Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names – With Examples - <AUTHOR> https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names-with-examples/ <comment><USER3> I like reading these lists and find them very interesting.

At the same time, I would caution anyone from building software that blindly tries to accommodate every point in these lists.

Every software has a set of requirements, and a target market. It should be built to meet those requirements and anticipate strange situations, but within reason. This is very context sensitive. There is no one ruleset.

At the same time, it should be possible to address edge cases in some reasonable way. For example, if your software does not support pasting images in as names (and therefore cannot represent the prince symbol), it should allow transliterations into a script that it can support. We can't support all cases perfectly, but being aware o them and finding some way to fit them in makes for a better experience.

<comment><USER4> I find it interesting because it's a more universal problem that predates software. Each civilization had its own way of doing things and had to occasionally accommodate people who didn't follow its customs, and they had to use many of these very same workarounds.

"You don't use our script? Okay, you'll have to come up with a version of your name that we can write in our script."

"You don't have a [second] family name? We'll have to come up with a convention for deriving one when we log you."

"Your name has sounds we can't pronounce? We'll treat you as having a version of your name that we can pronounce."

"You don't have a signature version of your name? Uh, write X or something."

<comment><USER5> Exactly this. Your name is not your own--your name is a contract between you and the culture / civilization you're dealing with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few random thoughts:

They chickened out on giving an actual example of a "bad word" name, though there's a not very dirty and really common example:

Dick, which can be short for Richard.

My ex is a Junior. When I get phone calls asking for "Doreen Traylor Junior" I know it's a telemarketer.

I used to try to crack jokes, but they never got it. As far as I know, Junior and Senior are masculine. Even if they weren't, it's my married name. Doreen Traylor didn't exist until I married. I couldn't have inherited it from my mother, even if culturally we did that kind of thing. (I mean even if it was common to give daughters the same name as their mother and call them _Junior_.)

I'm not sure where that falls on this list, but it seems like a glaringly obvious error if you know my gender. (And, as far as I know, _Doreen_ is a female name. Though _Michele_ can be male in some places, like Italy, they usually don't seem to know my middle name.)

<comment><USER7> I've gone through life with a surname that euphemistically refers to an intimate part of male anatomy. While I've never had problems with it (well, technological problems, at least) -- this writer with a slightly different spelling, has:

[https://twitter.com/natalieweiner/status/1034533630071193602...](https://twitter.com/natalieweiner/status/1034533630071193602?lang=en)

<comment><USER8> Interesting that the one pronounced "winer" has problems, where the "weener" doesn't. Perhaps someone not familiar with German, it is the second letter that is pronounced.

<comment><USER7> I'm not German -- this ends up being another, though unrelated, constant difficulty with this name. (It's pronounced like "Whiner.")

Family legend holds that when my great grandfather reached Canada and told the immigration agent his Lithuanian name, the agent replied, "I don't know how to spell that. I'm writing down 'Wiener'."

Strangers will insist we are pronouncing the family name wrong, though I firmly hold the position that we can pronounce it however we want, since it's our name.

<comment><USER8> Hmm, sounds easier to change the spelling rather than spend a lifetime working against standard expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those who have to design systems to properly accommodate most of these "falsehoods", don't reinvent the wheel. Take a look at how the HL7 CDA R2 format handles names for healthcare data interchange.

[http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/product_brief.cfm?pro...](http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/product_brief.cfm?product_id=7)

Each person can have multiple different names tagged by use (legal, maiden, alias, etc). Names can be composed of multiple different parts (prefix, suffix, given, family, or just free text). All of Unicode is supported. And names can also be _NULL_ in various different ways (which is distinct from just blank or missing).

</comment><comment><USER10> One for "people have names"\- in the context of an emergency room or criminal investigation, a person's name may not be initially known.

ERs work around this by assigning a code name to every trauma patient... meaning those patients have an additional name in the context of the hospital system.

</comment><comment><USER11> > "It seems some people believe that you get a name and it never changes. Not > so, even in Western countries, where a person may change their name when > they marry."

Since it is traditionally /women/ who change their names when married, this blind spot does not surprise me.

<comment><USER12> I don't think you need to reach for sexism as an explanation there. Name changes are sufficiently rare that building the flows to support it will usually only become an issue in mature production software where accurate names are extremely important, and where preserving long term records is equally important. That's not most systems. And that's before you get into cases where names are primary keys like usernames.

The business case for supporting such changes can be pretty weak relative to other features.

<comment><USER11> Name changes are not rare.

In recent decades, about 80 percent of brides choose to change their names after the wedding, both professionally and legally. [1] Most people marry at least once. [2] Women are half the population.

That being said, I do agree that in many systems, supporting name changes is not an immediate priority.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/upshot/maiden-names-on- the...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/upshot/maiden-names-on-the-rise- again.html) [2] [https://flowingdata.com/2017/11/01/who-is-married-by- now/](https://flowingdata.com/2017/11/01/who-is-married-by-now/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know people see No. 29 on this list and decide that their product or service will only be used by English speakers of European descent, but from experience even with these extraordinarily low requirements for testing most services fail. I've got three short (<8 letters) entirely ASCII names, and even then I still have trouble:

* I regularly get letters addressed to my first name and my middle name, missing my surname.

* Banks and airlines always seem to try a different way of dealing my middle name, from only using an initial to abbreviating it to anywhere from three to six characters.

* A friend once got issued travel documents where all of their given names were concatenated together (no spaces) and printed after their last name.

* Many websites still require you to pick an honourific from a drop down menu, but the options vary considerably (and usage is different in every country, even with a common language). Just make it a text field and be done with it.

I really don't think it's too difficult nowadays, especially if you're writing something from scratch, to just accept really long Unicode strings and store given names and surnames separately. And it's not like testing this is difficult - you can find datasets of a few hundred names in different languages and scripts fairly easily.

<comment><USER14> To your second and third point, recently traveled internationally and the airline concatenated my first and middle name on my ticket and boarding passes. My passport has a space between my first name and middle _initial_ My driver's license has a space between my first name and middle name.

Needless to say, I was unable to check in online or with one of the machines at the airport.

<comment><USER15> For some reason Delta prints GAVINJ as my first name on all tickets even though the J is the first letter of my middle name. When I book flights this isn't the case, either directly or through a 3rd-party; I assume they have some master record in a mainframe somewhere that was created by some other system incorrectly and I'm stuck with it forever.

However, I've flown hundreds of times and nobody who has checked my ID has ever been bothered by this, which is a little worrying.

<comment><USER16> Why is it worrying? What would you prefer they do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This was an interesting list, but I'd be more interested in reading examples of how these assumptions are manifested as erroneous design decisions.

