Who's to Blame for the 16 GB RAM Limit on the New MacBook Pros: Apple or Intel? - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/10/31/intel-mbp-ram <comment><USER2> I'm a little bit surprised at this outrage considering there are very few PC laptops that offer 32GB+ DDR4. XPS15 offers 32GB but its battery life is rather poor.

Thinkpad P50 offers 64gb with tested battery life of over 8 hours, but it clocks in at 5.8lbs.

I'm a pretty heavy duty user and I have 3 machines that each has 8GB. (PC, PC, Mac). What the hell are people doing on their 13.3 - 15inch laptop that requires 32GB?

<comment> purple-dragon I have 16GB of RAM in my MBP. As I type this I'm running at 15.25GB used. I'm not running any VMs, nor am I running any Adobe Products. Chrome, Spotify, Slack, Visual Studio Code, HipChat, Keynote, Sketch... this is a typical, yet light application load for me.

<comment><USER3> \- Chrome

\- Spotify (Chromium Embedded Framework)

\- Slack (MacGap (WebKit))/(Electron (Chromium Embedded Framework))

\- Visual Studio Code (Electron (Chromium Embedded Framework))

Notice a pattern? :)

<comment> purple-dragon Yes, the pattern is not lost on me :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> After hearing people complain about the new Macbook limit on 16gb RAM, I went to check out what the Surface Book offers -- which is, also, a max of 16gb RAM.

<comment><USER5> And which nobody even thought of raising as an issue...

<comment><USER6> Because in the windows market, surface isn't a laptop targeting video editors, game programmers, etc. It's a thin and light entry. Contrast with lenovo portable workstations which got 64gb over a year ago: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/11/9129681/lenovo-skylake- xeo...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/11/9129681/lenovo-skylake-xeon- notebooks-p50-p70)

Apple produces every osx compatible device. This means it needs to produce at least one device that can meet the needs of power users.

<comment><USER7> Have you not watched MIcrosofts "can't do that in a Mac" campaign? 3D modelling, video editing, lots of heavy lift graphics apps...

<comment><USER5> And yet most video editors I know use Macs, same for "heavy lift graphics apps". Nobody (ie very few) run around with a 8lbs/4hour battery "desktop replacement" PC to do such things on the go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been checking his site the last few days just to get the pro Apple spin. This is awesome.

Can Apple ever make a serious mistake in Gruber's eyes?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it would be a useful project to compile a list of times Gruber has been critical of Apple. One topic he has called out Apple on been the amount of memory in entry-level iPhones and iPads.

[http://daringfireball.net/2014/10/ipad_air_2](http://daringfireball.net/2014/10/ipad_air_2)

I don't know if this meets your criteria for "serious", and it's just a single example. Just a little push-back against "ever" :)

<comment><USER8> that specific article has a pinch of criticism in a gallon of praise ;-)

That said, I'm fine with Gruber being such a fanboy. He fills a niche, makes a great living, and his readers are happy. All good.

I personally find his writing amusing is all.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" that specific article has a pinch of criticism in a gallon of praise "_

No disagreement here :) Like I said, just a little push back :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First gen of Intel Mac's had 2GB limit (even though the chipset could address 3 or 4 GB), this got fixed later. My bet it that revision 2 in 6-12 months with whatever next Intel CPU generation will take 32GB with no issues.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a 4gb 2012 MacBook air that works fine. I don't face much performance related issues with it and can compile apps, use VMs(one at a time) fine with it. It can get slightly laggy at times, but most of it isn't noticeable. I usually restart when that starts to happen and it gets fine that way.

I am thinking of saving some money and upgrading to the base 1499 model and donating my air to a friend who really needs it. But it has got only 8GB of RAM. Ideally I would have gone for the 1799 model with 16gb ram which makes it $1999. But don't have that much money right now. However, since even the 4GBs of RAM have seemed satisfactory to me so far, I am thinking of making the jump. Non-apple is anyways not an option as I use sketch and need to compile iOS apps.

With my present air I always regret getting 128GB hard disk as it is too less, and I need to format my laptop every year to get rid of the junk occupying hard disk space. I hope I don't end up regretting the 8GB for the next few years.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am currently using a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), and am running: a Docker VM, IntelliJ IDEA (two instances, one large and one medium Java project), Slack, Safari, Chrome, iTerm configured with unlimited screen buffer, a VPN, Dropbox, Fantastical, Backblaze, 1Password, and a few other things.

For memory, I've got 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Activity Monitor is happily green, and shows me that 11.57GB of my 16.00 GB of memory is used, with 3.18 GB of cache.

I used to run into trouble with "memory pressure," but switching to Safari instead of Chrome eliminated all of that. I have 21 tabs open in Safari, only Gmail open in Chrome.

I'm sure I could come up with some combination of things that would strain the 16 GB I currently have. I might have to work at it a bit, though, and I think by most of the definitions I've seen in this thread, I should be screaming about the limitation.

If I ever hit the yellow zone with memory again, I'll just quit Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER12> The i5-7200U and i7-7500U both have DDR4 and a limit of 32GB. What kind of U CPU does the MacBook Pro has?

<comment><USER12> From [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro) the lowest spec CPU is an i5-6360U which supports DDR4 and 32GB of RAM: [http://ark.intel.com/m/products/91156/Intel- Core-i5-6360U-Pr...](http://ark.intel.com/m/products/91156/Intel- Core-i5-6360U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz#@product/specifications)

<comment><USER13> And the highest spec is a i7-6920HQ, which supports 64GB DDR4... but Apple declined to use DDR4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the tech bloggers/ industry have had their fill on the latest Apple PC lineup. We need to stop this madness of giving them attention. We are being trolled. My non-scientific estimate is that I've seen ~20 threads in some way related/ essentially having the same discussion in the last 24hrs.

Build your own desktop behemoth that you can use remotely (Xeon+dedicated GPU(s) and all), and buy an Apple laptop or Dell XPS with what you need. Done. If you develop for iOS, the choice is clear.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have an intel laptop (w520) from 5yrs that can supports more than 16gig of ram and currently has 20gb of ram (16+4). Yes spec says max is 16gb but that's not true. I don't know the max. i7 quad core. 5 years old.

<comment><USER16> Anyone know why Intel isn't able to support > 16GB of LPDDR4? Is it a limitation of address bus width in the design?

<comment><USER17> They don't have support for LPDDR4 at all at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like apple's just blowing smoke. The entry level macbook pro has a 10% (5kwh) larger battery. Seems rather implausible that an extra 5kwh is not enough to run 16GB ram for 10 hours.

</comment><comment><USER19> What 13" laptop of this form factor and size has 32gb of ram as an option?

Answer: none

<comment><USER20> Just bough a 14 inch thinkpad t460p with 32gb of ram for $980. The form factor isn't quite as sexy, but the specs compare favorably to the macbook pro, and the price difference is pretty absurd. It's entirely upgradable to boot.

<comment><USER10> Where did you get it for 980? I tried configuring one and a base model with 8gb of ram and 256gb ssd turns out to be over $1250. With 32GB ram it goes above $1500.

<comment><USER20> On the Lenovo site. I found a coupon for 30% just googling around. Unfortunately, I believe it ended 10/30\. However, Lenovo often has sales/promotions, esp around the holidays. So I'm sure there will be more sales soon. Another trick is to just get the HDD option and buy an ssd off Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It was annoying, a few years ago, trying to find a non-Apple laptop with better specifications. Now it's too easy, as a developer, I rarely find CPU limits my speed (typing is a limitation) but ram does limit how much I can do at once, or at least how many vms and containers I can run whilst developing, testing and searching stackoverflow. However, I use Linux laptops, but my graphic designing partner who loves to have lots of elements of work open at once as she works out how to aggregate them, is going to find it harder to cope, especially as graphics resolutions keep getting better and needing more memory.

</comment><comment><USER22> If I am not mistaken, the chipsets on the Intel NUC models are laptop chipsets. I have the Skylake Core i3 version and that supports up to 32G of LPDDR4 RAM (dual channel). Since the thin laptops typically have only one RAM slot, it makes sense why they are limited to only 16G.

With this in mind, my understanding is that it is perhaps a limitation of the current Intel chips for single RAM slots, combined with the reluctance of the laptop manufacturer to include dual channel memory in their (thin) laptops.

<comment><USER23> Even the Macbook has dual-channel memory. They don't have RAM slots--they solder memory chips directly to the motherboard.

<comment><USER22> Having RAM slots that are user serviceable and having them soldered directly into the motherboard is besides the point.

If there is only one RAM slot (whether soldered-on or otherwise), then the total memory that can be supported is at most 16G.

