Tesla Beats Delivery Forecast with 52% Quarterly Surge - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-02/tesla-beats-delivery-forecast-with-52-quarterly-surge <comment><USER2> It's impressive, really. This is the year that I've really started to see Teslas around here (Boston- there's a showroom in the Natick Mall). On the one hand, the car is risky: expensive battery, limited range / charging options, luxury car service cost. On the other, they found a niche: the coastal rich who are willing to use them as their daily commuting car.

They are cheaper than Maseratis, which I've also been seeing a lot of lately. When looked at this way, people are willing to take the risk on the cheaper car. Even so, if car sales are a zero-sum game, I think BMW is the one being hurt by them the most.

<comment><USER3> > luxury car service cost

I was under the impression that they have less service costs due to fewer moving parts. Or maybe it comes out all the same since there's less to service, but when something does need servicing it's more expensive than usual.

<comment><USER4> Tesla charges $600 for their annual service, or $450 if you prepay four years in advance. This is a bit high, especially considering that they do very little. However it's not mandatory, especially the first year.

What's likely to be cheaper is long-term repair costs. No muffler replacements, no leaking head gaskets, no timing belts making an attempt at freedom.... But whether that actually works out remains to be seen.

<comment><USER5> > No muffler replacements, no leaking head gaskets, no timing belts making an > attempt at freedom

FWIW I've only ever changed the oil on my 2006 Ford Focus.

<comment><USER4> You should have at least had transmission oil changed, fuel and air filters changed, brake pads and rotors (I count this because the brakes on an electric car driven by a normal person will last 150,000 miles or more), and probably new spark plugs by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where can I find the figure in China, I'm very interested in it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Best stock investment I ever made! Whoop whoop!

</comment><comment><USER8> Having worked in the stock-trading world and seeing some of the murky things that go on first-hand, I would not be surprised to learn that many of the negative comments we see every time Elon Musk is mentioned is due to a concerted effort by short-sellers.

<comment><USER9> I personally think Telsa's car business is bound to fail when the majors decide to compete. But that's a more long term strategy.

<comment><USER10> Having dealt with lots of the "majors'" new car models lately in rentals, I doubt that they have much to bring to the table anymore. The amount of stupidity in design is astounding. I think that once Tesla scales, it will completely demolish any of the other US car companies. Toyota and Honda may be able to compete.

I'm really really hungry for competence in both manufacturing and design, which is something that is sorely lacking in the current large US car companies. Based on their current track record, Tesla has a much better chance of delivering than Ford or GM.

<comment><USER11> > _The amount of stupidity in design is astounding_

Please, elaborate on all the design stupidity that the Tesla solves.

I've test driven a Tesla. It's awesome, thanks to the amazing torque delivery that comes from electric motors. It's a paradigm shift for a long time car guy, and has to be experienced to be understood.

..but, other than that...it's just a luxury car. What exactly has it "solved" that every other car company is still doing "stupidly"?

<comment><USER12> The Tesla is not a luxury car.

It may have a luxury price and technically it is very impressive but the interior quality is ridiculously poor for a car this expensive. I've sat in Hyundai and Daewoos that had better quality finishes and leathers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice to hear some good news for the guy after his rocket exploded.

<comment><USER14> Everything takes trial and error to develop.

<comment><USER15> You wouldn't say that if your Tesla got stuck in acceleration and the brake didn't work.

<comment><USER16> Pretty hard to compare two vastly different arenas like that. In space flight even mature platforms have a 1%-10% failure rate.

Because of the physics involved, rockets operate at the very edge of the capabilities of the rocket. Modern auto's don't have this issue: you can drive at highway speeds all day long without stressing the materials in your engine anywhere close to the edge of the operating envelope. In short, from an engineering perspective car's _aren 't_ hard any longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good thing they're making up the per unit losses with volume.

<comment><USER18> They make money on cars (gross margin). They lose money on R&D and expanding the production line.

Any car company growing this rapidly would lose money. Any car company this small designing a new model would lose money.

I know why so many financial commenters harp on and on about Tesla losing money. What mystifies me is why so many HN commenters do the same, given that most of us are startup people. Many startups lose money for the same reasons.

<comment><USER19> Most car companies include R&D in COGS. So it's fair to point out that Tesla does not.

<comment><USER20> Most car companies already have mature vehicle platforms (engines, transmissions, chassis and body experience, etc) to work off of and thus only have to charge R&D for a particular car against that car.

When you're developing a new car you have to do a lot of general R&D and a lot of car-specific R&D. What gets charged against the car and what are considered general? Who gets to decide? Why would they decide in a particular way?

It's not super obvious to me where you'd bill things even if they're ostensibly just for the Model S because in another year or two they might release a Model S2 with not a lot of R&D because they just stole parts from the Model S, Model X and Model 3.

Not saying it will happen, but it could. Then the R&D costs would be too low on that car and they'd have to go back and adjust their gross margin back as far as they've been selling the other cars and then the whole thing is a nightmare since I'm pretty sure the SEC won't let you do that.

<comment><USER19> It's not a indefensible position. But it is _different_ , and makes direct comparisons more difficult.

<comment><USER18> The numbers released to the public include enough information to make direct comparisons. The problem is that it's really apples-to-oranges: large, not- growing-very-fast car companies are a very different beast from small, rapidly-growing, risky new entrants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And my back button was hijacked.

</comment><comment><USER22> The model X is the bogeyman in Tesla's house. If they fail to start deliveries by September as they have indicated they will likely not make their sales goal for year. The suspect in the X delay is the gull wing doors which like the ragtop they had before, Elon's insistence on particular features again is causing production issues.

<comment><USER23> "Elon's insistence" has also created a $35b company. I think anyone would happily delay a car launch to both improve the car and increase the company's long term value.

<comment><USER24> A high-risk $500M loan from Uncle Sam (read: You and me, against our knowledge or direct choice) has created a $35B company, in which we the investor have no stake.

<comment><USER25> I don't understand why this is getting downvoted. The 'loan' the US made was extremely high risk and taxpayers got a terrible ROI for the amount given and the risk taken:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesl...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesla_is_worse_than_solyndra_how_the_u_s_government_bungled_its_investment.html)

Edit: I am a big fan of Tesla, SpaceX, and the feats Elon Musk has accomplished, but I don't think that means one can't be critical of him, his companies, or the way taxpayer money might have been spent to prop them up. It's undeniable that if the US govt had received some equity stake taxpayers could have more equally shared in Tesla's success, and I don't think there would have been anything unreasonable about that.

