Show HN: Forget Flash, Skip GIF, Control iOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.divergentmedia.com/blog/fullpost/phosphor_introduction <comment><USER2> Isn't it interesting how, caused by our inability to directly embed video onto websites, we are basically forced to reinvent video codecs in Javascript?

This basically means that on most mobile devices, instead of a hardware- accelerated decompressor, a slower, more CPU-consuming Javascript VM is in charge of video.

While technically impressive, I would much prefer the possibility of directly embedding (and controlling) real video.

</comment><comment><USER3> So Apple dug a hole by:

\- not allowing iOS to play videos in-DOM.

\- deciding not to support WebM, so Firefox users can't see their videos.

And now others are following them by helping to dig deeper in a vastly inefficient way of displaying moving images ? What could previously be offloaded to dedicated engines is now going to burn the CPU via JS. Hum, now that's gonna work…

<comment><USER4> I viewed three examples simultaneously from the Phosphor gallery at <http://www.divergentmedia.com/phosphor/gallery> and each one only used about 5% CPU, for 15% total. I closed them and viewed a YouTube HTML5 video (no Flash on this machine) and it consistently used 70% CPU. It seems the Phosphor approach is more lightweight than video and it was entirely smooth (on a 2007 dual core MacBook Pro running a 64-bit Linux). If you don't need audio and want to include a video or presentation in your page that doesn't require a plugin and looks to be supported on a wide range of browsers and platforms, this looks like a compelling option.

<comment><USER5> The image frames in those examples are 250 x 250. There's no sound. It's video deconstructed into frames then those frames animated to re-form a second-rate appearance of the original video.

I can't believe it's not butter!

Funnily enough it's Flash which is the best performer out of those he lists. Attempting to mask and layer video in HTML5 is a painful scrapheap of half- baked canvas hacking and browser compatibility woes. And then it doesn't work very well anyway even when you finally get the canvas to kick in. Flash eats that kind of thing for breakfast, with easy alpha channels on video layers and so on.

I wish Flash would just make a comeback, improve itself as a mobile plugin for browsers, and we can all enjoy rights-restricted video playback in the browser (at least), and clever next gen web games without paying Apple 30%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jon Skinner implemented a similar technique to create and display screencast animations on the Sublime Text homepage. I was just reading his article[1] last night in which he discussed his technique.

It's similar to this implementation, and his source is available on Github[2] (written in Python).

[1] [http://www.sublimetext.com/~jps/animated_gifs_the_hard_way.h...](http://www.sublimetext.com/~jps/animated_gifs_the_hard_way.html)

[2] <http://github.com/sublimehq/anim_encoder>

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe this is a dumb question, but I'm probably not the only one wondering that: how do you capture the video from the iPhone screen in the first place? [Edit: oh, just realized you're probably just using the simulator?]

Otherwise, awesome app. I can definitely see myself using this to add short videos to my designs.

<comment><USER8> Check out <http://www.airsquirrels.com/> they have an app that let's you mirror your iPhone to your desktop. It's very smooth. I use that, and then use a standard screen cap tool to capture the screen on OSX. Result is the ability to do full app demo on your iPhone and have everything mirrored to your screen. Also handy for sharing via a projector... Since it all goes over AirPlay you can demo without needing a cable/dongle off the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The video was so smooth I didn't realise what the example was. I actually watched the example video through several times thinking "what? there's no video on that page!" before realising that the thing I was watching _was_ the video.

</comment><comment><USER10>
        HTML 5 video: iOS devices won't play video tags in the
        DOM, they instead open in a standardized player. Apple
        also stops them from auto-playing on iPhone.

This is what makes Vine so useless on iOS outside of the native app. It makes it preferable to use GIF sans audio generally, whenever it's an option.

I get where Apple is coming from, but this is definitely sorely needed for some use cases.

<comment><USER11> It's not "iOS devices". It's the default browser, Safari.

If you use, say, iCab, HTML5 video stays embedded in the page -- to a fault. Often you won't be able to full screen the video, you end up having to zoom the page.

<comment><USER10> True. I use Opera on desktop, so I should know to use the distinction. I just hate the browser alternatives on iOS so much I repressed them. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks! I've been debating doing something like this on one of my app pages. So I've gone and done it now: <http://awesomeputioapp.com>

Feedback: I didn't like that there isn't a nice way to put all of the Phosphorous code in a subfolder (warning my HTML isn't amazing, I do iOS.) without a find & replace and hunting for the things to change. Overall I'm a happy customer though! Good work guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just took a look at the site, glad it's working for you! As for the moving, perhaps we should emit sample code with a location string you can fill with your path prefix? Sounds good to me.

As for your composition, I took a look and the atlas images seem large compared to what we tend to see. Perhaps try turning down the quality slider in the main page - all that affects is the post encoding jpg compression. 60-80% tends to look good.

<comment><USER12> I'll give it a re-run in the morning, sounds like a good idea. As does the path prefix :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really cool!

But often you can't upload videos or javascript, but only a GIF, like on a github.com's README file.

For that scenario, I recently wrote up a quick tutorial on how to use Quicktime + FFmpeg + gifsice to easily create a short screencast and convert it into a GIF.

<https://gist.github.com/4627207>

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks fantastic, might try and think of a use for it at work and give it a whirl. I remember being very impressed when reading the 'teardown' articles about how Apple had achieved it, the gap between a GIF and a <video> tag has always had potential, imho...

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks great - And fits perfectly into a need I had at the moment for sharing smaller screencasts.

I had a few crashes with it this morning on a rMBP, what's the best route for support ? (your forums do not seem updated yet for phosphor)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can email us at email@example.com. We've found one crash and are prepping a fix to submit to the MAS, but we can email you a new build if you get in touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So I can animate a movie/short film, take a screencast of it, and use Phosphor to render the movie on the client side?

That plus html5 audio could be a new low bandwidth way to stream movies in the future

<comment><USER17> html5 video and a good codec are a way better use of bandwidth. This technique is good for animations with few moving parts. For example the Alfa animation <http://www.divergentmedia.com/phosphor/gallery#alfa> needs to download 14 additional images for a total of 3.5 megabytes for a few seconds' worth of animation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> On iPad 1 all samples from the Gallery run at, what feels like, 1-2 fps. The screeencast in the blog though is very smooth. Why's the difference?

<comment> martin-adams Same on the iPhone 4S. I have a feeling it's because they're all running at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any research into how the download size compares to a similar video asset?

Do you have plans for native ios and android views?

<comment><AUTHOR> In our tests, it depends a lot on the type of content. "line art" compresses much better than video. We left a lot of room in the format to make the encoder side smarter with time which will increase compression performance.

The general rule of thumb for file size is h264 is smaller than phosphor is smaller than gif.

-mike

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does it have an overlaid div fallback option?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently no... it's on our list to do, but feel free to fork the player in github if you need it ASAP.

-mike

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wasn't this first seen on Apple's website for the iPhone 5 animations? Now this company is selling software to reproduce this effect for $9.99?

I haven't checked yet, but I wonder how much of the JavaScript output by this app is identical to what Apple wrote.

<comment><USER22> The acknowledge Apple did this first a few times in the post...

<comment><USER14> literally on the first line. XD</comment></comment></comment>


Travel and learn - <AUTHOR> Any ideas how can I join/ link my hostel to MOOC platforms (edx, coursera...)? <comment><USER2> What do you mean link them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sory, I am new and did not explain myself well (also not my native language.)

I was thinking about the idea of traveling and taking online courses.

To create some sort of university-hostel where people could travel arround the world and get an education (university degree). Something like minerva schools, but for a wider public, backpackers and travelers in general.

I understand anyone can take a MOOC in Edx, Coursera you name it, anywhere arround the globe (as long as there is a internet connection); but the problem is droping out, as 90 % of people that sign up to MOOC do.

In a hostel you might get to know other people that have the same educational interests and might encourage, challenge and enrich the MOOC experience.

Since we do not need to be in a specific physical place (say an university campus) to recieve an education, why not travel arround the world, meet other cultures, challenge our points of view AND get a bachelors degree.

So, I have this crazy idea of making a small hostel into some sort of university, but do not know how to start.</comment></comment>


Data load at over 9M rows/sec in Postgres-XL - <AUTHOR> http://blog.2ndquadrant.com/load-data-postgres-xl-9m-rows-sec/ <comment><USER2> That's very interesting! Rather than the headline number, I find the load rate of 1GB/sec more interesting. From the blog, it's not clear how large the cluster was. Useful to have that information too.

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I work at 2ndQuadrant.

We used a 16 datanodes, 2 coordinators Postgres-XL cluster for these tests. We'll be publishing more information with different cluster sizes in the coming weeks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I am 30, I want to change my career - <AUTHOR> Currently I am English teacher. I want to change my career and want to be web developer. Edit: Guide me whether or not it is the right path. <comment><USER2> In another HN post "what I learned from 3000 technical interviews" it showed that Udacity and other quality MOOCs are the most significant when getting a job. That might be a good way to bootstrap your abilities at design and creation. I find the structure of these classes helpful. But I think go for it!