<comment><USER23> There are no DIMM slots at all on an MB or MBP motherboard. There are bare memory chips soldered in a dual channel configuration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would say that, strangely enough, the Federal Aviation Administration is to blame for the 16GB RAM limit. I posted an explanation why here hours ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841293)

<comment><USER6> If the FFA is to blame, how have windows laptops had 64gb of ram for over a year? [http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/11/9129681/lenovo-skylake- xeo...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/11/9129681/lenovo-skylake-xeon- notebooks-p50-p70)

<comment><USER24> If you RTA you'll see that it's a forced compromise between battery life and FFA restrictions

<comment><USER6> I did. The FAA power limit is a red herring. Perhaps an example will help:

High res screens require more power to run, and more power to render for... which means you could also blame the FAA for Apple not using high res screens... except Apple does use high resolution screens.

So the situation is not one of forced compromise so much as Apple having different priorities from its users... which is where we thought we were before you brought up the FAA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My entire company was waiting on 32G, we run a simulation that chokes on 16G. Now everyone is trying to figure out what is the best non-Mac to do the job.

<comment><USER26> Why not use a desktop?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I overrammed my previous MacBook. It was a max of 4 or 8 Gb can't remember but I ended up going 8/16\. It worked fine until the keyboard failed. I'm going to replace it eventually.

</comment><comment><USER28> Jobs is not a fan of softkeys: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL7X3DTyS2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL7X3DTyS2Q)

This is pretty much directly relevant to the state of apple right now: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM)

It's quite eery.

</comment><comment><USER29> Battery is a pure smoke screen. They had no qualms cutting battery life to make it that little bit thinner and put in a watch with horizontal striped OLED display.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" They had no qualms cutting battery life"_

I haven't seen where Apple cut battery life in the MacBook Pro. Here's what's reported now (granted, it's from Apple's website):

15" MacBook Pro

2015 - Up to 9 hours wireless web [http://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/specs-2015/](http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-2015/)

2016 - Up to 10 hours wireless web [http://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/specs/](http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/)

If there are other references out there (particularly if they're independent of Apple), please share! Or perhaps you're referring to something besides last week's MacBook Pro updates?

<comment><USER30> Yep, battery life is improved but hey don't let that get in the way of Apple hate lol.</comment></comment></comment>


I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-for-an-ipad <comment><AUTHOR> This is a repost from 2011, but I think it is still an interesting workflow (at least the +Linode portion, no matter the client system), and timely, given how cloudy things have gotten since then. Good opportunity to see how others are doing cloud workflows now, that they use to do locally, etc. Some modern HN commentary/discussion I think would be good re: this topic/cloud workflows etc...

<comment><USER2> I re-read this series constantly, man I wish there was an update or another article in the same writing style. It's like digital "quasi-nomad" porn for me, a digital nomadic lifestyle I can actually live (and I do sometimes). Traveling the city and working from anywhere is a very romantic idea.

My workflow on my side project is pretty similar to his: I use Vim as my editor and tmux (or screen) to handle it all. It's web programming, but most of the work these days is backend so I don't need web debugging tools too much. I do use my Macbook more than an iPad just for screen size, but it works the same everywhere. I do light patches or emergency command line fixes from my phone.

My dev server runs on Digital Ocean for $5/mo. I code in Vim with a very light vimrc (add NerdTree and rails.vim and that's about it). My main tmux window has two panes, the code at the top and a 20-line pane at the bottom for the rails console. The next window has my running puma server. I can shut down my machine and it's all still running in the cloud.

I used to use Cloud9, it's really damn buggy and doesn't work on mobile devices but it was convenient and cloudy. Since they were bought by Amazon I was hoping it'd get more love and they'd fix it, but it's only been worse. It finally got to the point where I couldn't stand it anymore and switched to Vim. It's a nicer workflow than I would have thought, and I didn't even have to give up my mouse. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Working on an iPad Pro as my main computer

[http://typicalprogrammer.com/working-on-an-ipad-pro-as-my- ma...](http://typicalprogrammer.com/working-on-an-ipad-pro-as-my-main- computer)</comment>


British man accused of hacking into US government systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24712214

<comment><AUTHOR> The guy (Lauri Love) also has a Finnish citizenship and this is now big news here in Finland.</comment>


Windows is Free [2007] - <AUTHOR> http://www.autotelic.com/windows_is_free

<comment><AUTHOR> My thoughts on this article, since I submitted it:

Due to bulk licensing and paid bloatware, Windows computers are only about $30 more expensive than they would be without buying the OS. So I think the author gives too much weight to piracy and too little weight to the "My computer already came with a free OS" feeling most people have.

But in general I agree with the conclusion, basically, that Linux loses because people don't want to switch from a "free" OS they're familiar with to a Free OS they don't know. And that if people really did have to pay $100 for every copy of Windows they used, Linux's market share would skyrocket.</comment>


Discovery unveils Curiosity.com to inspire everyday learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.curiosity.com/

<comment><USER2> Proud to have worked on this site with a great crew in Chicago.</comment>


New Math - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math <comment><USER2> > _Topics introduced in the New Math include modular arithmetic, algebraic > inequalities, bases other than 10, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean > algebra, and abstract algebra._

Was this about higher focus on those/bringing them on early, or are these really not taught in the US today? Or just not in all classes?</comment>


The Cybersecurity 202: Iowa caucus debacle shakes public confidence in security - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-cybersecurity-202/2020/02/04/the-cybersecurity-202-iowa-caucus-debacle-shakes-public-confidence-in-2020-security/5e385fcd88e0fa7f82543738/ <comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/ywvCed](https://outline.com/ywvCed)

What a silly headline. Blaming tech and not those responsible. Was it the Russians or bad implementation by DNC?</comment>


Huawei finds itself in the crosshairs of Western security agencies - <AUTHOR> https://spectator.us/huawei-chinese-intelligence-front/ <comment><USER2> I wasn't previously aware of this website, but after reading the article and noticing its rather brash style I decided to take a look at the front page. Several headlines stand out to me, including "Wrinkled, white, and wrong — this is the face of the Democratic party", "Black lives matter, until they're ended by black people", and "Project Fact: how scared should we really be of a no-deal Brexit?", as well as a few statements seemingly designed to emphasize the racial and social undertones of various national debates. An admittedly cursory skim of these articles leaves the impression that the site's theme is low-key outrage generation and the propagation of divisive talking points that tend in a somewhat novel rightward direction.

Although I agree with the premise of the featured article, I have to wonder if this site's intent is actually aligned with the notion of a harmonic western social order incorporating political cooperation and tolerance for diversity of thought and belief, or if it is yet another low-key radicalization / division vector designed to appeal to those who are too intelligent, educated, naturally docile, or otherwise moderate to be swayed by the more extreme purveyors of discord such as Brietbart, etc. In other words, the site seems to be right on the edge of dog-whistling without actually going over that line, and my instinct is to not upvote articles sourced from it.

<comment><USER3> I was curious of the same thing.

[https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/american- spectator/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/american-spectator/)

It appears that it is a publication that leans heavily to the right, though apparently their reporting is factual. I would take that to mean that while anything that is explicitly stated as fact is likely true, the takeaways and editorials on the course of action is going be quite biased.

Skimming some of the other articles, they don't seem to be particular fans of Trump, with a couple of exceptions, so I'd guess they are probably of the Neoconservative Bush/Reagan bent rather than Trumpian.

<comment><USER4> > though apparently their reporting is factual.

One of the most effective forms of misleading reporting involves cherry- picking facts that support your narrative.

You can also conveniently ignore stories where it is obvious that facts may disrupt your desired meta-narrative.

Some organizations have even found ways of doing this whilst being revered for taking a balanced stance and presenting the full picture.

<comment><USER5> > One of the most effective forms of misleading reporting involves cherry- > picking facts that support your narrative and not exploring stories where it > is obvious that facts may disrupt your desired narrative.

Isn't that what about 100% of existing news media is doing? They key here is to read more than one source, but having a source that would alone represent more than one narrative by now is pretty close to hopeless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meanwhile in Australia, our government has recently passed a law [1] that very openly and explicitly makes companies legally obligated to add backdoors for the government to spy on whoever it likes, and imposes serious legal penalties on anyone who discloses these activities to their customers or the general public.

I don't know how much of the Huawei article is propaganda and how much of it describes a genuine threat. But one thing is for certain, which is that governments in the west are not much better. This was clear five years ago from the Snowden revelations; our governments are just being a little more open about it now and forcing private industry into their surveillance regimes.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/7/18130806/australia- access...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/7/18130806/australia-access-and- assistance-encryption-bill-2018-facebook-google-apple-respond)

<comment><USER7> This kind of argument always comes up in these threads, so I'm just going to cut to the chase with the response:

"Alike in desire to surveil" is not "alike in values and behavior."

Looking for the next poster to jump in and say something about "But are the values really that different?" or "But which are really the better values?"

<comment><USER8> Values mean nothing when the behaviour is the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Calling it a front is somewhat uncalled for, given that it's actually one of the largest tech companies on the planet.

Are they connected to the Chinese government and used to exercise geopolitical power? Sure but everyone could have told you that already, because that's how China openly operates. There is basically no distinction between government and multinationals.

As far as the rest of the world cooperates with China's businesses I think everyone sees that facet as a trade-off for access to the largest market in the world.

