Show HN: Proltify – A Vault for your Product Resources - <AUTHOR> https://proltify.com/?ref=hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hackernews!

Today I am very excited to share something that I have been working on from past couple of months.

Let me ask you, how do you manage your product's resources?

\- Does it become impossible to find a resource on your cluttered desktop?

\- Did you bookmark an important link but now, unable to find it?

\- Do a global or channel search on slack to find something important and spending 15 minutes finding it?

\- Do you also move your resources manually after the release?

Proltify helps solve all these problems.

* Proltify will create a vault for each product you create, then whenever you add a new resource to say a desktop, it will move those resources to your products vault when you `Flush` them.

* Save a note or a link using our shortcut to the current vault.

* Search a note, link, or any resource for one product or across all vaulted products with clear boundaries between them.

* Want to access your vault? You will see a Proltify folder on your desktop, it will contain all your products resources organized into Images, Videos, and Resources folder.

Would love to hear your comments, feedbacks and suggestions. Thanks!</comment>


Clinkle Raises $25M Seed Round - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/27/clinkle-raises-celebrity-filled-25m-round-as-it-gears-up-to-eliminate-the-physical-wallet/ <comment><USER2> Even with the best team, best idea & amazing execution prior to raising money $25M is crazy..

</comment><comment><USER3> What's different here than at the other peer-to-peer mobile payment apps?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like they have two goals. One, make adoption as easy as possible for merchants. Two, make the experience not suck (we're used to cash and credit cards so the experience has to be better than using them).</comment></comment>


US subsidies of road vs rail travel [2011] - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/11/road-v-rail

<comment><AUTHOR> Related to the gratis bus thread - should car travel be free?</comment>


Donald J. Trump's $30M Testing Team - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@babyak/donald-j-trumps-30m-testing-team-e1a9d542039e#.lex06vf4n <comment><USER2> Interesting stuff, I checked the website out and was impressed by the design.

I'm not too familiar with analytics and marketing, but I did like how the contribution and web store mechanics were set up.

That all said, I'm curious how much revenue you can attribute to optimization versus just general interest when it came to people wanting to donate, or buy a MAGA hat.

What I mean is, how much money could have been generated, without utilizing optimization tools such as the ones you used from Adobe, and by adding "Official" to everything.

Not trying to demoralize them, I'm just curious if they could separate that revenue, and point to a portion of it that directly came from optimization.

<comment><USER3> > Not trying to demoralize them

My observation indicates nobody is saying otherwise, which would normally beg the question "why are you saying this?" if someone didn't know any better. In this case, however, I think why you are saying it is actually based on inverse trust hacking.

Personally, I don't care about hearing about how using anti-trust got another anti-trust implementation success. Anti-trust doesn't scale, and the gains to be had by anti-trust imply suffering for many and only a small chance of reduced suffering for the wielder of it.

HN: This story represents blame and anti-trust. Report it least it spread further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's easy to underestimate the level of data-driven thinking that the Trump campaign brought to bear. Some important reading for those interested:

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes- hel...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-helped-trump- win)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside- th...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump- bunker-with-12-days-to-go)

> First, Cambridge Analytica [a company that was founded in Steve Bannon's > office and counts him as a board member] buys personal data from a range of > different sources, like land registries, automotive data, shopping data, > bonus cards, club memberships, what magazines you read, what churches you > attend. Nix displays the logos of globally active data brokers like Acxiom > and Experian—in the US, almost all personal data is for sale. For example, > if you want to know where Jewish women live, you can simply buy this > information, phone numbers included. Now Cambridge Analytica aggregates this > data with the electoral rolls of the Republican party and online data and > calculates a Big Five personality profile. Digital footprints suddenly > become real people with fears, needs, interests, and residential > addresses... Cambridge Analytica also uses, Nix told us, "surveys on social > media" and Facebook data.

> The embedded Cambridge Analytica team, apparently only a dozen people, > received $100,000 from Trump in July, $250,000 in August, and $5 million in > September. According to Nix, the company earned over $15 million overall. > (The company is incorporated in the US, where laws regarding the release of > personal data are more lax than in European Union countries. Whereas > European privacy laws require a person to "opt in" to a release of data, > those in the US permit data to be released unless a user "opts out.")

> In the Miami district of Little Haiti, for instance, Trump's campaign > provided inhabitants with news about the failure of the Clinton Foundation > following the earthquake in Haiti, in order to keep them from voting for > Hillary Clinton. This was one of the goals: to keep potential Clinton voters > (which include wavering left-wingers, African-Americans, and young women) > away from the ballot box, to "suppress" their vote, as one senior campaign > official told Bloomberg in the weeks before the election. These "dark > posts"—sponsored news-feed-style ads in Facebook timelines that can only be > seen by users with specific profiles—included videos aimed at African- > Americans in which Hillary Clinton refers to black men as predators, for > example.

(Though, with a grain of salt, it's hard to tell which ad campaigns were optimized by CamAnalytica vs. other data scientists on the team: [https://twitter.com/GaryCoby/status/825454953560936451](https://twitter.com/GaryCoby/status/825454953560936451) ... but the type of thinking is the same.)

Regardless of your political leanings, it's clear that the arms race in data for politics has reached a new level. If a party (or niche therein), whose views you fundamentally oppose, builds a data science team, are you morally obligated to try to counteract their efforts by helping to build even better targeting for the candidates and views you support? That statement, it would seem, goes both ways.

<comment><USER5> > Cambridge Analytica also uses, Nix told us, "surveys on social media" and > Facebook data.

I've always suspected those "connect your Facebook to find your future soulmate" things that are rampant were something along those lines.</comment></comment>


On belts, pants and logic - <AUTHOR> http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/398013.html <comment><USER2> Very neat!

But slight nit, I think he's wrong about one detail. Specifically this part:

> The reason the governments needed to economize even on the cheapest > materials (hence the disgusting military uniforms of the 20th century) is > that millions of ordinary people were drafted into the armies, where they > perished by millions in the machine-gun crossfire, displaying their gut on > the barbed wire. This, of course, is the heritance of the glorious French > Revolution with its achievement of citizens at arms: the nation-states > engaged into the war of mutual annihilation in the name of the higher goals. > The war became total...

The reason war was able to scale so violently was due to the Haber process, which is absolutely amazing in its own right. Says Wiki:

> Fertilizer generated from ammonia produced by the Haber process is estimated > to be responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population. It is > estimated that half of the protein within human beings is made of nitrogen > that was originally fixed by this process; the remainder was produced by > nitrogen fixing bacteria and archaea.

Massive ammonia production that made guarding saltpeter reserves less critical. Germany (and others) were then able to create enormous stockpiles of munitions very quickly. Thus war became (more) total.

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

<comment><USER3> Interesting - those fertilizers also caused the demographic explosion that let Germany leapfrog France in terms of population (from parity to a 60/40 advantage).

They also drew the war to an end. Germany didn't produce enough fertilizer and was dependent on imports, which England successfully reduced to a crawl via blockade. A prolonged inability to feed its citizens broke the will of the nation in a way that feeding men into machine guns never quite managed to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > ...their waistcoats became to be seen as the integral part of the folly of > the ruling classes, and so they went into steady decline.

Man, I'd love for waist coats to come back into style. Modern business attire presents a basic problem: where the hell do you keep your cell phone? Do you keep it in your jacket pocket? No, it's silly to keep your jacket on all day. Do you keep it in your trouser pocket? No, not only does it not look nice but because belts are actually a shitty way to keep pants up the weight causes your pants to fall down slightly with every step you take.

A waist coat gives you a perfectly serviceable pocket in which to keep your phone, and allows the wearing of suspenders which are far superior to belts for holding pants up. They also eliminate in one fell swoop the problem of "shirt muffin top" which is where after repeated getting up and sitting down your shirt comes partially untucked and bunches up around your waist.

<comment><USER5> Also, cell phones need fobs.

<comment><USER6> > _Also, cell phones need fobs._

In Japan, at least, they generally have them (a conspicuous exception being the U.S.-designed iphone...):

Japanese-designed cellphones almost always have a hole in the case for attaching a strap, and many people use it, usually buying a strap with a character miniature or something on the end as a sort of little "handle".

These are really quite useful—my phone has been saved from falling quite a few times by its strap, and when digging in my bag for my phone, it's usually the strap that comes to hand first—and afford an opportunity for cheap and simple user-customization.

I've always been a bit mystified that U.S. phones haven't copied this idea (which shouldn't add any cost or complexity to manufacturing). Surely _somebody_ would have noticed by now...

[Although Japanese-designed smart phones still have such holes, cases seem to have subsumed the formerly ubiquitous straps as a user-customization method to some degree...]

<comment><USER5> Right, it seems like "easily accessing your pocket watch, and preventing you from dropping it" was a solved problem once. I'm not sure why we forgot, in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The war became total, and patriotic citizenry in belted uniforms provided the fodder for cannons. In this sense, the belted trousers were inevitable. They are the very essence of modernity, crowning 300 years of advanced political thought."

Love it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Only $50/pair: <http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/store/002976.php>

You all can thank me later; for the jeers and stares that is.

</comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of the hesco bastion. It's nothing more than a hybrid between a gabion and a sandbag, both of which have been around for centuries if not millenia. It's just a huge rectangular bucket made out of wire mesh backed by sturdy fabric and then filled with dirt and rocks (most conveniently with earth moving equipment). It's a quick way to erect a temporary wall for flood control or fortifications. And it could have been made practical even going back to the late 1800s or perhaps even in pre-industrial times. They would have been incredibly useful in WWII, for example, and they had all of the equipment necessary to build them (even on tiny pacific islands there was earth moving equipment for roads and air strips). Yet nobody thought of it until the 1980s.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm reminded of _Shogun_ , where in pre-Meiji Japan, providing a uniform for all your samurai would be cost-prohibitive. Instead, soldiers were required to wear approximately the same shade of grey or blue or green.

