's the opposite of Ninite for new Dell PCs <http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This just saved me hours of time. I'm flying home in a couple of weeks and reinstalling XP on 5 different computers in two days. I'm going to image the first HDD to the other 4 computers, but installing all the basic apps with one installer is a god send. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope these guys grow this to be an Appstore/APT alike software channel. There's definitely a need for that on Windows. Edit: ok, they already did that <http://baseshield.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Are you considering ever adding sponsored apps to the list of apps in the free version?

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks incredibly handy for fresh Windows installs, thank you! Bookmarked for the next time I install a VM or so.

I just looked up Baseshield, and I'm interested in how the two products fit together. Does installing stuff with Ninite preclude keeping it up to date with Baseshield?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd love something like this that could install all the windows tools I use on machines at work: Emacs, Cygwin, Mercurial (TortoiseHG), Sysinternals, Wireshark, iperf, MySQL & PostgreSQL clients (e.g. pgAdminIII/phpPgAdmin) and either WAMP or XAMPP. MediaWiki, TrueCrypt and OCS Inventory would be nice too.

<comment><USER3> You can suggest new apps to add at the bottom.

Maybe they could deal with too many options by having expandable sections labelled "Developer" or "DBA" etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would love to see a Mac version of this.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't that just be a folder?

<comment><USER9> If only. A significant fraction of apps use installers.

Regardless, it's much easier to tick checkboxes with Ninite than it is to individually track files down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would love to see links to "more info" on the software available directly in the "Pick your software" lineup. Some of those I've never heard of, and tried to click on them (multiple times... doh) to find out more.

</comment><comment><USER12> Again changing names... Was previous <http://getvolery.com>

It would be good if somebody replied to my suggestion comments on site.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great, but it's not quite there. I'm a geek--I know what all of these do, but I think you've got a chance to target people who don't know what they want. Great job so far!

<comment><USER14> Maybe a way for third-parties to make a Recommended Install List as a base to start from and promote it. e.g., A List for Web Developers, a Default List, an Essentials List, etc. Including comments from the list creator (a la Amazon's wishlists) explaining what the app is and why they use it or chose it for the list.

e.g., I could create an install list for my family, or for clients.

It's a good idea though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a nice installer, but it doesn't keep programs up to date. The FileHippo Update Checker is a very small, pretty inconspicuous program that alerts me to new versions of software I have installed, which means I can turn off the Adobe, Apple, Java, Google, etc. updaters on my PC. <http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/>

<comment><USER16> Too bad it's still really annoying to turn off all those miscellaneous updaters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great idea! I'd love to see some more front-end work on the site. You guys need a logo for sure.

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice. But for it to really be _there_, the tools should sync your present config files, directories, reg settings for each app and optionally apply them after install. I think that's where your premium account potential lies.

</comment><comment><USER19> What's the business model?

<comment><USER20> <http://ninite.com/accounts/premium>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The url for BaseShield App Store (in baseshield.com) links to the download. Is this intentional? (I was expecting to see a list of applications in a webpage)

</comment><comment><USER22> Very nice. I was just starting to work on nearly the same idea. You must have had the idea before me. It looks good guys. Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER23> wow, really wish i had this back when i was on windows, begrudgingly formatting my hard drive every year. would have saved me so much time and hassle. nice work!

</comment><comment><USER24> Hey guys, this looks super great :-)

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice one, good job!</comment>


SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5" - <AUTHOR> http://sap.github.io/openui5/ <comment><USER2> Having worked with SAP via ABAP and Java back in the day (and hating it) I can still feel the soul of SAP through these web apps. They still feel incredibly slow and bloated for what they do. Their market dominance is driven by the FUD of other technologies unfortunately, so they need to create their own front- end javascript framework to keep the mystique going about how computer systems are complicated without SAP. On the other hand, when the SAP people retire I'd imagine they'll be completely out of business because no CTO in 20 years is going to get behind an SAP implementation as they work today.

<comment><USER3> It will be called SalesForce then.

<comment><USER4> As if SalesForce is any better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> SAP Hana is actually a pretty interesting technology for developing data analysis website. It's a DB integrated with a web server and it automatically builds web services that let you query the data. It also provides a html/js framework to easily display and drill down (i think SAPUI5 is tied to that framework, or even is that framework).

They even got an amazon AMI to start developping quickly without paying the license upfront. Unfortunately the IDE which you use to build the webapp requires Windows.

hint : i don't work for SAP at all. I just discovered that technology a few weeks ago and it was pretty weird for me since i've always associated SAP to big, bloated, clumsy, and hyper expensive tools, for the enterprise only.

<comment><USER6> SAP is a strangely technology-driven company on the inside.

They just solve a horrible problem: implementing everyones business process as they find them at the client, instead of the other way around, with legacy support for ages.

(disclaimer: I worked for SAP as an intern, a few years ago)

<comment><USER7> SAP (or Salesforce or whatever) comes in. Client wants new tech, but keep the business process the same. Lots of wasted money, tears, and anger. Client adapts business process.

The problem is that most enterprise do not reach the last step.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not one of the companies that I might have anticipated open sourcing this type of project. I hope that this helps other LargeCorps begin looking at open source as a reasonable business decision.

I salute SAP for the initiative and hope more follow suit.

<comment><USER9> Since the project started the developer fought for this internally. Finally they won.

<comment><USER8> Interesting, I was thinking that SAP might have opened this up to help broaden the base of developers who are comfortable working with their technology. I just assumed that there must be some business logic underlying the move.

I imagine that an open-source javascript project would be a great deal more approachable than proprietary ABAP for developers exploring new career paths.