For example, many of the flawed assumptions are a variation of "Names don't change/vary, ever". I think most U.S. programmers are very aware of this — especially the many who have some variation of a name like "Mike/Michael", "Dan/Daniel", "Kate/Katlyn/Katherine". But it took me a bit to figure out where a programmer would most likely forget that fact, in a way that's a disservice to users — making a database system that assumes the first name/surname fields should never be updated.

<comment><USER18> Updated? That's a design error right there.

"Nope, can't give you the records of Jane Doe from 2005, you are in our system as Jane Smith. You had a different name then? Doesn't compute!" In other words, the old name needs to be kept, the new one is not a _fix_ from an erroneous state: it used to be correct then, the new one is correct now, and you still need to match on _both_.

Why? Because changes never propagate instantly, if they propagate at all: I still get mail addressed to my mother (who hasn't lived here for decades), addressed to her previous name (another decade on top of that), into my mailbox, even though no trace of any of those names remains. As far as the post office goes, "XY Street 123, box 45" is still the residence of Mrs Foo. (That's actually a counterexample, yeah)

<comment><USER19> Interested question: Why shouldn't names be updated in-place?

<comment><USER18> If you do have a denormalized "this is a current name" column, sure, go ahead. But the example is right above you: you might need to match not just on a current name, but on historical names as well. People change their names _a lot_.

<comment><USER19> That's true, actually. I didn't read the reply properly. It makes complete sense to ban updates if you want to have access to historical names.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So what is the solution now?

Have a single full Unicode 'name' field which is over 200 characters long?

What is even the longest possible name?

The ex german minister of defence has 108 characters in his ridiculous name.

<comment><USER21> That still violates point 11:

"People's names are all mapped in Unicode code points."

It seems like it is impossible to address all these points. Obviously there's no way for me to allow people to enter their names which don't have any known code point. So at some point you're always going to be saying "tough luck, you must adapt your name - or come up with something - that confirms to these constraints." And I am sure people are clever enough to do so.

<comment><USER22> That point and point 40 ("People have names") can't be solved by technical means. There are two options here:

\- You can make name fields optional for people without (representable) names \- You can loosen what the field stands for to "what you want us to call you": for people who don't have a (representable) name, they can choose an alternative, without implying the user's (lack of) name is Wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's worth noting that mistakes here have enfranchisement implications as well: officials with one U.S. political party have been eager to combat voter fraud, including by refusing to allow people to vote whose names don't perfectly match in all relevant databases.

</comment><comment><USER24> Also see the curated list of falsehoods programmers believe in:

[https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome- falsehood](https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood)

</comment><comment><USER25> Another one for "People's names do not change." \- transgender people will almost always change their name during their transition.

<comment><USER26> The other obvious example is changing names when you get married.

<comment><USER25> yes, which is mentioned in the article..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This article points out lots of false or at least weak assumptions that programmers make about names. But it doesn't really address the root of the problem: why programmers make these assumptions in the first place.

There are two main reasons: 1\. UI/vanity: it's nice to see your name in your app/email somewhere, and to display your name, the software often must make assumptions about your name. 2\. Disambiguation: Software often has to determine if "Jon Livingston" is the same as "Jonathan M. Livingston". That is by it's nature pretty error prone, but over a finite and well understood dataset, can be made to be relatively accurate.

At it's worst, this article says that the two pieces of functionality above are impossible. At it's best, it says that they are possible, but there are a number of things you need to consider. I'm an optimist, but I'd like to see more that points to the latter.

<comment><USER28> > Software often has to determine if "Jon Livingston" is the same as "Jonathan > M. Livingston"

wat ? what kind of software does that ? that's dumb as hell. You have one name and that's the one on your id card.

<comment><USER29> a) I don't have an ID card

b) I rarely use my middle name or initial, except on "official" documents

c) People abbreviate their names a _lot_

d) Sometimes it's helpful to match people with the same name at the same address as being the same person .. and sometimes it's adversarial.

<comment><USER18> Ad d: an acquaintance of mine named his son after himself. We don't do suffixes here, so no "II." or "Junior" \- they're both Mr. Foo Bar, at Baz Drive, Quuxtown. The age differs, of course, but rarely does anyone collect it, much less use it for disambiguation. As you say, it's a mixed bag - <USER2> you get to impersonate the other, or the police gets all confused when looking for a rowdy adolescent and finding a middle-aged man, or you just can't get booked ("we already have you here" "no you don't, that's my son" "that's impossible, there can't be two of you, computer says so!").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I knew names were hard but now am convinced they are diabolical. The only safe solution seems to be to store every name as an alphanumeric blob and forget about parsing altogether.

<comment><USER31> If only there _was_ a unique aplhanumeric blob representing a name.

<comment><USER18> A name, or a person? The first one is a bit easier; person:name is, at the easiest, 1:n. But yeah, a name can have multiple representations, even before multiple languages come in (Peter/Cephas/Petros).

(Pedantry: Jean-Claude van Damme doesn't fit into the _alphanumeric_ requirement on two separate counts)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> One option might be to use a hash of one's DNA sequence and be done with it. The name identifier can then just be an image with any markings made by the person. This would then move name / id search from a character set problem to an image recognition problem. Works for me :-)

<comment><USER33> Chimeras: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_\(genetics\))

Essentially, people can (sometimes) not have a single set of DNA.

And this has already caused issues:

> _In 2002, Lydia Fairchild was denied public assistance in Washington state > when DNA evidence showed that she was not related to her children. A lawyer > for the prosecution heard of a human chimera in New England, Karen Keegan, > and suggested the possibility to the defense, who were able to show that > Fairchild, too, was a chimera with two sets of DNA, and that one of those > sets could have been the mother of the children._

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > 9\. People's names are written in ASCII.

This is apparently true in the UK, although they use the terms "special characters" and "normal letters". [https://passportapplication.service.gov.uk/help/html/pages/1...](https://passportapplication.service.gov.uk/help/html/pages/10.05_01_name- to-appear_en.html) :

>We cannot show full stops, hyphens, accents or other special characters in your passport. Full stops and hyphens in a name will be replaced with spaces. > >If your name has a special character or accent mark please enter your name using a normal letter eg e instead of é or a instead of ä etc.

<comment><USER35> "normal" letter sounds rather judging, doesn't it? Altough I suspect it is probably a product of an undereducated person.

<comment><USER36> Agreed, simply "please use the unaccented letter" would have been fine instructions. Accented letters are pretty "normal" in many languages.