<comment><USER10> It's getting downvoted because it's unnecessarily inflammatory, and ignorant of common practices with many other companies, both for companies that are well-established and for companies that bringing forth strategic emerging technologies.

<comment><USER24> Please describe how it is inflammatory.

Please describe how I implied Tesla was the only company who benefits from government largess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In my opinion, based on Tesla's maintenance cost today, it's a fancy toy for rich people.

It's out of reach of general consumer and when it comes to saving planet by consuming electricity, not gas in US I am skeptical. What I want to find out is a green house effect from 1 mile per gallon of gas vs. 1 mile per kWh off produced electricity. Considering US electricity is produced by coal burning plants, which are considered primary green gas effect contributors.

<comment><USER27> Expensive-toy prices are just barely keeping demand down to levels they can supply. They're using that money to ramp up production and lower their future costs. The long-term plan is to sell to progressively cheaper segments of the market, as they get rolling.

<comment><USER26> For years Tesla refused to make public it's sales numbers, after going public it's reluctantly doing so. I have read from 2012 to 2014 it's sales numbers in tenth of thousands per year. In comparison Mercedes Benz sells its gas powered toys in hundreds of thousands per year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So many downvoted comment, looks like nobody wants to accept the reality...

<comment><USER29> Or maybe people just downvote comments that contain the infamous "gratuitous negativity" and have no real substance to temper that with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Moral of the story in this comment section;

Negative comments about Tesla will be down voted upon detection.

<comment><USER4> I think you mean, comments which state falsehoods will be downvoted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What a perfect PR headline.

Exciting, confusing, non-specific.

"Wow a 52% quarterly surge, Tesla's on fire!"

I thought that meant they sold 52% more cars than Q1.

But what they really are saying is "Tesla sold 52% more cars in Q2 2015 than Q2 2014"

And they are still less than halfway through year end's target 2 quarters in which analysts feel certain they will not hit without the Model X release (2)

With all the discussion around the Unicorns preferring to stay private how much of a factor must avoiding the colossal pain in the ass of having to engineer this kind of financial-speak every quarter on top of just trying to run your business.

(1) [http://www.ibtimes.com/tesla-motors-inc-tsla-likely- miss-201...](http://www.ibtimes.com/tesla-motors-inc-tsla-likely- miss-2015-delivery-target-55000-model-s-model-x-cars-1881582)

<comment><USER19> That's generally what people mean in finance - YOY growth. Otherwise you get seasonal data problems (pretty much every retailer's Q4 is huge relative to Q3 because of Christmas, for example).

As always, dig deeper. Tesla isn't out of the woods yet.

<comment><USER32> That is the case. But I think the word "surge" is confusing people. If it said "up 52%" I'd assume year on year. But somehow "surge" implies a change in continuous state.</comment></comment></comment>


Duff's Device - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff%27s_device <comment><USER2> Abuse of the rules of C. "I feel a combination of pride and revulsion at this discovery." \-- Tom Duff</comment>


Darklang Source Code Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/darklang/dark <comment><USER2> Dark infra is an amazing reference for the ReasonML and OCaml community, I really hope they'll succeed

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for posting! I'll be writing a blog post this week to announce it officially!</comment>


We Need Masks4All by Lex Fridman - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1243514464865005570 <comment><AUTHOR> Papers about effectiveness of basic masks at [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOBX4p...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOBX4pt4oFDBhsC_jpblXpNtQ/edit#)

The Czech Republic story at [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EWpWmyjzM4sNBF-7jp_1Y9a-...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EWpWmyjzM4sNBF-7jp_1Y9a-pqiRg0wakGXy7kj11RA/preview)

And a more in depth video from Jeremy Howard (fast.ai guy) at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoDwXwZXsDI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoDwXwZXsDI)

</comment><comment><USER2> A brilliant man: "Every tragedy has its victims, its heroes, and its charlatans. Victims suffer. Heroes do all they can to help. Charlatans deceive others for personal gain. Be the hero. Beware of the charlatans."</comment>


Ask HN: Why is Google pushing RCS? - <AUTHOR> I recently read about how RCS is Google's latest attempt to get messaging right on Android and it doesn't make any sense to me. Why would they back a standard that's missing encryption?<p>I wish they would just clone iMessages. It isn't perfect by any means, but it's stable and you can count on Apple supporting it for a while still. <comment><USER2> Least path of resistance plain and simple. They want to maintain their dominance without risking support of carriers, manufacturers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if I'd call it the path of least resistance as the other commenter did, but it is definitely about how to control the default messaging app without pissing off carriers (in particular) and OEMs (to a lesser extent). They could have strong armed them through the play services agreement, but they decided the carrot was better than the stick here, even if it meant making some compromises.

<comment><AUTHOR> This doesn't make sense to me because (AFAIK) carriers and OEMs are free to set any messaging app as the default.

Wouldn't it be better for Google to focus on making users happy? And shouldn't user safety and security come above all of that?

RCS feels like something from a long time ago.

<comment><USER3> They tried to make users happy with Allo, it didn't work, so now they're trying to use their platform leverage. One thing I'm not even really clear on is why Google cares about messaging, but I'm guessing it's more about Android competitiveness than anything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> They didn't try very hard. I had never heard of Allo until a month ago when I got a Pixel 2 and saw the app pre-installed. If they really wanted to push it, they would have made it the default SMS app.

It seems odd to me that Google has been unable to solve a problem that Apple solved in 2012.

<comment><USER2> Allo also doesn't have encryption by default. It's considered only in "incognito" mode.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How LinkedIn used Node.js and HTML5 to build a better, faster app - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/16/linkedin-node/

<comment><USER2> _One reason was scale... The improvements the team saw were staggering. They went from running 15 servers with 15 instances (virtual servers) on each physical machine, to just four instances that can handle double the traffic. The capacity estimate is based on load testing the team has done._

Though Rails is not known of being high performance, this sentence rings a warning sign in my mind that something must be terribly wrong with their Rails implementation.