<comment><USER10> Yea that's isn't how SAP work. They only want inhouse developers developing on their platforms

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice set of font icons included (licensed as Apache License 2.0 too I think, so you can use them standalone elsewhere):

Icon Explorer: [https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demok...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demokit/icon-explorer/index.html)

Uncategorized icons: [https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/ui/core...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/ui/core/Icon.html)

Class sap.ui.core.Icon reference: [https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#docs/api/symbols/sap.ui.c...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#docs/api/symbols/sap.ui.core.Icon.html)

<comment><USER11> You can find the SAP-icons.ttf and SAP-icons.eot files into the following folders inside the UI5 Runtime zip file: resources/sap/ui/core/themes/*/fonts/

The copyright lines inside the font files say: Copyright (c) 2013 by Gerard Keane SAP AG Visual Design. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2013 by SAP AG Visual Design. All rights reserved.

But I still think that the Apache License 2.0 applies here too.

<comment><USER12> The copyright issue should be fixed. Looks like this was generated automatically by the software ;)

<comment><USER11> At first I thought you were part of the team and already fixed the font license issue on the public website, but I just checked and nothing seems to have been changed.

So maybe I misinterpreted your comment, and you are not part of the team, but just saying that this issue need to be fixed, and that probably it is there because of automatic generation.

Could you please clarify the meaning of your comment? Thanks! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 6MB, 150 files, interminably slow load times, a crazy-looking, complicated, Java-inspired API, and poor text contrast? Yeah, that's about what I was expecting from a UI toolkit from SAP. Makes me sad.

</comment><comment><USER14> I liked the UI because it is compact. I know they are not the only alternative, but I hate default padding and margin values of Bootstrap. Not everyone has retina or 4K displays. It is more suitable for desktop application where you need many components to be displayed, and you have a mouse to navigate. Bootstrap is good in the other way around.

<comment><USER15> Yeah bootstrap doesn't really have an enterprise look to it. Arguably the enterprise look is uncool though, so that's not surprising. wrapbootstrap has stuff that almost bridges the gap, erring on the cool side of things though. I doubt most enterprises want something that sleek looking.

In short, make your enterprise software look like the Microsoft suite of the day and you should be ok. I think Extjs fails in that regard, it used to look fresh though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lots of negative comments on HN, surprise surprise. Seems like an enormous amount of code, we should be happy it's now open source for others to use and learn from.

<comment><USER17> Most of the criticism is valid though, in this case. This is a genuinely poor UI framework.

1\. This is extjs, like someone else was mentioning below.

2\. Why would you supplant native HTML/CSS capabilities with shit like new sap.ui.commons.TextView({ layoutData : new sap.ui.layout.GridData({ span : "L4 M6 S12"...

3\. The problem is that the entire approach is outdated, and fairly slow and bloated on my machine. Coding with this is going to be as interesting as legacy Java and .Net "thick client" apps.

<comment><USER18> I think SAP deserves some praise for open sourcing some real work. Beyond that I agree with your critique, this framework is not going to make inroads in the larger web community.

However, keep in mind that this is an SAP tool geared towards the SAP ecosystem and it will ultimately be a pretty big deal within that space.

As an SAP developer I am happy to see any progress towards more modern practices and better technologies and SAPUI5 is, without a doubt, progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A UI toolkit from SAP, that's rich.

</comment><comment><USER20> What to makeof this thread? I see bias all around - on both sides of the house! Sure, it's always fun to be thrashing the big guys ("evil empires") and cheer for the under dog.

Those who have been watching more closely (IMHO, the only ones entitled to raise public critism) would back me up in saying that there has been an ongoing change for the better and SAP has really been opening up to the broader developer community - empowering developers and lowering the entry barrier!

SAP offers free education and free developer licenses so it's easier than ever to get started. At the end of the day, it's all about making a living as a software developer and hence I believe this is a positive trend... And one that should be acknowledged in a positive way.

</comment><comment><USER21> The basic overview blog is well worth reading [http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/front- end/blog...](http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/front- end/blog/2013/12/11/what-is-openui5-sapui5)

<comment><USER22> And the linked "Reasons to open-source this toolkit" at [http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/front- end/blog...](http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/front- end/blog/2013/11/20/reasons-why-sap-should-open-source-sapui5).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a direct link to documentation and examples of all the controls in the UI library

[https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#content/Controls/index.ht...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#content/Controls/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> If you're interested, we have a TodoMVC example for SAPUI5: [http://todomvc.com/labs/architecture- examples/sapui5/](http://todomvc.com/labs/architecture-examples/sapui5/)

<comment><USER24> Took over 5 seconds to load. I don't like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like UI kits from 3 years ago.

<comment><USER26> Compared to SAP GUI screens this is like an advanced alien technology.

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sap+gui&espv=210&es_sm=93&...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sap+gui&espv=210&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=5JmoUsmyGIKF4ASyt4D4Ag&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=755#imgdii=_)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The most interesting components in this library is in the sap.m namespace. They are a core part of the new UI strategy of the SAP and are often referred to as Fiori (see more at [https://experience.sap.com/fiori#demos](https://experience.sap.com/fiori#demos)). Designed to handle responsive design and mobile OS device adaptions. Perfect for combining with a hybrid container such as Cordova/Phonegap (though size- wise they need to be optimized more ref [http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/front- end/blog...](http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/front- end/blog/2013/11/26/why-i-want-my-fiori-to-be-lean-fast))

A lot of them are high-level components such as IconTabBar [https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demok...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demokit/explored/index.html#/sample/iconTabBarProcess)

TileContainer [https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demok...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demokit/explored/index.html#/sample/tileContainer) Lists [https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demok...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demokit/explored/index.html#/sample/listItemObject)

Forms [https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demok...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demokit/explored/index.html#/sample/form480)

</comment><comment><USER27> Am I the only one this isn't working for? I see comments in here describing all sorts of things but the demo and doc pages only give me JS errors:

> Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property 'OS' of null sap-ui-core.js:152

> Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'getUriParameters' of undefined > openui5.hana.ondemand.com/:35

I just see a blank page.