</comment><comment><USER11> Terrible writing style.

<comment><USER12> Any details? I actually found it quite readable.</comment></comment>


Examples of the logo design process - <AUTHOR> http://www.noupe.com/design/creative-brainstorming-50-examples-of-the-logo-design-process.html

<comment><USER2> Re: Grooveshark logo - it is a design process documented alright, but the logo itself was designed by someone else and then _cleaned up_ by David Pache of Helvetic Brands. Nowhere does he mention this though, which really rubs me the wrong way. Especially considering how he presents the design process, as if the final logo was a natural evolution of his own sketches.

<http://logopond.com/gallery/detail/6499> \- Jan '07

<http://logopond.com/gallery/detail/41685> \- Oct '08

\----

Also, it's worth noting that the design process illustrations are commonly put together _after_ the logo is done and they are meant to be promo pieces, so they do not accurately reflect the actual logo creation process, but rather an idealization of thereof. The actual process is far more hectic and zig-zag'ing towards the target than these illustrations depict it to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great - I love the logos and I love reading about the creative process from end to end. What do you think the price range is for the logos presented here?

<comment><USER4> Real Graphic Design isn't cheap. Identity design from a SF studio can run you into the thousands. $10k, easily. (If you're a big corporation, add one or two orders of magnitude to the bill.)

Now of course you can find stock and spec work on sites like 99designs—but that isn't real design. Rather, I consider it an affront to the profession. It will give you the same quality of work that outsourcing development to indian or russian kids for $5 an hour would get you.

EDIT: I wonder why I'm being downvoted for this. I know it's unpopular to elevate design, but it makes a huge difference. And after spending 4+ years of our life and $200k at design school to master the craft, I think designer's true worth and skill deserve some recognition.

<comment><USER5> You are wrong. Very wrong. You just come across as trying to raise the value of web designers. I don't think its worth that much to most people and never will be.

<comment><USER6> Pepsi paid over $1 million dollars for it's latest logo redesign. [http://adage.com/article/agency-news/breathtaking-word- purpo...](http://adage.com/article/agency-news/breathtaking-word-purported- arnell-pepsi-doc/134552/)

Check out the 27-page report about the logo: <http://adage.com/images/random/0209/pepsi-arnell021109.pdf>

<comment><USER7> I've always found that pepsi logo report so forced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I highly doubt these are real sketches of the process. More likely after the fact.

The process is usually not anywhere near as linear as it is depicted in the blog article.</comment>


Shards of Truth - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurozine.com/shards-of-truth/ <comment><USER2> > I'm constantly being dragged back into my former life!

> It must be the price to be paid for the Nobel.

That reminds me of a study a decade ago or so, showing Nobel laureates to enjoy a ridiculously higher life expectancy, in comparison to people who were merely nominated for the prize. It was something like 5 extra years, IIRC, and there was no other profession or status symbol even close.

Other nominees are unlikely to have significantly less access to healthcare, or be otherwise depraved.

So what's so unique about a Nobel? The hypothesis was that the Nobel is the only absolut "Game Over: You Win" scenario in existence, allowing its bearer to escape the rat race and its deleterious effects. Start-up or banking billionaires clearly aren't satiated by their money, so they continue on to space, or ocean racing, or becoming really bad politicians. Nobel laureate are done.

<comment><USER3> Is it not just survivorship bias? Nobel Prizes are often awarded decades after the fact, and (except in a couple edge cases) are never awarded posthumously. Being long lived makes you more likely to receive the prize in your lifetime, not necessarily the other way around.

<comment><USER2> They are _never_ awarded posthumously. But my completely unreliable gut instinct is to believe that most honourees are in their 50s and 60s, and that too few people die before that age for it having a significant impact here.

Plus, of course, nominees tend to be very similar in most regards _including age_ to the eventual winners.

<comment><USER3> On the contrary, consider Ralph Steinem [0], who was awarded the Medicine prize in 2011, three days after his death. The news had not yet reached the prize committee. There are a couple others[1,2] from decades past that were _nominated_ before their death, and the committee selected them after their death, but that loophole was closed in 1974.

As I said, edge cases.

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

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Axel_Karlfeldt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Axel_Karlfeldt) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskjold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskjold)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elixir vs. Erlang: a question of momentum - <AUTHOR> http://journal.dedasys.com/2015/04/23/elixir-vs-erlang-a-question-of-momentum/ <comment><USER2> More like "Elixir _and_ Erlang". It's certainly interesting to compare the relative momentums of each language and think about why that may be, but I hope people don't see it as a zero sum competition.

I was intrigued by Elixir, coming from a ruby background, but one of the key points for me was the robust and battle-tested Erlang VM and OTP. And as I've played with my Elixir app, I've found myself looking at Erlang code.

Erlang is one of the main draws of Elixir, and conversely the enthusiasm around Elixir will be hugely beneficial to the Erlang community.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent comment: it's definitely not zero-sum, but there is a bit of rivalry and duplication of effort. If someone's using ecto, they're using postgrex rather than epgsql, for instance. Elixir is definitely a gateway drug for Erlang, for many people. I think one of the things that José has done so well with Elixir is layer something on top of Erlang that adds to it without muddying what was underneath, if that makes sense. You can see Erlang sticking out in places, but what's on top if it fits there nicely.

</comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo Sure, Erlang has an issue with gaining forward momentum, but I feel like people are really overstating the momentum Elixer has.

It is easy to gain huge percentages of momentum (if you could ever measure that) when you have little to start with. That's the case with Elixir. That's the same situation languages like Factor and even Haskell saw seven years ago. The former is more or less dead and and the latter still never "broke out".

When Elixir is competing library-wise and ecosystem-wise with the likes of existing languages like Python, Ruby, Java, Javascript, and then some of its major selling points are in competitors like Go (though not 100%) or Clojure/Scala (which can leverage the JVM), it really, really has to distance itself.

As great as Elixir is, it is hard to make a bet on it ever crossing the threshold of "this is really cool" to something you can goto because library x y and z are available.

<comment><USER3> >> I feel like people are really overstating the momentum Elixir has

I don't think so at all. I see elixir gaining a groundswell of momentum very much like the early days of rails and node. Of course it's the beginning, but I see a whole different crowd of people interested in elixir - the "gets things done" crowd rather than the "this is cool/elite" crowd I see playing with factor or haskell (sorry, but it's true).

Elixir does not compete with Python, Ruby or JS - it solves a whole different problem, which is the "massively multiplayer" requirement the apps world is obviously moving towards. No-one I know likes Go or Scala. Clojure is a genuine competitor, you are right about that, but it lacks the ruby community spirit showing itself in elixir. Say what you want about ruby but its community moves mountains.

It's early, yes, but I know a lot of good rails devs who are embracing elixir and they're all "smart and gets things done" types. A lot of torque is building behind taking elixir mainstream, and there's excitement in the air. Time will tell, but it's a bet I'm increasingly ready to make.

<comment><USER4> Hi. I'm Dave. I really like Go, and I write and maintain a real-time and turn- based multiplayer game backend.

I liked Elixir a lot too, but when trying to pick the right tool, the learning required around Elixir/Erlang, the VM, and OTP didn't make sense when writing a production system that needs to handle 1000 req/s or more with a small staff. Go handles what we do fantastically.

Now you know someone. :)

<comment><USER5> If your interested, Jamie Winsor of Undead Labs did a talk at Erlang Factory on how they use Elixir for their backend: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i6n-eWiVn4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i6n-eWiVn4)

Also theres a good writeup on how Erlang was used for some of Call of Duty's infrastructure. [http://www.erlang- factory.com/upload/presentations/395/Erlan...](http://www.erlang- factory.com/upload/presentations/395/ErlangandFirst-PersonShooters.pdf)

Sounds like you're already committed to Go, but just wanted to make the case. Concurrent, fault-tolerant, highly scalable systems is Elixir's sweet spot.

[edit] One more, great talk from the Elixir Conf on how Martin Shurrer used Erlang to build a multiplayer card game. This one is particularly good because it deals with scaling, game states, and is very practical: [http://confreaks.tv/videos/elixirconf2014-otp-in- production-...](http://confreaks.tv/videos/elixirconf2014-otp-in-production- the-nitty-gritty-details-of-game-servers)

<comment><USER4> To be clear, I really liked both Elixir and Erlang. It's just that purely functional programming, the Erlang VM, OTP, and so on all required learning, and so introduced so many possible points of failure.

Go was familiar from the jump, and easy to reason around coming from primarily Objective-C, C, Python, and C#. Considering timeline, it wouldn't have made sense to be so behind the learning curve.

With more time or breathing room, I think Erlang would be a space I'd jump into with both feet.

Edit: I know Martin through common colleagues and have worked with him in Austria. He's a great dev, and that was a good watch. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Elixir is one of the best ways to program erlang. I learned erlang first, many years ago, and I don't really think of them as different languages. Yes, they have different syntaxes and yes Elixir has added features. But when I'm programming in Elixir I'm using the same part of my brain that loved programming in erlang. I think in the same way.

More importantly, I think, for some reason so many programmers just can't get past erlang's syntax. I've never seen any really good criticisms of erlang that made sense-- other than the syntax. While it was fine for me when I was doing erlang all the time I did spend a couple years away and find it frustrating again. So Elixir fixes that.