<comment><USER3> I'm a 5 year + rails developer, and this doesn't actually surprise me. Ruby and Rails are just incredibly slow in my experience unless you cache _everything_ , which can greatly increase complexity. Right now I'm struggling with the creation of 2000 active record objects taking 10 seconds, which is absolutely ridiculous. And that's down from 30 seconds - which was happening because require was being called for each of those object instantiations by a third party library. So a 20 second gain by removing 2000 calls to require - on Heroku - something is wrong there.

The JSON that's generated with all that data is converted to backbone objects instantaneously in a browser, and the few database calls are instantaneous - it's all Ruby. I will probably need to create custom lightweight objects just because ruby is so darn slow. Much of the time is spent in gsub resolving paths for paperclip attachments - work that would take most languages a few milliseconds can take 10 seconds in ruby. I know there are many ways to optimize this but I should not have to at this point.

I find with ruby I constantly run into performance bottlenecks and need to revert to optimization that I would not have to do on other platforms.

Yours is the typical answer from rails fans. But what could be wrong with his Rails implementation that could be _that_ slow, assuming they are reasonably competent - a valid assumption I think given their successful port to node?

<comment><USER2> _I find with ruby I constantly run into performance bottlenecks and need to revert to optimization that I would not have to do on other platforms._

Agree. Ruby tends to be more likely to be CPU-bound than other languages. That demands a more indepth understanding of Ruby itself. For example, as simple as string concatenation of use '+' vs '<<' can easily fail lots of people.

 _Yours is the typical answer from rails fans._

I don't quite like the tone of this statement. Although I've been working with Rails at work for the past five years, I don't consider myself a Rails fanboy. I consider it a valuable tool to bring along high productivity. I am quite aware of its strength and weakness.

 _But what could be wrong with his Rails implementation that could be that slow, assuming they are reasonably competent - a valid assumption I think given their successful port to node?_

We all know that scaling up Rails is doable though not an easy task. To handle webscale traffic like LinkedIn in Rails, you can not go very far following the traditional ActiveRecord way. Very likely, you will introduce a high performance middleware to prepare the data for rendering say in Java/C/C#. For the frontend, you have jQuery or whatever Javascript library you like. You just leave Rails to handle routings. Though some people may challenge that if it is necessary to have Rails in this architecture. I think Rails can still make a case even in such scenarios, which is basically what github does.

<comment><USER3> I think you answered the question. You scale Rails by slowly replacing it. The problem with their architecture is that they hadn't done that yet. Node is handling their web scale traffic as-is.

<comment><USER2> Maybe I didn't make myself clear. My point was that their Rails implementation may not be well written, i.e., not architect-ed properly since beginning. You cannot simply throw a few tables and scaffolds and hope it scale. That way may work for small apps, definitely not for web-scale apps like this.

To be fair, Node.js also has its own quirks, besides the callback maintenance issues, I also mentioned in another post that Node.js is not as scalable as a lot of people present it to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "One reason was scale... The improvements the team saw were staggering. They went from running 15 servers with 15 instances (virtual servers) on each physical machine, to just four instances that can handle double the traffic. The capacity estimate is based on load testing the team has done."

Nice to see an example of Node in the wild. It's so fun and easy to develop in Node, that it sometimes feels like a toy.

<comment><USER5> > It's so fun and easy to develop in Node, that it sometimes feels like a toy.

and using CoffeeScript makes it even easier!

<comment><USER6> I'm confused. There was no mention of CoffeeScript in the article. How does using CoffeeScript make it even easier?

<comment><USER5> I was responding to jinushaun's comment on how Node.js is easy to develop on. CoffeeScript compiles to JavaScript. Give <http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee- script/> a good read and you'll convert too!

<comment><USER7> From github: CoffeeScript: number = -42 if opposite

Javascript: if (opposite) number = -42;

How is coffeescript an advantage in this example? The javascript seems more readable to me as it more closely follows regular english grammar.

CoffeeScript: square = (x) -> x * x

Javascript: square = function(x) { return x * x; }

In this example, again the javascript seems more clear. The function actually has the word function in the declaration. I like that. Essentially coffeescript took out the word 'function' and 'return' and replaced curly braces with other symbols.

<comment><USER8> Inline conditionals on the left and the function keyword? From all the features that CoffeeScript offers it's kinda odd to focus on those minor details of taste and habit.

<comment><USER7> But it's one of the first things that is presented on the overview so naturally it's going to get lots of focus.

<comment><USER9> It's a bloody overview mate, it mentions everything in more-or-less random order :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Also, the development time was unusually fast."

That's surprising -- my impression has been that one tradeoff with Node.js vs. frameworks like Rails & Django is a lot more work to implement functionality they ship with out of the box -- it works at a much lower level.

It also tends to be slower going for a while as you get accustomed to the non- procedural approach.

<comment><USER11> I'm one of the LinkedIn engineers who rewrote the mobile server in node. One of our biggest concerns going into this was the amount of infrastructure work we might have to develop to get us back to par with what we had with rails. We were pleasantly surprised by how much was already there. The Express framework, in particular, was very nice in terms of features and quality (it's basically Sinatra for node). For most of what we needed, we were able to find a node module that could do the job.

We were able to develop this quickly for a couple of reasons. One was that we already knew rails. We used a lot of rails patterns throughout our project. Any rails dev who looked at our directory structure would be feel at home. Another reason was that we had a good understanding of our domain. We were able to anticipate many features and tasks that would have been been expensive (time-wise) to implement later. Another reason is that had 2 week release cycles with demo-able features at the end. This kept things moving at a good pace.

And of course, we have high caliber staff ;-)

<comment><USER12> "We were able to anticipate many features and tasks that would have been been expensive (time-wise) to implement later."

So your opinion, so far, is that it is easier to modify the application, after it's launched, in Rails than it is in Node?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm confused -- isn't Node.js's ruby equivalent EventMachine? Why are they comparing Node.js, an asynchronous I/O library, with a MVC web framework? I don't think this is a fair comparison unless they tell us the MVC framework their Node.js is using, and the server stack their Rails app was using.

<comment><USER14> Has anyone done a good comparison of Node and EventMachine (a couple of use cases load tested)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've often thought of doing a high volume messaging project with Node.js but I seem to be addicted to jBoss Netty.