</comment><comment><USER3> I studied English and I was a test prep instructor and manager for Kaplan before switching careers to be a Web developer at age 27. It was the right decision for me because the hours and pay were better.

At Kaplan, especially as a manager, I had to work long hours since we opened early for self study and classes were often late at night. The salary was also low...I started at $30k in 2004. In two years I had gotten promotions and raises and ended up at $47k. Everyone told me that was unprecedented, since most raises are capped at 3% to 5%. I knew that long hours and low pay couldn't be a long term solution.

I quit and took a year off to teach myself web development. I had prior experience doing this in college so it was easy to pick up again. I did freelance for about 6 months, finding clients on Craigslist before getting a full time job paying $55k in 2007. By 2011 I was making $110k, and by 2015 I was making $175k as director of engineering at a startup.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a former English teacher and school director, and I created FreeCodeCamp.com two years ago specifically to help people transition into web development as a career. We have a large community of career-changers, more than 5,000 of whom have now gotten their first developer job.</comment>


Ask HN: Password Schema Site - <AUTHOR> Do I have a special character? Do I need numbers? An uppercase character?<p>Is there a site that tracks all the, often ridiculous, password schemas in use on different websites? <comment><AUTHOR> I've started a repo here [https://github.com/17twenty/password- schemas](https://github.com/17twenty/password-schemas)

Hopefully we can get something going

</comment><comment><USER2> this would be awesome as extension. in 99% when i dont know my password it is because the website defines some special rules which my personal shema does not include.

<comment><AUTHOR> Last two days I've been bitten by this for three web properties.

I tried a number of 'standard' passwords for one property wherein it locked me out, I then had to call a person who could reset the password.

On clicking the reset email link it was only then it told me what schema I had to comply with.

So stupid.</comment></comment>


What I Learnt From Reviewing 22 CVs - <AUTHOR> https://youknowfordevs.com/2020/07/04/what-i-learnt-from-reviewing-22-cvs.html <comment><USER3> >And although I'm not particularly a big fan of LinkedIn, I always quite like it when I see people who are at the early stages of their career making connections with everyone they met at last night's Meetup.

To me this shows people who are more concerned about networking than learning. I want co-workers who are passionate about technology and not about how to hack their careers.

edit: More broadly the best engineers I've worked with had horrible social profiles because they were concerned about making things and learning rather than social credits.

<comment><USER4> >> To me this shows people who are more concerned about networking than learning.

I've always thought of a conference as something to plant the seeds of ideas in your head. There isn't a lot of detail and you might be one of 100 other people in the room so you can't really ask about details.

Following up with the speaker or other attendees after the fact is where the benefits are.

I don't mind a developer that says "I'm not sure how to do that, but _____ said they did something similar, let's give them a call."

<comment><USER5> Lurking the ten minute post-talk scrum at the front of the room is the best part of conferences for me. 'Ah damn, they are running into the exact same issue we are'...trade some ideas and contact info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > One final thing has just occurred to me…I didn't consider the qualifications > of _anyone_ , which I imagine is down to the role that the CVs were for. > You'd certainly be interested in degrees and PhDs if you were hiring a data > scientist or someone to write an operating system; in these spaces theory is > a major element. But for fast-moving technologies like front-end > development, you can probably tell everything about a person from their > experience.

This feels like a prime example of why applying for programming jobs as a new- grad is so frustrating. You spend five years getting an MSE degree and then the recruiters just ignore your application because you don't have any previous work experience.

edit: Parts of this blog post also reminded me of this awful tweet from a senior recruiter at Blizzard [1].

 _" I've asked this in interviews at Blizzard for 30 years: What do you program at home? Many answer they don't have time. Wrong. Program at home. Every day. If you don't have that passion, programming is not really for you. Write small games. Do game jams. #gamejobs"_

The "you're not a real/good programmer unless you program as a hobby" sentiment really needs to die.

[1] [https://i.redd.it/jgiy4rw2ug751.png](https://i.redd.it/jgiy4rw2ug751.png)

<comment><USER7> > This feels like a prime example of why applying for programming jobs as a > new-grad is so frustrating.

Or how when you've a decade or two of experience and self-directed learning but no fancy degree. Apply to any coveted job and resume is in the first group sent straight to the trash.

It's as if we have no idea how to hire developers. ;-)

<comment><USER8> > It's as if we have no idea how to hire developers. ;-)

Indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > I want to be with people [...] who have weekend projects, or who are > contributing bug fixes back to open source projects.

These are two sides of the same problem. I happened to be in both kind of shoes in the past but this is why hiring is fucked up in tech, I believe. This sentence implies someone is expected to work more than they are paid for if they want to be recognized at something. That's ridiculous. The brightest and most talented engineers I ever worked with in the last 20 years had families with kids (I don't, for the record) and were many years in their careers already, who got offline during the weekend enjoying dinners, doing whatever non-tech stuff and posting only personal content online, sharing it with non- work friends.

If you want me to contribute with bug fixes to OSS while I am doing something else of personal value or have neat weekend projects to post on HN then pay me to do so or at least have the decency of not expectating my own life to revolve around what you think it should. These... "projects"... take time and, deities forbid it, I'm doomed in screenings if I don't share the same passion for engineering projects on late weekend nights as you because you are biased?

Hiring folks, through tech managers' perspectives, talk about freedom but they expect others to exercise their own liberty in accordance to what the company think is best, it seems. Bullshit.

<comment><USER10> Nobody every asks "so, how many sales gigs do you do on the sides, during weekends?" or "oh, how many teams do you lead/mentors, during the weekends?"

All this BS "weekend-extra-open-source-labour-tax" must be borne by the members opting for tech streams. The innate, simple truth is that all that "weekend extra effort" is a way to see if the person can take up more work off hours without so much of a complaint and not demand overtime pay - in the name of "passion".

Passion is overrated. There are many who play the passion card, while trying to showcase their role-playing fantasies in a very skewed way. Hiring based on such appearances is at best just a gamble. There are many such "social profiles" which are either crafted for befooling the spectators, or inane content which just about passes the "100 for effort! value, best left unsaid!" types.

<comment><USER8> > Passion is overrated

"Passionate employees" seems to be code for "compliant human robots willing to sacrifice their personal lives, health and sanity for the company's bottom line, and to work extensive overtime without compensation while we recruit their cheaper replacements."

<comment><USER11> I dunno, it doesn't always mean that (though I have encountered this kind of abuse).

Passion for what someone does is awesome, in that they'll actually notice (and speak up) when sh*t is messed up. I love working with people who care about this stuff.

It's entirely orthogonal to whether or not they have side-projects, so I would always try and get signal for this in the interview itself, rather than looking for a GitHub or whatnot (although I almost always look at someone's code when it's on their CV, which isn't all that common in data science).

<comment><USER10> > I love working with people who care about this stuff.

Yes, absolutely. However, when orgs start using that against the individual to drive down pay or eke out more from the person, is when that show starts becoming to cliched and downright exploitative.

A civil engineer who is good at what he does and loves construction will not (easily) let anyone in his team have wrong proportions of concrete and sand, cause he understands the ramifications. But that passion in him towards the trade should in no way be constitued by his employer as a notion indicating that he could work for lesser pay cause "he seems to be loving that work anyway, so that actually is a perk!" (IT IS NOT!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Recently worked with someone who... gotta say, it was a bit strange after a while. We're all remote, but he had no picture of himself, ever. Now... granted - there may actually be some visual reason - some disfigurement, for example - that the person is self-conscious of (hadn't originally thought of it).

However - we had no social media profile at all for this person. No pics of the person, alone or with friends.

We had no programming profile - no bitbucket/github/etc. I did find, later, a couple of public bug fixes from 2014 (this was in 2020) attached to this person, but no pic or any other work to tie it to.

The person was no more than a voice on a phone/webex.

It was just a strange experience, because the rest of the team - <USER2> another 6 people or so - all had some degree of personal whatever - picture, blog, repo, camera during Webex for facial expressions.

Over time, it was just... odd. Then ... off. The person was recently let got from the project, but had communicated some weird stuff to me in private, which was troubling (moreso to have been told in the first place, because then I have to make a decision how to act on it).

I completely agree that we don't have to live online 24/7, people should have separation between work/life, we shouldn't judge people just based on a GitHub profile, and private life can (and should) be private. But taken to an extreme, where you end up just working with a faceless voice... had its drawbacks.

<comment><USER13> > but he had no picture of himself, ever. Now... granted - there may actually > be some visual reason - some disfigurement, for example - that the person is > self-conscious of (hadn't originally thought of it).

> However - we had no social media profile at all for this person. No pics of > the person, alone or with friends.

People who are fleeing domestic abuse or controlling parents may have very locked down social media profiles, and may even be using different names for different parts of their life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author says he would ignore a nice looking resume for c++ developers but not frontend developers. This is only because he's consciously aware of it.

When I used to look for jobs, I was one of the only to use LaTeX and it was most definitely a point of discussion when I was called in.

Sadly the LaTeX resume templates now look like something out of MS Word.

So whether or not you're a frontend Dev, every non cringy thing you can do to stand out is important.