Further, there is no other language/platform that does distributed computing correctly, or on such scale, and with such battle testing. Haskell may do it correctly (I'm not sure) but it's very new. Go, Node.js, every "actors" library you can think of, they are single-threaded-thinker's attempts to scale, and they are not correct.

Yes, in computer science there is such a thing as "correct" and "not correct", and way too many young programmers seem to think popularity determines correctness.

IF you haven't learned Elixir and you want to write code that runs on multiple machines without a lot of hassle, and you've seen how tough this is to do on other platforms, head over to [http://elixir-lang.org](http://elixir-lang.org) and learn. It's really a delight!

Edit: Fixed some typos. Oops. Want to add, my intention is not to bash languages like Go. Go has some good ideas and is appropriate for certain use cases. It's just frustrating to see these things being pitched as "distributed" when they have not incorporated the lessons learned building erlang over 20 years ago, and the 20+ years of development since.

<comment> j-conn _does distributed computing correctly_

 _Go, Node.js, ever "actors" library you can think of, they are single- threaded-thinker's attempts to scale, and they are not correct_

Could you elaborate, or point to a resource comparing the different scaling strategies? What makes the Erlang approach correct?

<comment><USER6> It really is concurrent and at a fundamental level, eg: it's supported in the VM. The JVM does not support it. It's not a language feature that simulates concurrency and it's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater and just using events (node.js).

The book recommended by the other replyer is probably good. I'd also suggest you check out Joe Armstrongs thesis or his ProgPRog book "Learning Erlang".

There are many necessary things to do things right. It's not a single feature. Erlang the language, the VM, the OTP platform are a collection of all these choices...

<comment><USER7> I understand and appreciate your enthusiasm and excitement over the Erlang vm, but you really shouldn't misrepresent what's possible with the JVM, the Go VM, or even with Node.js.

All support parallelism as well as concurrency, and all can do so with an actor paradigm (and predictably, Node's support is the weakest).

Erlang's solution is more exciting because it offers a transparent mapping between local and remote code, so long as "transparent mapping" ignores the performance overhead.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that there is a leaky abstraction of concurrency in Node and Akka. Anytime you want to do some blocking computation or IO, you put the whole application at risk. This even applies to garbage collection. There's a whole class of things that you shouldn't do in that concurrency model. You also have to be sure that none of the libraries you use are doing these things. (zealots will say "don't do blocking IO in Akka!", which missing the point entirely)

Erlang's solution shines (in addition to reasons you cite) because of its efficient scheduler. That's something that you can't have in another language without essentially building Erlang itself.

<comment><USER7> > Anytime you want to do some blocking computation or IO, you put the whole > application at risk.

It is true that you should not do this, and it's a fair point. Of course, you don't do it with Erlang either! Erlang carefully takes all file I/O out of their actor model and has it so that one (and only one) process can interact with a file handle. Operations to this have to be serialized by the actor. Since there is only one implementation of I/O and it's non-blocking, this works fine, but _if your application is an actor pipeline you run exactly the same risk as your mailbox overflows_. Needham's Duality is real.

And naturally that ignores the fact that JVM concurrency and parallelism can handle that outcome perfectly well (and in fact Akka appeals to these primitives). It's absurd to suggest that java.util.concurrent doesn't have great tools for parallel anything, let alone parallel I/O.

Golang, by the way, doesn't have this restriction. The runtime supports non- blocking, parallel-friendly I/O from the ground up.

And as for Node.js, well the general abstraction here is the most parallel of all. I'm not a huge fan of it and I agree it's a bit leaky, but Node's cluster stuff is serviceable and used by many. You cannot argue the actor model is essential, threadpools and actors ultimately model the same process and as Go has shown can do so with similar sharing semantics.

Finally, Erlang's scheduler is not black magic nor an arcane work of wisdom. It uses well-known, well documented principles and techniques. Quite frankly, its not the secret sauce of Erlang. Erlang's secret sauce is the HUGE some of very good code for building a distributed system with all the robust goodness that OTP provides.

Erlang's great, Elixir is interesting (albeit it took one stinky old syntax and exchanged it for another stinky syntax). I wanted to reply to that prior post and talk to why Erlang has a magical recipe for _distributed_ code, not _parallel_ code. Quite frankly, Erlang's parallelism story only makes sense in the context of its decision to make remote and local execution indistinguishable at the call site.

<comment><USER8> In the context of sharing IO, Erlang does have the same problems. I was however referring to IO in the sense of "I'm going to block until I get a response." And not have to deal with callback shenanigans (be it futures or callbacks). Golang does solve these issues fairly well except for GC issues (which I've heard have gotten better).

<comment><USER7> > I was however referring to IO in the sense of "I'm going to block until I > get a response." And not have to deal with callback shenanigans (be it > futures or callbacks).

Callbacks and futures are very different modeling techniques and I'm not sure why you'd suggest they're inherently inferior. They have their uses just like the Actor model.

People obsess on the existence of blocking I/O (proponents of Node.js do this too) and I find it strange that this is still a subject of conversation. It's by and large a solved problem.

> Golang does solve these issues fairly well except for GC issues (which I've > heard have gotten better).

Golang's GC issues were no to much about GOMAXPROCs as just needing a really good optimization pass. As a younger language, it's unsurprising it needs some time to reach production readiness. Erlang has the benefit of many years of testing in anger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the same feeling I have. Well mostly toward Erlang. I was at an Erlang meetup and I've mentioned that the reason why Ruby is popular was because of RoR. Erlang needs a killer framework. A web framework would be a good choice since RoR have shown that. The consensus I got from this was basically Erlang doesn't need a killer software and the majority at the meetup thought the idea wasn't valid.

Here come Elixir and so far it have decent momentum. It got mix, ecto, etc.. tools. And all of a sudden the creator started to contribute to Phoenix framework. It got 2 books now and an OTP books coming out.

In general, I think Elixir is executing pretty well. If pheonix hit 1.0 that is comparable to RoR and can make restful service dead simple with oAuth, elixir might have a chance.

edit:

From what I've gathered:

The blog posts and online community of Erlang is mostly technical. The community at the local meetup is very against new ideas, they're stuck in a cycle of continuing the same path while complaining about how to get adoption rate up for Erlang...

<comment><USER10> > Erlang needs a killer framework

I like N2O a lot: [https://github.com/5HT/n2o](https://github.com/5HT/n2o)

<comment><AUTHOR> One part of that, and Nitrogen, that I really disagree with is "writing HTML via Erlang": the number of people who can hack on a template that is HTML with some processing instructions exceeds, by orders of magnitude, the number of people who can write Erlang.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure this only partially addresses your issue, but one can use DTL (Django Template Language) with N2O: [https://synrc.com/apps/n2o/doc/web/elements.htm](https://synrc.com/apps/n2o/doc/web/elements.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think in part this is because there are a few very vocal elixer proponents here on HN and this being _the_ site where those people with scaling issues and 'erlang' style problems (which most web stuff actually is!) converge the uptake could be substantial. Erlang doesn't nearly have the 'hey look at me, I wrote a language' component but it just quietly excels at what it does (reliable, scalable). Elixer being targeted at the VM it is very well possible to have the best of both worlds.

I'm curious what will happen in the longer term, if at some point the 'upstream' providers of the erlang ecosystem will take notice of elixer and will start to cater to it and then maybe actually adopt it. Until then I'm on the fence, elixer could be great but it also could end up being abandoned as more and more warts in erlang are taken care of.

And most of those warts are cosmetic rather than real problems, the lack of libraries will hurt both languages just about the same and it would be much nicer if new libraries were written with interop in mind.

That way they will have staying power regardless of which language will eventually become dominant/stay dominant.

The erlang vm and ecosystem are very well thought out, battle hardened and solid beyond what most programmers that came into the profession past say 1998 or so are familiar with but it is clearly showing its age and elixer solves some of those problems. A more open process around erlang itself could easily take the wind out of elixer's sails.

Time will tell, it sure is interesting.

And thanks David, excellent post.

edit: it could actually be that elixer will drive developers to erlang in the longer run, the syntax is a minor nuisance easily understood after a little bit of work and the 'strings' issue is mostly a different take on an old problem that you can either work around or simply accept as part of the deal. It can throw you for a loop but not worse than the things other languages will force on you and if you think about it is actually an elegant solution, re-use the same data structure to make life easier.

If under the hood those lists would be replaced with something like the clojure ones you might be able to get rid of the performance issues entirely without affecting the code already in production (unless it was C code operating directly on internal structures of erlang).

<comment><USER8> They've gone as far as making 1 in 8 tracks at Erlang Factory about Elixir. They had José give a keynote last year and participate on a panel this year. Robert Virding (one of the creators of Erlang) is fairly active in monitoring (and participating) in the elixir mailing lists. Granted, there's always a small tone of "get off my lawn", but that's just entertaining :-).

I've mentioned this before but I'll daybit again. Protocols and Macros are the game changer. The Enumerable protocol absolutely changes the way you write code and solve problems. Doing the same thing in Erlang is just not the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As huge fan of the Elixir language I think this article missed the point.

Elixir is gaining popularity _because_ of the Erlang VM and libraries. Yes, macros, protocols, syntax, etc may attract a first glance at the language, but I believe people stay and evangelize Elixir because of the power of Erlang/OTP.