<comment><USER37> Accented letters are not the only issue. Apart from the already mentioned apostrophes and hyphens, there are consonants with diacritics such as ç, č and ñ, or cases where substituting an "accented" letter with the corresponding unaccented one is not appropriate (e.g. ä in German is transcribed as ae in ASCII).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _An Australian businessman and politician called Benjamin Benjamin died in 1905._

There's a _current_ Australian politician called Grace Grace.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, this is actually quite common. This is the man who rediscovered how to move the moai using simple tools: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Pavel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Pavel) In this case, neither the first name nor the surname are rare, when used separately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> He (Patrick) missed out "People in the same family have unique names" as a general concept.

He pointed out "Jr." and "I/II/III", but how about Maria <middle name> <last name>?

Both my sisters' first names are Maria, as is my daughter and my upcoming one. My new daughter will have the same initials as one of my sisters (My mother, her sisters and my cousin also are all Marias, but luckily many of them have different last names).

So, if your form only has an initial for middle name, you could have a situation where a person living in the same household (i.e. same address) is indistinguishable for another.

So neglecting the middle name, as if often done, is terrible.

<comment><USER40> And let's not forget George Foreman, who named all five of his sons George Edward Foreman. So a middle name wouldn't have helped you there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I enjoyed the list and examples but I feel the hypothesis in the introduction is flawed.

All anecdata, but I expect those of us who read these sorts of lists will likely understand them quickly without needing examples. There's a large number of developers that are not reading software blogs and lists and are not applying much thought to their programs beyond "how do I meet the minimum requirements put forth in this user story". As long as those sorts of developer continue to be prevalent it's partly on the business to specify these requirements explicitly.

Tragically I don't see this changing any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER42> Small example with ny own name: In my home country im called Jüri, in Finland probably Jyri, in Russia Juri, and in the passport it's also written as Jueri. Some people write it mistakenly as Yuri.

</comment><comment><USER43> Can't we just refer to people as a hash of their DNA.. And forget about identical twins.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About DNA"

<comment><USER44> Yea, there's at least two in there already.

<comment><USER45> "Lydia Fairchild is an American woman who exhibits chimerism, in having two distinct populations of DNA among the cells of her body." \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Fairchild](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Fairchild)

<comment><USER6> Microchemerism more common than previously believed:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/science/a-pregnancy- souve...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/science/a-pregnancy-souvenir- cells-that-are-not-your-own.html)

TLDR: Having a baby tends to leave you with DNA from the baby distributed throughout your body.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This was a fun read. However, at least one point is wrong. "People's names fit within a certain defined amount of space" This is actually true.

<comment> GuB-42 And how do you define the amount of space people's names fit within? ;) Tautologies are cheating.

"People's names fit within a certain amount of space" is definitely true though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Despite being a middle-class white guy from the US, I've experienced three of these on the same day.

When I met my future wife, my last name ("Coon") happened to be a (somewhat rare) slur on her ethnic background. At that time, a man couldn't automatically change names on his wedding day in California, so we had to go to court ahead of time to fill out a legal name change form.

The paper form had only one blank for the entire new name. A Hispanic family ahead of us in line had a son whose last name was supposed to be [father's surname] [mother's surname], but his birth certificate had accidentally recorded his father's surname in the middle-name field instead. So the family wanted to move his "middle" name to the front of his surname. With only one blank for the whole name, the kid's current legal name had the same exact sequence of characters as the new legal name, and there was no place on the form to make a note. The judge asked if they were OK with adding a hyphen, and they were.

Epilogue: each of my daughters has two middle names.

</comment><comment><USER48> This was an interesting read!

Being from Belgium, I wouldn't have expected the difference between how we index "Vincent Van Gogh". We always (or I do) thought that using the same software in Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands would be easy - i18n wise.

(There are issues with different laws though depending on the domain of your software)

</comment><comment><USER49> >People whose names break my system are weird outliers. They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎. >No, your system is badly designed.

>People have names. >This one is perhaps the most difficult for which to give solid examples. There was an isolated culture in which no one had names – they referred to everyone in relative terms, such as "my mother's eldest sister".

So taking the last two statements together, any system that assumes a name exist is thus poorly designed?

Some of these examples are things people need to take into account, but that doesn't mean bad design. A well designed system takes into account that there is a business need and a business budget. To ignore the constraints of real world situation makes less sense than ignoring the one culture where people don't have names at all.

</comment><comment><USER50> "e e cummings preferred his name written in all lower case." \- this is not exactly true. He signed with capital letters, most of the time. (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings#Name_and_capita...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings#Name_and_capitalization))

A good example of such a name, though, would be eden ahbez: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eden_ahbez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eden_ahbez) (he's also a good example of someone with more than one name.)

</comment><comment><USER51> The original McKenzie list was posted to HN many times from 2010 on. Original, 170+ points:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472)

</comment><comment><USER52> 41\. You share a surname with your father.

This is not true of many people from South India. My last name is my father's first name. So my sibling, mother and I share a last name, but my father has a different one (his father's first name).

Shoutout to the consultant who was helping me fill a visa application and helpfully "fixed" my typo.

</comment><comment><USER53> I have a hyphenated last name and I'd say 1/4 of online forms do not validate when I enter my name.

When a system had an account created for me and doesn't accept logging in with my name, it is always a guessing game to see if they normalized it with a space, am underscore, removing the first or second name etc.

</comment><comment><USER54> Nitpick. I don't think most developers "believe" most of these things. I think most developers would rather wire up some simple code to handle names and move on to (what they feel is) more interesting logic so they end up using 40 chars of ascii for names and leave it at that.

</comment><comment><USER55> Also somewhat related: Computerphile's video on dates and timezones. Programmers might be tempted to make similar assumptions about dates, times and timezones:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm- gesOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY)

</comment><comment><USER56> The worst offense is two-world last names. If you give me one field that says "Full name" I may as well roll the dice to determine if the three strings I input in there are First Middle Last, First Last1 Last2, First1 First2 Last, etc.

</comment><comment><USER57> I always wanted an exhaustive list of name falsehoods. The worst part is probably that I read it with interest... I have no life!

<comment><USER18> Exhaustive? Ha, this doesn't even scratch the surface! How about "There is a set of strings that never refers to a real person, so treat 'Christopher Null' as test data." [https://www.wired.com/2015/11/null/](https://www.wired.com/2015/11/null/) (Also, talk about timing: "'Abcde' is not a real name, either" [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-46393501](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46393501) )

<comment><USER58> Let alone "Little Bobby Tables" :-)

<comment><USER18> Some years ago, a certain Mr. O'Neil had something to do on a site of ours, which made certain assumptions. He couldn't get through to our contact form - in the e-mail, he was...outspoken.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PHP Docs are making me dizzy - <AUTHOR> http://tr2.php.net/docs.php I'm not hung over, so the effects must be an April Fool's joke. <comment><USER2> this is really annoying. i don't see the point in adding such childish jokes on the page, especially to the docs which are used productively.