<comment><USER28> Same here. After setting the user agent to IE 8 the page renders fine. (I guess it can't handle FreeBSD)

<comment><USER27> I'm also a user of FreeBSD.

I've created a pull request to address the issue.

[https://github.com/Incognito/openui5/commit/09a1b50bf73bc6bd...](https://github.com/Incognito/openui5/commit/09a1b50bf73bc6bd6f07c4c4fe47fc8bf41af6dd)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seeing lots of comparisons to ExtJS, in many ways it is similar, but it is also a lot like Dojo and even Backbone.

Would hope in time we see a proper comparision like in [http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/27/journey- throug...](http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/27/journey-through-the- javascript-mvc-jungle/)

Where SAPUI5 excels is in providing an easy and consistent way to interact with SAP based backends. Anyone who has tried to do this with other frameworks will appreciate the complexity, SAP themselves have used and are using SAPUI5 for developing many application across the globe. It has been used in anger and been proven to be very extensible and scalable, the kind of things you look for as a Enterprise Developer.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's very cool and immensely impressive, but the web moves fast and it's interesting to note how quickly previous everything and the kitchen sink and or ui libraries become dated. Just look to dojo, jquery ui, ext.js, jquery mobile, even Cappuccino looks dated (take a look at [http://www.cappuccino- project.org/learn/demos/LightsOff/](http://www.cappuccino- project.org/learn/demos/LightsOff/) for example).

Big libraries can't move fast, and can't adapt to all the latest things easily, like reactivity, flat ui, new features like webrtc, persistent websockets instead of REST, etc.

<comment><USER16> And the web will continue moving fast and soon enough "flat" ui will look dated. This is why it can be themed:

[https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#docs/guide/ThemingFAQ.htm...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#docs/guide/ThemingFAQ.html)

<comment><USER30> jQuery UI can be themed, there's a flat theme, few people use it. Those who do were already using jQuery UI and searched for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The amount of different controls is impressive. The design, not so much. Look at those emphasized buttons, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not so long ago, SAP released a suite of applications under the brand "Fiori" \- these apps are responsivea, have a uniform look and feel and are much more pleasing to the eye.

Here is an example from the Demokit: [https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demok...](https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test- resources/sap/m/demokit/poa/index.html)

<comment><USER32> This looks really good, but doesn't seem to be part of the open sourced UI? If it is, i can't find it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is part of the library - you'll find the Fiori controls under the sap.m (for "mobile") namespace in the API section.

It's the "SplitApp" element that gives you the nice looking, responsive container (I was not able to find a good code sample right away).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why is it so slow?

<comment><USER34> It's 400KB of minified Javascript. Compare with some other large-ish libraries:

Angular: 97KB jQuery: 90KB jQueryUI: 87KB

It takes a while to load and compile.

<comment><USER35> To be truly fair, you need to compare this against ext-js which is ~700KB

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This looks like ExtJS, but worse than ExtJS.

</comment><comment><USER36> Oh my, that "Delphi mentality" in 2013..) ExtJS, if I remember correctly, is 5 or 6 years old already?) But we, no doubt, will read about ground-breaking innovations from their PR machine.)

Is there any info which "startup" they have acquired or in what third-world country it was outsourced?)

<comment><AUTHOR> There was nothing in your comment that made sense to me at all.

>> Oh my, that "Delphi mentality" in 2013..)

What's "Delphi mentality"?

>> ExtJS, if I remember correctly, is 5 or 6 years old already?

Why do you bring up ExtJS?

>> Is there any info which "startup" they have acquired or in what third-world country it was outsourced?

UI5 was developed in-house by SAP - not sure where it happened, but I think that particular bit of your comment reeks of arrogance and chauvinism

<comment><USER36> > Why do you bring up ExtJS?

Because it is an JS UI library of the very same kind which were around for years, isn't it?

Not sure about arrogance, but yes, I do hate SAP because I have seen it in production.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you could be forgiven for disliking SAP based on your experiences with their old UI - but UI5 is luckily their attempt to remedy the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The date-picker has a bug, it shows calendar week "53" instead of 1 (first week of 2014): [http://postimg.org/image/faubokz5b/](http://postimg.org/image/faubokz5b/)

SAPUI5 is good, finally they can replace the outdated Netweavers Web UI with its horrible JS code.

<comment><USER38> It's probably defaulting to the 4-4-5 calendar used in finance or something.

<comment><USER37> maybe.

I think they coded it for European style calendar format "Monday" = first day of week, as SAP is a german company. I wrote a datepicker in JavaScript and it had similar bugs in one of the calendar formats too.</comment></comment></comment>


Fuck Committees - <AUTHOR> http://www.manifestoproject.it/fuck-committees/ <comment><USER2> Well that was a letdown.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love tibor :)</comment>


How I write Go HTTP services after 7 years - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/statuscode/how-i-write-go-http-services-after-seven-years-37c208122831 <comment><USER2> Very nice.

> By calling ServeHTTP on the server, we are testing the entire stack > including routing and middleware, etc. You can of course call the handler > methods directly if you want to avoid this

What is the trade-off between the two? Does it make the tests significantly slower to test the entire stack rather than just a handler?

<comment><USER3> I usually do both. I like having unit tests that test individual function that describe functionality. But I also like to have tests that ensure everything works as intended ones you throw everything together.

<comment><USER2> To be clear, you test individual functions handler uses, and to test the handlers themselves, you opt to test the whole stack as described in the article?