Likewise, I think Elixir popularity will only drive Erlang, Joxa, and LFE popularity forward as the initial roadblock of grokking the Erlang VM and how OTP works are overcome.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. Just Elixir build on say Ruby VM or Python VM would not be appealing. BEAM VM is really a marvel of engineering. Telling others that yes it provides lightweight processes which also have isolated heaps is often met with disbelief. It is almost magic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It should be noted that rebar3 ([http://rebar3.org](http://rebar3.org)) uses hex for packages and has a plugin for working with hex repos [https://github.com/tsloughter/rebar3_hex](https://github.com/tsloughter/rebar3_hex)

<comment><USER15> Given I had no knowledge of rebar3 before clicking the link, it took me a while to discover what it actually is.

There is no descriptive text on the landing page aside from "Build Better Erlang" which i guess narrows this down to some sort of erlang developer tool. The Getting Started page has no mention of what we are installing actually does aside from a snippet in their console output log "you can use rebar to build OTP-compliant apps". So its a build tool? Not until "Basic Usage" do I find out in writing what rebar potentially is:

"Rebar3 comes with templates for creating applications, library applications (with no start/2), releases and plugins"

So it's a project templating tool? Does "comes with" mean it has more functionality than just templating? On the sidebar I see some terms that lead me to believe it can do more than that but I would love something on the landing page that told me exactly what the tool's purpose or function is.

From my understanding it is a tool similar to Leiningen?

<comment><USER16> Yes, pretty much. I think we went short on the rebar3 descriptions just because of how known 'rebar' is as a household name. Go to almost any Erlang project, and you'll find 'rebar' or some variant.

Rebar3 is the next version of it.

But you're entirely right, the page and documentation is lacking to people unfamiliar with the Erlang/OTP ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had a brief look at Erlang in my spare time. Time passed, and I would have returned to it at some point, but then Elixir appeared on the radar, and it appears almost as a refreshed, improved Erlang, an Erlang 2.0. Well, why would I learn yesteryear's implementation instead of a modern implementation? So, I looked at Elixir, and now would need an unlikely compelling reason to look back in Erlang's direction with any serious effort. When people talk about Erlang, they talk about telephone switches and data stores - I'm never going to be hired to build either, how many are? Elixir being used for more modest feats of engineering makes it sound more appealing and accessible to the mortal majority, hence building momentum. That said, I've just looked at the roles advertised at a large London tech fair - two Golang, zero Elixir, zero Erlang, numerous .Net and Java, countless Javascript. Long way to go for new languages, and London feels excruciatingly risk-averse.

<comment><USER18> That's funny because JavaScript could be considered a new language (unless you were counting the "JavaScript, HTML, CSS knowledge useful" descriptions). Languages take time, two Golang jobs is already pretty good given how young a language it is.

<comment><USER17> Its popularity increasing doesn't make it a new language. If you spend seconds on a web search you'll see that two is pathetic compared to elsewhere - I'm commenting on London there, not Go, or Elixir, both of which I would love to use, hence my grumbling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord _Trying to put together cowboy, poolboy, a circuit breaker, a database driver, erlydtl, and various and sundry other pieces, for someone not well versed in Erlang is a losing proposition._

How so? A framework can very much be (and often is) a reductionist endeavor: the sum of its parts connected by entry points. Particularly ones that are loosely coupled, as the one you alluded to (Chicago Boss) is

If someone is not well versed in Erlang, they should probably learn Erlang before starting a project in it. Chicago Boss still makes implicit much of OTP, the process model and records that it's easy for beginners to jump in, though.

 _Their friend, using Elixir, will at least have something up and running in short order._

Once again, this is just as applicable to Erlang.

 _A package management system, "hex"._

Do people even know why they want/need a hundred language-specific package managers anymore, or is it just a cargo cult thing to do? No, a module system, a dependency resolver (Rebar) and release management may push you out of your comfort zone a bit compared to the typical do-everything package manager blob, but it's very much doable.

 _Ecto database driver, with Postgres as the first database integrated (yay!)._

Ecto looks more like ActiveRecord, but there's nothing particularly wrong with BossDB. The fact that BossRecords are serialized as proplists means you can perform relatively complicated operations by using list comprehensions alone. Oh, but you have to learn some Erlang. No avoiding that.

 _Ecto migrations._

I might grant that. BossDB migrations aren't particularly advanced. Not sure how well Ecto fairs in to it.

 _Porcelain, for working with external processes, where Erlang is somewhat lacking_

[https://github.com/msantos/alcove](https://github.com/msantos/alcove)

[https://github.com/msantos/perc](https://github.com/msantos/perc)

Latter is old, but the point remains. Port drivers and NIFs can easily bridge the gap from the Erlang VM to the host OS, and it seems that Porcelain uses exactly the former, at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> > BossDB migrations aren't particularly advanced.

No, they aren't, they were "the simplest thing that possibly worked" for my needs (I wrote that code).

One problem with boss_db is that it uses some heavy duty compiler magic that none of the "pure Erlang" kinds of folks really want to touch because it produces un-Erlangy code. This leaves it in a no-man's land: the Erlang people don't want to deal with it, and the people coming in from Ruby or whatever are just going to go straight to Elixir which looks more familiar anyway.

<comment><USER19> IMHO when Ericsson decided to remove "experimental pmods" support from Erlang in version 16, the compiler magic in ChicagoBoss turned from "oh cool" into a liability. Ericsson's development team did release a workaround example, but the whole process how this went down left a sour taste in my mouth.

My wish is that Ericsson's Erlang development team became more transparent to the outside world, shared their bug tracker, code reviews (Go team does this wonderfully) and did all development in the open. Then we would not have these situations [https://github.com/erlang/otp/pull/687](https://github.com/erlang/otp/pull/687) and it would save me ton of time couple years ago chasing after ssl bugs.

<comment><AUTHOR> > when Ericsson decided to remove "experimental pmods" support from Erlang in > version 16, the compiler magic in ChicagoBoss turned from "oh cool" into a > liability.

It caused a bit of hassle, but not much, really. It was a feature that many Erlang people did not like much in the first place, so heavy use of it put them off to begin with.

<comment><USER19> I agree with you that it wasn't that much of a hassle technically, just wish that the announcement was done with more transparency instead of "OTP Technical Board" met somewhere and this is what was decided [http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2012-October/06...](http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2012-October/069720.html)

Reminds me of Microsoft's .NET development process from 10 years ago, huge corporation drives development of a platform behind closed doors with very few people from the outside having any idea what is coming in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That this post has > 100 replies (good or bad) heartens me. I would be happy to see more from erl or exrl. Both are phenomenal achievements. I'm only saddened that erl doesn't move faster to modernize its obvious, and easily rectified shortcomings (modern strings anyone?).

Adding hashes to erl is a good start, and joeerl seems very open to more. There is certainly more to come in both camps, and that's good for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not a discussion of Elixir vs Erlang. Its not a zero sum game. Every improvement to erlang is an improvement to elixir and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER22> Quick side-by-side code comparison, for everyone wanting a quick (and not very complete) overview: [http://rosetta.alhur.es/compare/elixir/erlang/#](http://rosetta.alhur.es/compare/elixir/erlang/#)

</comment><comment><USER19> Elixir needs a good IDE with code completion and jump to definition. There are awesome Erlang plugins for Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA, but for Elixir I am still hacking in SublimeText and the lack of those two functionalities slows down the process considerably, from what it could be.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure if this would suffice, but I came across [https://github.com/tonini/alchemist.el](https://github.com/tonini/alchemist.el)

<comment><USER19> alchemist.el does the trick. I got it to work after some configuration tinkering, but so far so good. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A bit like lisp the metaprogramming aspect of elixir allows for really rapid domain customization with out needing to have your changes approved by the core team. I think this on top of interop with existing erlang libraries and the scalability of the erlang vm model put elixir in a really good position to have presence if not in web dev overall then atleast in areas that in the past would have been grudgingly done using erlang instead of scala or whatever for scale reasons.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's also a ton of great stuff highlighted at Awesome Elixir [1] and Awesome Erlang [2]

[1] [https://github.com/h4cc/awesome-elixir](https://github.com/h4cc/awesome- elixir) [2] [https://github.com/drobakowski/awesome- erlang](https://github.com/drobakowski/awesome-erlang)

</comment><comment><USER26> > Being, among other things, a "web guy", this is particularly noticeable to > me, and perhaps less so to people using Erlang for what Erlang traditionally > has done well.

What are the things Erlang has traditionally done well? In what domains is it generally used now?

</comment><comment><USER27> Great article!

For a language that has been there for 29years, it's very hard to get such momentum.

<comment> maze-le Well, Erlang has kind of a cumbersome syntax, and it is hard to learn for someone who has never seen a functional programming language.

IMO Elixir does a great job at reducing the inherent complexity of the Erlang syntax, while keeping its powerful features (Erlang-procs, horizontal scalability, fault-tolerance).

<comment><USER28> But I still don't understand why Elixir didn't drop ends.

<comment><USER29> I think they should keep the "end"s, but they should say what they end! "end function" tells me that a function ends here. "end if" tells me that an if statement ends here. "end" is just equivalent to "}".

<comment><USER30> Some Ruby (and Elixir and Julia and other languages that use `end`) will just add a comment at the end of the `end` if they want to be more explicit about it. For example:

        def foo(bar,baz) do
          ...
        end # foo

This brings me to why a bare `end` makes more sense (in the case of Elixir, at least): because every use of `end` corresponds to a `do`. The above code is basically equivalent to `def foo(bar,baz) { ... }`, since `def` takes a function specifier and a block as its arguments.

If you really don't like `end`, you can also (at least with Elixir) use the shorthand form:

        def foo(bar,baz), do: ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is the main drawback about Elixir lack of support from Dialyzer?