I know its April 1st, but i am not in fifth grade anymore to find me giggling about this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. It was a WTF the first time I saw it. A mildly amused "I understand what's going on now" the next time and seriously annoyed all the following times.

This silly trick makes the docs unusable. If I need to use the PHP docs today, I need to use an alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's gone.</comment>


Why are most of us so bad at predicting things? - <AUTHOR> http://www.omaha.com/columnists/hansen/hansen-superforecaster-s-success-raises-the-question-why-are-most/article_4f8a85ad-690f-520d-a688-4bbdb51f7cce.html <comment><USER2> The experiments by Tetlock and company (that are detailed in the book "Superforecasters") are pretty amazing.

However, the article _hugely_ mischaracterizes the way Tetlock talks about superforecasting, in particular from his book. In particular, this bit here:

"He's a superforecaster because some strange brew of genetics and learned behavior makes his brain work differently from the way the rest of ours do."

Where on earth did this claim about genetics come from?

The book boils most of the forecasting process down to starting with an outside view, but at _no point_ is it insinuated that genetics have something to do with it. It's seemingly just reframing of thought patterns.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I pay my escort girl/ drug dealer in sweden if there is no cash? - <AUTHOR> I came across this IMF working paper, where they describe strategies of communication towards society regarding "de-cashing", meaning the removal of cash from the single countries.
https://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Publications/WP/2017/wp1771.ashx%20
So, we have already some "de-cashed" countries around the world, one of the most "successfull" ones by far is South Korea - how did they do it? Special trick: They allowed a distinct part of consumtion expenses to be tax deductable, if, and only if it was paid with electronic payments. Nice trick. And the mouse went in the trap next day, applouding for this great "achievement".
So, my question is: How do i pay my escort girl or my drug dealer (marijuna e.g.) if there is no more cash in a country?
Let's dicuss. <comment><USER2> I watched a thing on Japan regarding gambling a few years ago. From what I remember and understand, gambling is illegal. There's loophole, its illegal for straight up money.

Thus, I think its pachinko, you win tokens while playing. Then you exchange tokens for random items. Then there are "separate" companies that are outside these pachinko halls that buy those items from you for a "surprisingly" similar theoretical cash amount of the winning tokens the item cost. Totally coincidental. I'm totally sure of that.

I'd wager a guess that a similar system would scab in soon after a cashless system arises. Until a better system pops up.

But fuck cashless. At least cash can be somewhat anonymous. I'm sick of all sorts of companies tracking my purchases.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on how much anonymity and security you want. If you work within channels that your country's tax authority can audit (like direct bank transfers, apps like Venmo or gift cards etc), then you can always be caught. Of course, there are degrees of anonymity and security associated with different instruments and you will have to find the one that works for you.

I guess the most anonymous and secure payment method would be to work anonymously for a cryptocurrency (i.e. a job that doesn't require you to give your personal information), and then use that to pay for your illegal goods. Of course, you have to ensure that your illegal goods supplier does not know your personal information either, so they don't accidentally anonymize you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Would PayPal, Apple Pay (and all other similar solutions), Cash App, Venmo, Zelle, bank transfer work? I don't like cashless societies, they scare me, but you should still be able to pay for less than legal things, but the recipient may have difficulty keeping an account depending on how scrutinized they are.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can always pay in gift card, gold or some other thing like bitcoin.

Also, many escorts I've seen accept credit cards and it's mostly appears on your card statement as "XYZ Entertainment".

<comment><USER6> "XYZ Entertainment" or whatever it appears as sounds pretty traceable. Would be easy to find out what their services are.

<comment><USER5> Who is going after them? I've seen a lot of them working based on referral and pretending to offering services like consultancy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can't. In a cashless society, your purchases (and all the things one can infer from that: interests, location, day patterns) are surveilled 100% of the time.

<comment><USER8> You could pay with gold or silver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a worse case scenario, you would barter. If the government has access to every single database, and a PROMIS-tier search engine, that is.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this a serious thread? Do many HN users buy drugs and escorts illegally?

<comment><USER11> > Do many HN users buy [...] escorts illegally?

Paying for sex is currently legal in England and Wales. It's a bit complicated because there's a bunch of stuff which is illegal around it (soliciting; inducing someone into prostitution; paying someone who has been trafficked; paying someone under 18; paying someone who is being coercively controlled; etc etc) but the core activity (two people exchanging sex for money) isn't illegal.

[https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshea...](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/exploitation- of-prostitution)

While it's not illegal there are understandable reasons to keep this private.

<comment><USER10> The topic asked about Sweden and it certainly isn't legal there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pay her with sex. she's your escort girl afterall.

</comment><comment><USER13> Monero</comment>


Xobni: The super plugin for Outlook - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/09/xobni-the-super-plugin-for-outlook/

<comment><USER2> I used xobni about a month ago after a friend got the invite. I must admit, I didn't find any of the features useful. It looked really nice, but I just didn't care... Sorry guys.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was using Xobni for a few months and really liked it, but wound up having to uninstall it a while back. With it installed, Outlook would hang upon launch about half the time. Once in a while, the whole plug-in (menu and side bar) would just disappear, and I'd have no idea how to get it back, and sometimes the search functionality would stop working. Hopefully it is (or is getting) more stable, because I really miss the functionality, and the plug-in I'm now using instead (X1) is horrendous.

<comment><USER4> The product is absolutely more stable and reliable now. I'd recommend giving it another go.

<comment><USER3> Good to hear -- I've re-added myself to the mailing list, so hopefully I get a new invite soon.

<comment><USER5> I've got 5 invites, let me know if you want one: david.kitchen at that there gmail.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i was one of the many invited this morning. i installed outlook and imported my gmail account.

unfortunately, my usage of xobni is going to have to wait until they support a client that doesn't make my eyes bleed.

:)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, mind hookin some brothas up? [http://digg.com/microsoft/Xobni_inbox_spelled_backwards_The_...](http://digg.com/microsoft/Xobni_inbox_spelled_backwards_The_super_plugin_for_Outook)

<comment><USER7> Some people say this isn't working anymore, but I just signed up and downloaded it using the password 'techcrunch'.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it didn't work for me yesterday, but it worked for me earlier this morning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I personally wish that the analytical bar that shows what time you get the most emails from a person was a little bit more detailed. Please?