<comment><USER3> I test the whole stack to ensure things work as intended when all put together. But I also write very isolated unit tests. I usually have them in separate test suites so I can choose which ones to run

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not part of the post but can't help and laugh at the company's marketing snipped below. Buzz-worthy!

"What is this Machine Box that I keep hearing all this amazing stuff about?

Machine Learning in Docker containers for Kubernetes — implement some ML today, without having to learn all that Tensorflow stuff."

</comment><comment><USER4> 7 years is a long-time in Golangland.</comment>


Reddit is now censoring posts and communities on a country-by-country basis - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com.au/reddit-unbanned-russia-magic-mushrooms-germany-watchpeopledie-localised-censorship-2015-8

<comment><USER2> Reddit's response:

> Here's the full statement from Reddit, posted to r/ChillingEffects, about > the ban:

> This week, Reddit received valid legal requests from Germany and Russia > requesting the takedown of content that violated local law. As a result, > /r/watchpeopledie was blocked from German IPs, and a post in /r/rudrugs was > blocked from Russian IP's in order to preserve the existence of reddit in > those regions. We want to ensure our services are available to users > everywhere, but if we receive a valid request from an authorised entity, we > reserve the right to restrict content in a particular country. We will work > to find ways to make this process more transparent and streamlined as Reddit > continues to grow globally.

So pretty much any country can now get reddit to ban any sub that they think violates local law...</comment>


Protest at SF City Hall After Soccer Conflict with Dropbox, Airbnb Employees - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/16/soccer-dropbox-airbnb/ <comment><USER2> Selling reservations for fields that often are in use by locals is guaranteed to start fights; what on earth was the parks department thinking?

<comment><USER3> Why can't the locals deal with a reservation system? The fields are a shared resource paid for by all SF taxpayers, not just the local community. It seems the city did its best to inform everyone of the reservation system but some people will just ignore the rules. Not that I think it's right that the kids can't use the fields in the evening. I don't know all the details. Maybe there are some evenings blocked off for unreserved use. Maybe the locals want no reservation system at all. There has to be some give and take here. This has been turned into another anti-gentrification, anti-tech issue. At least some of the tech-workers are SF citizens and "locals" too. In some other parts of the world reservation systems work.

<comment><USER4> The point you're glossing over is the kids have no representation in the local city council. Yeah, people go on making laws and claiming they know what's best for children, but no one ever bother to ask them. In another extreme case, some adults entirely dismiss the kid's perspective claiming these issues go over their head.

This didn't turn into a gentrification issue as it is very much a class struggle issue from the beginning. (And as such, a gentrification issue.) Kids don't have money to pay to play, so they can't even share the field?

<comment><USER5> > The point you're glossing over is the kids have no representation in the > local city council.

Nonsense; they have the same representation anyone else in San Francisco has. The fact that they cannot vote doors not mean that they are not represented.

Moreover, this being America, their parents or guardians can vote.

<comment><USER2> If you seriously believe that poor people, middle class, and upper class people all get the same representation in sf -- or anywhere in America -- and the same returns to their tax dollars, you're a willfully blind idiot. After all, whose kids just got prime hours in the local parks auctioned off?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit So... let me get this straight. A group of people (it doesn't make any difference that they were Dropbox/Airbnb employees) show up to play a game on a field they reserved through the proper channels and they find the field occupied so they ask them to leave. Why are they the bad guys here? If a neighborhood family had reserved the field for a soccer themed birthday party for a 6 year old, would they have been blasted like this? Doubtful. But oh snap... we have some techies so let's blast them for following the rules. Stupid.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've always seen the ability to reserve parks for usage like kickball leagues and the like, but only a few days out of the week were reservable.

It looks like this was a similar situation, so why would anyone feel "slighted" because someone made a reservation?

</comment><comment><USER7> I've just read this and the whole story sounds extremely weird to me... I don't know how things are done over there in SF, but from my point of view there's no need to go to a City Town Hall to solve this...you book online, show up and play. It looks more a way to feed the Tech Hype rather than a real problem but...

</comment><comment><USER8> Pretty clueless of Dropbox employees to kick people out of the park.

Give up the game, but let people know about the reservation system; offer company funding to book community sessions; get someone else to do the enforcing so it's them who look bad.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a good lesson in economics for the kids. When something is in demand and it has limited supply, the price increases. Simple as that.

<comment><USER10> Do you believe that every aspect of life should have a price tag on it? (Serious question). In a wealthy country is it not desirable to redistribute some wealth to the young, old and sick? Communal park areas have been a standing feature of western countries. By supporting pay for access you belie not your wealth but a sense of entitlement.

<comment><USER11> Did you read the article? "As part of that, there was a new reservation system on certain nights of the week for a $27 permit...left the park open for drop- in play 96 percent of the time".

So 96% of the time, the park is open to everyone and 4% of the time the park can be reserved for a price which is equal to 2.5 hours of work at the local minimum wage.

One could easily argue that the people showing an unreasonable entitlement are the ones who think they should get to use the park in the tiny sliver of time where someone else has paid the city to reserve it for an organized game.

<comment><USER10> >> One could easily argue that the people showing an unreasonable entitlement are the ones who think they should get to use the park in the tiny sliver of time where someone else has paid the city to reserve it for an organized game.

Your argument seems to be based on the idea that people with money intrinsically have more right to something than those who do not. I understand this is the prominent view in the US but there are other ways to do it(there's a big gap between communism and ultra-capitalism). Look to the scandinavian countries for instance where they place a far great emphasis on wealth redistribution and community support through better schooling and healthcare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Look, I am a doctor in San Francisco, cardiac anesthesiologist, did my residency at Harvard and fellowship at Mount Sinai. So, I am not a piece of crap. But everywhere I go I repeatedly see smug and condescending behavior from techies toward everyone else, including me. This behavior is everywhere: in bars, restaurants, bus stops, etc, etc. Get a grip, people, you are no better than everyone else!