<comment><USER2> Depends on the traffic you need to work with. I've kept an eye on Node.js for some time. So far, among the failures involved with Node.js are Plurk and SyncPad. Plurk switched to JBoss Netty, while SyncPad used Erlang instead. Though that was almost a year ago, things may have improved.

Not to bad-mouth Node.js here. Just to give some counter examples to anybody who wants to try Node.js in production.

<comment><USER16> Plurk? Seems they changed from Netty to Node JS, not vice versa?

<comment><USER17> They switched back to Netty again: <http://amix.dk/blog/post/19577>

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the link.

It seems running multiple instance of node.js and use a more updated version would helps (maybe).

Anyway, I always think that lack of threading support is definitely a feature instead of incompetency. Threading is hard and average developers should avoid it. (Unless you are doing scientific computing). If you need to scale, eventually you will need multiple servers anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder why they used Node instead of EventMachine, given all the ruby code they already had.

<comment><USER11> EventMachine was definitely on the table, but a big reason we chose node was that it's asynchronous all the way through. Node modules tend to be asynchronous by default.

In other evented frameworks, it's hard to make sure that all of your code is asynchronous (especially when you use existing libraries). If your server runs into a slow, synchronous function at a critical time, it might come to a screeching halt and then fall over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is pretty cool to see that LinkedIn used node.js for their mobile interface for pretty much the exact same reasons I used node for the last mobile interface I built. To echo the article's sentiment, node works really well when you are interfacing with a bunch of other services.

<comment><USER20> Can you explain a little bit more regarding node ability to interface with services?

Let's say I have a few services, Service A that does Invoicing, Service B that does Payments, and the system has to communicate with 2-3 web-services as well. Let's say there is a need to create some sort of "portal"-ish solution (mobile or not). In this situation, what would be the advantage using Node?

Would you mind to share when Node is not the right choice as well?

I'm interested to know more about Node :)

UPDATE: Thank you for the replies.

FYI, I do understand the concept of node.js in terms of the async callback and the argument of client-side and server-side use the same code.

I'm not a heavy Rails user (more of a Java/Python guy) but when it comes to creating a typical CRUD web-app, Rails would be more productive?

<comment><USER21> The advantage is that Node uses async/non-blocking IO.

For example, say your portal needs to collect info from 3 sources A, B, and C. In a synchronous system, you would have to request service A, wait for a response, then request B, wait, and so on. This means your request is utilizing the system for all that time, unable to serve other requests, without extra threads or processes.

Node, and other async systems, when they call for IO, like a service, a callback is registered for the result. So instead of having to wait for the result, the system becomes available for other actions, like other requests. So in this case you could request service A, B, and C all at once, and while you are waiting for the responses, the system can be handling other requests. When any of those services completes, it calls back to your code so you can handle the results, and give a response to the client.

So the advantage is that instead of a request taking A + B + C + extra time, it can take max(A, B, C) + extra time to serve the request, while serving other requests concurrently.

Node is not the only way to achieve this, many async systems exist like Tornado for python, EventMachine for ruby, and many others. But the JavaScript in node can be particularly fun to work with especially if you are also doing the front-end JavaScript, as it pretty much brings the context-switching in your brain to almost nothing.

<comment><USER22> Here's one thing that never made sense to me: lets say a request comes in and data needs to be collected from 3 different sources, A, B, and C before a response can be given back to the client. You say that it would take max(A, B, C) in order to retrieve all the data. Consider this pretty standard snippet:

        function get(source, callback) {
            var result = getData(source);
            callback(result);
        }

        get(A, function(result) {
            get(B, function(result) {
                get(C, function(result) {
                    // CREATE RESPONSE WITH A, B, AND C HERE
                });
            });
        });

Wouldn't you have to wait for the data to be retrieved before running the next callback resulting in a time of A + B + C anyways? Am I missing something about the way to retrieve data from multiple sources? I don't see how max(A, B, C) is possible while still knowing for sure when all the data has been collected.

<comment><USER23> This method has basically turned an async request into a synchronous request. One idea is that you make requests A, B, and C concurrently, parse the data, then have a handler which waits for the 3 to complete and then combines them into a single response, as opposed to cascading all the callbacks.

<comment><USER22> I understand that, but I feel like a majority of the javascript async code I've seen has all been in this format. By chance, do you have an example of handler which would wait for multiple async requests to complete?

<comment><USER24> You could write your own way of doing it or use an existing flow control library. There are lots. :)

<https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/modules#wiki-async-flow>

For a specific example, look at async.parallel: <https://github.com/caolan/async>

<comment><USER22> I wish I knew about this kind of thing last time I hacked on node.js... I would have had such better & cleaner code. This clears up a lot. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would be interested in hearing how LinkedIn gets around Node.js issues .For example

Isn't Node.js single threaded ? Would it not under-perform , say compared to Erlang or Netty, in a multi-core CPU.

<comment><USER25> > Isn't Node.js single threaded ?

Yes (for now, we might take up V8 isolates).

> Would it not under-perform , say compared to Erlang or Netty, in a multi- > core CPU.

No. You can spin up multiple processes and handle the load with (for example) cluster[1].

[1] <http://learnboost.github.com/cluster/>

<comment><USER26> > No. You can spin up multiple processes and handle the load with (for > example) cluster[1].

Which is what I speculate they're doing, as they say they're running just four instances. Probably, they have servers capable of running 4 threads at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Could someone explain the following: "Connections are all stored locally, also for speed and so if you're offline, you can still access them."? I'm confused as to how a connection to a remote resource can be accessed offline. Is all of the data cached locally? Further down they mention "We don't use the browser's caching system" so I'm assuming they have custom built the cache.

<comment><USER28> "Connection" is linked-in-speak for "Friend."

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd love to see someone put together a guide to Node and the current javascript world for the Rails developer. I've looked at Node a few times, but it's so much lower-level than Rails...I'd think it would be more valid to compare it to Rack. What about the other components of a Rails app? What should you use as an ORM? What about views? What about routing? Etc, etc.

<comment><USER30> Here's a good list of available modules <https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/modules>. If you get involved in the community you'll quickly discover which ones are widely used in your area of concern. I've played with express <http://expressjs.com/> routing and views with the jade <https://github.com/visionmedia/jade> view engine. I found them quite easy to learn. When I got into node I also got into MongoDB <http://www.mongodb.org/> so I haven't played with any ORM tools because there was no mapping of objects to a relation db needed, no mapping at all really since I pretty much keep everything in JSON format from front to back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow, that's some awful performance from their Ruby solution. Is synchronous code the norm in many shops?