So I don't agree with the take at the end of the article that finding a Huawei spy in Poland would be surprising or catastrophic for China. Grave cuts to commercial ties to China would probably send the economy spiralling, so nobody's going to do it, it's just going to be a tug-of-war for a long time to come.

<comment><USER10> Yeh but I don't think western countries have really been paying attention. It's obvious based on sentiment they thought wealth would change that.

<comment><USER11> China has been a big focus for the western countries' ruling classes for atleast 200 years.

I agree that the populace hasn't been paying attention though.

<comment><USER12> there's been no plan for 200 years to deal with china. that's like saying western countries have been paying attention to the catholic church for 1000+ years. There's no government plan towards china, everything has changed every 25 or 50 years.

Many western governments hoped they magically democratize as they became wealthier, instead they went the other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pick your poison. As Snowden revealed, Cisco was/is regularly backdoored by US intelligence as well.

<comment><USER14> True, but unless USA ordered Cisco to do that, it's a bit different. NSA will use whatever it can to spy on others, it's obvious

<comment><USER15> I just with that the NSA had policies to disclose backdoors to appropriate business entities 30 days after discovery/purchase. They could still use 0-days, but at least the window would be reduced so the stockpile isn't unleashed on the world at large being a much bigger risk to security.

<comment><USER5> 30 days is useless. Intelligence operations take years to unfold. Banning NSA from using zero-days doesn't mean everybody else is banned from using zero- days, including PRC.

<comment><USER15> I didn't say they couldn't use them.. only that they should have to disclose them to the company(ies) responsible.

If they get a zero-day for windows, they can use it all they want... but they should have to disclose it to MS after 30-60 days of knowledge. The NSA is as responsible for technology security in the US as much as spying operations. They need to find a balance to do both.

If they responsibly disclose and that happens before other nation states discover and take advantage of zero-days it makes it much better for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> if you leave all the colloquialisms, the article is based on two facts:

* Last February, the heads of the 'big three' US intelligence agencies warned Americans against buying Huawei phones, which they deemed a security risk.

* Poland ABW arrested the two on the spionage charges, huawei office is being searched

i'm a bit disappointed, because there is nothing new in the article. i was expecting something intel about huawei devices being rigged with backdoors, calling home or having kill switches.

*edit: grammar

<comment><USER11> We need a smoking gun and less of the "Supermicro phantom chip" caliber reporting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe? I accepted this nearly 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18884720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18884720) is about the latest story.

</comment><comment><USER19> Slight tangent: my perception as a tech person but not a networking professional is that TP-Link became big in consumer network gear very suddenly. It made me wonder at the time if they got a leg up from the Chinese government, and now with these stories about Huawei I wonder if they're similarly entangled.

How much of a white hat effort is there to check what servers these products connect to? Are there (volunteer?/open source?) efforts to watch for suspect behavior or do targeted disassembly of the firmware?

</comment><comment><USER20> I'll happily let China spy on me if it means I'm not vulnerable to "five eyes", the German BND and all the other illegal spying operations with larger impact on my daily life.

<comment><USER21> Interesting. Why do you see European spying operations as more impactful to your daily life than Chinese?

<comment><USER11> China doesn't go around the world arresting people who haven't even visited their country... in Assange's case on the other hand the US...

<comment><USER21> In his lifetime, Assange has hacked the Pentagon, US Navy telcom systems, other DoD infrastructure, Lockheed Martin, Panasonic, and others through a hacking group he founded[0]. That's not even including Wikileaks and his suspected ties to the Russian government.

Combine that with the fact that most countries carry extradition treaties, it's not all that surprising that the US wants him. He's committed a litany of crimes in his lifetime against foreign countries, and often bragged about it. Why is it crazy to you that a foreign country wants to detain someone that has hacked said country's critical military infrastructure and participated in information laundering that potentially impacted a US presidential election?

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

<comment><USER11> He was initially pursued for exposing war crimes in Iraq involving the US army and Reuter's journalists. Everything else was seemingly tacked on after the fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'll choose the US, which for all its faults has a much better human rights record than China. Political opponents aren't jailed, there are no reeducation camps for minority groups (like Muslims.) Business isn't done through constant bribing of officials (which is very popular in China.) Etc, etc. Were it not for trade empowering the Chinese political class, China would be a hermit state like North Korea.

<comment><USER23> The human rights records is a p/r gambit which is mostly bullshit. The US violates human rights of all sorts of people all over the world all of the time. They just treat their own citizens with a certain amount of courtesy.

> there are no reeducation camps for minority groups (like Muslims.)

No there are just bombings and complete destruction of various Muslim countries that don't go with the economic agenda of the US.

<comment><USER11> Didn't the US just finish murdering about 2+ million Arabs over the last decade or so, I bet the dead Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis would rather be in "history lesson camps" in China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who's not accepting it? If a country can use something to spy on others it will. No doubt in my mind that China controls them 100%, one way or another, so...

</comment><comment><USER23> You can't trust American companies to not spy on you. You can't trust Chinese companies not to spy on you. They are both arms of the government and conduct continuous espionage. Maybe we should get Samsung in this game as a non- superpower third party, though they probably already in the NSA's pocket as you hear no complaints about them from the US.

It's like who would you rather your secrets be stolen by? Americans or the Chinese?

<comment><USER15> I'd rather neither... however, I've not been arrested for reading/spreading articles about the Snowden documents or for making disparaging comments against the U.S. (I'm a resident and citizen).

The difference being if you live in China and do these things you may never be seen again.

I'm also against the whisle-blower persecutions that started under GWB and escalated under Obama.

<comment><USER23> I live in neither country. It's obvious that it's better to be a US citizen rather than a Chinese citizen. However, China has little ability to affect lives of citizens of other countries... whereas the US has much more power to do so potentially based on evidence gathered through surveillance they can for instance extradite people to the US to face charges for crimes whereas China is incapable of doing such a thing to non-Chinese citizens. This is no a hypothetical thing, it has happened more than once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> BoingBoing has the skinny on author John Schindler[1]

> John Schindler was a prof at the College; he slammed Snowden as a traitor > and compared Greenwald to Hitler, and was generally dismissive about > concerns about network surveillance; he also sent pictures of his dick to a > woman who wasn't his wife. He also co-wrote the report that stated that > Sadam Hussein had WMDs, and helped send America to war. That was a lot worse > than dick pics.

I mean, while I have no issue with Schindler's evident animus for the current US President, and while the Polish case may (or may not) establish Schindler's intended point, his credibility is IMO way insufficient to be trusted on stories like this. He's really best seen as part of a fringe movement of pro- intelligence online cheerleaders and would-be vigilantes, whose most visible participant is the infamous Louise Mensch[2]

1: [https://boingboing.net/2014/08/12/former-nsa-spook- resigns-f...](https://boingboing.net/2014/08/12/former-nsa-spook-resigns- from.html)

2: [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/louise-mensch- an...](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/louise-mensch-and-the-rise- of-the-liberal-conspiracy-theorist.html?via=gdpr-consent)

<comment><USER25> You just posted a lot of ad hominems that have no bearing on whether the author's statements in this article are true.

<comment><USER24> >> He also co-wrote the report that stated that Sadam Hussein had WMDs, and helped send America to war.

It's not an ad-hominem to suggest that an author's previous record on accuracy can be a guide to his present credibility.</comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox acquires Droptalk to drop content into conversations - <AUTHOR> http://www.droptalk.us/

<comment><AUTHOR> Video of the desktop version of the product: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGL91VhpCgw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGL91VhpCgw)

</comment><comment><USER2> It doesn't explain what they do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please find the video of their Desktop product here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGL91VhpCgw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGL91VhpCgw)

<comment><USER2> Interesting video, thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Be the Co-Founder of an Event Recommendation Site - <AUTHOR> http://dakick.com We're an Istanbul based startup and looking forward to find passionate cofounder in SV. (Business background, ex-entrepreneur)<p>dakick is a personalized event recommendation engine  and people who like to work on that subject will be great for us. <comment><USER2> How?

<comment><AUTHOR> contact with me :)</comment></comment>


gVisor: Container Runtime Sandbox, a user-space kernel for containers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/gvisor <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16975706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16975706)</comment>


Help keep Riseup, the secure e-mail and mail list provider, online - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fight-the-nsa-save-privacy-help-riseup/x/1872842

<comment><USER2> I know a lot of people criticize Riseup for not being perfect, but it's important to recognize that the alternative for most people is a Google Group. If there are things you think they should be doing better...donate some money so they can do it!

</comment><comment><USER3> It might be a little tempting to dismiss this as post-Snowden opportunism, but Riseup are used by a lot of campaign groups and I hope they manage to stay in the black.

I wonder why some of the perks are listed twice.

</comment><comment><USER4> This gave me a good excuse to finally get off my duff and donate to them, but I wish they at least had stickers or something as a gift for one of the tiers.</comment>


Addons.mozilla.org to move from CakePHP to Django in 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://micropipes.com/blog/2009/11/17/amo-development-changes-in-2010/

<comment><USER2> "When it did work it would return enormous nested arrays of data causing massive CPU and memory usage (out of memory errors plague us on AMO). When it didn't work, we'd end up doing queries directly which kind of defeats the purpose."