<comment><USER32> You can use Dialyzer, not perfectly (yet) but it works. [1-2]

[1] [https://github.com/jeremyjh/dialyxir](https://github.com/jeremyjh/dialyxir)

[2] [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/elixir-lang- talk/yDX...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/elixir-lang- talk/yDXgV0hnM-c)</comment></comment>


Danish Researchers: A Better Way to Line Up Than 'First Come, First Served' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/lines-efficient-first-come-served/404218/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> It sounds to me like the researchers trials were ignoring the reason queues exist. You dont _choose_ to go to the bank or post office (for example) at an arbitrary time. You go because you have business which must be conducted and you only have certain time windows available in which to go there. The higher the overall demand for service is at this time the bigger the queue will be.

Also in the last served first system it would be possible for people in the bottom of the stack to never be served! As long as a steady stream of newcomers arrived.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

In supermarket lines, for example, you let people choose their queue because you can see what people have and let them judge which queue they should be in to incentivise them to go to the queue which packs them in the most. I always feel a bit guilty when I purchase dry ice (for science) at the supermarket because it causes queuers to make an error in judgement as to the length of the line.

At banks and the DMV, because there is no way to judge how long someone in front of you is going to take, it doesn't make sense to let people choose, so there is a single queue that is distributed at the end of the line.

<comment><USER4> Actually the DMV in my state works a little differently (at all of the secondary businesses which perform that task under some state license system, probably notary of the republic based; I never looked in to the details).

There is generally a queue for a /type/ of operation that you are doing. It's expected that the average time to service a given person receiving that service has only minor variation and an occasional outlying exception.

It seems that there is usually one agent assigned to each queue, and sometimes additional agents are assigned (balanced?) as load dictates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've often thought that the root of many queues is a discontinuity in pricing. This is most apparent on black friday. If prices were smoothed out then a time/money trade-off can happen. Anyone can jump to the front of the line if they are willing to pay more. This is more "fair" than last first but would optimize revenue for the seller, and lower wait times for everyone.

Imagine: The next iPhone sale stars at $10,000. The crowd makes a loose circle as the clock starts to count down to sale time. Just before the clocks reaches zero, one obviously rich and important individual struts up to buy one. They casually complete their transaction, and hold up their prize as the clock starts counting down from 30 again.

At time=zero, the current price starts dropping $5 per second until about a minute later the next person is willing to step up to buy it for $6k. They walk away satisfied because of the conspicuous consumption they have just experienced. Several more step up as the price begins dropping again at $4k, $3750, and $3100. The envy of the crowd is palpable.

At $2560 a small swarm of early adopters breaks ranks. It's a good 20 minutes before the price starts dropping again. As you watch the large pile dwindle and the crowd begins to vibrate it's clear they will not be reaching the base price today, but will instead sell out the entire inventory at some unknown price.

As you eye the crowd, you think about how much you want it, and suddenly your heart races as you step out in front of everyone else to get your hearts desire.

<comment><USER6> I once tried to sell a car like this. I put an ad in the paper that said, say, $6000 and dropped it in price over time. It didn't sell.

Years later when I went to buy a house the real estate agent explained to me why. The market for houses (and presumably cards) include lots of people who are watching and waiting for months or years to buy. They get into a steady state where they only look at new listings and ignore the ones they've already seen.

So if your house or car doesn't sell relatively quickly, you move from the seller-arrival queue to the buyer-arrival queue. Which takes disproportionately longer and it's likely that you won't be getting the best price for it.

<comment><USER7> The incentives for the real estate agent make them think that way though. If they sell a house for $200,000 in a week, they are probably a lot happier than if they sold it for $300,000 in 6 months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > the queues are more efficient

How? Are they processing more units from the queue per second? Is it easier to find the vague end of a line among a jumble of people than the head of a queue? Are LIFO queues more likely to have something in them than FIFO queues thus avoiding wait times for the next customer and idle staff? Is it a good idea to leave a large portion of boarding to the last few minutes of the boarding interval?

<comment><USER3> There's probably also a pareto equilibrium illusion going on. If you screw the one person at the bottom of the stack, but serve everyone else more efficiency, is that 'the best choice'? Indeed, there may be no way to rearrange the order of service so that no one is worse off, but that is not necessarily the 'correct' optimal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem with this method is starvation. If you treat a queue like a stack, and you have a steady stream of incoming people, the first person in the queue will die of starvation before they are helped.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is horrifying. Literally the fabric of society would break down.</comment>


Superior Correlation: Why We Created Fizzle, Our New Matching Language - <AUTHOR> http://blog.datarank.com/fizzle-a-new-matching-language/

<comment><USER2> This sounds interesting, but would make a much better HN post if you went into technical detail. The more the better.</comment>


AI learns to defy the laws of physics to win at hide-and-seek - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2216410-ai-learns-to-defy-the-laws-of-physics-to-win-at-hide-and-seek/ <comment><USER2> Nothing interesting, just the simulation of the physics laws was poor and so it glitched.</comment>


WHO official: Asymptomatic spread of coronavirus 'rare' - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/homenews/coronavirus-report/501696-who-official-asymptomatic-spread-of-coronavirus-very-rare <comment><USER2> Presumably the same WHO who lied about travel bans, masks, covered up for China, put Taiwan in danger and repeatedly lied about the extent of the outbreak -- all while calling China "transparent and open" publicly.

<comment><USER3> Does anyone have any authoritative sources regarding the battle between Italian doctor who says they have less potent coronavirus now, and the WHO saying they're wrong?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who worked for a global UN agency, I can personally attest to the influence of China in the organisation. I remember one instance where the Chinese govt. kicked a major fuss over including 'Taiwan' in the country selector dropdown for our web properties. The order came from really high up in the top and we had to remove Taiwan lol.

</comment><comment><USER5> The title is very misleading.

A WHO official did, indeed, state that asymptomatic transmission was "rare," but, the article goes on to say "She noted that the answer is not definitive," and then goes on to quote the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and an infectious disease expert from Baylor University expressing doubt.

<comment><USER6> Also uses a very strict definition of "asymptomatic" which apparently excludes the likely more common case of "presymptomatic" carriers -- who will develop symptoms but haven't yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They are so discredited now, now one listens to them.

<comment><USER8> Well now that they've been severely defunded by the USA everything coming out of them is especially suspect as propaganda resulting from that leverage.

The American president wants scapegoats for his failings, and despite completely ignoring the WHO recommendations at the start of the pandemic, he's turned the WHO into one.

<comment><USER7> Every recommendation coming out of WHO was bad so far. Especially to not close borders with China.

<comment><USER8> Every? B.S.

On Jan. 30 the WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. That announcement is a trigger for the agency's member governments to follow its recommendations. These include establishing a comprehensive programme of testing, quarantining people suspected to be infected, and tracing their contacts.

The US completely ignored it, while Germany, Signapore, South Korea, didn't.

Nobody is claiming the WHO is perfect, but come on, this is such political hogwash.

<comment><USER7> Really how about this: [https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus- outbreak/...](https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/who- chief-urges-countries-not-close-borders-foreigners-china)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did the WHO ever change its stance on wearing facemasks (specifically: "only wear a mask if you're symptomatic or in the same household as someone who is", rather than the arguably more responsible "wear a mask, period" guidance of e.g. the CDC)?

I feel like this is an attempt to double-down on that "guidance". I would hope that the WHO cares more about saving lives than saving face.

Either way, this statement is meaningless when unaccompanied by data.</comment>


BitTorrent brings secure chat app Bleep to iOS - k-mcgrady http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/12/8590361/bittorrent-bleep-secure-chat-app-ios-launch

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "While users have got past similar Snapchat restrictions by simply taking screenshots of sent messages, Bleep offers some protection against this tactic: when reading messages from a contact, their username is blocked out. If you want to see who you're talking to, you'll need to press an eye icon that in turn blurs the entire message history, ensuring that users can't be easily tied to potentially incriminating screenshots."

Pretty smart way of getting around the screenshot issue.</comment>


Why the French Love to Complain - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200831-why-the-french-love-to-complain <comment><USER2> > _there's "porter plainte", for complaining more officially_

Note that this does not simply mean an 'official' complaint, but a formal criminal complaint to police or 'procureur' (district attorney). So if you're unhappy about the service in a Parisian cafe and tell the waiter that you're going to "porter plainte" the reply will probably only be a sneer even more condescending than usual.

<comment><USER3> Actually don't say you are going to "porter plainte" in a café, you will look like a Karen with extra steps

edit : Porter plainte means filling the papers to a Police station to start a judiciary procedure against someone, you'd do that for violence, theft, rape etc...

<comment><USER2> Yes, exactly what I wrote ;)

<comment><USER3> yup ^^

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Uhm, I think the British won the "complainer" trophy with our lame ass brexit project. In fact, now the Scots are complaining about England (& Wales) winning the complaint trophy, that they themselves will likely win the complaint contest in 2021. (Please note I support Scots independence, and Scots complaints with the UK are also long standing and well founded.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm an expat living in France, and I always tell my French friends they don't know how lucky they are to be living in such a wonderful country. Really when you come to other countries I lived in, there's no comparison.

<comment><USER6> The thinking is that the country probably wouldn't be so wonderful if the people were not in the habit of complaining about some of the things that aren't that wonderful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ah the UK, where its okay to be racist against everyone apart from the UK upper class.

"I speak English without an accent.." \- you mean you speak English with a SE England accent?

</comment><comment><USER8> This applies to most European countries actually.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, for poles, "How are you?/Co u ciebie?" is an invitation to complain, not a figure of speech.