<comment><USER32> Yes, synchronous code is the norm for many. In Java, which is where I'm from, this is due to a limitation on the JEE spec. While some servers do provide thread pools (JBoss and WebSphere), that behavior is beyond the spec and breaks the ability to switch to any container you like.

Some issues Ruby/Rails faces is due to both the language and the framework. It is not uncommon for JEE apps to pull back 10k objects, show 10 to a user and pitch the rest. ORMs like Hibernate tend to be fairly quick, especially when tuned. As a result synch code is not that problematic.

This might start to change with the advent of Scala in JVM on the server. The actors it provides MIGHT make Oracle rethink the spec a bit. But I doubt it.

<comment><USER20> I believe asynchronous programming model made it in to Java EE6 and expect more to be added to Java EE7.

[http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/JavaEE/JavaE...](http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/JavaEE/JavaEE6Overview_Part3.html#asynejb)</comment></comment></comment>


8 of the Best "Coming Soon" and Under Construction WordPress Themes and Plugins - <AUTHOR> http://inboundrocket.co/blog/the-best-coming-soon-under-construction-wordpress-themes-and-plugins/

<comment><USER2> Should probably say "9 of the 8 Best 'Coming Soon'..." ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> hahaha yeah for sure, added one at the last moment, updated the title, thanks a lot!</comment></comment>


What Cost Is Each State Obsessed With - <AUTHOR> http://www.fixr.com/blog/2015/02/27/cost-obsessions-us-map/ <comment><USER2> I would look at Google trends rather than autocomplete. Their autocomplete tries to be smart and doesn't reflect actual search traffic.

See: Why won't my parakeet eat my diarrhea.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like it only returns words that begin with consonants because of the "a". If you search for

"how much does an * cost in"

You get different results that begin with vowels as well as acronyms/abbreviations.

</comment><comment><USER4> This study has ruined is ability to be reproduced, as whenever you attempt any of the searches, you get the study and many articles about the study, in the results, which reinforces the findings of the study.

It's a self-reinforcing study! The more you test it, the stronger its validity becomes!

</comment><comment><USER5> As others have already stated, there are some problems with this "study." I'm too lazy to do this myself, but my guess is that when you actually redo this auto-complete search, and look at not just the top search, but rather the top 5 searches, you will find a lot of overlap in many of the state searches, which will probably show less state variation (with some exceptions of course, and possibly more regional homogeneity, which would be interesting.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I love NY and Vermont.

Pound of Weed ----> Cord of Wood

</comment><comment><USER7> I posted this as a comment on the article, but I'll share here as well...

This is kind of funny, but the methodology is suspect. For example, Lincoln Nebraska is a college dominated city so the result is no surprise, Omaha Nebraska has a much larger population and not really skewed so much toward a single demographic. When I run your search for Omaha the top result was drivers license. However we all know that your personal search history can affect results and I had been researching voter ID laws. When I try the search in a new incognito window... I get no results whatsoever! So, unfortunately, I'm going to have to firmly place this in the humor category.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the methodology here is off. It may not be that People in Florida and Alabama are looking for abortion prices. It could be people in Georgia price shopping neighboring states, then looking for taxis to get across the border.

<comment><USER9> Right - best example of that is "How much does a fishing license cost in Montana". People outside Montana are probably going to drown out people inside Montana.

There aren't that many people in Montana

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a horrible metric; tons of these are clearly people googling about things somewhere other than where they live (c.f. Alaska, "gallon of milk").

<comment><USER11> Other comments allude to it, but this one should be at the top as it gives a good example as to why the methodology is suspect: pretty sure people in AK know what a gallon of milk costs in Delta Junction. I, a WA resident, would have to look it up.

There are other, similar examples of course. Price of weed in CO? Yeah, maybe residents are looking, but I'm more inclined to think the girl in Detroit is wondering, "I'm paying $250/quarter for pot, I wonder how much it costs in states where it's legal?" If I want to know how much weed costs in WA (where it is also legal), I pull up the website of my local store, not ask Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This doesn't show California as obsessed with the price of housing, so I have to assume the methodology is flawed in some way.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Succession" in Louisiana

I don't care if the methodology is suspect, I WANT TO BELIEVE...

<comment><USER14> It either means inheriting an estate (LA has a very unique legal system) or it means "LA IS LEAVING THE US!!"

And the United states gross income per capita and IQ went up by 100%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Funny when you've contributed to your state's thing at least twice. I wonder whether it's the humid heat, or the need to chill lots of beer and cheese that makes Wisconsin obsessed with electricity.

</comment><comment><USER16> Kentucky and Florida should make some sort of deal.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not at all surprised to see what my hometown of Bismarck, ND is obsessed with.

<comment><USER18> Does "a minor" have a different meaning, or is there a thriving underage slavery ring there?

I suppose it could also be "a minor ticket" or "A Minor" (the scale).

<comment><USER19> It costs a lot to import those Aeolian modes all the way from Greece to North Dakota.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Add 2015 to the title please.

</comment><comment><USER21> Vermont is so quaint.

</comment><comment><USER22> "The T" ??? What's Massachusetts going on about?

<comment><USER23> Boston subway system.</comment></comment>


From Child on Street to Nobel Laureate - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100800252.html?hpid=sec-health <comment><USER2> What an incredible life! makes me feel spoiled for being born in Soviet Russia.</comment>


Adopting Erlang - <AUTHOR> https://adoptingerlang.org/ <comment><USER2> One of the authors here. This website is still a work in progress.

It's an ongoing effort to gather all the resources that will help you use Erlang in a business. The booksite is divided in three sections focusing particularly on Erlang/OTP's higher level concepts in the current open source ecosystem, how to use it in production (while setting up a pipeline for continuous development and delivery), and how to build a team when you're starting from scratch.

We're working mostly linearly in each section, but they're not all progressing at the same pace. We have nothing yet on "building a team" although our outlines are all planned; the "hard things to get right" chapter was supposed to come in later but we saw enough questions about these topics to rush it out.