</comment><comment><USER13> Must be a slow news day</comment>


Megathread: India-Pakistan Border Skirmish - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/avafxp/megathread_indiapakistan_border_skirmish/ <comment><USER2> _" Indian megathread: India-Pakistan Border Skirmish"_ would be as better title in my opinion. It is an Indian subreddit and very one-sided, stating things like "this is all because Pakistan supports terrorist" etc. yet not a word about why the official death-tolls from India mentions _militants_ killed in Pakistani attacks on Indian military installations.

I'm neither Indian or Pakistani or rooting for either side. Just pointing out it is one-sided and that _both_ sides support and use terrorists/militants/whatever.</comment>


Consul-tree for hashicorp/consul - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vagharsh/consul-tree <comment><AUTHOR> I have created a Tree representation of the Key/Value Store part of hashicorp/consul, take a look at it and give me your opinion, Version 6.0 is the latest release, demos ( screenshots are available also ) [https://github.com/vagharsh/consul-tree](https://github.com/vagharsh/consul- tree)</comment>


Ask HN: Review my app, kornar.co.uk - <AUTHOR>

this is still a very premature app, i coded it in one day, i just want to test out the idea, the idea to write something very short, and get people to vote on it, like a micropoll.<p>p.s. this is just prototype, so excuse the design, please do suggest feature requests and any bugs ecountered, cheers :)) <comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.kornar.co.uk></comment>


Citizen scientist hunts for kissing bugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/10/chagas-disease-kissing-bugs-hunt/ <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triatominae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triatominae)

They're also called assassin bugs and are pretty common. If you treat around your house for bugs like ticks, fleas, ants and termites you're probably using an insecticide that will also control these things.

Yes I know ticks aren't bugs, but none of what I listed are true bugs.

And now my skin is itchy.

<comment><USER3> Both kissing bugs and assassin bugs are both true bugs in the family Reduviidae, but they are not the same thing. Kissing bugs that can spread Chagas are not common outside the extreme southern portion of the US.

By the way, not only are ticks not bugs, they aren't even insects, they are arachnids. Many insecticides have no effect on them.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the peace of mind. I've seen many assassin bugs in my apartment in the Seattle area and sometimes worry that one of us might have been bitten by them and have Chagas. I guess we're safe in this area.

<comment><USER3> Here is a map of the states where the kissing bugs that vector Chagas disease have been been reported in the US.

[http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/chagas/gen_info/vectors/](http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/chagas/gen_info/vectors/)

This doesn't mean the bugs are common in these states, or even when bugs are present, that they have the parasite responsible for Chagas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Partially, it was for financial reasons. If he spent 100 hours participating > in scientific research on his land, he could reduce his property taxes by > more than half.

That's interesting. Anyone know offhand how that works?

<comment><USER6> Googled "100 hours participating scientific research land property taxes". Third result:

Timber Taxation: A General Guide for Forestland Owners [http://extension.psu.edu/natural- resources/forests/finance/f...](http://extension.psu.edu/natural- resources/forests/finance/forest-tax-info/tax-information/timber-taxation-a- general-guide-for-forestland-owners)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"Behind all of that knowledge is a basic principle," he said. "The closer you look, the weirder it gets."_

It's a fractal

</comment><comment><USER8> Curious guy. The kind of people able to make things regrowth after their footseps. They are scarce and often elusive.

<comment><USER9> Watch "The Man Who Planted Trees" by Frederic Bac; tremendous film, best there evere was on the subject of regrowth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just to be clear, there is a test and a treatment for Chagas disease (although not necessarily a cure).

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if it is possible to use gene drive against this bugs? As the article says biting us is a "capital offense" and getting rid of mosquitos, ticks, tsetse and this horrible thing, would improve life of many people.

</comment><comment><USER11> You know a clear picture of a kissing bug would greatly enhance this article

<comment><USER12> I agree with you. But since a clear picture wasn't included, here's our friendly CDC providing the lifecycle dvelopment of this bug[1].

[1] [http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/chagas/gen_info/vectors/triatom...](http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/chagas/gen_info/vectors/triatomine_stages_lg.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if these could (and should?) be wiped out like that plan to wipe out the mosquitoes by releasing sterile ones.

</comment><comment><USER14> From the title I assumed we were talking about glandular fever.

<comment><USER15> FYI known to Americans as "mono" or "infectious mononucleosis" \- I've heard it called "kissing disease" but rarely

<comment><USER14> And in the reverse direction, it took me ages (and maybe a web search) before I figured out that "mono" was glandular fever.

What's going to be really interesting in the future is "regional" vernacular being split along online community lines more than geographic lines, so you'll get the same cultural confusion talking to your neighbour as you currently do talking to fellow internet posters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> this is terrifying</comment>


Are there any customers in production using Docker? - <AUTHOR> Are there any customers in production using Docker? <comment><USER2> Absolutely. The number of customers moving to production on Docker is quickly growing.