For what it's worth, I believe a lot of these issues are solved with 1.2 (AMO claims to be still on 1.1 which is at least two years old now). It sounds as if their system is just defining relations in their models and letting the database layer pull up all the objects for them. Which of course creates problems. They should shift to using "contains" to limit the depth of the objects retrieved.

The only real issues I've run into in the most recent version of Cake have been an inability to define a separate join table on one of the basic relationships (hasMany?). I seem to remember rails making this possible through an intermediary table, but it is somewhat advanced in any case and the easiest solution ended up being to write an SQL function in the model and use that to fetch the data. It was not hard.

Good luck to them with the re-write.

<comment><USER3> Agree, it sounds like most of their issues were solved in 1.2. Huge nested arrays definitely sounds like they aren't controlling the recursion level properly, which is quite simple in 1.2 as you mentioned. Caching is also quite painless in 1.2.

Its too bad for such a high profile project to bail on Cake without giving the new version a try. It really is an excellent framework for many projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reasons given in this post show the ineffectiveness of the AMO development team.

I worked at Yahoo and I've used different Java and PHP frameworks in the past, some good, some bad. However, that never stopped us from having a continuous build running locally and an integration build running on our server, or from unit testing our code, even though we had to extend and adapt some components and unit testing frameworks. The same with debugging, it never stopped us from creating awesome tools to debug our code and monitor the performance of our applications.

After finishing building a CMS using Django, I can only say one thing: A framework doesn't make you a better programmer. If you suck, you suck.

</comment><comment><USER5> Didn't know they were running CakePHP, but I can understand it being insufficient. Unfortunately, its attempts to copy Rails have left it as a framework designed for the wrong language. It's OK for beginners, but not something you really want to get locked into.

Good luck and godspeed on the migration, AMO.

<comment><USER6> I unfortunately have had way too much experience with CakePHP. It is the second to worst framework I have used. Second to .NET 2. CakePHP trying to emulate Rails while supporting PHP was an idea destined to fail especially when trying to support PHP 4.x.

<comment><USER7> So what do people around here recommend for a php framework? I normally use and love Django, but I would like to add a php framework into my toolset.

<comment><USER8> Personally I use (and recommend) Kohana. Especially in recent versions they have made a lot of improvements to the MVC model for PHP.

<comment><USER9> That's based on Codeigniter, right? How do the two compare?

<comment><USER8> Well it was originally a fork of CI. Version 2 was a recode but using the same inspiration. Version 3 is another rebuild but a more developed version of the idea (i.e. unrecognisable from it's CI origins).

It's about preference I guess: Kohana takes advantage of a lot of the PHP5 extra's and also unfucks some of the "gotcha's" CI had (especially in the area of loading stuff). Also it is updated more regularly and is community developed.

CI is still good, I personally prefer Kohana's way of doing it.

<comment><USER9> I thought it was a recent fork of the project - I stand corrected. Kohana certainly does look good. I'm just getting to grips with CI now. Authentication has been a matter of bolting on a 3rd party library. Would you recommend a switch to Kohana? I'm mostly concerned by the long-term support and development for each of them.

EDIT: Just realised that I'm asking you to sum up a lot to recommend one over the other. I'm currently looking at both in detail, cheers.

<comment><USER8> I'd recommend it yes. Kohana is a bit of a hackers framework - you do need to dig inside it sometimes (I consider that a good thing). It also has a pretty nice ORM based / Role based auth module included which you can extend fairly easily.

In terms of LTS: V2 is pretty frozen at 2.4 right now (i.e. no API changes) though the documentation still reflects V2.3. There should only be bug fixes on the 2.x branch. 3.x is in active development (and worth looking at) and should be there for the long haul.

I personally use 2.x because that is what I started with and I haven't had chance to make the switch to 3.x (it's pretty much the same except there are changes to some naming conventions and file paths) mostly due to having to support 2.x based sites still :)

EDIT: It's a bit old (and I apologise for the abysmal writing!) but this is a comparison I wrote when I first made the switch: [http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2008/06/framework- comparision-c...](http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2008/06/framework-comparision- ci-vs-k2/) might be useful.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, that's a great appraisal of the two and sums up most of what I've read so far nicely.

<comment><USER8> I nearly cried reading it back - might attempt to rewrite it. As one of the most popular posts I have it probably doesnt give a great impression :D

<comment><USER9> Seriously, it ain't that bad! But I wouldn't complain about an update if you feel so inclined :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am equally surprised by both choices. I rarely visit the site consciously, but I often end up there through internal firefox redirection, say, after an automatic addon update. Given Mozilla's marketshare, a very popular addon can easily spike the site's traffic. The recent security issue removing the Microsoft .NET plugin is a good example.

Seems like they have the resources to keep php and python running under duress.

</comment><comment><USER11> well shit, the python guys could use some good news.

</comment><comment><USER12> but... but i thought django was only for making blog engines!

i kid, i kid...</comment>


Face Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.wrevenue.com/2008/11/07/face-time/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's too easy to fall into email only mode. For me I have to consciously work to communicate in other ways.</comment>


I just passed 5000 in HN karma. - <AUTHOR>

This is a big day for me. So to celebrate, I'm going to give you the ultimate geek gift: A great scifi book recommendation. Load up your Kindle or Kindle App right now and go buy "Wool" 1-5. For the 50% of you reading this that have already read it, I apologize for being late to the party, but it's worth it to make the other 50% happy. <comment><USER2> LOL- love it- the gift of a good sci-fi read is always appreciated :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations. I see you make great comments. Well deserved!

</comment><comment><USER2> and congrats!</comment>


Surefire Ways To Lose A Great Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://gregorymazurek.com/posts/2014/02/05/10-sure-fire-ways-to-lose-a-great-software-engineer.html

<comment><USER2> #1 made me laugh. It describes most of my days and is definitely one of the reasons I'm considering leaving. I love when my manager is out of town for business or on vacation. I get to actually think for more than 30 minutes at a time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can agree with all of those points except for #4. Whilst this may apply within the 'web' scope, most software development (especially qualifying for 'engineering') requires longer timescales.

Quality takes time and anyone seriously invested in that will likely want to take their time to get it right, rather than require instant gratification of getting it 'out there'.</comment>


More Google Search Issues - google-stuff

Click on the 1st result of this query http://www.google.com/search?q=amortization+modification
It goes to this page: http://www.startingtowhoop.com/vidplayer/source/fla/amortizationloanmodification.html
I presume they are doing this to generate affiliate education leads ($20-40/lead).
This is similar to what Chris Dixon had shown in his analysis: http://cdixon.org/2009/12/19/anatomy-of-a-bad-search-result/
where they translate between languages and post garbage. ==== Bing is slightly better with the same query: http://www.bing.com/search?q=amortization+modification
The 1st result goes to this page: http://loanmodification.name/?tag=amortization
===== I posted using a throwaway account & I am not affiliated with Google/MS or not into SEO. I just don't want Matt Cutts analyzing all my submissions /comments at HN :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2063693 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm familiar with this sort of spam, but it's unlike any of the other cases mentioned recently. I believe the site itself is legitimate, but it's been hacked.

Our system first detected and blocked hacked content on this site on 8/30/2010, but at that point it was only a subpart of the site that was hacked. It appears that not only has the site owner not gotten the issue under control, but now the main root page has been hacked. Luckily our automated malware checks are now flagging the site; visiting the Chrome should show a big red page and a message like "www.startingtowhoop.com contains content from onlineisdudescars.com, a site known to distribute malware." So the ball is rolling to alert visitors to this site and the owner of this site.

I wouldn't expect this site to last too much longer in the results (probably gone in a few hours or tomorrow). You're getting a glimpse of some of the stuff we have to deal with to return good search results, including site owners who don't deal with hacked sites for months at a time and hackers who do massive attacks across hundreds or thousands of domains with a malware chaser. :(

P.S. You might want to edit the url in your submission so that no one else clicks on that links and gets malware. IE doesn't use our Safe Browsing API, so IE users might get infected.</comment>


New email gateway release based on FreeBSD 10  - <AUTHOR> http://my.halon.se/support/softwareupdates/mailsecurity

<comment><USER2> Impressive software, nice Apis, docs at [http://wiki.halon.se](http://wiki.halon.se)</comment>


Self forming teams at scale - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2015/07/24/self-forming-teams-at-scale.aspx <comment><USER2> I've seen/implemented this at three different companies and it always went well -- and there were many folks who didn't think it would.

I like the "selling" idea, and even though it already feels a little too over- engineered the way the MS guy is pitching it, I might add one more wrinkle: nobody stays on the same feature team more than X months. Becoming an expert in a particular area is sorely needed in many tech organizations, but after 1, 2, or 3 years, it's probably time to move on to something else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Like the idea, but it feels heavy to me and like it may suit slower release cycles better. Maybe that's because MS is still shipping installed software tools (TFS in this case).