We might release things from each section as they are ready and we see fit. In the meanwhile, we're always appreciating feedback and people checking in to see what's new in terms of content.

<comment><USER3> One of the things I've learned from many attempts to document internal processes at organizations, is that often the authors are least equipped to explain things.

They know too much, they often don't recognize how many pieces of assumed information they're injecting into their so-called explanations. You often get circular explanations in addition to circular reasoning and it can be off- putting.

A better use of time is to get someone who is just started to exhibit competence to write the docs. They won't assume the jargon, they can't assume deep knowledge, and because they're living right at the pain point they can be especially sympathetic. And if what they explain is dead wrong, this is your chance to correct a horrible misunderstanding before they get too far along. Pointing out the 'false friends' in a system early on can be pretty powerful. Educationally or as an opportunity for improving the system.

In other words, I'd encourage you to invite new people to contribute. Just keep an eye on what they do and be ready to jump in with corrections.

<comment><USER4> Can't people just remember what it was like to learn the things they know? They were all those newbies at one point.

<comment><USER2> Yes and no. Some of the struggles are fresher than others, and in some cases you do internalize things to the point they feel like a second nature.

The effort mentioned here of getting newer people to read the content and/or produce it is something I've done a lot in the past, and one of the ways I've used in on-boarding people as well. We (the co-authors of Adopting Erlang) tend to do it with topics where we don't know everything the other authors know, and provide feedback to each other about things that lack clarity.

I've also taught Erlang stuff in multiple places and started knowing some of the things people find confusing as a kind of pattern, which may get easier to address early on with time.

The thing that can never be done well, though, is predicting the things someone with an entirely different background from yours would find confusing; the context carried by their experience influences the things they understand and the information they extract from a text. Teaching to a functional programmer is different from teaching to a developer who has done OO their entire career. Teaching to someone doing front-end work is going to be a different experience from teaching to someone doing mobile or back-end work. The same may often extend to sociological, economical, or cultural factors as well.

All of this means that each teaching experience has new surprises as well and you can't just cover them by thinking very hard. Frequent reviews, both technical and from editors can help, though, along with your own experience when teaching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is amazing, thanks for all of your hard work! It's very encouraging to see continual effort put into the Erlang ecosystem. I haven't used Erlang in around 5 years so this looks right up my alley for getting up to date with the latest best practices.

As an aside, it's been a little bittersweet seeing all of the attention and momentum going into Elixir. Yes it's great for BEAM and Erlang certainly benefits from those contributions as well. But there's just something so beautiful about Erlang, it deserves more attention than it gets. Thanks for keeping the dream alive!

</comment><comment><USER6> As an Elixir dev for coming up on four (four! Jeez where has the time gone?) years, I've yet to really delve into Erlang. I can read the syntax well enough to figure out why my Hackney request is doing odd things with my HTTP headers etc..., but that's about it. To all Erlangers out there, what advantages/niceties/powers do you have in Erlang that make you reach for the language over Elixir?

<comment><USER2> Mostly I just like it better. But otherwise in my day-to-day off the top of my head:

Less "magic" (fewer macros that may change semantics, straightforward config handling), focus on declarativeness, no variable re-binding, more powerful test framework (common_test), seamless Dialyzer support, better logging framework for structured logging, simpler/minimal syntax, personal preferences for tooling (until recently, direct support for releases was lacking in Elixir), and force of habit.

</comment></comment><comment> dynamite-ready I've noticed there's a section in there about deploying with Docker. I know many other development communities swear by Docker, but a number of the OTP/BEAM devs I've spoken to seem unsure about it.

I also tend to believe Docker makes little sense, where OTP releases are the alternative.

What's the opinion here? This question only pertains to OTP development.

<comment><USER7> It's difficult to deploy Erlang apps in Erlang-style using Docker. The style I speak of is zero downtime deploys where the VM is never turned off, but is updated with new software as a living organism.

You can run BEAM apps in a container the same way you'd run any other app. It's possible. But BEAM is less like a PHP/Python/Ruby etc interpreter and more like an abstraction for the OS (some might even consider it to be one). When you're in Erlang you think in Erlang and the runtime abstracts things like processes, threads, and network partitions away... so you tend to want a big beast BEAM instance (or a few big beasts) rather than a lot of tiny ones (as one might scale up a horizontally scaled app like one on Heroku dynos).

It can be done. It's just kinda going against the grain.

<comment> dynamite-ready This is what I've been thinking. At the very least, I know that Docker interferes with the BEAM VM's default behaviour for port management, and node discovery. Docker containers require developers to select which ports containers communicate through. Isn't that right?

<comment><USER2> This is ultimately not very different than what you would get with any firewall or network rules in any business, and it's an issue shared by most deployments regardless of whether you get containerized or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great stuff, as always. I liked this quote:

> If you expect failure to happen on an external service, do not make its > presence a guarantee of your system. We're dealing with the real world here, > and failure of external dependencies is always an option.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've always kludged my way through making Erlang applications. I still do, but having had a good read of this, I'm encouraged. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> What is the use case for erlang given the current container technology and cloud providers? I mean many problems that erlang solved (and beautifully did it) can be dealt with docker and kubernetes

<comment><USER2> The Docker chapter does mention similar things, and José Valim recently wrote the following blog post on this: [http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2019/10/kubernetes-and- the-...](http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2019/10/kubernetes-and-the-erlang- vm-orchestration-on-the-large-and-the-small/)

In a nutshell, docker and k8s are to OTP what region failover is to k8s tech. They operate on different layers of abstraction and impact distinct components.

OTP allows handling partial failures WITHIN an instance, something K8s can't help with.</comment></comment>


MathJax, beautiful math in all browsers - <AUTHOR> http://www.mathjax.org/ <comment><USER2> I use MathJax on one site I'm developing. It has two problems related to speed:

1\. It is so modular that you cannot really optimize it using something like Google Closure (<http://code.google.com/closure/> ). If you do, it breaks it.

2\. The modularity means that you're likely to need a few roundtrips to the server to get everything. Invariably these block the loading of the page and you get a hang, sometimes for a few seconds. This is not good for user experience.

Of course MathJax solves a very important problem, but it's a problem browsers have introduced. None of the support MathML in a sane way: Firefox requires content served as fully valid XHTML (good luck with that if you're using a CMS) and Webkit only got MathML support recently in the nightly releases. If browsers actually implement MathML in a way developers can use without losing hair, then MathJax is no longer needed. Till then, I love MathJax despite its warts.