<comment><USER15> I used to use a LaTeX resume until a recruiter told me their ATS couldn't scan it properly :(

<comment><USER16> Don't know why but I've had much better luck with XeTeX and resume scanning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Imagine, biases like "good formatting => better; no typos => better; social profiles => better;" etc being put within an AI/ML based resume parser, with an intent to mimic human behaviour of sourcing a resume out of a bundle of resumes, and scoring against a job description. Now, what might go wrong, when

\- more such biases creep in to the models, thanks to groupthink, multiple developers/groups and their biases

\- such systems end up gating the applicants before a human view is cast on the resume

This is happening now, at scale. And only a very few in the industry seem to be really tuned about such dangerous bias perpetuation engines.

</comment><comment> vincent-manis I'm retired now, so thankfully don't have to look at CVs any more. I was a university/college instructor, so over the years I reviewed many, many CVs of applicants for computer science teaching positions. Some comments on the blog post and the other comments here.

a) If I saw a CV with a picture, I'd call up HR and ask why they let the picture through. Pictures, and even names, give information that can be (and has been) used to discriminate on racial and gender grounds, among others. I always wanted to hire the best candidate, based on track record. Pictures provide no useful information here.

b) When I got the CVs, I'd look primarily at what they say the applicant has done, rather than formal qualifications. CVs then went into 3 piles: worth interviewing, worth interviewing if nobody in the previous group pans out, not worth interviewing. I would tend to give each CV about 1 minute of attention in doing this, because in my experience the interview tells you a lot more than the CV.

A CV is primarily for getting one's foot in the door, and announcing interest in the position.

My alltime favorite CV was one I reviewed for hiring a successor when I was leaving a university teaching position. The job posting specified "Masters or PhD in computer science required". The applicant's CV detailed some very low- level education in a field completely distant from computer science. The cover letter said "I recognize that I may not have all the background needed for this position. If so, could you please tell me where I could get it."

</comment><comment><USER17> All of the biases present in the article are why I avoid reading CVs (leaving it to recruiters) and focus on an interview process that demonstrates whether you have what we need.

<comment><AUTHOR> the thing that I found interesting about it is he's a developer who was told to look over CVs, and these are the feelings he noticed himself having after looking over 22 of them.

Given that makes me wonder what it's like for HR looking over CVs, gotta be worse I figure, and if I wouldn't have the same reaction - I mean sure, I don't believe you need a LinkedIn account, GitHub account etc. but if I see a bunch of resumes and one doesn't have it will I be able to see that point as inessential or will it make me cautious.

We all like to talk a good game about how we would handle hiring, but maybe we wouldn't handle it as well as we hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Glad to see others bringing up concerns about the obsession with extracurricular learning in the industry. It's pressure on people to do work at home, cleverly worded to not sound like a requirement. Yes, in depth learning takes a lot of time and is needed to become a better engineer, but that qualifies as WORK which should be compensated for, just like how delivering features is work. Throughout my career I have actively encouraged teammates to slow down and really understand problem domains, because the industry default they tend to be used to is to rush to completion.

All that being said, you just have to play the game a little bit too if you want to maximize your hireability. Find some dumb errors in doc sites for popular projects to check off the "OSS contributor" box. Have code in your GitHub account be public, hell just go fork some projects and never do anything with them, better than nothing and takes zero time. Add tasteful color and styling to your resume, etc. Feels superficial, it is! But in a competitive market it's worth it and all of the above is mostly one-off work, not a "code is my lifestyle" transformation. Be honest if asked about it though, don't lie about being a Rails core contributor because you forked Rails.

</comment><comment><USER19> People don't always use their real names on their stack overflow and github acccounts, I certainly don't.

</comment><comment><USER20> This: >typos really jump out at you when you are looking at a lot of CVs

I've seen a couple of CVs professionally and I've helped a few friends with theirs and it really leaves me with a bad taste when I see spelling/typo mistakes. Perhaps it's my OCD with symmetry and order :-)

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, all the emotion in the comments, what's going on? I thought it was a pretty balanced observation and clearly a personal opinion, not a "39 ways to find the perfect candidate" type of post.

</comment><comment><USER22> "A public Git account" \- that is not really a well-defined concept. Did you mean GitHub? Open source software exists outside of GitHub. If we want to be pedantic, even outside of Git.

<comment><USER23> A static site hosting a git server with your projects could be considered a "Git account" of sorts

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> FWIW, recently I had to interview a fair number of candidates and screen their CVs. The point made about having a github profile definitely resonates with me. With the small caveat that if it was empty, I considered it silly to put something on your CV that you're not using. For frontend developers some kind of portfolio also stands out, and many did seem to have some.

I know it's bias and many good developers don't have side projects. It's just my "gut reaction" towards the CVs.

<comment><USER25> Identifies bias. Changes nothing.

Snarky comment aside, that's the challenge that even if you see a flawed thinking in yourself it's hard to change your bias. We give ourselves a pass too often.

Maybe we shouldn't be so forgiving.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, it's something I catch myself doing all the time too, confirming a bias I have but then just moving on anyway. As if confirming the bias somehow made it okay to just have it.

<comment><USER24> In the moment itself I manage to move away from the bias - but a lot of times it probably happens subconsciously.

It's tricky to overcome, not sure if it is even possible to overcome it entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We know that having people vouch for you goes a much longer way than self- reported accomplishments on a resume. I keep wondering why isn't there a platform where your specific accomplishments in a job are validated by your former co-workers? Effectively, a peer-validated resume. Not LI style testimonials but more specific like say "yes, Jack worked on this feature and did a great job!"

<comment><USER27> It's because such a system will be gamed by the networkers, not the most competent. The people who are vouched for most will be the people who are most shameless about asking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> 22 CV's.

Anyone doing hiring would love if their life only involved 22 cv's. I'd interview half of them :)

If you hire regularly at least in some fields, the total flood of cv's is a bit crazy (obviously something is scraping and auto or one click submitting them).

</comment><comment><USER8> > There were other technologies that were similarly indicative, such as > mention of 'microservices

I will never mention microservices on my CV. Except maybe as an anti-pattern that I can assist with avoiding.

</comment><comment><USER29> >an important criteria

In a section of the article about typos, this is annoying to see.

</comment><comment><USER30> Resumes are a marketing document with a heavy focus on signalling, simply because you can't stuff much in there.

</comment><comment><USER31> just another knowitallogist

</comment><comment><USER32> > I want to be with people that are sharing links to things they've read, > people who are trying out new technologies and languages, people who have > weekend projects, or who are contributing bug fixes back to open source > projects.

I hate this culture in software engineering. There are many excellent engineers out there who work to live, rather than live to work. Why do we have this expectation that programmers want to spend every waking second coding something? I'd hire someone who appears to have balance in their life with other interests and hobbies besides computers (all other things being equal).

<comment><USER33> Let's be honest. The guy reviewed 22 CVs and went to write a blog post about it.

I have interviewed hundreds of candidates, not just red their CVs (typically around 1 candidate a week for the past 15 years, currently 3 candidates a week on average).

What I have learned is to be very cautious when looking through CVs lest you select for candidates who can make good looking CVs.

I have met many nice and competent people who don't write blog post and who can't make nice CV. They don't make projects for show because they have enough work at... work and they don't do ten other projects because they want to focus where it really matters for them. They might have other non-technical hobbies like riding a bike or picking up girls at the bar. They may not feel the need to impose their interests and thoughts on everybody else or they might think their thoughts and experiences are not at all valuable to general public.

A person who writes blog posts, for-show github repos, who creates public image, is just one of many types of developers. If you select for this you are missing out on many excellent people.

<comment><USER34> But issue is the people you are talking about rarely gets noticed.

<comment><USER35> I don't know about that, most of the people I've ever worked with (and hired or helped hire) seems to fall in to the category of not writing blogs, etc. A silent majority, if you will. I may well be wrong of course, and I don't doubt that being better at marketing gets you noticed more easily but that's not the same as everyone else rarely getting noticed.

<comment><USER33> Exactly.

Not every act of noticing must be noticed by general public, if that makes sense.

You might be doing a good job and get promoted and be part of 99.9% of population who will never make headlines.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


10 Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before I Started Teaching Differential Equations - <AUTHOR> https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/lg5/Rota.pdf <comment><USER2>
        Some thirty or so years ago, Bessel functions were included
        in the syllabus, but in our day they are out of the question.

lolwut? Maybe it's just a physics thing, but _most_ of the differential equations we solved in college needed Bessel functions of some sort (usually because of cylindrical/spherical symmetry).

</comment><comment><USER3> Educational essay worth the read.</comment>


Ask HN: HIPAA hosting provider - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone have any experience or suggestions with a HIPAA compliant hosting provider they could share?<p>How much can one expect to pay for a HIPAA cloud host? <comment><USER2> I regret that I cannot answer this question in the way you have phrased it, because you can't just check a box and say that a cloud host is suddenly HIPAA compliant or not. There are various procedural safeguards which you'll need, the absence of which will make any technical safeguards irrelevant from a compliance perspective. For example, one of the requirements is that you have a nominated HIPAA officer, another is that you have a written policy to discipline employees who abuse patient health information. You need both of these things regardless of whether your host makes certain aspects of compliance with the Security Rule easier.