"We've done it 3 times now over the past ~7 years and have been happy with the results every time"

This comment confirmed it for me. I'm interested in companies who are using this model in a context where software is released continuously or at least multiple times per year?

<comment><USER4> Actually, this team is responsible for both TFS (major releases 1-2 years, minor releases quarterly) and Visual Studio Online which is a hosted service and releases once every three weeks. Pretty much everyone on the team works on both products because they share a very large percentage of their code.

Source: I'm the guy closest to the camera in the picture. Oh, and we're hiring if anyone is interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't suppose you're hiring in Brisbane, Australia?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wanted this to be teams of 10k people or more, I wouldn't say this is "at scale".

tl;dr Self selected Instant runoff voting of future destiny instead of forcing decisions on workers turns out pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love how the original concept is then convoluted and completely compromised by "early selling" and "manager selection".</comment>


Facebook said images of dead girl didn't violate the site's terms and conditions - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3617200/Man-killed-girlfriend-posted-pictures-dead-body-covered-blood-Facebook-site-refused-36-hours-didn-t-violate-terms-conditions.html <comment><USER2> (Various edits) Facebook's justifications for its delay (i.e., waiting to confirm that the site was hijacked, and disregarding the obvious violation of community standards) are pure baloney.

Facebook's terms contain COUNTLESS LOOPHOLES that seek to PROTECT it in all cases, let alone its taking down a murder victim's bloody murder photo at the request of her family. For example:

\--Facebook disclaims all liability for to its account holders and all other persons for any of its actions.

\--Facebook Account holders and site users must defend, hold harmless and indemnify (reimburse) Facebook for any liability that might be imposed on Facebook by the account holder or any other person.

\--Facebook reserves the right to pull material offensive to community standards or as necessary to facilitate law enforcement activities.

\--Facebook Account holder's right to jury trial for claims against Facebook is replaced by "arbitration" by arbitrators (i.e., moonlighting corporate defense attorneys, who are well-known to favor corporate defendants).

Even assuming Facebook had some reason to disbelieve the family's assertions of murder and site hijacking - which it did not - how could it possibly have been sued or even criticized if it had promptly removed the bloody photos?

In the worst-case scenario, what measure of damages could possibly be imposed on it? What financial or property damage could possibly have flowed from its removal of the material were by some miracle held to be inappropriate in light of the family's assertions of murder and site hijacking? How about ZERO.

Facebook's actions clearly facilitated the murderer's goal of terrorizing the victim's family. I'd say that violates T&C and community standards. Of course Facebook also continued to earn revenue from ads as the site went viral. In a sense it is an accomplice after the fact.

Facebook's self-indulgently legalistic behavior in this case will incent other gun-nut nut-jobs to imitate the murderer in question by offering them a free 36-hour pass to post photos of their bloody crimes

Contrast this situation to Facebook's immediate censorship of a respected journalist's mere objection to Ferdinand Marcos' burial in the Philippine's Heroes Cemetery on the specious ground of "community standards". Facebook acts quickly to remove even the most innocuous content in order to protect its own interests (e.g., avoiding backlash of Philippines' conservative extremists). See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11813354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11813354)

In sum... this case encapsulates what is wrong with Facebook... and with Silicon Valley's tech elite.</comment>


My 5-year-old son died 7 months ago. Help me find out why - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/petitions/state-of-oklahoma-jim-inhofe-and-tom-coburn-urge-oklahoma-to-increase-staffing-for-the-medical-examiner-office-2

<comment><USER2> Who oversees the medical examiner's department? The governor or state legislature or other locally elected officials should be taken to task for the delays.

I do not see how asking US senators can help.

I hope some explanation comes soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, when I put this up this morning I wasn't really sure to whom I was petitioning to be honest. It looks like the medical examiner office is overseen by the governor of Oklahoma.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This really sucks, and I completely understand the need for closure.

At least in the Bay Area the various coroners process suspected homocides first, then suspected plagues/pathogens, then unexplained deaths, then maybe 'outside the hospital but not unexpected' deaths.

What that means in our fairly area is that if your death isn't a suspected homicide you probably won't get an autopsy. The only way to get that information would be to hire a forensic pathologist to do the work for you.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are some incredible statistics available at the states Medical Examiner's website . [http://www.ok.gov/ocme/Statistics/index.html](http://www.ok.gov/ocme/Statistics/index.html)

Just in 2010 there were thirty five thousand cases of which five thousand were examined or autopsied. Staff information is also available on the site.

I would recommend following up with whichever part of the governor's office this agency reports too. Find your local State office Senator (not the US Congressional one) as they may be more in tune with your community.

</comment><comment><USER5> Will increasing staff make the system more effective? If so, could that money be used elsewhere to greater benefit?

Perhaps we should learn what the issue is before offering suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sorry for your loss. This must be heartbreaking.

</comment><comment><USER7> My condolences.

You might be able to get a more timely response by hiring a private medical- examiner/coroner.

</comment><comment><USER8> It seems he isn't due to die until 5 months from now... ah nevermind they fixed the date.</comment>


Show HN: Build A SaaS App in Rails 6 – book - <AUTHOR> https://buildasaasappinrails.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm building a SaaS app in Rails and might be interested in something like this. Not interested enough to give you my email to get trickled some samples and then, presumably, spammed for the rest of time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love this book. Thanks for updating it!!!</comment>


Doozer: a consistent, highly-available data store from Heroku labs - <AUTHOR> http://xph.us/2011/04/13/introducing-doozer.html

<comment><USER2> (Reposting my blog comment here)

"I mean primarily the ability to face a network partition and continue providing write service to all clients transitively connected to a majority of servers. Secondarily, I mean the ability to continue providing read-only service to all clients connected to any server."

A truly available system, in the sense of CAP, allows writes, not just reads, even under partition, even for clients not connected to the "majority" nodes. This leads inevitably to the need for conflict detection and resolution, and that whole "eventually consistent" thing. What you are describing is very useful, hence the existence of things like Chubby and ZK, but is most definitely not "available", per CAP.

Folks might also be interested in the classic paper on constructing locks from low level primitives like CAS, Herlihy's 'Wait-free Synchronization" [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=A01...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=A01FADDC263D88A280509C0D8BF86C6F?doi=10.1.1.87.871&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a number of other systems that allow this same approach of consistency and high availability. For example, Cassandra, which is freely available (as required by the poster), appears to be able to give you this behavior if you set ConsistencyLevel to QUORUM.

Clustrix, the company I work for, offers a full SQL data store with similar quorum semantics. However, it's not free.

Google Megastore allows similar consistency semantics (with its own data model) in a cross data center "cloud" fashion. It's also not free, but it would probably be suitable for some set of Heroku customers, particularly if they're already using Google App Engine.

<comment><USER4> You actually cannot implement strongly consistent compare-and-set on a quorum based system. This is because quorums do not have strong failure semantics.

For example, lets say you have key A with data 'foo' living on all 3 nodes of a quorum based system. You perform a write to key A with data 'bar' and one host accepts the write and two fail resulting in your client getting a failure back. Reading data back from all nodes will return 'foo'. Time goes along and read repair or some other anti-entropy process kicks in a replicates 'bar' to the other hosts. Now a read for key A returns 'bar'. In short, when a client performs a write and gets a failure back they actually have no idea if it will update the data store or not. You cannot implement compare-and-set in that type of environment.

<comment><USER5> That is not how paxos works. It guarantees that all hosts in the system learn the same sequence of writes. The scenario where "one host accepts the write and two fail" does not happen. This is proved in [http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/paxos- simpl...](http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/paxos-simple.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Right, I was talking about the quorum semantics as used by systems like Dynamo and Cassandra. Paxos provides a much stronger guarantee than simple quorums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The only freely-available tool that attempts to provide both of these is zookeeper, but zookeeper is specialized, focused on locking and server management. We need a general-purpose tool that provides the same guarantees in a clean, well-designed package."

I think they dismissed Zookeeper too quickly without trying to understand it first. The zookeeper primitives (get/set nodes and their children) seems simpler and cleaner than doozer is client protocol, AFAICT. Zookeeper should scale better (especially for readers) than typical Paxos based systems as well.

<comment><USER4> The problem with zookeeper is there is no safe way to dynamically change the nodes in the cluster. That's where Paxos comes in since it is provably correct even with nodes joining and leaving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool. Is the consensus algorithm straight-up Paxos, or are there modifications? The Paxos Made Live [1] paper from Google raised some interesting issues.

[1] <http://labs.google.com/papers/paxos_made_live.html>

<comment><USER8> Yes, it is Paxos. We have a post coming up about it.

<comment><USER7> Great, looking forward to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What happens when you CAS the same key from two sides of a network partition and the partitions rejoin?

<comment><USER2> As explained in the post, the minority side of the partition is not writable.

<comment><USER9> Ahh I see it's in the extra small note at the bottom

"I mean primarily the ability to face a network partition and continue providing write service to all clients transitively connected to a majority of servers."