<comment><USER10> Where complain here means "actually talk about your life/how you are/situation", and then listen to the other talk about theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was told by a fellow Australian, that was a birth right as Australian :-)</comment>


Interviews on Skype - <AUTHOR> https://skype.com/interviews <comment><AUTHOR> Test candidates using a real-time code editor over Skype. Give instructions, interview candidates and provide feedback via the in-browser Skype call. The in-browser code editor allows candidates to run their code and check their results. Help candidates avoid syntactic mistakes with real-time syntax highlighting for 7 popular programming languages.

<comment><USER2> I've seen a few companies use HackerRank for this. They provide a few problems, one or two test cases, and then run your code against other provided test cases that you don't see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> C# doesn't seem to be working properly

string Hello () { return "test"; }

Console.WriteLine(Hello());

solution.cs(1,0): error CS1525: Unexpected symbol `string'

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks really cool. Can you prepare a test project for the candidates or do they always start from blank?

<comment><AUTHOR> Feedback noted! Will evaluate this with the team. Thanks for the feedback

<comment><USER5> Also known as: No.</comment></comment></comment>


DOMINATE Your Niche Market. MailingBoss – The Unlimited Email Marketing Tool - <AUTHOR> http://mailingboss-funnel.onlinefinance.live/ <comment><USER2> Anybody from HN has experience with this?</comment>


Woolim – Lifting the Fog on DPRK's Latest Tablet PC [video] - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8143-woolim_lifting_the_fog_on_dprk_s_latest_tablet_pc <comment><USER4> Slides: [https://github.com/takeshixx/woolim- tools](https://github.com/takeshixx/woolim-tools)

Blog-Post: [https://insinuator.net/2016/12/woolim-lifting-the-fog-on- dpr...](https://insinuator.net/2016/12/woolim-lifting-the-fog-on-dprks-latest- tablet-pc/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm constantly impressed by the effort the DPRK is putting into securing their devices.

I've just skimmed it, but:

The talk describes what is really an extreme form of DRM, the tablet can only open media created and signed by the government or media created and self- signed on the tablet.

Users can't exchange files, if they try the signature check fails.

It's very similar to what they presented last year on RedStar OS, but this seems to be taking it to even greater extremes.

In RedStar OS you could transfer files, but they'd get watermarked. In someways that's even scarier, because they can log ever user who touched the file.

Really very interesting, it will be fascinating to see how this progresses (as well as terrifying).

<comment><USER6> > Users can't exchange files

Yes, they can, but the OS appends a watermark to each file when it is exported, so every file carries with it a record of who exported it and in what order. That allows the government, when it gets a copy of a shared file, to track back exactly who gave it to whom.

> terrifying

Indeed.

<comment><USER5> That appears to be the case on RedStar OS. But on Woolim you can only few government signed or self-signed content, nothing else. That was my understanding from the talk.

<comment><USER6> Ah, you may be right. I skipped over a few parts of the talk, so I may have been missing some context during the watermarking discussion. My comment was based on the segment starting at 41:30.

<comment><USER7> Maybe you should state that you skimmed the article before declaring something so assertively. Did you even read the parent comment, or did you see "transfer files, Redstar OS" and jump at the chance to espouse your little NK factoid?

Seriously, you didn't read/listen to the article, and you didn't read the parent comment. This sort of comment etiquette is unacceptable on YC

<comment><USER8> _> This sort of comment etiquette is unacceptable on YC_

I feel that the above statement is more applicable to your comment, than to the comment you were talking about. I would like to politely suggest silently downvoting a comment that is factually incorrect, instead of going on a rant about comment etiquette.

We're all human and we all make mistakes. Angry outbursts like yours are more toxic to a community than having an occasional user be negligent and fail to fact-check their comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This would be so much fun to jailbreak.

The solution to media content distribution looks a lot like what companies in the United States have tried again and again to do, but have failed - <USER2> perhaps the recent exception of smart phone and tablet devices.

Another trick the DPRK might consider is making much of their software a service and requiring always-on connectivity to use the application in question. This not only restricts what a user can do, but it also allows the 'stewart' body to track usage, collect metadata and a number of other useful bits for state security. Often, the use of the app can be track to a geolocation.

<comment><USER10> Well, Bono managed to point to China's great firewall as an example when talking about DRM enforcement...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess these guys hadn't seen the info on [https://linux- sunxi.org/Main_Page](https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page) when they were trying to get the device to run arbitrary code. All Allwinner SoCs have a USB bootloader baked into the _CPU_, which you can talk to over an open-source protocol (poorly documented, but on my old A10 tablet the magic term to google for is 'LiveSuit' \- there is an open-source Linux driver, bootloader, and flasher stub to be found on github somewhere).

</comment><comment><USER12> "We don't know if it's really Flash, but it makes sense because most of the DPRK websites are using Flash to serve video… and deliver remote exploits."

</comment><comment><USER13> DPRK is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly referred to as "North Korea".

</comment><comment><USER14> (Now - listen: this is after "suffering" through 3-4 CCC speeches in the past week.)

Ah. It's that time the the year. CCC. Ze Germans.

I'm also not a native speaker of English (I'm Swedish).. but I know my limits. If I would want to communicate something to the rest of the world, I would put it on the web. In text and images.

German people tend to be decent-to-quite good good at writing English - <USER3> kind of bad at speaking it, to be honest. This guy is one of the better, I have to say. The video format is still annoying though, because of its linear format.

Please: CCC speakers with brilliant and interesting topics that you know will interest the global community: Put up an English language blog post!

<comment><USER15> I had a similarly irritating experience with one of the CCC videos, but I'm not sure if it's just me being spoiled (these are otherwise excellent quality talks, provided at no cost to me). The first 20 minutes of the Snowden/family talk was a presenter fiddling around with her laptop which had run out of battery, interspersed with a guy whistling into the mic to "entertain" the crowd. I was able to skip past it, but whistling - wtf!?

<comment><USER5> I feel a bit sad to read this.

The CCC is a super-cheap conference. It costs 100Euro (about 100USD currently?) to attend a 4 day conference.

The venue is massive, and roughly 13,000 people attend. There are often 3 or 4 talks going on at the same time. The talks are among the most technically interesting available anywhere.

In top of that, they have areas where people can hack on group projects, and the venue is open 24hours during the conference (some people even crash there over night).

This is all run on a largely volunteer basis. And in my view to a very professional standard.

Someone screwing up and delaying one talk seems pretty insignificant in light of the amazing work they do.

<comment><USER15> Hey hold on - I did say that the talks were excellent and delivered at no cost, and conceded that I was probably just overreacting. Why are you commenting as I didn't?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/22538/chinese-miners-hash-halving-coronavirus <comment><USER2> Thank goodness. This waste of electricity and natural resources needs to go away.

<comment><USER3> it was always funny that people with a prepper mentality touted bitcoin as some sort of rock stable currency in times of crisis when government money was going to be worthless despite the fact that it basically takes an electricity source the size of the country to keep the whole thing running.

What are you going to do in the post apocalypse, get a team of people with an abacus to calculate hash functions?

<comment><USER4> I would expect bitcoin to work properly with as few as 3 people... And any computer can calculate hashes.

<comment><USER5> This is a point I see a lot of people miss about Bitcoin's power consumption. It doesn't have to use as much electricity as it does, as the difficulty is adjusted to mining capacity.

The reason why so much electricity is being used on BTC is a result of an arms race between miners, not a necessity of the technical specification. Bitcoin would still operate correctly with less mining capacity. What is sacrificed is that the threshold for mounting a 51% attack becomes lower with less miners. But again, the network itself does not need a nation-state's worth of electricity to operate.

<comment><USER6> How quickly would the difficulty adjust? My understanding is that there is an algorithm that slowly adjusts difficulty. If a big chunk of the ASIC miners went offline and mining reverted to individual GPUs, it might be a very long time before the difficulty reverted to something reasonable.

<comment><USER7> Bitcoin difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks, nominally 2 weeks. Each time it can adjust by a factor of at most 4 (in either direction). Many other cryptocurrencies adjust difficulty every single block.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this is true, which I welcome because Chinese miner centralization has been a massive worry for us since about 2012, that still has yielded they highest hash rate (the computing power dedicated to mining Bitcoin) in the History of BTC:

[https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin- hashrate.html](https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html)

Its easy to skew this if you don't understand the underlying tech, but Bitcoin continues to work despite a supposed exodus of miners (best example being the last fork with BCash), what secures the network are the nodes, not miners. They're just participants who are rewarded for appropriating the network with hashing power.

As for the price dip, well I welcome anyone to buy $100 of BTC and hold onto a $100 and see which is more valuable now that the Federal Reserve has dropped Interest rates to 0%, and is issuing a $700 Billion QE program:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/federal-reserve-cuts- rates-t...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/federal-reserve-cuts-rates-to- zero-and-launches-massive-700-billion-quantitative-easing-program.html)

> They should never be there anyway, Bitcoin is a waste of time.

Personally, this couldn't have come at a worst time for me as I stepped down from my day job to undergo my SpaceX interview(s), I've turned down some gig/jobs in the last month too, but I'm glad that I have BTC as a cushion with some cash on hand.

<comment><USER9> Bitcoin is fundamentally not a cash alternative. Which means definitionally the alternative to holding onto $100 BTC is NOT holding onto $100 cash. In fact cash is intentionally inflationary and BTC is intentionally deflationary (over long enough time scales) so yeah, you'd win your silly bet if there's no major crash. Doesn't mean you'll come out ahead of other strategies.

<comment><USER10> The problem with bitcoin is specifically that it is deflationary. In over simplified macro economic terms when you have deflation it is in the consumers interest to not spend money, because the cost of a service or good will be lower in the future. So the longer you wait the more you save.