About those things: HIPAA was apparently drafted by Congressional aides, not by technologists, so the Security Rule establishes a bunch of checkboxes which have eff all relevance to my main concerns as a systems engineer about application security.

For example, HIPAA and the assorted guidance is, as far as I know, totally silent on what this:

 _Do you have procedures for creating, changing, and safeguarding passwords?_

actually means when the bcrypt hits the road. I'm pretty sure that "Yes, we do. We enforce 8 character maximum passwords, they have to be changed every 3 weeks and 1 day except when the anniversary date falls on a Tuesday, and they are secured in our database by ROT13, an advanced encryption technology." is facially compliant as long as you have written it down somewhere. There is very little in terms of either best practices or safe harbors.

This is a long way to say that you probably can't take an application and HIPAA-ify it by writing a check to a hosting provider.

Given that you have the procedural and technical safeguards in place, I'm personally of the opinion (and feel free to check with your lawyer) that the right words, procedures, and application-level security features make it possible to host HIPAA-compliant applications on most common cloud providers.

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, yadda yadda.

<comment><USER3> My impression at a distance is that the act of outsourcing may open a new can of worms when it comes to HIPPA. Is that consistent with your understanding?

<comment><USER2> We are now approaching the territory of "Seemingly simple questions it is maddeningly difficult to get a straight answer on", but I have discussed this with multiple lawyers, often experts at HIPAA under the employ of enterprise clients, and "You don't own the hardware?" has never been a dealbreaker for them.

YMMV. Ask a lawyer if you want to sleep better at night.

I will close with the observation that, empirically, the system that you and I come up with is OMGWTFROFLSTOMP more secure than what passes for state-of-the- art at many of our clients. ("We didn't want the data to be stored in a database, because that isn't secure, so _just think of worse places to put data because I think I 've heard them all_.")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Windows Azure and AWS both support HIPAA compliance

[http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/trust- center/compl...](http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/trust- center/compliance/)

[http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2009/04/06/whitepa...](http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2009/04/06/whitepaper-hipaa/)

I know a couple of things regarding HIPAA compliance, first-most you need a very high level of security on the transport layer (I believe it's 256 bits AES or higher for SSL - some spout that 128 bits is sufficient, but effectively a standard SSL certificate doesn't cut it). The second is HIPAA compliance is multi-part (see [http://luxsci.com/blog/what-makes-a-web-site- hipaa-secure.ht...](http://luxsci.com/blog/what-makes-a-web-site-hipaa- secure.html)) and the infrastructure can only support HIPAA compliance (ex. if you're using AWS S3), but your application is responsible for the implementation thereof.

Your application cannot be branded to be HIPAA compliant simply because your infrastructure supports it. You'll have to go through the requirements list in order to construct your infrastructure to support it and then enforce the rules on the application and systems thereof (at least via unit/behavioral testing). You cannot really prove your application is compliant without proper test cases that enforce the rules.</comment>


Why Leo Traynor's troll story may be a lie - <AUTHOR> http://www.resistradio.com/news/questioning-the-trollocaust-did-leotraynor-really-suffer-vile-hate-campaign <comment><USER2> "Almost certainly" seems like a stretch.

\- The arguments regarding Traynor's behavior on Twitter carry absolutely no water with me and sound like totally average behavior. It's not very intuitive that only people you follow can message you.

\- Police in America frequently decline to investigate things like harassment and petty theft in favor of spending their time elsewhere. I don't know about Ireland, but it seems very unsurprising (if disappointing) that they would ignore his complaint.

The only compelling reason to disbelieve anything is the whole home address discovery thing, which does seem very strange. Although it's possible that there was some convenient coincidence that permitted the identification, probably that part of the story was embellished or false somehow. (edit: After looking at replies, I changed my mind, I think it's more likely mostly true. There's a lot of plausible avenues of discovery given the length of the alleged abuse.)

The rest, however, seems very conventional and I don't see a good reason to disbelieve it.

<comment><USER3> _It's not very intuitive that only people you follow can message you._

But after you've received some hate messages, it also sounds like the kind of thing that you'd learn pretty quickly.

In other words if you're making up a story, it is the kind of detail that you'd not noticed you'd gotten wrong. But if you're actually harassed, it is the kind of thing that wouldn't keep happening to you for years.

Seems like a good reason to conclude that the story is made up.

As for home address discovery, that bothered me far less. If I had tracked someone down to 3 IPs, one of which was close, I'd go looking for evidence that there was a personal connection. One of the standard things that I would think of is to look through all received emails, and look for the IP address there.

That would indeed track it down reasonably reliably to a specific household without any need for a court order. And if the person that I did this for didn't understand what I did, confused explanations about how it was done are only to be expected.

<comment><USER4> > But after you've received some hate messages, it also sounds like the kind > of thing that you'd learn pretty quickly.

He can't know in advance if he has a troll following him, and he likes to reciprocate followers. Should he, in a sense, penalize followers because of a troll?

I don't see anything in the original story about the delay between July 2009 and making his twitter account private. Is there anything to think it was years rather than weeks?

<comment><USER5> This makes no sense at all to me. If you're getting 2-3 people a day following you, and then sending you hateful DMs when you follow back, you seriously keep refollowing random people who will presumably be harassing you? It's not punishing anyone to put a bit of an effort in to seeing if the person seems legit before following them back.

<comment><USER4> If you have 20 new people a day following you and 2-3 are trolls, I'd still do it. No troll is going to make me change my polite behavior with other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author of this article is almost certainly trolling.

It's perfectly logical that the victim would change his Twitter behavior even after discovering the identity of the harasser. If your car were stolen but then recovered and the thief arrested, would you stop locking it? After all, the threat has been eliminated...

Just because you cannot traceroute an IP to a physical address doesn't mean you can't determine where an IP is being used with a high degree of confidence. If the parents were indeed friends of the victim, any email correspondence sent from their home connection would include their IP in the headers.

The biggest flaw however is that there is no plausible motive given for the victim to lie. Sure, it's possible that he lied, but why would he?

<comment><USER7> 0\. He didn't change his behavior during the abuse, when he could have trivially stopped it by unfollowing. If your car was stolen, would you keep the loaner unlocked before your car was even recovered?

1\. Only if they use non webmail

2\. To sell a story. The default assumption should always be that tales like this are false or at least extremely embellished.

<comment><USER8> Wait... am I supposed to assume all blog posts are false? Certainly an interesting way to live. I'll start with your comment.

<comment><USER9> If there is one coincidence to make you question the authenticity of the author - nah.

If there are several coincidences, then this leads to a pattern of behavior to which a motive can be questioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is copied in its entirety from:

[http://www.resistradio.com/news/questioning-the- trollocaust-...](http://www.resistradio.com/news/questioning-the-trollocaust- did-leotraynor-really-suffer-vile-hate-campaign)

as admitted in the intro. Why link to a copy instead of the original?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I'm functioning on little sleep and managed to miss that.

If one of the mods could change the URL to point to the original I'd be grateful.

<comment><USER11> Why did you post this analysis?

No, really, I'm curious. What drove you to do this?

Who _cares_ whether he's lying? (And _why_ do you care?)

<comment><USER12> I care if he's lying because his story was re-printed in The Guardian, where I read it, as truth. If it's not a true story, it's wrong to present it as such.

<comment><USER11> _If it's not a true story, it's wrong to present it as such._

But _why_? Can you (or someone) please articulate what exactly is so bad about it?

Some of the best and most influential stories in human history were precisely that: lies presented as truth. Were the authors "bad" for doing this? At what point does it become bad? (And why?)

<comment><USER12> Hey look buddy, I'm an engineer; that means I solve problems. Not problems like 'Why is lying wrong?', because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. I solve practical problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only strong case here is in the IP address geo-identification.

Traynor could identify them if he were to cross validate the IP address location with a list of known friends and family - people of whom would have Traynor's personal address.

But Traynor should have suspected his friend - not his friend's teenage son. That's the part of the story that doesn't add up.

<comment><USER13> Depends on what the "IT Genius" tried.

For example, IP addresses (even internal unroutable ones) are frequently passed along in email headers. If he was able to find an IP and an email sent by his friend in the same timeframe, that would be a good correlation. I've done this on occasion when someone's external IP has dynamically changed but they sent email, in order to fix VPN connections.

Pinning it on the son is the stretch here.

<comment><USER9> Even with the IP address from the header, which geolocation service did he use to pinpoint the street address?

If it's like most ISPs, this IP address is subject to change every couple of days, so this IP location service would need to be updated with personal addresses, across the globe, that often.

<comment><USER14> I have a "dynamic" IP address from Cox, it has changed three times in six years.

<comment><USER9> Anecdotal, but did you request the static IP? I can't imagine Cox handing those out like Pez.

<comment><USER14> I think that's the point.

Cox (and my understanding many other ISPs as well) CHARGE for static IPs, but give out dynamic IPs that basically never change because it is actually just easier for them to set the service up that way.