<comment><USER8> Oh and what if I know the persons number and I dont want to email them to get their phone number?

<comment><USER9> Try right clicking on their picture :)

-Greg from Xobni

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i really need this my work outlook is a nightmare - no address book, 3000 emails in the inbox... no folders

<comment><USER11> Screw you, I have to use lotus! :-)

<comment><USER12> Aha! Now I understand your choice in usernames.

<comment><USER11> No, if I had used that as my choice in usernames, it would be: Pleaseshootmenowplease! :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beautiful free Git repository hosting service - <AUTHOR> https://gitgo.io/

<comment><USER2> A few screenshots wouldn't hurt if it's advertised as "Beautiful". Also the "Blog" is just a blank page for me: [https://gitgo.io/blog](https://gitgo.io/blog)

<comment><USER3> [https://twitter.com/GitGoHQ/media](https://twitter.com/GitGoHQ/media) seems nice though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No offense but I feel like I'm being dishonestly marketed to from your landing page

The biggest thing is the tagline is "Simple, free version control" but after checking your pricing (which is buried in the footer) you have tiered pricing just like everyone else in this space, albeit with a different pricing scheme. Obviously it costs money to run and I would never expect a service like this to be completely free, but why pretend like your differentiator is being free?

Another smaller thing is your 100% SLA. Clicking through to the fine print again, you offer 5% of the cost back per 30 min downtime per month. 30 min per month is "only" between 3 & 4 nines (plus even if you miss that you only refund 5% of the cost not a full refund so it's a pretty soft promise anyway). As with the price I have no problem with the actual SLA, 99.95% uptime seems reasonable, I just feel like you're trying to trick me as someone coming to your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest we have been focusing on our app and service more then our marketing techniques.

The points you have made are valid and we will be addressing as soon as possible.

The SLA is inline with other competitors but maybe it should be more a 'refund policy'.

So far we have not had any downtime.

<comment><USER4> Makes sense, I get that getting the product right for the first customers is the top priority. Just wanted to share my initial reaction. Good luck with the service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One huge thing missing from this is a demonstration of the UI and features.

Also, "Instant Deployments" is pretty confusing. Is this a self hosted/licensed product or saas?

<comment><USER6> I was pretty confused and intrigued by "instant deployments" as well.

If you go to their help docs, you can see that they can integrate directly with a few services (digital ocean and another that I can't remember) to "instantly deploy" your app.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a page showing our deployment process but It was removed recently as it's being improved.

We connect to any ssh service and run the commands to deploy your application using GIT.

This saves you from having to setup hooks.

Deployments can be automatically triggered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too bad it will never work with CodeClimate, Travis-Ci, etc. We have many Git hosting sites to choose from; but the reality is that few 3rd party sites integrate with anything other than Github.

<comment><USER8> If they mirror the Github API, it's certainly possible. That's been the key to Gitlab's wide adoption -- Gitlab is compatible with both CodeClimate and Travis-CI.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working on supporting CodeClimate and will hopefully have something to report very soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quick note: there's a spelling mistake on [https://gitgo.io/get- started](https://gitgo.io/get-started) under issue tracking. Mange should be Manage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, corrected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the maximum repository size and file size ?

Most other services i know:

\- Github is somewhere at around 1GB.

\- Bitbucket has a soft limit at also 1GB.

<comment><AUTHOR> Soft limit of 1GB</comment></comment>


Why belief is a powerful biological weapon of disruption. - <AUTHOR> http://walnutstlabs.com/2013/12/12/bending-reality-the-strange-connection-between-breakthroughs-and-belief/

<comment><USER2> Yes!!!</comment>


Timing Lessons - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizstone.com/2010/09/timing-lessons.html

<comment><USER2> Great post, but as a side note:

      "Twitter has 145m users in the same way @MikeTyson has $400m in career earnings."

<http://twitter.com/AndySwan/status/22880346280>

<comment><USER3> Yeah I was wondering about this, surely they didn't have 145 million "users" as in "created accounts", which is typically the definition. I imagine someone who checked the website once is part of their "user" tally.

<comment><USER2> Twitter has been quoted claiming 176M unique visitors a few months ago. That stat makes sense for a site like nytimes.com, but not for a social network. The number of active users is close to a standard in the industry. When Facebook says it has 500M+ users, they mean people who have accounts and have visited the site in the last 30 days.

Thing is that everyone knows the right stats to publish. They only use 145M because is sounds better than (the more likely) 70M active. This doesn't come as a coincidence as Twitter is trying to start selling ads. Attractiveness to advertisers is directly proportional to audience size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Surrounding yourself with smart people you like to work with helps > immeasurably.

I think this is one of the most important pieces of advice ever. Not many people are solo savants - almost everyone who is successful (in business, academia, life) is surrounded by other competent, like-minded people. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants here, and the romantic meme of the lone-wolf superstar maverick needs to be put away.

<comment><USER5> it makes setbacks tolerable, and day to day toiling a pleasure.

<comment><USER6> Not just on an emotional level, I think when a bunch of clever people get together a sort of super brain is formed which is greater than each of them.

This is so since the super brain has the combined knowledge but not the combined biases of the individuals. To give an analogue this is like these comment threads where knowledge gets added and incorrect statements promptly and strongly refuted, but on a much much higher resolution when you work with a smart person face to face for a considerable length of time.

<comment><USER7> I think if you were to plot it as a graph it has a curve though.

Sure adding that 2nd smart person, the 8th smart person, etc., can add benefit and yield a whole which is greater than the sum of the individual parts in isolation. But once you are in the organization size range where you're adding a 500th person, a 10,000th person, then the organization almost always takes on other qualities and conditions: bureaucracy, slowing down, middle management, rules, paperwork, gossip, insulation from consumers/competition, groupthink, aversion to risk, and so on. And these qualities dumb it down. The "group brain" becomes much dumber than a smart brain when left alone and unfettered as an individual.

Google is a bit of an exceptional case where despite having on the OOM of 20k employees they don't seem to have quite succumbed to Big Dumb Company-itis. Surely they have some aspects of it, but they've tried hard to fight it and stay like a smaller/younger org.

I once dealt with a startup that was around 12 people and already I could see symptoms of Big Dumb Company start to manifest themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Overnight success takes a long time." Paul Buchheit

[http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/overnight- success-t...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/overnight-success- takes-long-time.html)

<comment><USER7> I like that quote/notion too.