Feel free to check the detailed customer use cases here: [http://dchq.co/customers.html](http://dchq.co/customers.html)

Here's a great article on how ProLeads moved from Heroku to Docker leveraging DCHQ for application management: [http://stackshare.io/proleads/how-we-moved- from-heroku-to-co...](http://stackshare.io/proleads/how-we-moved-from-heroku- to-containers-with-no-docker-experience)</comment>


Announcing WSL 2 - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/ <comment><USER2> > File intensive operations like git clone, npm install, apt update, apt > upgrade, and more will all be noticeably faster. The actual speed increase > will depend on which app you're running and how it is interacting with the > file system. Initial tests that we've run have WSL 2 running up to 20x > faster compared to WSL 1 when unpacking a zipped tarball, and around 2-5x > faster when using git clone, npm install and cmake on various projects.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They are moving from reimplementing syscalls to running full Linux kernel inside of a "lightweight utility virtual machine"

<comment><USER3> So how does that VM work behind the scenes? Somehow, things still need to be written to a disk and go through the filesystem minifilters don't they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is marked as a dupe, but searching I don't see another discussion.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Announcing%20WSL%202&sort=byDa...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Announcing%20WSL%202&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

Edit: it's [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842817)

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this isn't a translation layer anymore, this is just a straight-up built- from-source Linux kernel inside Windows. O brave new world.

I've seen a couple people wondering why Microsoft doesn't just ship a Linux distro with a Win32 compatibility layer on top of it, and it seems like that speculation is only going to increase now. Windows is still a long way from that, but unmistakably drifting in that direction.

</comment><comment><USER6> Having just switched my home desktop from Windows/Linux dualboot, to full Linux, this kind of makes me want to switch back to Windows. My only grievance is nvidia driver support lacking on Linux at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER7> So they are writing their own kernel, but moving to using a VM? Why not use an existing kernel if they are moving to using a VM...?

</comment><comment><USER8> It sort of seems like a shame to throw out the entire approach and move to something vm-based when it was already working so well, but I guess if it improves both performance and compatibility it makes sense?

<comment><USER9> This started as "Bash On Windows," got embiggened to WSL and now we're finally where it probably should have started; a tightly integrated VM running a genuine Linux kernel. This also obviates some of the shade that has been thrown at Microsoft's effort because this is no longer a reimplementation of the Linux kernel.

So both technical and political improvements. I have few complaints.

<comment><USER10> What's wrong with re-implementing the linux kernel? Why would people not like that?

<comment><USER9> > What's wrong with re-implementing the linux kernel?

I don't know that there is anything _wrong_ with it. I do know there are those that don't care to see Microsoft rehosting the Linux ecosystem on a proprietary kernel and have seen WSL as more 'embrace, extend, extinguish' behavior. One imagines that view must moderate some given that Microsoft is now relying on the genuine GPL licensed kernel.

I believe I've hit my daily weasel word limit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a _great_ update!

...I'm still running Linux bare when possible, though.</comment>


Can your smartphone really replace your point-and-shoot camera? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techhive.com/article/2029961/can-your-smartphone-really-replace-your-point-and-shoot-camera-.html <comment><USER2> Yes it can. For most point-and-soot use it's more important to have the camera always with you than small differences in image quality.</comment>


Intel's Xeon Phi Is Being Sold for a Low Price - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzNjY <comment><USER2> An insanely low price _relative to_ it's original price. Peronally, I still find this a very reasonable price (double it would still be decent), but normally they are heavily overpriced.

It's hard to compare different devices of course, but in terms of pure FLOPS (and benchmarks) is roughly the same as an AMD r280x, which costs 240$ and allows you to play video-games in between your work.

There is definitely a market for these cards I think, niche but it exists, however the normal price of >$2k is the old-fashioned "industry tax" (c.f. Tesla cards) and not a reflection of the actual performance.

<comment><USER3> You're comparing apples and oranges. The Xeon Phi has full-fledged x86 cores and 8GB of ECC memory. It's a much more flexible machine than any GPU.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't call Xeon Phi x86:

\- It doesn't support CMOV, MMX, SSE, AVX, and all other ISA extensions the popped up after the original Pentium.

\- It does not use standard System V x86-64 ABI.

\- Most of its compute power is due to special vector instruction set, that is not compatible with any previous or future x86 ISA (including AVX-512).

\- The only fully supported compiler is Intel Compiler (icc). And in my opinion, its code-generation quality for Xeon Phi is far worse than for other Intel architectures.

\- The only supported assembler is GAS. No NASM, no YASM.

\- Most debugging and profiling utilities (that run fine on normal x86 cores) are not supported on Xeon Phi. This includes valgrind, Address Sanitizer, Thread Sanitizer, and even memory profiling options in Intel compiler.

Given these limitations, how does it help that Xeon Phi is x86-based?

<comment><USER3> It handles branching and memory access like a conventional x86 core.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a little confused about the value proposition here. This is about 60 CPUs at 1GHz with little memory and low IPC. Price, before promotion, is $2k, and after, $250.

I can get an FX-9590 for $250, which has 8 cores, but running at 4.7GHz, and higher IPC. In terms of raw compute speed, it seems like the FX-9590 will be at least the same speed. But:

* I can use standard programming tools.

* I only distribute computes 8-ways, not 60-ways. That's easier.

* Anything which is not easily made parallel is much faster. My experience is that there tends to be a lot of that.

* I have less work to transfer data back and forth. For big data, that actually takes a fair bit of time.

When would the Phi be faster? When would I want to use it?

<comment><USER6> _In terms of raw compute speed, it seems like the FX-9590 will be at least the same speed._

They aren't really comparable. An FX-9590 at 4.7GHz is about 300 GFlops, but the the Xeon Phi 31S1P is slightly over 1 TFlop --- more than 3x as many floating point operations per second. The spec that probably shows the most difference is memory bandwidth. The FX-9590 with 1866 memory achieves 30GB/s. The Phi reaches 320GB/s, about 10 times as much. The presumption is that you might put 4 of these in a server, in addition to the standard processors.