The few times the IP address changed was when they did an upgrade at their site, a very long outage, and I think a time when an installer screwed up a neighbors installation.

I cannot guarantee my address tonight will be what it is now, but the reality is, it will be.

I believe (stress no real evidence of this) that my home router tries to give out the same IP addresses to the same MAC addresses. I say this because after I reboot the router, my various machines will pop up at the same IP addresses they had before (and none of them are Apple products known to do this on purpose.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just to add a bit more fuel to the fire, while a reasonable skepticism should always be well, reasonable, I think it takes a lot of chutzpah to so directly out and out call this fake given the sparsity of the argument as it is.

Compare this to skepticism over ElevatorGate.

FWIW, here's a woman at skepchick expressing doubt that Leo even exists: [http://skepchick.org/2012/10/leo-traynor-anti-semitism- and-t...](http://skepchick.org/2012/10/leo-traynor-anti-semitism-and-the- sticky-problem-of-facts/)

<comment><USER15> Someone should send her a link to Derailing for Dummies. Questioning his account of the events is dangerously close to blaming the victim, derailing the argument from the cause discussing anti-Semitism, and forms a pattern of discouragement against people who come forward as the victims of trolling. This is NOT ok.

<comment><USER16> And that is why the concept of "derailing" is BS. The position of the speaker as member of an oppressed class means that you must accept their claims on faith. To question them in any way is "NOT ok". Adopting this policy means that no rational person should believe anything that comes from a group with such ground rules.

<comment><USER17> You've missed the point entirely.

If I told you I had a sandwich the other day, your skepticism meter wouldn't suddenly kick in. You wouldn't ask me how much I paid or intimate that I don't know what a sandwich is. If I told you a crazy guy yelled at me on the bus in the city, you wouldn't ask me whether maybe I misunderstood, or start going through my social network postings to confirm/deny that I took the bus to work the other day.

Yet suddenly you're skeptical when someone claims to have experienced discrimination or bigotry, you're full speed ahead on skepticism? Take nothing as given? Come on.

This might not apply to _you personally_ , but that dynamic is why the term was invented. Esp. with white male nerds, they find their skepticism often, it seems, when minorities, et al, talk about experiences outside the typical white male's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank you for posting this. I thought the story was fishy too. Hopefully everyone reading this knows you can't generally trace an IP to an exact home address without help from the ISP.

People are WAY too eager to explain that away with "oh he must have cross checked it with his registry of friends IP addresses." Nope. As the article notes, Traynor said the method his "IT friend" used was "almost identical" to ipttackeronline.com, which does not provide exact addresses.

Great point about the police procedure for handling credible death threats, too. We don't even have to get into the twitter stuff.

Why would he lie? For attention and sympathy, of course. People do it all the time.

<comment><USER19> Easy to trace an IP to the ISP that owns it and often an area of a country via naming schemes.

Not a huge step from there to think "Wait, x uses ISP Y and lives in Z" before burrowing through emails or checking blog comments, etc. Could be that two people were commenting from the same IP, but with different devices which suggested the son rather than the friend could be responsible.

<comment><USER18> Problem is he didn't do that critical second step, the "burrowing through emails or checking blog comments" for something that links the IP to a friend.

He made the mistake of responding to the criticism of his story's technical implausability by claiming his friend used a procedure of looking up the IP location on a general web database. But those only resolve to ISP-level geolocation, not user-level, as the very post he linked to was later updated to admit.

Would have been better for him to keep quiet and let us all keep imagining exotic solutions.

<comment><USER19> I must've missed where he claimed that he didn't do those things? Their specific methods were always suggested to be something "like x" rather than exactly like it.

Further, he didn't need a method that worked at identifying all people (as tripped up 90% of people in the linked explanation), just this particular one.

I run a forum and often try to identify/discourage PITAs. Sometimes just tracing an IP reveals nothing but the ISP and location/exchange, sure, but other times it'll give me an employer and so on. Trace an IP, get something like accessplus.weblink.telstra.net, recognise your pal's Access Plus business name and you're on your way.

Revealing the method goes some way towards informing future trolls of tricks available to them.

To me, it seemed that the mysterious method referenced was half about luring the troll away from Twitter/etc to a place where they could directly record the IP address. The rest came from there.

Picking out something like this to discredit the entire account is very rough, IMO, and I flagged this story FWIW.

<comment><USER18> He said it was his friend's house, not a workplace, so your theory is pretty weak.

He didn't say his IT wizard did something "like" geolocating the ISP, he said it was "almost identical" to geolocating the ISP.

Furthermore if there were some magical additional steps or wonderous circumstance that did bridge the gap between ISP-level geolocation and personal home address, he has absolutely no reason not to spell them out.

Unless he's lying.

You know, what's really fascinating about this whole thing is not why this guy would fabricate a dramatic story about him confronting a troll. That's easy to understand. It's why some people have such a powerful need to believe it. So much that they bend over backwards to find some exotic explanation around all the holes, rather than seeing them for what they are.

<comment><USER19> People run businesses from home. I outlined a reason someone wouldn't spell out specific details and others have written more too.

Will leave you to it, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is more of an aside than a comment specific to the article.

Over the past year I've felt that the term "troll" is increasingly being confused with what would have been called "griefing" back in my gaming days. My early encounters with trolling were that it was your fairly basic ribbing of friends, nothing particularly malicious. Nowadays, anything and everything seems to be labelled as trolling when I feel that the circumstances with malicious intent would be better labelled as griefing. Not only do I think griefing is a more apt description for the behaviour being associated with trolling, I think it allows for a distinction between harmless fun and out-to- cause-harm when describing activity on the internet.

Proper distinction between the two modes would, imo, help keep frames of reference and hopefully prevent knee-jerk reactions to what is currently labelled as trolling affecting a more wide variety of interactions.

Also, it would probably help a lot when the next newbie asks you what "trolling" means as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> If someone was sending me DMs that would mean I had followed them.

If I somehow had three IP addresses to general locations, I would wonder who I had followed in those general locations.

If in one of those locations a friend of mine lived, I might wonder and then check my email to see what IP addresses had been captured there.

</comment><comment><USER4> Strange logic or comprehension problem. How did the author go from "does not work in all cases" to does not work at all? Is he really ready to stake his reputation on the claim that an IP address can NEVER lead to an individual's home address?

"(NOTE: this does not work in all cases but even a general location is a piece in the puzzle when tracking a troll.) The late addition of this note to 'Tracking a troll' only confirms what has just been explained in this article – that an IP address does not enable you to identify an individual's home address. An author whose article was specifically referenced by Traynor as 'proof' of his home address claim, has had to admit that the method given in his article does not actually allow you to identify someone's home address"

</comment><comment><USER21> Jesus, how much time went into "investigating" this? This is really, really long.

We all enjoyed the story, and it sounded plausible enough. It had character depth. It had (kind of) redemption, and forgiveness. It had a boy in an awkward position that we could _tut tut_ at.

Who gives a shit if it's embellished?

</comment><comment><USER22> When Twitter first started many people auto-followed back anyone who followed them. There were apps to make this easy; I never did, but it was pretty common and was how conversations would take place. Twitter dynamics have changed significantly since the time period he was talking about.

</comment><comment><USER23> I always get suspicious when I hear the term "almost certainly."</comment>


Help Shut the Government's Surveillance Backdoors - <AUTHOR> https://shutthebackdoor.net/ <comment><USER2> The NSA doesn't obey laws. Or, more precisely, we don't know if they obey laws.

Or, when we think a law limits their behavior, it will be challenged, where 'challenged' means ignored until it is discovered, then tried in secret.

Functionally, laws don't matter here. Their existence, and their content, are not predictive of the NSA's behavior.

<comment><USER3> > Or, more precisely, we don't know if they obey laws.

Do you _know_ that any agency in the U.S. obeys laws? Do you verify this everyday, across the entirety of the USG?

That was always the striking thing to me about these leaks as compared to the NSA investigated by the Church Committee, is that in this case you see an NSA actually trying to comply with the law. This is why MUSCULAR is only overseas, or why only phone metadata was being collected, and only after legal approval by FISC _and_ the FAA by Congress in 2011, and why all their slides talk about "USPERs" and non-USPERs.

If you want change in what NSA is permitted to do then the law is a _great_ place to start. If nothing else it would make it clear to the rank-and-file NSA employee (the same ones Snowden went to bat for on his NBC interview) that there are new, _clear_ boundaries instead of reliance on court orders and Supreme Court precedents.

<comment><USER4> NSA trying to comply with laws? What? No. Trying to comply with US laws maybe. The rest of us out here that make up the majority of the world have the NSA breaking our laws with impunity. We don't get a say or a vote, we just get to hear the anguished cries of Americans worried that US laws may have been broken.

<comment><USER3> > The rest of us out here that make up the majority of the world have the NSA > breaking our laws with impunity.

When the rest of the world starts upholding things like First and Second Amendment principles even for their own citizens, I will worry more about the U.S. reciprocating by extending Fourth Amendment principles to those who seek to harm the people of the U.S.

But that is still a long ways off it seems. Are women in takfiri-controlled areas able to freely protest or even attend schools yet?