<comment><USER3> However, when you see the MathML rendering of Firefox, you immediately see why something like MathJax is still _required_. We would need widespread support for MathML rendering that is actually readable. That will take another while.

<comment><USER4> The appearance of MathML sadly depends on native fonts installed. If your user has STIX or Computer Modern fonts installed then MathML looks very readable compared to say Mathematica's typesetting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes, when the ol' fever comes back and nobody's there to remind me that we have come to accept HTML/CSS, I dream of a world wide web built on TeX and TeX alone. It's a place of wonder, and happiness, and river-less paragraphs. Then I wake up, sweating, screaming, to a world without proper hyphenation. XeTeX is my XaNaX. Makes the web-pain go away.

[MathJax, on the other hand, looks glorious. Many thanks to the people in charge of the project!]

<comment><USER6> If you're bothered by rivers and lack of hyphenation, check out a project I worked on a while ago, which implements the Knuth and Plass line breaking algorithm in JavaScript. Combined with Hyphenator.js, the results are nearly indistinguishable from TeX output.

<http://www.bramstein.com/projects/typeset/flatland/>

Earlier incarnations made it to HN before, but unlike the old version this renders in plain HTML instead of Canvas, so text can be selected, copied, etc.

<comment><USER7> I cannot upvote you enough. I wonder if I can hack this onto my wordpress blog.

<comment><USER6> You probably could get it working, but the implementation isn't (yet) capable of dealing with arbitrary HTML. It only expects paragraphs and images. This is only a matter of implementation though, the core algorithm should be able to deal with most of the content found on websites.

I'm talking to Filipe Fortes of Treesaver about implementing it as part of his Treesaver technology (demo: <http://treesaver.publicintegrity.org/smoke_screen>) Perhaps a general implementation will roll out of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very nice, I'm looking forward to usinig it. So I thought I'd check the license to see if it's compatible with what I envision.

The documentation page just says "Open Source", the FAQ and download pages nothing at all.

The release announcement at [http://www.mathjax.org/2010/01/12/news/mathjax- beta-released...](http://www.mathjax.org/2010/01/12/news/mathjax-beta- released/) finally says "Apache 2.0 open source license".

Note to other developers: don't hide your license -- it's a piece of information others might actually be interested in, particularly if it's not an application, but more of a library.

<comment><USER2> It is Apache 2.0: <http://sourceforge.net/projects/mathjax/> . You'll need to click on the barely visible "Show project details" link at the right hand side under the download link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We use MathJax for inline display of equations in the GitHub wikis and it's really nice. I spent a long time looking for a LaTeX style math solution for the web, and MathJax was a great fit.

</comment><comment><USER10> MathJax is the secret sauce behind the pretty math typesetting at _The Tau Manifesto_ (<http://tauday.com/>). For what it's worth, Davide Cervone, the lead developer of MathJax, is incredibly helpful and friendly. In the process of writing _The Tau Manifesto_ , I was running into some weird problems; Davide realized that there was a subtle MathJax bug when used with HTML5, and pushed a fix within hours of finding the problem.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks nice! Minor issue with spacing in my browser: <http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/6766/spacingissue.png>

Source of the top equation is: J_\alpha(x) = \sum_{m=0}^\infty \frac{(-1)^m}{m! \, \Gamma(m + \alpha + 1)}{\left({\frac{x}{2}}\right)}^{2 m + \alpha}

Source of the bottom equation is:

<math display="block"> <mrow> <msup> <mi>c</mi> <mn>2</mn> </msup> <mo>=</mo> <msup> <mi>a</mi> <mn>2</mn> </msup> <mo>+</mo> <msup> <mi>b</mi> <mn>2</mn> </msup> <mo>−</mo><mn>2</mn><mi>a</mi><mi>b</mi> <mrow><mo>cos</mo><mi>θ</mi></mrow></mrow>

          </math>

Browser is Chrome 8.0.552.215 on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit

<comment><USER12> Same browser, Windows 7 Prof. 64 bit with same issues :/

The probability equation looks awful with the squishing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can't wait for this to be incorporated on the arXiv.

</comment><comment><USER14> Right now this works for some people and not others, because they aren't doing progressive enhancement over a server-side fallback rendering. The TeX samples just show raw \macros and the HTML-CSS renderings of the MathML samples are incorrect (x=−b±b2−4ac2a is not the quadratic formula).

Looks nice on the machine I use as a js sandbox, though.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wikipedia has LaTeX code in the ALT attribute for all images on their website. Would it make sense for them to migrate?

</comment><comment><USER16> Firefox 4 on Linux gives a message at the bottom saying something like "WebFonts not supported, falling back to image fonts", meaning that the scaling examples look horrible and most examples are very fuzzy. Shame, looks neat otherwise :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd like to port a large LaTeX document to a web browsable format but it makes heavy use of pstricks and picture environments. Can anyone comment on how well this would cope with that or what alternatives might help?

<comment><USER18> Currently the best approach is to just serve the pdf. You will not be able to get a direct translation. There is a very good forum for TeX now at <http://tex.stackexchange.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been using jsMath for a while, I'm glad these sorts of libraries exist. It chips at my heart a little every time I see ascii sigmas and the like.

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks ugly here. The letters are overlapping.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/388822/mathjax.png>

Chrome 7.0.517.44

</comment><comment><USER21> In all _recent_ browsers. For silly corporate reasons one box I work on is stuck at firefox 1.5 and this displays nothing.

<comment><USER22> Just use IE. Unless silly corporate reasons have you on IE6 also... :-p

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Worthy of an 'atta-boy' from Knuth himself...

</comment><comment><USER15> It would be awesome if someone could make an extension for browsers to enable this on browser chats/emails. :-)

</comment><comment><USER24> This could use an extension for xypic. It would trounce the alternatives if this were added.

</comment><comment><USER25> All well and good except for the fact that it locks up my entire computer for several seconds.

</comment><comment><USER26> Doesn't work as i expect in my browser.

<comment><USER27> Details?