The price is actually quite a bit better, too, as some vendors are offering the Phi at $125 each in quantities of 10: [http://www.colfax- intl.com/nd/xeonphi/31s1p-promo.aspx](http://www.colfax- intl.com/nd/xeonphi/31s1p-promo.aspx)

This article offers some good information about cases where the Phi is a good (or bad) choice: [https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/article/33016...](https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/article/330164/an- overview-of-programming-for-intel-xeon-processors-and-intel-xeon-phi- coprocessors_1.pdf)

The short answer would be that the Phi might be the best choice in cases where you need to perform billions of energy efficient floating point operations on a working set small enough to fit in the cards RAM, where the degree of branching is such that a "normal" GPU would be inappropriate, and where the problem justifies considerable programmer time for optimization. Financial and scientific models are the usual examples.

<comment><USER7> Ok, but if the normal price is 2000USD, then that leaves space for a lot of 9590s. You could get almost the same memory bandwidth and 3x as much processing power with 10 9590s. And remember that's floating point performance; the bulldozer architecture the 9590 is based on gives you about effectively 1.5x as many cores when doing integer operations.

So, ok, the Phi is useful at the current price, but at the 2000USD price other people are talking about in the thread it seems pretty useless.

<comment><USER8> Everyone in this thread keeps railing on its floating point perf, which is about on par with parts like nVidia's Tesla and similarly priced... but its _integer_ performance is why people are really buying these cards up. All GPUs are floating point monsters but integer pansies because that's what their graphics workload heritage turned them into. Xeon Phi is a Computing Monster, with crazy Integer and Floating Point perf, because its heritage was "Let's try to make a graphics card out of CPUs" and not visa versa. It's similar to buying a whole stack of x86 chips just to get to the SSE/AVX units. Only, now you don't need a whole stack of computers, you need a handful of host computers and a stack of add-on cards.

And if you think $2000 is expensive for 60 x86 cores (~$35/core) when all you care about is the SSE/AVX unit and how many vector ops you can cram through it, you're definitely not Intel's target.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, you are right that I shouldn't have focussed on just floating point. I emphasized it because it better matched the frequently quoted "teraflop in a single card" measurement. As you say, the Phi is equally strong at vector integer operations as floating point, in both cases operating on 512-bit vectors.

But I'll quibble with the assertion that all GPU's are "integer pansies", although it's a fantastic phrase. Historically, NVidia GPU's are much stronger at floating point operations than integer because of their graphics origins, and NVidia's Tesla is definitely what Intel views as nearest to the Phi's target market.

But AMD/ATI cards have excellent vector integer performance, several times that of NVidia/Tesla, and much better per dollar than Phi until this recent price drop. This is why AMD cards were the best choice for bitcoin mining until the recent arrival of dedicated ASIC's: [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153467-amd-destroys- nvi...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153467-amd-destroys-nvidia- bitcoin-mining)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is a very aggressive promotion, but I kind of wonder whether there's any chance it'll find a useful target audience. At least when we briefly looked at deploying various kinds of coprocessor solutions, paying the real cost for a development unit would not have been any kind of a blocker. It's just that actually deploying a Phi in production didn't seem to make any sense for us in the end (just like GPU and ASIC based options didn't either). I would imagine that a development unit would not have been an issue for anyone else who has seriously evaluated one of these. Seems like this kind of fire sale would only help in reaching people who need lots and lots of Phis, don't realize it yet, and are susceptible to buying a piece of kit just because it's almost free. (And admittedly very cool).

Also, my understanding is that this model is a 270W TDP board with passive cooling. What kind of a machine can you actually install those in?

<comment><USER10> You're meant to be running these in server rack cases that already have fans in the front. Most server CPU heatsink designs take this sort of form as well[1], as there's no point in putting a tiny fan on top of the heatsink when you've got delta fans at the front blasting air through what amounts to a sealed pipe. I've dealt with GPUs of a lower TDP in a cramped environment and the amount of airflow you need is completely insane, if you ran this without aggressive cooling for more than a couple of seconds it would just ignite.

[1]: [https://i.imgur.com/yh2oMeh.png](https://i.imgur.com/yh2oMeh.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some case studies of this here [1].

[1]: [https://software.intel.com/en-us/mic- developer#pid-22612-186...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/mic- developer#pid-22612-1861)

<comment><USER12> Thanks - I was curious what it was for. I see:

\- Black-Scholes Valuation Computing

\- Weather simulation

fairly specialist number crunching I guess

[update]

I see the 'worlds fastest computer', Tianhe-2 uses 48,000 Xeon Phis. Wonder if they got a bulk discount?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianhe-2#Applications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianhe-2#Applications)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In 1997 there was a supercomputer called ASCI Red. It had 76 cabinets of processors.

The entire thing (with memory and disk) took up 1600 sq feet of floor space.

Here we are 17 years later, and we can get the same processing power in a pci card.

</comment><comment><USER14> Does anybody know how these sorts of devices are presented to an operating system? Is it controlled/programmed in a similar manner to a modern GPGPU card?

<comment><USER15> They run an embedded Linux operating system on the coprocessor, which in principle allows you to run programs on it, as if it were an ordinary albeit weird independent computer (see here [https://software.intel.com/en- us/articles/building-a-native-...](https://software.intel.com/en- us/articles/building-a-native-application-for-intel-xeon-phi-coprocessors)). That is you can ssh on the device, etc. There are also various tools sold by Intel all with three digit price tags (I believe), that allow you to program with parallel directives for example and which translate that to something that runs on a xeon phi. You can also use OpenCL, in which case it presents itself as one of several OpenCL devices you can use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've said it before but I think it's worth repeating: general purpose CPU cores are not becoming much faster. Learning to make your software run well on multiple cores seems to be a very sound investment.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just checked and these are on the list of unsupported processors for Cinema 4D. Are there any uses for this sort of thing in other 3d rendering applications or is it not suited to that kind of thing? Only asking because there are still a lot of rendering engines that don't leverage GPU but $250 for a good chunk of rendering power would be a great alternative to building a dedicated render farm for someone like me who does it more for art/creative projects and not so much for a living. Right now my options are just continuing to use my standard consumer workstation, building a small render farm, or purchasing (and adapting to) a GPU-accelerated renderer.