The ironic thing is that you say you don't even "get a say", but you do. Our President has had to focus attention on _foreign intelligence programs_ to try and appease _non-American_ audiences, precisely _because_ of the fact that non-Americans "get a say", which is something that the Chinese and Russian leadership will never have to worry about. Do you protest SORM to Putin? If you've _ever_ (directly or indirectly) used a .ru site, or a site hosted in Russia, you should.

<comment><USER5> > I will worry more about the U.S. reciprocating by extending Fourth Amendment > principles to those who seek to harm the people of the U.S.

Fourth Amendment (and Fifth Amendment) protections protect the US from a government _pretending_ to be protecting them from "people who seek to harm the people of the US" without actually doing so.

While the direct targets are the most obvious victims of denials of due process protections, the more significant victim is the public at large -- due process protections increase the cost of security theater so as to limit the extent to which it is easier for the government to cut corners and engage in show punishments of scapegoats for propaganda purposes rather than do the hard work of finding the real guilty parties.

And for real, organized, enemies against which legal process is inadequate, well, that's what declarations of war against specific enemies. But permanent, open-ended, unconstrained war -- and arbitrary executive use of war- appropriate processes -- against whomever the current executive thinks might be a threat is another thing altogether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is unthinkably strange that this "call to action" does not include a link to the full text of the ammendment. Why do the organizers think that it would not be useful for people to read the ammendment that they are urging support of? Is it too complex for my feeble mind to comprehend? Or am I assumed to be so sheeplike that I will blindly support something merely because the page casts the ammendment as "anti-NSA"?

From what I can tell the page is urging support for: [http://amendments- rules.house.gov/amendments/LOFGRE_05551914...](http://amendments- rules.house.gov/amendments/LOFGRE_055519141339143914.pdf)

Ms. Lofgren also has ammendment regarding mandated backdoors in chips, firmware and tech standards: [http://amendments- rules.house.gov/amendments/LOFGRE_05651914...](http://amendments- rules.house.gov/amendments/LOFGRE_056519141329382938.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good call, we'll add a link to the amendment now. The amendment was only made public this morning so we didn't have it when we were making the site last night. The whole site was made in about 16 hours, so apologies it's not more fully-baked.

Edit: Link added.

Edit: Just re-reading your comment. We definitely don't think you're sheep- like or feeble-minded. In fact, quite the opposite. It was simply an accidental omission.

<comment><USER6> I appreciate your candor and response and I apologize if it seems like I am picking on you. The truth is that this omission seems to be the norm, so these comments should not be read as directed at you but at online activists in general.[^1]

In my opinion there seems to be a problem of priorities and perspective. The goal is not "making a site" instead it should be "creating an awareness /advocacy campaign." When viewed from this perspective collecting materials for citizen education is the first step, or "1\. Register domain, 2. Collect materials for education" and at the very least "X. Collect materials, X+1. Launch site."

[^1]: The most recent that I can remember: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7841903](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7841903)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem is that this fight is only about a small, very small part of the equation. It's the entire Black Budget we need to see shut down.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/special/national/black-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/special/national/black-budget/)

<comment><USER8> You aren't seriously suggesting that _all_ secret funding be cancelled, or made public? What about the huge number of legitimately secret projects that _must_ be funded covertly to prevent adversaries discovering and exploiting defence and national security capabilities.

I think this debate has caused a lot of people to wrongly equate 'secret' with 'evil' or 'immoral' and 'unethical, which is not the case. Look at the specifics, don't make unjustified sweeping generalisations...

<comment><USER9> At the risk of asking an unanswerable question, what kind of "legitimately secret projects" do you think must remain funded by a covert budget?

<comment><USER10> The kind that are completely incompatible with an open, democratic society, obviously.

The fundamental problem is that any secrecy sufficient to hide weakness from an adversary can also hide corruption from the beneficiary. We literally cannot tell the difference between the cost of running a legitimate defense operation and the cost of all the director's cronies buying beach cocktails all morning, country club fees all afternoon, and hookers and blow all night.

If you look hard enough at just the publicly reported budget items, you can see worse! Corruption does not become less prevalent under a thicker layer of obfuscation!

And, obviously, if you write down on your budget that you need tax money to intentionally give Southern black men syphilis and then leave it untreated just so that you can see what happens to them, some people might have a problem with that. But then again, you might ask for tax money to kidnap and imprison people with Japanese ancestry until the war with Japan ends, and people would be too busy to notice it.

If giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenaged boys, adding secrecy is like putting a teenaged girl in the mix. Any rational parent would, quite sensibly, attempt to ensure that the boy only had access to, at most, one of those three things at any given time, because any two in combination inevitably results in utter disaster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just called Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, my rep from eastern WA. The woman who answered was quite pleasant, but didn't know anything about this amendment. She said that I was the first person to call about it, and that they needed more people like me who "pay attention". Since my rep is a far-right Republican, I'm hoping that she has enough libertarian in her to vote the right way.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't trust that passing new laws will do anything when existing law is being broken. Show me people being thrown in jail and I will believe they are serious.

<comment><USER13> This doesn't make it worthless. Making things more illegal increases the costs and the risks it makes the tools more fragile and decreases cooperation of the private sector.

It doesn't replace other approaches— changing the design of the services we use to make this kind of surveillance closer to a mathematical impossibility— but its still worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is certainly a lot of things that NSA may do, but the website references FISA 702, but doesn't understand it: [http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/topics/section-702](http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/topics/section-702)

This is not a back door but an order given to a US company AND the person CANNOT be in the US, regardless if the person is a US person or not.

<comment><USER3> > but the website references FISA 702, but doesn't understand it:

One of the very first Snowden leaks was a complete misunderstanding of the leaked program (PRISM), so why should it be shocking that FISA 702 is misunderstood here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is great and I hope that people do call their representatives, but I wonder if it would be more effective if the pro-privacy and civil rights demographic would organize on a more permanent basis to call representatives rather than on an issue-by-issue basis. To some extent, this describes the EFF and the ACLU, but I'm thinking more of ordinary people who understand that these kinds of reforms need to happen, but aren't interested in being a member of such an organization.

Each time a new bill starts making its way through Congressional committees someone spins up a new issue-specific website, which is good, but it seems like there must be a lot of overhead in organizing on an issue-specific basis and that a lot of work (collecting emails, convincing people that _this_ issue is worth their time to call, etc) is duplicated. Maybe individual grassroots political advocacy could even be incentivized in a "gamification" kind of way if it had a more permanent organizational structure with account or email records that persisted across issues? I don't really have anything concrete though; mostly I'm just thinking out loud.

<comment><USER16> > if it would be more effective if the pro-privacy and civil rights > demographic would organize on a more permanent basis to call representatives > rather than on an issue-by-issue basis.

EFF, and to a lesser extent the ACLU, has been doing this for over 20 years.

>more of ordinary people who understand that these kinds of reforms need to happen, but aren't interested in being a member of such an organization.

You don't need to be a member of EFF to sign up for their alerts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's great. I'm all for political advocacy, but we still need better technical safeguards and culture that eagerly uses them.

<comment><USER18> [https://pack.resetthenet.org](https://pack.resetthenet.org) does a good job at listing tools for citizens to use

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I got a confirmed yes from Anne Eshoo. Anyone else have a report?

</comment><comment><USER20> > _The amendment would block the NSA from using any of its funding..._

Why is the legislation is written to cut off funding as opposed to making the act itself illegal?

In fact, why not do both, i.e., deny the use of funds _and_ make the action (warrantless searches and backdoors) illegal?

</comment><comment><USER21> Done and done.

<comment><USER22> I think a little bit of bragging is good, it can create a bit of social pressure for others to act. More people should publicly share what they've done

So, your awesome, if I was a US citizen I would be calling right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Instead of laws and wishful thinking why don't people take action toward an alternative technology: [http://mailmarkup.org/value.xhtml](http://mailmarkup.org/value.xhtml)

You can tell the people who really care about this subject from those who just need something to whine about by looking at the contributions they make.

<comment><USER24> There isn't really an either-or here. Do both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does my call count if I'm not American but live in the US as a worker?

<comment><USER26> No. If you are not a US citizen, you don't have a vote, and therefore you do not have a representative in Congress.

That said… I doubt they have any capacity to actually check if callers are US citizens.

<comment><USER16> If you're a permanent resident (a "green card" holder) you can do something more effective than merely filling out a web form or phoning a congresscritter's aides. You can donate money to help the pro-privacy politicos (very few) or aid challengers to the anti-privacy politicos (many, but unlikely to succeed).

[http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/foreign.shtml](http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/foreign.shtml) "An immigrant may make a [political] contribution if he or she has a 'green card' indicating his or her lawful admittance for permanent residence in the United States."

The real way to do it, which I've written about occasionally for the last decade, is to identify the worst surveillance offenders of each major party. Narrow down the list to ones who are electorally vulnerable (this excludes Feinstein, for instance). You'll need to spend millions of dollars on ads reminding voters how thoroughly the incumbent disrespects the Constitution. Also encourage contributions to the incumbent's challenger. Only do this where you're likely to win. Committee chairmen would be ideal. Be thoroughly non- partisan and focused only on surveillance.