However, I don't think the time aspect of his success story is about an overnight success taking 10 years as much as it is about refining one's product & market acumen over time, combined with having the luck to put something on the market (micro-blogging service) at just the right timing when a lot of people are ready for it (traditional blogging had become mainstream, but also lots of bloggers had become dissatisfied with the ROI and/or blog readers were looking for smaller/easier things to read and/or with more frequent updates AND smart phones were taking off with full web access on the go).

Enter Twitter. They executed well, but I think they _also_ had very lucky timing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success."

Love this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Joel Spolsky (2001):

"Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it."

\- <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm having a hard time understanding why he thinks Xanga wasn't a success. He worked on Blogger as well, both of those sites are huge still, maybe not Twitter huge but they are big.

<comment><USER5> does he say it wasn't a success?

<comment><USER11> That's true he doesn't say they weren't successes explicitly. He does say that it took 10 years to make you look like a succes in the last paragraph which I understood as the other sites not being successes to him.

<comment><USER5> well, with all due respect, you're not king of the world if you're the founder or co-founder of Xanga :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's good to hear a "Sometimes things take time" point of view. The typical mental model of YC [1] can make one feel less than perfect for not having raised $5M by 19, made multiple angel investments by 22, then traveled around the world for philanthropy during your mid 20s because now, carefully managed, you're set for life.

[1]: How the press likes to portray YC: get unknown kids, accelerate them towards terminal funding velocity, stir for three years, and _bam_ instant millionaires.

</comment><comment><USER13> while I can't say I personally admire twitter as a business, I have some serious respect for his message: 10 years of hard work make an overnight success.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am glad that he purposefully calls out the balance between perseverance and a seemingly overnight success. This balance (or differentiation) is quite significant for anyone who is starting off. A week on TC and one would assume that raising money and releasing products is a matter of weeks if not days. But all good things (including wine) takes time to blosom.

Back to hardwork.com

</comment><comment><USER7> I also like how his tale shows a progression over time in startup ideas that almost kept getting simpler and easier with each new iteration. The core feature(s) of Twitter is pretty darn simple to build out -- scaling it up is harder, sure, but that's a Maserati problem and the kind you may never have the privilege of having anyway. But it was a neat idea, they executed it, nailed it well, and lots of other people loved it. The lesson here with them is you don't have to build something that's very big or hard or complicated, you just have to build something people want and ideally love and tell their friends about it so you don't have to advertise -- if people learn by word-of- mouth your cost-of-customer acquisition approaches zero.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting! Its great to know that it takes years/decades to get to systems like Twitter. The media makes it look so much like a "it-happened- overnight" story.

</comment><comment><USER16> Twitter's real founding story. The not so famous version.

[http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/How-did-Jack-Dorsey-Ev- Willia...](http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/How-did-Jack-Dorsey-Ev-William-and- Biz-Stone-split-up-the-equity-on-Twitter-when-they-restructured-Twitter-post- Odeo#ans95282)

</comment><comment><USER17> More specifically, it seems you have to do basically the same project for 10 years too.

<comment><USER17> (wasn't intended to be snarky, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing the same project for 10 years. That's how long it takes to hit the home run. Maybe the whole "10,000 hours" thing is more finely targeted than people initially assume)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Er, he personally launched Xanga? I think not from what I have read elsewhere.

More like he learned how to code/design from being given work to do on Xanga.

Rewriting history there eh?

</comment><comment><USER19> It's called luck

<comment><USER20> True. But skill also. Luck let's you roll a 6 if you need one. Skill makes sure you get to the roll the die 10 times.

<comment> j-g-faustus Skill and perseverance.

A "lucky break" is more likely to come along if you keep at it for a decade than if you give up after the first non-successful year.

I think skill comes in two forms: The skill of making something that people want to use, but also the skill of recognizing and making the most out of "lucky breaks".</comment></comment></comment>


CoreOS images now on Brightbox Cloud. Build a CoreOS cluster in 5 minutes. - <AUTHOR> http://brightbox.com/blog/2013/10/18/coreos-on-brightbox-cloud/

<comment><USER2> As I understood CoreOS (and SmartOS and their ilk) the benefit is to run it on bare metal and then spin up VMs or docker images or zones to do your actual computing. What, then, is the benefit of a VM with CoreOS?

I suppose you could run a collection of containers inside a container, but at some point you're going to run out of benefits.

CoreOS seems great, I just thought it was more useful as the OS on your dedicated box, not your VPS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Surely using less resources in any machine is useful as it leaves more for your actual app to use. Admittedly you might get _more_ benefits from having it on bare metal, but on the other hand the OS using 10% less ram (for example) on a small VM might make more of a noticeable difference to your app.

Personally I prefer having cloud machines to bare metal machines simply for my time being saved in doing things like firewalling them or load balancing. But then my personal time is more precious to me than a few extra £ a month out of my pocket, so that's an active choice I make. CoreOS (& docker especially) seem pretty neat, regardless of where I want to run them as it were.

Perhaps you're right though, I've not used CoreOS in anger yet so I don't know specifically. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I must be missing something, but it seems like CoreOS is just etcd and vanilla docker. I do like the idea of etcd, but is there some sort of API to control docker with it?

<comment><USER4> To me (docker user and contributor) CoreOS is simply the smallest distro which can run docker. That is already extremely nice when building minimal server images: faster boots, less disk usage and so on.

To me etcd is a completely separate (and also awesome) project. If I use it, it will be as an agent on all my host machines, including Ubuntu and red hat- based ones.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Been meaning to play with CoreOS as a next step on from just using docker. Hadn't yet gotten around to it, this will make giving it a test run so much easier when I get to it. Awesomesauce.</comment>


NYC students: we're hosting a demo event this Saturday - <AUTHOR> http://techatnyudemodays.eventbrite.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but it _is_ student-only. I think you can understand - <USER2> recruiters abound if you open CS school events up to the general public.

If you're an NYC startup and would like to attend/sponsor, please let me know at: me [at] nmb [dot] li

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't wait for this!

</comment><comment><USER4> Gonna be nuts!!</comment>


The impact of language choice on github projects - <AUTHOR> http://corte.si/posts/code/devsurvey/index.html <comment><USER2> 2009\. Note the rise in popularity of JavaScript since then: <https://github.com/languages>

Also, box plots would provide more useful comparison than medians; box plots can show several quantiles simultaneously. This is almost essential if you don't know anything else about the distribution. Still enjoyed the analysis, though, and I think it's an interesting space for further exploration!

</comment><comment><USER3> "it becomes harder and harder to contribute to a Perl codebase, the bigger it gets."

I've never written any perl, but is this really true? I fail to see how its really any worse than ruby/python.