Probably should be a little more prominent considering it's one of the first questions you'd want answered but I was a bit careless to miss it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recruiters asking for "last 4 digits of SSN"? - <AUTHOR> I applied for a few developer positions on dice recently, and twice now recruiters who haven't even spoken to me have asked me for the last 4 digits of my SSN.
Why would they legitimately need this information ? What concerns me is even if they have a legitimate use for it, the last 4 can be used to guess the entire SSN. The first 3 are unique to your birthplace, so that means if you know the last 4, someone only needs to correctly guess your place of birth and try 100 times until they guess the full SSN.
Obviously I don't give them the last 4, or I give them phony numbers. But I just wanted to hear what others say about it. I contacted dice about this a few years back, but they didn't seem to share the same concern that the info could be used for identity theft.
Here's what one recruiter wanted:
Candidate Detail Full Name (As per SSN): Contact Number: DOB (MM/DD/YY): Email id: Linkedin id:
Preferred location: Notice Period: Skype id: SSN (Last 4 digit): Currently working(Y/N): Total US Exp.: <comment><USER2> Why would they legitimately need this information?

It's become a common practice especially among large, buraucratic employers. The Last 4 Digits are simply a unique identifier, used for quick (soft) reference in employment eligibility.

You're just a number to machine at this point. HR Flunkies & Bozo Recruiters don't care if it turns you off or raises red flags about your security.

Here's an excellent take on this by Nick Corcodillos >[http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/7696/wanted-hr-exec-with- the...](http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/7696/wanted-hr-exec-with-the-guts-to- not-ask-for-your-ssn)

<comment><USER3> > The Last 4 Digits are simply a unique identifier

No, they aren't. As is kind of obvious, given the number of combinations of four digits there are, and the size of the universe of people identified with SSNs.

<comment><USER2> More on this explanation from Corcodilos: The reality is, some software designer included a SSN field in the employer's database, and the HR department bought the software without questioning the design and intent. Because HR relies on such software to process you, HR doesn't know what to do if you decline to provide data the software "requires." Go figure. Suppose the software included a credit card field instead — that's unique to you, too, right? But no one would expect you to provide it because the employer doesn't need it.

I feel your pain. Some employers will boot you out of the hiring process if you don't give them your SSN (and your salary history) — just like a phone or cable company will refuse to sell you service without it. I wish someone would file a lawsuit. > [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-the- headhunter-...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-the-headhunter- does-hr-really-need-your-social-security-number/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do recruiting (3rd party). This sounds like total shenanigans. I would be actively afraid to ask for your SSN and definitely DOB - they should be avoiding asking your age out of fear of discrimination lawsuits. What's reasonable on a call:

\- name (they don't need your middle)

\- email, phone, Skype (if they do video tech interviews), experience

\- asking if you are legally allowed to work in the US without sponsorship. For a defense job, if you are a citizen. You don't want to waste your time if you're not.

Depending on the job, before your on-site interview a major corp. might ask for your full name, DOB, felony convictions (not arrests), etc. for a background check, but I don't think they'd need your SSN until you're there for employee orientation (tax purposes, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER5> Never happened to me, and I would frankly laugh at their face. Same with date of birth and pretty much everything from your list. The only thing they need: my name and a way to reach me. Later in the process, if the company needs to run a background check sure I'll provide more details.

</comment><comment><USER6> If they are using that information for a background check, they would have to inform you by law. I could see them using it for identity verification, but they should be much more transparent about that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, and if it were background, I would expect them to need the full SSN.

<comment><USER6> You can definitely do it with only the last four digits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i would assume this is a scam. the _only_ time you need to provide ssn is when you are starting a new job -- you have already been hired -- and HR needs to photocopy your social security card. that's it. no other time. ever. (edit: ok, also other HR things like maybe when choosing your health insurance plan, etc)

also you are under no compulsion to provide a recruiter (agency or internal) any information you don't want to. this includes prior salary, GPA, etc, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've never seen this. This is highly suspicious. Also DOB is an illegal question in the United States.</comment>


How to start an open source project with no actual skills, experience or money? - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea for a non-existing web-app I'd like really like to exist and be used by me and others. I could probably start something with my low-level amateur design and programming skills (never learned this systematically), but I believe the project's chances of coming to life are higher as an open-source project that more professional people are leading.
Can this happen? Or, to be more concrete, has this ever happened before with an actual published app or software? Where should I start?
To be clear, I aim at an open, free use application without an intention to sell. <comment><USER2> Just start doing what you can with what you know. You stand to learn orders of magnitude by doing and redoing, than you do by asking. Choose some tools and see if they work out for you, and if not, roll the dice again and retry. You might have to start from scratch a couple of times, but that's not as onerous when the project is at an early stage and you are learning by doing. Best of luck! :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I'm all about that. What is the first step? Where to go? I'm looking for a few concrete actions I can do as first few steps and having a hard time finding anything specific.</comment></comment>


America's Sweatshop Diplomacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/americas-sweatshop-diplomacy.html

<comment><USER2> My family and I went to a local theme park last week and noticed, for the first time in the many, many (oh, too many!) years we've been going that there were many Eastern Europeans manning the rides. Now I guess I know why.

This park has always had a difficult time filling its positions due to the poor way they treat their employees, mostly 15-16 year old, first-job kids. While I hope the foreign workers weren't being taken advantage of, given the park's history, I would be surprised if they weren't at least treated quite poorly.</comment>


Python's Hardest Problem (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeffknupp.com/blog/2012/03/31/pythons-hardest-problem/ <comment><USER2> This was FUD when it was posted and now it is age-old FUD which there's no point in re-posting.

Jython and IronPython do not have a GIL. Multiprocessing avoids the GIL. Blocking on I/O gives up the GIL. There are all kinds of techniques used instead of throwing threads naively at every problem. And, conveniently, none of this is mentioned in the article. Either the author was not aware of these basic facts, or suppressed them.

It is blatantly false that "no single issue has caused more frustration or curiosity for Python novices and experts alike than the Global Interpreter Lock." The author may consider it important, but this does not mean that author is speaking for everyone else.

Novices would have good reason to avoid shared-everything threading, which introduces piles of race conditions and difficulty controlling runaway threads, and should try simpler tools first and see whether they can get good results instead of prematurely optimizing with techniques they don't know how to use.

Experts will know that the GIL is often not a primary concern, and where it actually is a concern they'll be conversant with other tools like multiprocessing and task queues.

The people with the most to say about the GIL are mediocre programmers who want to show off that they are so good Python is limiting them, and people not very familiar with Python (possibly with background in languages which try to make threads the answer to everything) who have an axe to grind.

Instead of asking how it is to do what they want to do, they just assume that the problem is the GIL and there is no solution, then expect to be praised for their technical acumen. People with technical acumen just solve the problem in any of the available ways instead of bitching in public about how it's the tool's fault they can't solve the problem because they have defined the problem incorrectly and insist on some arbitrary way of doing it.

<comment><USER3> I'm the original author (and didn't post this) but I fail to see how the article is FUD. In fact, the article makes the exact same point as your fourth paragraph ("Novices would..."). Controlling access to shared data often does lead to issues for many programmers, and just throwing threading at a problem is rarely a good idea.

I'm sorry you didn't find the article useful, but perhaps you're not in the article's target audience. I simply wanted to give Python novices some information and background about the GIL.

That said, the fact that other implementations do not have a GIL isn't relevant to the article; it specifically refers to the cPython implementation. And your observation that multiprocessing avoids the GIL is explicitly mentioned in the article. To say "blocking on I/O gives up the GIL" is true in a very narrow sense but not very interesting. Import any third party package using C extensions and you now need to worry about how well the author manages the GIL.

<comment><USER4> Ignore the negativity train on Hacker News as of late. I thought it was a very well written and interesting article.

I was once one of the very noobies that your article describes. In fact, I even made the same Stack Overflow post asking why threading made my program slow to a crawl. I did then (thanks to a friendly answer) learn about multiprocessing rather than threading, but I never actually got around to learning -- or even thinking about!-- what exactly the GIL is and why it makes threading terrible for CPU bound tasks.

Point being, I enjoyed it.

<comment><USER5> _"I never actually got around to learning -- or even thinking about!-- what exactly the GIL is"_

David Beazley does a good job on explaining the GIL. There are multiple videos of his GIL talks on YouTube. This one, for instance: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obt-vMVdM8s>

He has a page about this at <http://www.dabeaz.com/GIL/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've written native C modules interacting with EVE online, probably one of the biggest Python systems in deployment, and they run on stackless python with a bazillion of threads for every little thing. While still needing to hit that 50fps window.

The GIL was not a problem.

<comment><USER3> ...because they run on Stackless Python.

<comment><USER7> This is a common misconception about Stackless Python.

Stackless still has the GIL - it facilitates concurrent, not parallel programming. Stackless Python programs run on a single core, with cooperative task switching between microthreads.

See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/377254/stackless- python-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/377254/stackless-python-and- multicores)

<comment><USER8> It's not concurrent either. It's about asynchronous. Tasks that don't finish before another one starts and runs.