Once you do that, and have a Cantor-like upset against the pro-surveillance, anti-privacy incumbent, suddenly privacy will be taken far more seriously on Capitol Hill. Politicians will respond better to this than a useless $1,000 PAC contribution.</comment></comment></comment>


Gain in the number of syringes found in parks in the Bronx in recent years - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2018/05/21/junkies-are-filling-bronx-parks-with-over-5000-used-needles-a-week/ <comment><USER2> Am I crazy or does systematic tolerance (not legalization) of drug use yield more drug use? Or at least more demanding drug users?

Likewise, does systematic tolerance of homelessness yield more homelessness?

Seems like condoning these behaviors encourages more of the same, while at the same time allowing those who partake to push the envelope even further.

Anyone have insight on this? I couldn't find any studies that measure exactly what I'd like to measure.

<comment><USER3> I'm not an expert, but from my experience with addicts, intolerance pushes those suffering with addiction further underground, making it more difficult to engage the population in ways that could lead to meaningfully addressing the root problem instead of simply hiding it from view.

I understand, at least abstractly, the desire to paint the addict with the brush of moral failure, but as with the practical process of an individual getting sober, admitting the problem is the first step in overcoming it.

Until we accept this charge on a societal level—not just choosing whether or not to "condone" their suffering—nothing will meaningfully change.

And with overdoses killing more people than car accidents and guns in the United States, maybe the greater moral failure is ours?

<comment><USER2> That's interesting and I see your point.

While I realize addicts might be victims of circumstance and not just victims of their own bad choices, at some point we have to prioritize safety.

Are parks for tax payers and their children to enjoy the outdoors safely or are they a place to shoot up? It's an either or proposition because the two can't coexist.</comment></comment></comment>


What comes after Serverless? - <AUTHOR> https://arcentry.com/blog/what-comes-after-serverless/#embed <comment><USER2> I guess the question is, who is going to make money on it? And how are they going to do it? Cloud services and serverless exist mainly because companies like Amazon and Microsoft can charge you money to manage the back end stuff. It's in their interest to develop these solutions in a way that keeps you increasingly locked in to their services. They're not going to develop systems that run on machines they can't charge you for. So who's going to build that?

Edit to add: of course, this means that they will fight over control of every possible node, I guess. They won't want CPU power to exist anywhere they can't monetize.</comment>


Vanity Fear:Mexicans and El Salvadorans may be turning wrenches on your airplane - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2015/11/15/vanity-fear-mexicans-and-el-salvadorans-may-be-turning-wrenches-on-your-airplane/ <comment><USER2> The UK has a similar problem making cars. It's a kind of urban legend that you shouldn't buy a UK built car because the workers are so incompetent and bits will fall off. People I've met trust Japanese cars more. That's not to say English people are somehow inferior, just that the competent people will be doing some other higher payed or more prestigious job.

</comment><comment><USER3> here's that _Vanity Fair_ article: [http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane- maintenance-...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance- disturbing-truth)

</comment><comment><USER4> Your car is probably built in mexico too. oh heavens no.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for clearing this up.</comment>


Why the lucky stiff Wikipedia entry page to be deleted - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff <comment><USER2> No it's not.

Anybody in the world can add an AfD tag to an article and put it up for deletion. Go ahead, try it: you can get DHH or Paul Graham listed right now. But without a clear consensus to delete, the article isn't going anywhere. Moreover, once the article survives an AfD, it is harder to delete in the future.

This article is running 2-1 keep. I've never seen an AfD succeed with half that opposition. All you can do at this point is piss the WP hobbyists off, have the delete discussion devolve into an argument about "voting versus debating", and make the discussion that much harder for the deleting admin to assess.

Sorry, I know it's a slow news day, but this doesn't count.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the heads up on how this works. Not knowing wikipedia's process at all, I would have thought that why's entry was about to be deleted as well.

Now we know that it's not as big a deal as it seems.

<comment><USER4> | Not knowing wikipedia's process at all, I would have thought that why's entry was about to be deleted as well.

From the big note at the top of the page:

"This article is being considered for deletion ... Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page."

There's nothing there to suggest that it's about to be deleted, and getting more information about the process of article deletion is as easy as following the links posted in the note at the top of the page. Wikipedia tries to be fairly transparent about this sort of thing.

Also, note that this article was considered for deletion about a year and a half ago, and the overall consensus was to keep it. It's probably gonna be sticking around, although it needs some heavy cleaning up.

<comment><USER3> "This article is being considered for deletion" seems like a strong indicator that it might be deleted to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He looks a bit like Jack Black, does he not?

His achievements are certainly impressive. I would be content to draw half as well and be half as imaginative. Great product and tool creator and has a band? Come on, do not crush us.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tptacek - Thank you for letting me know how Wikipedia works. I did not realize that, and next time I will be sure to investigate into the issue further prior to posting it.

I saw this link pop-up on my feed, and knowing _why and his contribution to the ruby community, I felt this to be relevant. In hindsight, it now seems like it wasn't that relevant.

To fellow hackers out there, my intention was not to post for the sake of posting. I appreciate the HN community, and find myself frowning occasionally when certain articles get upvoted. I certainly did not intend to pollute the quality of articles that make it HN.

To all, my sincere apologies.

<comment><USER2> You're not supposed to worry about whether your posts are good. That's why we have the little arrow thingies we click on to score the articles. Stop worrying and keep posting. =)

<comment><USER6> Actually you are supposed to worry about whether your posts are good... the little arrows just give you feedback about whether they are or not, and discourage you from posting things which aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm unclear on why people seem to care so much that there should be a wikipedia article on this annoyingly-named guy who is (at best) borderline notable.

Is it because they've read some of his work and now feel a loyalty towards him?

Or is it because the revelation that "the third most important person in the Ruby community" isn't really all that important when viewed from outside said "community" might give them an unwanted perspective on their own sense of their own importance?

<comment><USER7> There are a lot of people that really aren't all that important when viewed from outside the communities in which they really are important.

I'm sorry that you're annoyed by his alias, and that you feel that Ruby users are self-important fools. I hope you can either get past those feelings or come up with a better argument.

<comment><USER2> Well, there actually is a WP guideline about this phenomenon: WP:LOCALFAME. The long/short of it is: you're notable if a reliable source (not a blog) has written about you. It's pretty much exactly that simple.

<comment><USER6> That sounds like a pretty loose criterion. I know plenty of non-notable people who have had, say, articles written about them in the newspaper.

In any case, looking at the sources at the bottom of this page, this guy doesn't even seem to satisfy this criterion.

<comment><USER2> Yes. It is loose. It does get annoying. I've put many articles up for deletion and failed because of scraps of evidence --- press releases reprinted in news feeds, for instance.

So, if you want to take your issue with _why and litigate it in the AfD, go ahead and do it. You'll lose, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you don't know who the _stiff_ is, you probably run around well outside Ruby circles. Hit up hackety.org and spend enough time to go through some of his archives.

_stiff_ is a uniquely creative guy. Instead of copying-and-pasting source code, you'll often find him sketching it out on paper with doodles.

He's a tough guy to define. Maybe it's best not to. Maybe that's why we don't know his real name. He is a hero though to many of us.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is what is brilliant about Wikipedia. Cartoon characters from children's shows are extensively detailed (e.g., <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon> ), but pages about semi- notable figures in the web development community are debated for deletion.

Jigglypuff is more notable than why the lucky stiff? Yeah, OK, if you're a comic book guy nerd.

<comment><USER6> Millions of people all over the world have heard of Jigglypuff. I personally have bashed jigglypuff's oversized head in with a large mallet many times in Super Smash Bros. Jigglypuff is no doubt an important cultural touchstone for the generation who were nine years old in 2002 (or whenever Pokemon was popular, I forget).

On the other hand, I've never heard of this "why the lucky stiff" guy (I only clicked on this article because I couldn't parse the headline), although I have to admit I've heard of his "(poignant) guide to Ruby" second-hand from a friend who was complaining how annoying its writing style was. Having read his biography, I'd have to say his achievements, which seem to be limited to writing an online manual, a couple of libraries and speaking at a couple of conferences, don't seem to be all that notable.

Perhaps I'd feel differently if the wikipedia article were listed under his real name instead of his self-important handle. As it is, it kinda looks like he wrote most of this himself. I don't bother to edit wikipedia but if I did I think I'd vote for deletion.

<comment><USER2> Way to just make shit up there. Wikipedia has full edit histories. You might avail yourself of them, or of the article discussion page, where _why himself formally requested the article be deleted. But hey, if it makes you feel better to say "he wrote most of it himself", don't let reality stop you.

<comment><USER6> Wow, getting emotionally involved? Your tone really isn't at all appropriate for this forum.

I said "it looks like he wrote it himself", not that he actually did (I know, I read the talk page). From the content it's indistinguishable from a vanity page (the most identifiable feature of a vanity page being that it works hard to inflate minor achievements like speaking at conferences) but I understand he has quite a number of fans so it's quite possible they wrote it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure I understand why this is relevant?