<comment><USER4> Perl and ruby are pretty similar (much of ruby was inspired by perl according to Matz), but perl is much older than ruby, and thus many people are used to language idioms that aren't particularly modern.

There's also a tradition of writing one liners ala sed/awk in perl, and someone going from that to more complete programs isn't generally the best for program structure.

Python's whitespace requirements tend to make it clearer to read, as there are fewer ways to format identical code, and it's a much less of a TMTOWTDI language than perl.

 _tl/dr:_ Perl code is often written by old timers who expect everyone to be a perl genius like they are.

<comment><USER5> _Python's whitespace requirements tend to make it clearer to read..._

What projects have you worked on such that consistency of indentation was at all a meaningful factor to maintenance? I worry more about duplication and near duplication, testing efficacy, proper factoring, symbol naming, effective error handling, the possibility of fencepost errors, and clarity of intent.

<comment><USER6> Very well put.

In my experience unless you are hiring exceptionally bad programmers. You don't really have to worry about code indentation.

Seriously code indentation is all people worry about? I have bigger problems to worry about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found the statistics to be quite interesting. The conclusions drawn by the author, however, left a lot to be desired. Most of them were not directly (or even indirectly) supported by the data, and consisted primarily of random opinions that left me feeling negatively about an otherwise interesting post.

I would have also like to see data on the mean for some of the statistics, and not just the median. In some cases, one or the other can provide very misleading statistics, and providing both to compare would have helped smooth over concerns there.

</comment><comment><USER8> I found the median commits and committers to be interesting - there must be a lot of people doing a few number of commits, which is what I would expect more in e.g. forum posts than source code. I would like to have seen the mean too. As to the title, I don't think that the numbers really say anything about the impact of language choice.

</comment><comment><USER9> > First, the sample size. Clearly, github is very popular with the Ruby crowd, > with more than four times as many projects as Python, the runner-up.

It looks like Python is at ~400 in the graph, and Ruby is at ~1200. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER10> How much of the javascript on github is just jquery bundled in rails projects?

<comment><USER11> I'm fairly sure that GitHub counts languages by projects, not by files. So a few JavaScript files inside a Ruby project would not affect the ranking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No Haskell? I'm surprised.

<comment><USER13> While Haskell is ranked ahead of eg scala or erlang in total repos on github, the majority of larger/active projects in Haskell are still in darcs repos, on places like code.haskell.org.

Historical note: the Haskell dev world jumped on distributed vcs a few years before git appeared, via darcs, and that early move has resulted in the situation today, where it's mostly only the younger projects in git.

<comment><USER13> And just as an example, I have around 200 darcs repos, including big projects like xmonad, yi or bytestring, that might never be on github, since they're in darcs on c.h.o.

The Haskell world is really an anomaly in this regard.

<comment><USER14> Not really, same applies to Smalltalk, and I'd guess Lisp as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Median" and "average" are being used inconsistently in this article, making it more difficult to meaningfully interpret the dataset.

<comment><USER16> Hi there. I think you're interpreting "average" as being equivalent to "mean", but this isn't my understanding of the term. Both the "median" and "mean" are measurements of "averageness". I use "median" when I'm talking directly about figures or a diagram. I use "average" when I'm making some general point, and only after I've already specified what my exact measure of central tendency was.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average>

<comment><USER17> Median is an exact term that means the middle value in a sorted list of values.

<comment><USER16> Yes, I don't think anyone has disputed that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Theory of Neural Computation with Clifford Algebras (2005) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/inf/Sommer/doc/Dissertationen/Sven_Buchholz/diss.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm not really aware about this application of Clifford algebra. I'll summarize it as the algebra that operated on sets of scalars, vectors, matrices, and up, so we can use both addition and multiplication between Clifford objects. Just my recollection.

\+ I would assume then that keeping track of Clifford objects per neuron is not biological plausible.

\+ I would then also assume that geometric manipulations are handled differently than through Clifford algebra.

Just saying because biology is mentioned in a few places in the thesis as motivation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Additional information for Clifford Algebra can be found here:

[https://slehar.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/clifford-algebra- a-v...](https://slehar.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/clifford-algebra-a-visual- introduction/)

<comment><USER4> Oh that article again. It starts out great but I just get so worried about his well-being when I read the epilogue.

<comment><USER5> Rationalist thinking has taught us to scoff at anything greater than examining physical reality by scientific method - greatest tragedy of the Enlightenment

<comment><USER4> You are right. I should be more open to other perspectives outside the paradigm I was taught. That's the only way to go against the historical pattern discussed in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As I recall, the most interesting feature of these networks is that they do better when learning geometric features in the presence of noise. Without the added geometric structure baked into the network, the real neural nets overfit and 'learn the noise' to a much greater extent.</comment>


Komodia/Superfish SSL Validation is broken - <AUTHOR> https://blog.filippo.io/komodia-superfish-ssl-validation-is-broken/

<comment><USER2> If they got something this basic wrong, you can only imagine what else is broken in it. TLS is very hard to get right.

</comment><comment><USER3> On top of providing a MITM vector, they've managed to allow insecure ciphers and validate for bad certificates. Now that's pretty poor form for a "security" company.</comment>


Get Let's Encrypt Cert in Five Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kaienkira/acme-client-quick <comment><USER2> Why is this better than Certbot, which has more options and more support? Set up a daily cron to run the certbot-auto `--renew` flag and forget about it. Done.

[https://certbot.eff.org/](https://certbot.eff.org/)

<comment><USER3> The Debian package is even more convenient, it sets up the cronjob automatically (with a random delay to prevent everyone from hitting the servers at the same time). It's even quicker to set up.

<comment><USER2> Is this a new-ish feature or did I just not read the docs thouroughly when I first used it almost a year ago? Thanks for the tip either way.

<comment><USER4> Same here, I just set up LetsEncrypt for a second site last week and didn't know this. From a glance at the docs it looks like it's relatively new. Ubuntu 16.10 has the automatic cron setup but not Ubuntu 16.04 which is what I used.

<comment><USER2> That's strange. I swore last year I would never use a non-LTS version for a server. Unless I'm missing something, it seems to be more headaches than it is worth to roll with the XX.10 vs XX.04.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> on nixos it is:

        services.nginx.virtualHosts."myhost.org" = {
            enableSSL = true;
            enableACME = true;
            root = "/var/www/myhost.org";
        }

Put that in your host configuration and the nginx will be configured to start up the nginx with SSL enabled. All other locations required for the acme request are automatically configured. Systemd timers are also added for automatic renewal. IMHO it does not get any better than this.

edit1: no extra location required

<comment><USER6> More complex configurations are possible as well, of course:

[https://github.com/Erisia/Madoka/blob/master/configuration.n...](https://github.com/Erisia/Madoka/blob/master/configuration.nix#L207)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A little off topic, but I somehow missed until recently that AWS cert manager will give you free, auto-renewing SSL certs for use with AWS. Just another free, convenient SSL option.