You have the same issue with Bitcoin, because it is deflationary it is in the holder's interest to not spend it, because it's future buying power will be increased.

So if you look at how bitcoin was distributed you have early holders that have a tremendous amount and have been rewarded for it.

Add to that speculation and you have this whole cycle ramped up on steroids, with huge swings up, and then down, and all the while the value continues to increase because it is designed to do so.

The problem was that bitcoin tried to solve two problems, but should have only solved one.

The first problem was how to transfer value in an untrusted network which was a great success.

The second, was unneeded, which is to make it deflationary as some sort of perhaps response to the inflationary world we live in.

But the reality is that the inflationary world was designed by economists so that wealth continues to circulate. Yes, there are still issues. Yes we have imbalance. But inflation does case wealth to circulate, though not as quickly as some would hope for.

In bitcoin, you have the exact opposite, wealth gets accrued to early backers and just sits there.

<comment><USER11> There is hidden inflation that comes from other crypto currencies.

Once Bitcoin inflation is too strong and people are not willing to sell, it becomes profitable to start another currency. That currency will absorb liquidity and the deflation of BC stops. Like information in the internet, value flows around obstacles.

<comment><USER11> edit: Once Bitcoin _deflation_ is too strong ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Curious about the network's capacity to respond to a downward trend in hash power (which doesn't seem inevitable, but possible).

Does the difficulty factor of new blocks get dropped in response to losing hash power? Is the fee / mining reward balance predictable? Does the network become non-functional for xfers below a certain value at some point?

<comment><USER13> Yes, the difficulty rebalances periodically (every two weeks, roughly?), it would take a catastrophic decrease in hashing power to affect that by too much.

The mining reward stays the same, though it drops by half every few years (one such drop is approaching in May).

The network actually becomes non-functional for low transfers the other way - when there's too much interest, and too many transactions, the fees to get a transaction through start to rocket. At the peak of the 2017 hype the y hit around $50-70, IIRC.

<comment><USER14> It balances after 2016 blocks, not 2 weeks. This is a crucial difference because when the hash rate drops dramatically, those 2016 blocks might take 4 or even more weeks to create.

<comment><USER13> Yes, it could. There is a hypothetical "stuck network" situation, but that really is dependent on a lot of network power disappearing. Before that you'd end up with a lot of idle hash power and ex-miners wondering what they could achieve in the way of an attack with it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bitcoin is volatile. No surprise there.

</comment><comment><USER16> Last week a FB friend discusses with his connections the winning investment strategy wrt the virus. They agreed that BTC (besides gold) is a safe heaven. It was @ $8k back then (now it's $5k).

</comment><comment><USER17> In my opinion, for-profit bitcoin mining is detrimental to the ecosystem. Prices should fall to unprofitable levels,so network hash power is more distributed among smaller groups.

<comment><USER18> The already existing mining hardware would make attacks easier and more probable, especially considering actors able and willing to operate at a loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> They should never be there anyway, Bitcoin is a waste of time.

<comment><USER20> It's not waste of time. I think if helped progress in the hardware. It educated people on blockchain. Now there may be rigs our there for sale, which can be reused for more important things, scientific research, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it's time that the government started to consider stepping in a providing support to these out of work ASICs.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h In the interest of hijacking this into a productive discussion: Does anyone know if it's possible to use BTC ASICs for anything else? It's just a lot of sha256 hardware, right? Can we use it for arbitrary checksumming?

<comment><USER22> Absolutely not. They're application specific as the name implies. They can not do anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Given the run on toilet paper, a better black swan hedge seems to be Shitcoin!</comment>


Socialite Cordelia Scaife May Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/anti-immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html <comment><USER2> It seems like many now-popular movements had deep-pocketed sponsors.

Can a billion dollars always push an idea into the mainstream? Or are there counterexamples of groups who poured huge amounts of money into promoting something that never caught on?

<comment><USER3> Money does seem to be the only way to get even a hint of policy change from Washington, but the trend line of public opinion is opposite of what you suggest. Until around 1995, immigration restriction was overwhelmingly mainstream in the United States and still commands a strong plurality.

[https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx)

I'd further point out that the overwhelming majority of the moneyed interests still stack up on the side of permissive immigration policies. It is, after all, capital that benefits from a global free market for labor and an expanded consumer base. It's just about the only thing the Koch brothers and Soros can agree on.

<comment><USER4> This is the fantastic irony of the completely false dichotomy that the public imagines mainstream politics to be. The modern left seems to paradoxically be supporting open-borders _and_ worker's rights. Normally I would further qualify that statement by attributing such sentiments to the _far_ left, but this seems to be a fairly mainstream position based upon what we saw in the Democratic Primary debates recently. I find it difficult to believe that a pro-trade union candidate like Bernie Sanders does not understand the basic laws of supply/demand: How a supply of cheap labour affects the wages of the individual employee. I'm in my early 30s and I came of age immersed in the counter-culture of the 90s. Nihilistic Industrial rock decrying the emergence of free-trade and a globalised economy was the left wing soundtrack of the age. Now the far-left seems to be wholesale pro free movement of people and capital. I would accuse the masses expecting that this will not have a negative impact on the financial well-being of the individual of absolute foolishness, but it seems that many proponents of such policies are no longer expecting them to be feasible within the framework of social-democracy. Instead opting for much more collectivist forms of government.

<comment><USER5> > I find it difficult to believe that a pro-trade union candidate like Bernie > Sanders does not understand the basic laws of supply/demand: How a supply of > cheap labour affects the wages of the individual employee.

This interview would indicate that he understands that, and wants to restrict immigration for that very reason: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0)

Edit: The interview is from 2015, so it may be that his understanding has 'evolved' since.

<comment><USER4> ( Without watching said interview, I'm in the office and don't have headphones ) Did Sanders not indicate his support for decriminalisation of illegal border crossing in the primaries? I would hardly take that as an endorsement of restricting immigration.

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily no.

Most border crossings aren't even prosecuted. [https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/520/](https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/520/)

Increasing the number of them being prosecuted places a massive burden on the court system and results in the various unjust scenarios we have today. [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/us/border-immigration- cou...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/us/border-immigration- courts.html?module=inline)

There isn't any evidence that criminalization decreases the number of border crossings either. [https://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/2015/OIG_15-95_May15.pdf](https://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/2015/OIG_15-95_May15.pdf)

Indeed, immigration levels haven't decreased under trump despite the massive increase in prosecutions.

Given this, it isn't absurd to think that other approaches would be at least as effective at controlling immigration in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When someone moves from the 3rd world to the US, their CO2 footprint grows enormously. Mass immigration is hugely disruptive to stable job and family formulation. It seems to be supported by mainly by two groups in the US, one that wants cheap exploitable labor, and one that wants to shift American politics by changing the demographics.

<comment><USER8> There's also a third group, who believes that if someone's country has become unlivable (e.g., Honduras today), the United States of America would be honored to have them.

/s/, descendant of Potato Famine Irish Immigrants

<comment><USER7> What quantity of people are you talking about exactly, and what price are you willing for poor black/Hispanic/white people with only high school degrees to pay in low-skilled labor competition, in order to assuage your racial guilt?

Do you have any idea what has happened to the wages for non-skilled labor since the 1970s? While you and I may have nice cushy jobs and live in nice houses, the largest employer in this country is Walmart. Most people in this country don't have college degrees. They are poor, and mass immigration has made them poorer, and continues to make them poorer.

A lot of the "Abolish ICE" support comes from people in highly gentrifying areas of the country, living in cities that are in the process of driving out their historic minority residents from their homes to go live in the Midwest, all to make way for wealthier white people. Not that this would be your situation, of course! But it can make that sort of person's cheap grace very cheap indeed.

<comment><USER8> I live in Washington, DC, where I own a house in a neighborhood that was ranked as the hottest market in the country a couple years ago. So, I'm one of those privileged coastal elites who lived in a highly gentrifying area.

That gentrifying neighborhood is also home to DC's Central American diaspora. My daughter's classmates' families fled violence in Honduras and El Salvador (both in the 80s and now, with renewed unrest).

I'm also from rural Iowa, lived on a farm during the 80s farm crisis until my dad threw in the towel. I go back regularly. I have a very personal understanding of rural depopulation and economic stagnation.

Your accusation of cheap grace is indeed cheap. You want real grace? Love thy neighbor, every one of them. Do you have any idea what life is like in San Pedro Sula?

<comment><USER7> What do you want me to say? That you're going to heaven by taking the bread out of poor black people's mouths in order to help Hondurans? I don't think it works that way. You aren't making any personal sacrifice whatsoever here. You're just hectoring people about neighbor-loving while you get rich and they get poorer.

And if your interest in immigration is especially asylum law, I would be extremely worried about the people now deploying asylum fraud as a mass immigration wedge. It's going to wind up hurting the people who need it the most, and in fact already has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I assume this article was written because of proposed changes to the green card system hinted at earlier this week.

It may be my own bias showing, but is there ever a reason to offer some person permanent residency in the country when you know they will need to go on public assistance right away?

<comment><USER10> Because permanent residency shouldn't be a privilege granted only to the relatively wealthy.

<comment><USER9> Most Americans aren't relatively wealthy, but also aren't on food stamps or other public programs.

<comment><USER11> As of July 1, 2016, over 80 million Americans, nearly a quarter of the population, was enrolled in Medicaid. [0] (Because someone qualified for other means-tested assistance will almost always also qualify for Medicaid, that's a pretty good rough estimate, though still a lower bound, for the total aid- receiving population at that point in time.)