Why would you want this? From the website: * Improved program structure. * More readable code. * Increased programmer productivity.

<comment><USER7> This is "concurrent" in the increasingly common Erlang sense of the word:

"The real world is 'concurrent'. It is made up of a bunch of things (or actors) that interact with each other ina loosely coupled way with limited knowledge of each other." -- Grant Olson "Why Stackless" 2006

"Concurrent computing is a form of computing in which programs are designed as collections of interacting computational processes that may be executed in parallel." -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_computing>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "And why has no one attempted something like this before?"

"However, if you've been around the Python community long enough, you might also know that the GIL was already removed once before--specifically, by Greg Stein who created a patch against Python 1.4 in 1996." (Also mentioned in the OP)

More info can be seen at [http://dabeaz.blogspot.nl/2011/08/inside-look-at- gil-removal...](http://dabeaz.blogspot.nl/2011/08/inside-look-at-gil-removal- patch-of.html)

<comment><USER10> I don't know a lot about the history of Python and the GIL, but did they ever consider optionally removing the GIL or leaving it in depending upon some switch? Go has GOMAXPROCS which defaults to 1 to avoid the overhead of locking when only a single thread will be used for similar purposes.

I guess back in 1996 a system like that may have been considered overkill because multithreading was still pretty exotic.

<comment><USER11> Having a look at the source, you get this for free in python. If you don't use any threads the overhead is just the checking of one (non-atomic) variable in the main eval loop, so that is at least as cheap as GOMAXPROCS=1 in Go. There is a small overhead of dropping/taking the gil around I/O functions, but it isn't worth optimizing the few nanoseconds that takes for the much slower i/o functions.

But if even this overhead is too much you can compile python without treading support.

<comment><USER11> Ok, the above is not really relevant, I misread the parent comment. Why the gil is not completely removed or made optional can be read at <http://wiki.python.org/moin/GlobalInterpreterLock>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >using multiple threads to increase performance is at best a difficult task.

This isn't completely true. If you are doing anything non CPU bound, using threads is trivial, as the GIL will allow you to perform IO in parallel.

<comment><USER13> Performing I/O already releases the GIL.

(Not to mention that Python has many event-driven I/O options available which are generally more efficient than threading)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Due to the design of the Python interpreter, using multiple threads to > increase performance is at best a difficult task. At worst, it will decrease > (sometimes significantly) the speed of your program.

Nope. The writer sounds misinformed and is spreading FUD.

I have successfully used Python's threads to perform concurrent database fetches, http page getters, file uploads in parallel. Yes, there was almost linear speedup.

If you listen to this story it sounds like Guido and most other talented and smart Python contributors added threads to Python just to fuck with people heads -- "thread don't work but let's add them anyway! just to mess with them!". Nope they added them because there are many cases when they work.

The answer is if you handle concurrent I/O Python's threads will give you good speedup. Threads are real OS threads and come with nasty side-effects if using shared data structures, but make no mistake you will get the speedup.

Your mileage may very and everyone is probably biased and has a different perspective, but where I am coming from in the last 10+ years I have written mostly I/O bound concurrent code. There were very few cases where I hoped to use extra CPU concurrency.

Now I did have to do that a couple of times and if you do have that issue, most likely you'd want to descend down to C anyway. Which is what I did. Once in C you can release the lock so Python can process in parallel and your C extension/driver can process in parallel. This is exactly what I did.

Now wouldn't it be nice if Python had CPU level concurrency built in. Yes it would be great. But I don't think that is the #1 issue currently. We still don't have 16 cores on most machines.

       #define RANT

What worries me is library fragmentation and the new Python 3 adoption (or lack of) now coupled with the new Async IO Future/Promise/Deferred framework introduction. That will harm Python faster and worse than GIL ever did. Adopting and standardizing a Twisted like approach to Async IO will put the nail in Python's coffin. And Guido is certainly marching in that direction. This will fragment existing (already rather fragmented) libraries. Now we'll have Twisted, Tornado, gevent, eventlet, asyncore, Threads, new Promise/Future thingie (anyone know of more?) ways of doing concurrent IO and every time you pick a library (unless you use threads, gevent or eventlet + monkey patching) you will end up choosing a whole new _ecosystem_ of frameworks.

I remember for years scouring the web for a Twisted version of an already existing library,because I had made the mistake of picking Twisted as the I/O concurrency framework. Regular library module is available, oh but I need to return a Deferred from it of course, in order for me to use it.

       #undef RANT

<comment><USER13> The idea of including an async API ( _not_ an implementation) in the standard library is that it will enable compatibility by having twisted/tornado/gevent/etc. implement this interface, and async libraries to conform to this interface. It's trying to solve the same problem you identify. (Personally I'm not terribly hopeful that it will work, but what would you suggest?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This a great overview - nicely done! It would have been nice to also mention how other implementations of Python like Jython that _don't_ have the GIL, and how they managed to do it.

As for why it hasn't been solved yet...the api for threads and processes is pretty much identical. Since you're just as well off using a process in the majority of cases, that's we we go with.

<comment><USER3> Author here.

Actually, the reason it hasn't been "solved" yet has much more to do with the cPython implementation rather than the fact that we can just use multiprocessing. There is a ton of globally shared data in the cPython implementation. Retrofitting a locking scheme granular enough to obviate the need for the GIL while at the same time not negatively impacting single- threaded performance is decidedly non-trivial.

The PyPy guys are making decent progress by attacking the problem from another angle: using software transactional memory to automatically resolve data conflicts that arise from multiple threads mutating data simultaneously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is written as if shared memory is the only parallel programing paradigm. While it is true, that threads are a very useful construct for writing high performance parallel software, distributed memory programming is also a valid approach.

If your problem can map to distributed memory techniques, then you have multiple advantages over shared memory programming. Most importantly you can parallelize over multiple machines. Other advantages include decoupling of each parallel task from each other (fewer race conditions and other hard to debug problems).

There are several ways to achieve distributed memory parallelism in Python: multiprocessing, zeromq, raw tcp/ip sockets and mpi4py. Which approach makes sense to use will depend on your problem.

</comment><comment><USER17> Neat discussion on this. Its interesting to look at stuff where threading was front and center (Go, Java, Etc) vs where threading was not (Python, Perl, Etc). The arguments are something you should get an introduction to at least with a CS degree and one of the things people without that explicit teaching develop by feel.

Concurrency is the 'tricky bit' of the 'algorithms' pillar [1].

[1] The Four arbitrary pillars of computing (algorithms, languages, systems, and data structures) I

<comment><USER18> Aren't algorithms and data structure one and the same? (If you squint just right..)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm glad I came across this article. I'm learning Python and was given that advice to use multiprocessing rather than threading, but hadn't researched why. Very informative, thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER20> Well hold on now; there are a lot of times when using threading is easier and faster than using multiprocessing. It depends on what you're doing.

Threading creates new OS-level threads, but whenever your code is being run by the bytecode interpreter, Python holds the global interpreter lock. This is released during I/O operations and a lot of the built-in functions, and you can release it in any C or Cython extension code you write. If you're running into Python speed bottlenecks, you can usually get significant speedups with very little effort by moving the bottlenecky code to Cython and maybe adding a few type declarations.

Multiprocessing spawns a pool of worker processes and doles out tasks to them by serializing the data and using local sockets for IPC. This naturally has a lot of overhead, and there's some subtlety with the data serialization. So, be aware of that. The nice part, though, is that you don't have the GIL, which can sometimes speed things up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What about Google's Unladen Swallow project? I'm aware their attempt to remove GIL was aborted. Did any enhancements from those projects find their way into the mainline CPython3k?

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there really that much Python code out there that is not IO bound (obviating the GIL)? Scientific computing is the only area that comes to mind where I can imagine problems.

<comment><USER20> I've written a fair amount of CPU-bound Python code. It quickly turned into CPU-bound Cython code. The most CPU-heavy parts release the GIL. It hasn't really been a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I _love_ to use the Python parallel map function.

</comment><comment><USER24> Disagree; Python's hardest problem is packaging, followed closely by bikeshedding over networking libraries and an ever-growing dichotomy between the Python 3 and Python 2 universes of code.

You can _skip_ all conversation about the GIL and threads neatly by simply preferring a different concurrency model. There are plenty of ways to do this (see above re: bikesheds and their colors), but being permanently tied to CPython and the threading module is increasingly uncommon for professional Python, and it isn't as unavoidable as things like networking or even _which language you're going to use_.

Edit: I see that the author's in this thread. Nicely written article, but a tad hyperbolic.

<comment><USER25> The transition was always planned to take several years and I can't think of any major project which decided not to port to python 3. <http://py3ksupport.appspot.com/> and <https://python3wos.appspot.com/> both list package compatibility.

What issues do you see with python2 to 3 transition?

<comment><USER26> To be fair, the Python 3 transition timer shouldn't have had its tick starting until more recent versions of Py3. This won't be true for all Python communities (eg. Mathematics / Research), but until the more sane implementation of bytes/strings/unicode, the transition for most web frameworks or protocols was a mess.