I'm certainly no expert on this stuff but I'm always on the lookout for affordable ways to make my projects easier to work with.

</comment><comment><USER18> Knight Landing, the second version, is supposed to be coming out in early 2015. If you want to get one be warned you might need a special motherboard as well if you were thinking of tossing it in a consumer box.

[http://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2013/08/06/Will-your- mother...](http://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2013/08/06/Will-your-motherboard- work-with-Intel-Xeon-Phi-490/)

Here is a link to Intel's promotion page it has participating vendors in various locations:

[https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/special- promotion-...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/special-promotion- intel-xeon-phi-coprocessor-31s1p)

<comment><USER19> Won't be until the second half of 2015... We should have a better estimate come ISC in June, and my bet is on a release in November of 2015 to coincide with SC15.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Perhaps the insanely low price is because no one is buying the current design in the quantities they naively expected and they have to dump these ugly monstrosities for whatever price they can get before a new architecture is released.

</comment><comment><USER21> The Xeon Phi looks really awesome, and I'd love to be able to have that many cores at my disposal...however, as far as I can tell, its not at all like have 57 cores on your current computer. Whereas in my current software (Ruby, Haskell programs) I can just specify the number of threads to create to parallelize my software further, I'm not really sure how I'd use the Phi.

</comment><comment><USER22> What can I use this "coprocessor" for?

<comment><USER23> Coprocessors target audience has been for the most part HPC providers. If you're doing large numerical task or some huge amount of parallelism they can be incredibly useful. That being said there's a not insignificant amount of development time needed to properly use them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A really dumb question: Would it be usable for running some kind of virtual machine, like ubuntu in virtual box or vagrant?

<comment><USER25> No

<comment><USER24> Craps, it would have been so cool to buy a 200 usd extension for your computer and have a mega virtual machine...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there a cheap way to connect this to my Macbook pro? I do a lot of MD simulations, and this would be great to play around with when I don't want to use research funded computing time, but I feel like the connection to my laptop could end up being more expensive than the board itself.

<comment><USER27> You can probably find a Thunderbolt-connected PCIe enclosure, but the bandwidth from host memory to card memory will be lower than a direct connection. Drivers would be another issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I would be really tempted if I can find a computer capable of running it on the cheap (student). I think my current desktop may work, if I remove the video card and use the integrated graphics...

</comment><comment><USER29> I seem to recall a case where someone used a GPU to handle index lookups or some other part of query processing for a database, on a GPU. I wonder if this could be used for that purpose.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is the deal over? Amazon lists it for $499 now.

</comment><comment><USER31> Can Blender Cycles use this? Looks like there was talk about it in 2012/3, but nothing recently.

</comment><comment><USER32> How good is it at Crypto Currency mining?

<comment><USER33> Looking at GFlops, much worse than GPUs from few years back (and we are in the ASICs era now). Don't know about scrypt, but since there are also ASICs there, I would imagine cost and power usage per hashrate would be not even comparable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> good luck trying to get that in europe...

<comment><USER16> I live in Brazil. Anything is easier than that...

<comment><USER33> Sorry for being ignorant about politics, but can you elaborate? Why is that so?

<comment><USER16> Customs. Import taxes are absolutely crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Previous submission, completely ignored: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8593125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8593125)

<comment><USER36> You buried the lead. The price was the important information.

<comment><USER35> Whenever I improve the title, it gets reverted back to the original. Whenever I point to a secondary source, it gets replace with the primary. When I use the primary source with the original title, it gets no votes.</comment></comment></comment>


Confidence – The Startup CEO - <AUTHOR> https://tomnora.substack.com/p/confidence <comment><AUTHOR> A series is for people who are currently a startup CEO or would like to become one.</comment>


End-to-End Location Aware Programming - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/openmobster/wiki/LocationAwareApps

<comment><AUTHOR> This tutorial covers developing Location Aware Apps using the new Location Module of the OpenMobster platform. Location Awareness means writing your business logic by taking Location information into account. In OpenMobster, the business components are encapsulated with this Location information. The components then have easy access to the Location data and can easily integrate it with the business data.</comment>


Show HN: Web browsing using your keyboard and binary space partitioning (BSP) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/binarez/BSPKeynav <comment><USER2> Do you consider using both arrows and the numpad? it would allow extra control over the page such as scrolling of even selecting a page element

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate on your idea? I invite you to fork the extension and add features!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to use this thread to discuss ideas about web browsing using only a keyboard, no mouse.</comment>


Is Elon Musk Wrong about Lidar? A Quantitative Study - <AUTHOR> https://scale.com/blog/is-elon-wrong-about-lidar#hn <comment><USER2> Wow, calculating 3D data using only one camera.

Did you notice we use two eyes to judge distance? Did they note there can be even more than two cameras on a car?

I think if more than one camera is used you can get very accurate 3D data.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. While stereo depth estimation would work in theory, none of the self- driving cars actually have camera configurations that allow for stereo depth estimation (see here: [https://electrek.co/wp- content/uploads/sites/3/2016/10/tesla...](https://electrek.co/wp- content/uploads/sites/3/2016/10/tesla-second-gen-autopilot-sensors-suite.png))

2\. Stereo depth estimation is quite unreliable in practice because it requires you to match up pixels between the two images very precisely (1-2px difference can be a large disparity in distance), so it is not reliably used.</comment></comment>