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Why are we voting this stuff up?

<comment><USER4> "We" aren't. 30-odd people so far have promoted it, and the remaining majority has no practical way to counter those votes.

<comment><USER12> Upvote everything else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is one of the worst top articles I've seen yet on news.yc.

Thanks guys

<comment><USER14> You missed a lot of much worser ones. Lucky you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The horror!

</comment><comment><USER16> Good.</comment>


R.T. Russell's Z80 BBC Basic Is Now Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://cowlark.com/2019-06-14-bbcbasic-opensource/ <comment><USER3> Richard Russell was also involved in the Colour Recovery Working Group, which successfully sought to recover the colour signal from black and white telerecordings.

For background: many programmes produced on colour videotape by the BBC in the 70s, were distributed to overseas broadcasters on black and white film only. When the BBC destroyed the original videotapes, this left the black and white films as the only remaining copies of these programmes. In some cases, however, the colour information had been accidentally embedded into the black and white film (a notch filter should have been used to remove it).

So around 2008, Richard developed a piece of software, in BBC BASIC, which was able to recover the embedded colour signal and restore several programmes held in black and white to their full colour glory.

<comment><USER4> The process seems fairly DSP intensive. If I recall, the IQ modulated color signal would leave a dot pattern in the luminance signal. I wonder how many frames it could process a second, if written in BASIC.

<comment><USER3> From memory, it would do 1.5 frames per second.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great!

I'm currently working on a homebrew Z80 computer on breadboards and wirewrapped boards, and building all the (simple) hardware and software from scratch, using vintage chips (strictly no post-1989 chips) and Steve Ciarcia's _Build Your Own Z80 Computer_ as a reference, but with a much higher spec (32K or better).

My original plan is porting Li-Chen Wang's Tiny BASIC ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_BASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_BASIC)) to my homebrew computer, and describing its operation at my local hackerspace. Basically, after Bill Gates' has written his letter, there was a revolt in the microcomputer scene and many hobbyists sought alternative implementations. Around the same time, Li-Chen Wang released his hobby project - Tiny BASIC, with full source in public domain. In retrospect, it can be seen as a free software project before the free software movement. Although its functionality was extremely limited Proof-of-Concept and never widely used, but I believe it's a piece of important legacy of the FLOSS community worth mentioning.

But now, since BBC Basic is now free, I'm looking forward to port BBC Basic to my system as well!

<comment><USER6> Sounds like a great project, good luck. I'll share my favourite tip from back in the day when I regularly brought up new bare metal Z80 systems. Just on the off chance it might be useful. Use a blank EPROM as your first program. It's all 0xff bytes which are RST 7 instructions, equivalent to a subroutine call to 0x0038. So you should observe an super tight loop of an 8 bit read of 0xff from 0x0038, then a 16 bit write of 0x0039 to an ever incrementing address. Suitable for scoping each bit of your address and data bus. The incrementing write address is the stack pointer, which just cycles through 64K. The most significant address bit toggles at the rate it takes to cycle through 64K. Although 0x0039 return address keeps getting pushed onto the stack, there's no corresponding pop, the stack is just perpetually overflowing. But it doesn't matter given this 1 byte "program" serves only to give you the simplest possible repeating pattern to look at with your oscilloscope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "during the early eighties every school child in the United Kingdom was exposed to it, spawning a whole generation of bedroom programmers." Erm no. When I was at secondary school, only those deemed to be good at Maths were allowed to work with the BBC Micros, despite having some skills already from owning a ZX Spectrum at home. This maths centric view was partly why I didn't try to study Comp Sci at Uni and went to do Chem, and then fell into more IT classes and post grad and onto an IT career subsequently.

</comment><comment><USER8> The original Sophie Wilson version of BBC BASIC was brilliant. I did not get to play with the Z80 version but if it is a faithful original of the BBC 6502 version then this a valuable contribution to open source software.

The UK owes a lot to the people such as Sophie Wilson (who wasn't Sophie then) that were extremely forward thinking. The BBC Micro was just for kids. Rather than dumb it down the creators went the other way.

Anyone not familiar with the BBC Micro (because they weren't a kid in the UK in the 1980's) can't really appreciate how good it was and for its time. Perhaps an analogy could be found between arcade games machines and home consoles of the era, the arcade machine just worked, the console was just compromised in every way in comparison to what you had in the arcade original.

It was the same with the BBC and home computer rivals. There was just an edge of performance to it that no other home computers had. This was because the hardware had all the add ons, e.g. a decent sound chip, not just one but two competent graphics chips, a socket next to the keyboard to put your home blown EEPROM in and every port you could imagine at the back and under the machine.

The BBC Model B was a true Rolls Royce of a machine and we gave it to kids.

BBC BASIC was equally deluxe. The built in assembler that was embedded in was awesome. Particularly when you only had a 6502 which has all of three registers - X, Y and A. I was doing assembler at school and plenty of other kids were. No extra software was needed, nobody needed to pay for a compiler, it was all in there.

The rest of BBC BASIC was sophisticated compared to all other BASICs of the time. You could and did write procedures at a time when other BASICs would have you doing GOSUB with a line number.

Later when I moved on to the IBM PC with MS-DOS I felt extremely disappointed. It was actually backward! It lacked the sophistication the BBC Micro had. It was MS-DOS that I found particularly dumb, I just felt 'is this all there is?' and could not believe this was the new 'better'.

Exposure to BBC BASIC, UNIX and today's Linux makes me wonder whether Microsoft's products from MS-DOS to Windows have really advanced computing as we know it. I am not knocking Microsoft entirely as I do believe some of their products such as Word 2.0c were fantastic at enabling progress. But with Microsoft came a particular model of personal computing, we stayed on floppy disks far too long and Microsoft BASIC introduced things that are best not taught - i.e. the GOTO statement.

Anyway, the BBC Micro and BBC BASIC were free from this Microsoft way of doing things, the BBC Micro got it right and it was a vision that was gifted to a generation of schoolchildren.

<comment> Z-T-T Your personal experience is very interesting but it's misleading to claim the BBC Micro was "given to kids" or "gifted to schoolchildren", as if the BBC or its Micro inspired a generation of British computer enthusiasts or programmers.

In reality kids were largely not allowed to go anywhere near the beige Rolls Royces gathering dust in classroom cupboards, because they were so expensive and/or because nobody was trained to use them.

The massive gaming and programming ("computer literacy") explosion in the UK in the 80s was almost entirely thanks to the ZX Spectrum, ZX81 and ZX80.

<comment><USER8> I never owned a BBC Micro but my school let me borrow one every holiday. It was a comprehensive, a state school, so anecdotal.

<comment> Z-T-T As in take it home? That's amazing. They had at least one BBC at my middle school in the early/mid 80s, and we once or maybe twice got to play Frak on it. That was it. :/

<comment><USER8> Frak!

I totally forgot about Frak. I will have to see if someone has uploaded that being played to YouTube. Inevitably they will play better than I would and I would also avoid the risk of getting hooked into a game...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgiA10MfOu4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgiA10MfOu4)

From the comments, the levels on stage 1 spell 'FRAK'. As per the comments, I don't think I knew that!

It was such a rich diversity of games then, it was more like listening to music in that you don't just have the one song you listen to, depending on your mood you have different things to listen to. With modern consoles you just have the one or two things in practice, you don't have the repertoire.

As well as the BBC Micro there was also the CUB monitor and disk drives. Imagine that!

This was mid eighties, I don't think I did any formal computer lessons at school, it was a lunchtime thing where things like Frak certainly got played. I know you envy my fortune - and in a regular state school.

During one holiday I made things like a pantograph arm for drawing with - <USER2> of carefully cut perspex, potentiometers and the A/D port, then some code to do the trig and draw something on a screen. This was my first go at using a saw, a file, a soldering iron and also my first experience learning the reality does not match the dream. The noise in the A/D was ridiculous and having real time screen updates was also not exactly without lag.

This was an entirely self directed project, no competition or even idea from a magazine. Just a desire to draw at a time when ambition just worked. It was useless at what it did but there was more maths in that than what 99% of the population ever use, even if simple trig.

To think nowadays kids all have their own laptops/tablets/phones and there is zero recognition that 32K of RAM and a beige box could be special. But they actually do much better things now than anything I was ever up to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> WoW! Finally, my second programming language.</comment>


Amazon Halo wearable tracks activity, body fat, emotions - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/27/amazon-hal-wearable-tracks-activity-body-fat-emotions.html <comment><USER2> Amazon "promises" to respect your privacy. Do you trust them?</comment>


Show HN: Set reminders to be sent through FB Messenger - <AUTHOR> https://memodeer.com <comment><AUTHOR> [https://snag.gy/rYBD4I.jpg](https://snag.gy/rYBD4I.jpg) \- main page, logged [https://snag.gy/bqRnes.jpg](https://snag.gy/bqRnes.jpg) \- main page logged, calendar style view, opened dialog for new reminder [https://snag.gy/y80noi.jpg](https://snag.gy/y80noi.jpg) \- account management

:)

</comment><comment><USER2> Could you share some screenshots of what the UI is like?</comment>