</comment><comment><USER8> What about using Forge instead ([http://forge.laravel.com](http://forge.laravel.com))? I know it's not free but for 10$/month you can get Let's Encrypt cert in 20 seconds and tons of more features (server provisioning with really good security setup and all the tools you need).

<comment><USER9> $10/month? I prefer $0.30 per month at [http://nearlyfreespeech.net](http://nearlyfreespeech.net), but Forge does look cool for when I need those features. Thanks.

<comment><USER10> Not to pile on but it is not $10. It is $15 / Month for individuals and $30 / Month for teams.

and that is on top of however much it costs you to run a vps on Digital Ocean or Linode or Amazon.

[https://forge.laravel.com/](https://forge.laravel.com/) [https://forge.laravel.com/features](https://forge.laravel.com/features)

It is worth taking a look if you don't enjoy setting up machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> angry-hacker What about SNI?</comment>


The Desktop Muon Detector: A project for university students - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01196 <comment><AUTHOR> Write-up about the project at Symmetry Magazine [1]

\- "The $100 muon detector" [ [http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-100-muon- detecto...](http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-100-muon-detector) ]

<comment><USER2> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12325943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12325943)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Learn how to navigate the 4th dimension  - <AUTHOR>

My coworker Drew (http://traipse.com/) wrote a beautiful iPad app to teach about the fourth dimension (coordinate spaces and such.)<p>http://fourthdimensionapp.com/ <comment><USER2> That is pretty cool. Didn't get it as I don't actually need it, but my advice is to put this in front of Schools. Education sales could really help.

To sell it to schools, Drew might want to add practice problems or send out promo codes to schools with iPad programs. Good luck!

Clickable: <http://www.fourthdimensionapp.com/?ref=hn> iTunes ($2.99): [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fourth- dimension/id504201...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fourth- dimension/id504201783?ls=1&mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this has got to be the best way to learn about the fourth dimension! There's hardly any resources that are this interactive for such a cause.

Also, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-dimensional_space></comment>


WalmartLabs acquires Tasty Labs - <AUTHOR> http://walmartlabs.blogspot.com/2013/05/walmartlabs-has-good-taste.html <comment><USER2> 1\. Walmart paid $300m to buy Kosmix/RightHealth to create @WalmartLabs [http://techland.time.com/2011/04/19/walmart-purchases- kosmix...](http://techland.time.com/2011/04/19/walmart-purchases-kosmix-opens- walmartlabs-for-social-shopping-experience/)

2\. The original Kosmix founders left in a year - [http://gigaom.com/2012/06/22/walmartlabs-loses-kosmix- founde...](http://gigaom.com/2012/06/22/walmartlabs-loses-kosmix-founders/)

3\. Rinse and Repeat with "Tasty Labs"

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like an acquihire. The things Tasty Labs were working on are not very related to Walmart.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel like Joshua is just good at acquisitions. I noticed he updated his position to advisor @ walmart labs today on my LinkedIn feed so I knew something was up. Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER5> TastyLabs in the Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TkuH07z...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TkuH07zK7nUJ:www.tastylabs.com/)

Based on this, it looks like they had an app called Jig. Jig.com redirects to the Walmart post, but the blog is still live. <http://blog.jig.com/>

<comment><USER6> Weren't those guys building some sort of complicated forum software that sort of worked like SO?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jig was excellent, some very clear talent involved there. Curious to see what comes next. Best of luck to all of you!

</comment><comment><USER8> "HousingMaps was a pioneer of the Ajax revolution"

It was?

<comment><USER9> HousingMaps was the first to reverse engineer Google Maps, which helped Google realize the potential of an API and motivate them to make it a real thing. That API was one of the first very popular JS APIs on the web (it was #1 on programmableweb.com for years), and may have been many developer's first introduction to AJAX(JSONP) based APIs/UIs. (I worked on the Maps API for 4 years, so that's based on what I remember).

<comment><USER10> I think it would be more appropriate to say it pioneered mashups; it was one of (if not the) first mashups.

<comment><USER11> Mashups are much easier when APIs exist. As such, gp's point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> so what's Tasty Labs?

<comment><USER13> Crunchbase -- 'Tasty Labs is a startup founded by the founder of Delicious, Joshua Schachter, and ex googler Paul Rademacher and former Mozilla Director of Add-Ons, Nick Nguyen. Tasty Labs goal is to try and put "the useful back into social software".'

skills.io, human.io, jig.com seem to be relevant to Tasty Labs, which are now redirecting to said article.

<comment><USER14> So that still doesn't tell us any more. From this, it reads like a scheme to sell some social app to stupid industry behemoths like WalMart.

<comment><USER15> After seeing enough things that meet that description I'm starting to think that, no, really, _that's it_. That's exactly, and all, it is.

Apparently "Scheme to sell some social app to stupid industry behemoths" is in fact a thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wonder if Marissa Mayer, who is on Walmart's board, had any influence on an acquisition like this.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lots of subdued excitement in the Walmart post. Sounds very coporatespeak. But good for them...

</comment><comment><USER18> So, what is Walmart paying for? Talent, or they really have an insight that is going to make Wallmart more competitive?

</comment><comment><USER19> congrats joshu!

</comment><comment><USER20> What's next for joshu?

</comment><comment><USER21> and OneOps also</comment>


The brand for broke college students and people trying to save – Amazon Basics - <AUTHOR> http://thebrotalk.com/lifestyle/fell-love-amazon-basics-brand/ <comment><USER2> Utterly worthless "article" and it's packed full of affiliate links.</comment>


Jury nullification is not a crime, Denver - <AUTHOR> http://www.denverpost.com/editorials/ci_28662070/jury-nullification-is-not-crime-denver/mobile-web <comment><USER2> I think that jury nullification is one of the "hacks" that makes the USA amazing.

It is not only the juror's right, but his duty, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the directions of the court.-- John Adams

Hell our founding fathers thought this was a good thing. Its the people expressing their will inspire of the behavior of the republic. The first amendment pretty much trumps everything, and it is a justices obligation to uphold that, inspite of the diminishment of their power that results.

</comment><comment><USER3> Judges and prosecutors try hard to avoid having jurors who know what nullification is.

I wonder how that could be done in this case. ;D</comment>