However, from the later list, there are some really damning packages. For one, we're going to have transition off Twistd, which is much more than just an event loop. Py3 might not have enough advantage(s) to compel us to make that transition.

<comment><USER25> <http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/milestone/Python-3.x>

So, just wait to migrate until twisted is ready?

<comment><USER26> Honestly, I didn't check the dozen-plus packages pending update for us and then someone else cutting their teeth on it for a while, but Twisted was clearly marked as not being updated for Py3. But yes, clearly we're waiting; apparently Guido also wants to take a stab at the async batteries, which could help or hurt, if the Twisted contributors think they will be affected.

To the point of the comment you first responded to, there is lot of issues not being "solved" with respect to network libs, their upgrading to Py3, and Py3 looking to step into that arena. In other words, there is no horizon for networking libs updating, and they may feel even less motivated if the Py3 crowd is saying, "don't worry about it, because we are going to standardize our way." Does the Py3 transition-clock only start then?

<comment><USER25> I'm not really sure what your issue is. You use twisted. Twisted is currently being updated to support python3. Gevent has a branch which passes tests for python 3.3: <https://travis-ci.org/fantix/gevent/builds/3588293> Is there some major library you are using that has no plans for python 3?

I'm not actually seeing an issue with python 2 -> 3 transition which is what my original comment was asking about. I see a lot of negativity surrounding python 3 and talks of fracture, but no actual evidence of it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kim Dotcom [Megaupload Founder] Says He Is Officially Broke - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/kim-dotcom-im-officially-broke-2014-11

<comment><USER2> I find it kind of hard to feel sorry for Dotcom. On one hand, I agree with his stance on the state of the copyright industry and their tactics, but on the other hand, this guy burns through cash faster than an inferno in a wood factory. Look at his lifestyle, he lives in a massive house, all of his assets (cars amongst other possessions) he has more than most people will ever have in their lives and he takes it all for granted.

I am not saying this makes Dotcom any less of a person or means he is guilty of the things he is accused of, but he has been so bullish about his innocence and wasted so much of his money on non-important things, ten million dollars in legal fees is probably still considerably less than the cost of his house, cars and other possessions combined.

I think Kim Dotcom is great at hiding the kind of person he really is. On the outside, he portrays this down-and-out image of: I am going broke, Hollywood is trying to put me in jail and make an example of me. Which is partially true. I mean the military style raid on his home was a pretty massive overreach of political and law enforcement power, I definitely agree it was wrong and over the top. But then you have this real image he desperately tries to hide: the extravagance, the arrogance and overestimation of his own abilities to change things. Are we forgetting the millions he sunk into his failed attempt of getting the New Zealand Internet Party into power, five million in New Zealand dollars? In 2011 he spent $500,000 [http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10697221) on a fireworks show because he apparently loves fireworks.

I seriously doubt his claims of being broke. He still has a home, he still has his material possessions. He might be seriously economically handicapped, but probably still has more money and assets than most of us here on HN do. Having said that, I find Dotcom entertaining and if he finds a way to come back from this, I am sure he will be even crazier than he was before which will make for a great Internet fireworks display, because as we all know, Dotcom loves fireworks.</comment>


TMAP: Visualizing High-Dimensional Data Sets as MSTs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/reymond-group/tmap <comment><AUTHOR> We were looking for faster, better ways to create interactive visualizations of subsets of the chemical space (large chemical databases). Here's the result.</comment>


What does the noprocrast setting do? - <AUTHOR>

What does the 'noprocrast' setting do in my HN profile? It gives me a yes or a no, which is a little confusing since it's a double negative. It would be nicer if it was just 'procrast' and then it was set to yes by default, but what does procrast mean in this context? <comment><USER2> Did you read the FAQ?

 _In my profile, what is noprocrast?

It's a way to help you prevent yourself from spending too much time on News.YC. If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero._

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't see it, thanks. I usually consume via RSS so it doesn't help me too much anyway.</comment></comment>


Steve Blank: The Best Way to Kill Your Start-Up: Waiting for 100% Certainty - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/the-best-way-to-kill-your-start-up-waiting-for-100-certainty/249307? <comment><USER2> The lean startup methodology typically works under the assumption that constant iteration is needed to get the validation of customers. Interesting to see the other side of the coin and the wrong idea of using the same approach to an instant homerun. Wish I had Bob's prob.</comment>


Draft: MapReduce Algorithm Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jimmylin/book.html

<comment><USER2> I wish more professors were on the edge as you are. Congratulations on the useful work.

</comment><comment><USER3> "This marked an beginning of an entirely new strategy and the dawn of the multi-core era [81]." (page 13) error in grammar</comment>


Ask YC: Can you provide Feedback on my customizable homepage start-up? - <AUTHOR> http://www.clutterme.com/?r=0109 We're always looking for new input.  Even criticisms are appreciated. <comment><USER3> It's cool! I like the site. I like the idea. What group of people do you think will use it? I was thinking thinking this would be great for "unsophisticated" users. When I worked as the webmaster for a large school division in Virgina - I always got ask to help employees "create" things on their computers. It was kind of like putting a picture of your kids on your desk or desktop screen saver. When other people visited your office/cube they always ask about your kids. And the social aspect of your idea might fit in too. If you're interested in testing out the "unsophisticated" users angle let me know - <USER2> don't work at the school anymore but I still have inroads to to other similar environments.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you've identified someone's "pain." Have you further explored that idea? [A lot of startups begin with a story like yours!]

<comment><USER3> Good point but I'm playing with another concept at the moment. When I can I just like to lend a hand to other startups - I was thinking the people I know might like the ClutterMe site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool technology.

Unfortunately, the page looks ugly because I suck at design, and you're making me do the design. So it ends up looking really tacky.

Perhaps this "click anywhere and type/edit" technology can be used to annotate webpages (or even iPaper PDFs). I know I'd use it for those purposes if I could.

<comment><USER6> Annotation is an interesting idea. I've seen other ideas to annotate web pages out there, but never one that really caught on to my knowledge (maybe because they required a browser plug-in to see or create the annotations), and they also allowed you to annotate anyone's site with or without their permission.

What if as an option you allowed other sites to install an "annotate my site" script you provided, which acts as a lead-in to direct people back to your site with a link or with a "find other pages like this" type of thing? You could even provide a cross-reference between annotated sites this way, and provide a centralized site sort of like a directory of these sites...

<comment><USER7> What aneesh and yourself are saying is coming eerily close to discussions we've been having recently... thanks for the feedback guys, very much appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've visited your site several times before, and every time I visit I just don't see many people using it. I appreciate the freedom your service offers, but I think even for a customized homepage there is value in structure and organization. As much as Myspace pages vary with annoying background gifs and videos, there is still an underlying framework that adds unity to the site. I think the fact that it's too open might hurt you in the end. On Facebook you have your pics, your wall, your feed, etc., so there are expected components to each page that unite users. Placing anything anywhere on a page would give users a lack of focus and expend energy to use your service because they'd have to forge the connections among their and their friends' pages.

I think your click and type anywhere technology, which is very cool, could be applied to other fields as a feature, but I don't think it'd work best as a social network.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's comments like this that help us iterate.

We're almost back full time on our web app and it was frustrationg trying to find our niche. It looks as though we are going to open up ClutterMe to external sites.

We're thinking two levels of service, the first being something along the lines of an iFrame and the second level is allowing users to create accounts from within their site.

If you want to be included in the conversation and/or want this software on your site, send us a ping, or just keep track of the blog for updates. (blog.clutterme.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good work! A few notes:

Use a colored header and a footer. There are two important reasons to do this: 1) it keeps the non-editable content seperate from the editable content, which makes your site's function clearer. 2) it maintains the webpage metaphor that people have grown accustomed to. My reaction to your site for the first half- second was "wtf?", which I mainly attribute to the fact that the page design gave no indication of where I should look to understand it.

Use directional arrows instead of a paw for the "move" icon. The paw looks friendly, but it makes no sense ;)

Demonstrate the fonts in the drop-down font menu. Ditto for sizes.

Don't allow the "People on ClutterMe" section to load more than one person with the same photo.

</comment><comment><USER10> Very cool, dude... I don't know much about the web design industry, etc., but maybe you can get multiple revenue streams going by using this technology for a variety of applications. Maybe Web-based photo annotation? Web-base architectural diagram creation? Just a thought... seemed like cool tech that could be used for a lot of different things.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not exactly the most user friendly interface. I kept trying to type anywhere into the google search box. :P

Not bad. However, I agree with aneesh. Probably better used for annotation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow...

Very simple, but really nice. It needs some work on usability and design though. If you get that rigth it's a winner. There are some great possibilities in sharing pages too.

</comment><comment><USER13> while at PyCon I was talking to John Draper (Captain Crunch) and he brought up some idea (although I don't remember the specifics) that made me think of your site. I tried to remember the URL so I can show him your site but I couldn't remember it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the "links" this can save me a tremendous amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I remember this from 8 months ago but forgot the name. It's good to see you guys have kept at it.</comment>