[0] [https://data.medicaid.gov/widgets/x3sw- xby3](https://data.medicaid.gov/widgets/x3sw-xby3)

<comment><USER9> Okay, so most Americans are not on public assistance. That seems to agree with what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is your occasional reminder that a lot of the "Mexican" "Immigrants" our president hates so much are the descendants of the people who were already here when Europeans came here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> paywall breach: [http://archive.is/RRKEH](http://archive.is/RRKEH)

</comment><comment><USER13> On a recent Vox Weeds episode there was mention made of the environmental movement's early connections to eugenics, sterilization and population control, and how national parks weren't so altruistic when it came to native populations and local population subsistence. I have also heard opinions in the past that environmentalism in its 20th century forms was really just a white culture concept of aesthetics. I can imagine that if you scratch deep enough there's lots of dark stuff there.

<comment><USER14> Up until the green revolution population control was of great concern. The PRC took that to heart and introduced the 1CPF policy.

It's arguable that this policy while very cruel and unjustly applied and which resulted in skewed gender demographics, had allowed China to prosper quicker than otherwise. On the other hand, in 20-30 years they will face a severe shortage of working age people. But they are autocrats so they may be able to manage that via central policies.

<comment><USER15> If you sincerely believe that the earth cannot support a large population of humans that live unsustainable lifestyles, your most logical conclusion will probably be to find ways to reduce it. However, we know now that as a country gets wealthier, it's fertility rate also decreases rapidly. So perhaps instead of trying to fix the problem by eliminating humans we can try to make other societies prosper and let socioeconomic factors take care of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't like to see overpopulation being conflated with immigration again, because...

Overpopulation is obviously a problem; immigration maybe or maybe not (case- by-case each country decides).

Overpopulation is from people being born; not from people crossing borders. No humans are created or destroyed in the act of emigration or immigration.

Overpopulation, nobody wants to talk about; immigration, everybody wants to talk about.

<comment><USER17> How does that square with many western nations whose population would be declining due to low birthrates if not for immigration?

<comment><USER18> Prosperity reduces birth rates for a variety of reasons.

One of the big drivers of population growth is being a poor farmer and preserving a legacy. Once you have some wealth, the incentives change.

My grandparents grew up poor in rural Ireland, my grandmother was one of 12 children and at least 16 pregnancies, born in the WWI era. 9 of the siblings made it to adulthood. They needed people to milk cows and catch fish, and needed living sons to inherit the land and take care of the elders.

Immigration in modern western countries fills the gap between productivity gains and the dearth of workers. It keeps salaries lower to reduce inflation and preserves the status quo. Remember that behind of all of these crazy debates is a need for certain stakeholders to maintain power.

<comment><USER15> > It keeps salaries lower to reduce inflation and preserves the status quo.

That doesn't seem correct. Waves of Hispanic and Asian immigration has reshaped California from Conservative to _the_ most liberal state. CA also has high minimum wages and much better worker protections than most other states, due to the liberal leaning politicians that got elected.

<comment><USER18> Enter the right wing "populists".

Why do you think that these folks are so upset about immigration from Latin America and Asia? The old way was to exploit cheap immigrant labor... but after many years, you now have a situation where that immigrant labor is disrupting the status quo.

This has happened before. The same type language directed at Mexican and central american laborers was directed at Irish, Italian, Greek, Chinese and Jewish immigrants in the 19th century. Race, religion, supposed immorality, the same shit. See the Page Act, Chinese Exclusion Act and "Know Nothing Party".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A billionaire worrying about the possibility of global ecological collapse due to overpopulation and then deciding that their preferred reaction to this is to spend their vast wealth keeping people out of the particular corner of the planet that they personally spend most time in, is some of the laziest thinking I have encountered in quite a while.

edit - Also, I am not entirely sure that her partners in this battle she was fighting against immigration, have really got the memo on the whole ecology/overpopulation thing. They strike me as more the sort to either be siring their quiverfull ready for the coming eschaton, or to leave a trail of illegitimate children from a series of messy affairs with employees.</comment>


The £400 test that tells you how long you'll live - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-163400-test-that-tells-you-how-long-youll-live-2284639.html

<comment><USER2> What's with the change of title to add "scientists react with fear"?

As a scientist, I react with skepticism and the depressing knowledge that a bunch of people are going to put _far_ more stock in these test results than they deserve. Is your "true age" any better than the one I'd get out of Wii Fit?

The only way I could support this is if it comes with some _very_ careful statistical analysis and a comparison to the actuarial tables of the general population. Don't tell me how many more years I should expect to live, but tell me the chance that I'll be dead by 2021, 2031, 2041 et cetera, with proper error bars, and how that compares to the longevity of the general population of my gender.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you take the test and be curious about the results?

"Scientists" proposing "ethical restrictions" on tests because they fear the public is archaic thinking, and it's half of what I got out of the article.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Fax Robot – a GPL'ed web app and API for sending faxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.faxrobot.com

<comment><USER2> There's so much to like about your execution here. I think my favorite is that the contact email for Fax Robot is email@example.com.

I would highly recommend putting the information that you need to buy $2 worth up front.

Finding that out in an FAQ doesn't feel right to me. [http://cl.ly/image/0P270O2E2b39](http://cl.ly/image/0P270O2E2b39)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's awesome. I can't believe that fax is still a thing, but sometimes there's just no easy way to get N pages into somebody else's hands. Scan-to- email is good, but the usability for various products is all over the map.

edit: I think the Github link on the FAQ is busted. Should probably link to [https://github.com/lyonbros/faxrobot- www](https://github.com/lyonbros/faxrobot-www) or [https://github.com/lyonbros/faxrobot](https://github.com/lyonbros/faxrobot)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it is a great service and I built a manual version with a server and an old FAX modem. The challenge for me is that with a service, if your infrastructure gets compromised, and you have a fax that I sent to my bank asking them to say 'reroute my checking account', it becomes trivial to have my bank reroute it again. The problem for me with FAX is that it is both massively easy to spoof and considered so freakin' authentic by the folks who demand faxes.

</comment><comment><USER5> I _just_ needed to send faxes related to payroll taxes a few days ago, and ended up with another pay-as-you-go type service. Wish I'd seen this first. Since it's been three or four years since I've previously needed to send faxes, I'm unlikely to become a regular Fax Robot user, but the price is right (I'm paying .11 per page) and the simplicity of the thing looks great. Minimal hassle, no monthly fee, etc. were among my qualifications when I made a decision about which service to use.

Historically I used MaxEmail which was always fine, and a good deal if you need incoming faxes, but since I didn't need that and canceled my account with them a few years back, it was unnecessarily expensive.

</comment><comment><USER6> >NOTE: The device for your faxmodem must be accessible by the user account you're running the worker.py process under. (hint: add your user account to the dialout group)

So you have like, a server with a fax modem hooked up to a landline? Wouldn't this be much cheaper to do as VoIP?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use a virtual hardware device like IAXmodem[1] to go over a VoIP channel, while identifying itself to Linux as a normal dialup modem. That's outside of the scope of Fax Robot as a project, but certainly a good option for scaling it up.

[1]: [http://iaxmodem.sourceforge.net/](http://iaxmodem.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER7> Yep. True story: that's how I ran my hotel reservation network in China about ... oh ... 8 years ago now. E1 link (30 simultaneous lines) plus a Sangoma interface card, Asterisk, IAXmodem and a lot of configuration, custom web- based call center operator distributed web interface. Faxes would come in to a human workqueue based on caller ID (we could tell which partner hotel were sending them). We'd store them as PDFs, ask someone to pick a page and place to 'stamp' (hah!) them to signal agreement or receipt, then automagically digitally fax them back. Presto: paperless office! Usually 3-5 people, we scaled to about ~3500 partner hotels (at the time, the same network size as the 2x leading competition, both Nasdaq listed) by being more efficient. I'm seriously considering re-launching this now, if anyone's got a fat China-scale marketing budget lying around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks Fax Robot! You served your purpose today when I got the random email asking for some data to be faxed to them for expedited service... (seriously, an email requesting a fax.. thanks world.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Good execution. But I usually use hellofax [1], plus they give you up to 5 free docs to fax i think.

[1] [http://hellofax.com](http://hellofax.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> How is this different from Phaxio [+]?

[+] [https://www.phaxio.com/](https://www.phaxio.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this was easier to answer with a bulleted comparison. The main thing is Fax Robot is free for anyone who wants to run it on their own network.

Phaxio: \- _Just_ an API \- More features than Fax Robot API \- More expensive \- Closed source

Fax Robot: \- An API and a web app \- Less API features than Phaxio (send only) \- Less expensive \- Open source (GPL)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That reminds me, I should cancel my MaxEmail fax account. I haven't needed to receive an inbound fax in years.</comment>


Facebook Chat Extensions - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/guides/chat-extensions <comment><USER2> To me that's very significant. Apps for chat groups are much more useful, because they can provide very differentiated services

1-1 bots are too close to regular apps, with some advantages and some drawbacks. 1-n bots are in a new, significantly different space</comment>


PeerTube 2.2 Is Out - <AUTHOR> https://joinpeertube.org/news#release-2-2-0 <comment><USER2> If anyone wants to check out a PeerTube instance that isn't just French language and/or porn videos [https://diode.zone](https://diode.zone) is cool.</comment>


Europe's most densely populated square kilometres - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2018/mar/22/most-densely-populated-square-kilometres-europe-mapped <comment><AUTHOR> For Americans: 20,000 people / sq km = 52,000 people / sq mile.</comment>