<comment><USER26> Sorry, it works. But the Ajax is slow. When I posted my first comment, the Javascript just didn't complete in time to show me the rendered equations and hence I reported things not working. The quality is great and good job for that, however I believe you are doing a bunch of processing on the server and that's going to be an important hurdle in widespread adoption.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I reversed engineered parts of Yo's API - <AUTHOR> http://yo.moinnadeem.com

<comment><USER2> This is pretty sweet. How did you do it? Do you have your source code online?</comment>


Unusual Software Bugs - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual_software_bug

<comment><USER2> usual software bugs: One that the developer can't fix and will blame the user for that :)</comment>


On thinking probabilistically [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/mcintyre/mcintyre-thinking-probabilistically.pdf

<comment><USER2> While I generally tend to stand with McIntyre on the Bayesian vs frequentist debate (whether it is much of a debate anymore given recent advances in AI due to Bayesian techniques for ML is another discussion) I feel that he doesn't adequately explain our 'wrong' intuition on the Monty Hall problem. While he goes on a tirade against the frequentist hold on our education system as being responsible for our mistaken intuition in this regard, he doesn't explain the fact that largely _all_ of us are duped by this problem (having taking courses at school taught by evil frequentists or not). If indeed Bayesian probability theory is innate in us and we have just been brainwashed in school, it would seem to me then that those of us not taught frequentist statistics would be able to solve the problem better than the rest of us. I think this would be an easy experiment to conduct but I have not seen any experiments done to confirm this though.</comment>


The End of an Infinite Series (PBS) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIwnCoqx91Q <comment><AUTHOR> A great shame to see this series terminate.

I've learnt a lot, it took a while to digest some of the videos, but I have learnt so much.</comment>


The Truth About Sex Differences - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201711/the-truth-about-sex-differences <comment><USER2> I want to believe that there are many differences and ideas of gender, but I feel this tug from science that there are really only two.

<comment><USER3> The "two or many genders" debate really is just a debate on how society should integrate people whose behaviour doesn't conform to their physical sex. There's often an _objective_ phenomenon (sex-nonconformity) that is interpreted _subjectively_ by a given culture. The best way I can put it across is how different cultures have different "genders". All this means is that they interpret what's going on differently.

In foreign cultures like some Indian tribes or the Samoans, gender non- confirmity is typically regarded as a third category (two-spirit, fa'fafine). There's men, women, and then this "third gender" which is really just a third category for the relationship between expected roles and one's birth sex. Contrast to in the west, where until very recently, we denied gender non- conformity ever even happened. Then, we considered it a "disease" where you were "born in the wrong body". So people born male with this "disease" are "cured" with hormones and surgeries that will allow them to pass themselves as "female". It's the same underlying psychological phenonomon viewed through two different cultural lenses.

Those who claim there are more than two genders are really just trying to advocate for a model of gender that rejects the "disease" model that western medicine rather arbitrarily came up with some time in the 1940s. It resembles a western spin on how indigineous cultures handled this issue, placing it into a "third category", while at the same time respecting those who identify as women under the "disease" model.

The only reason this issue is so damn radioactive is there's a false notion that a specific model of gender should be pushed onto the population at large by legislative fiat (hate-crimes legislation, other regulations on private business). I suggest if you don't agree with a specific model of gender, then don't, because there's no single right way to classify something as long as you keep all the facts in mind (such as the reality that not all people born men are going to "act like men.") But the freedom to assess the facts and decide upon what model of gender works for both the individual in question and the people they voluntarily associate with will be paramount in maintaining the dignity of everyone involved.

<comment><USER4> Very insightful analysis, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reads very well, as far as psychological articles go. Explains everything comprehensively and clearly.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'll wager that no one ventures to broach the third rail of internet discussion topics.

<comment><USER7> How many people here wrote a comment and then hit cancel before posting it?</comment></comment>


And people wonder why kernel maintainers are grumpy. - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/111049168280159033135/posts/5YtkxtuRXTy <comment><USER2> I think it's because they take everything personally. A bad patch isn't just bad coding, it's a personal insult to them!</comment>


Heroku – Sales and Use Tax - <AUTHOR> https://www.heroku.com/salestax <comment><USER2> Didn't the recent Supreme Court decision on sales tax make this the seller's responsibility?

<comment><USER3> The SCOTUS decision allowed the states to establish the concept of an "economic nexus." This means that a business does not need to have a physical presence in the state, but only meet certain transactional threshholds, such as the number of transactions, or the value of those transactions. However, this presumes that the buyer takes delivery of a physical product in the state itself. In other words, it is not residence in the state, but where the buyer takes possession of a product that determines whether a seller must collect sales tax. There has to be a shipping address within the state for a transaction to qualify as taxable in that state.

So where does a buyer take possession of an online service? There is no shipping address. Most state laws do not yet deal with online services, and the SCOTUS decision is not specific enough to allow such services to be taxed based upon the residency of the buyer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nor does any other hosting company. This is not newsworthy.

<comment><AUTHOR>
      "Heroku is not required to, and does not, collect your state's sales or use tax. Purchases are not tax-exempt merely because a seller is not required to collect the tax. Your state's law requires a purchaser to review untaxed purchases and, if any tax is owed, file a use tax return and pay any tax due."

This is taken from a Heroku receipt. It seems to suggest taxes may be required but that the burden is on the consumer. If I'm understanding this correctly and Heroku can just avoid the mess of collecting taxes by adding a sentence to their receipts, why wouldn't every company selling services online do this?

<comment><USER3> You misunderstand.

Heroku does not avoid having to collect taxes by adding this to their receipts. They could say nothing, and every word of that statement still would be true, and they would still not be liable to collect the tax. Heroku is just unique in that they are telling the customer about it.

I am the CIO of a $150M company. I am in charge of the sales tax processing infrastructure at this company, and I even re-wrote our billing process to comply with the various state laws. Though I am not an accountant, I know more about sales tax than I ever wanted to know.

I also purchase thousands of dollars worth of online services every month. NONE of them charge tax. None whatsoever. Again, Heroku is not unique.

This is true of every online service because to be required to collect tax, you must have a nexus in the state to which you are delivering a product. That used to mean merely a physical business presence. (Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992)). But now, since the SCOTUS decision last June, it can mean an "economic nexus." But even then, this nexus is defined by the physical address to which a product is delivered. See the issue?

And regarding the requirement of consumers to self-assess sales tax: This is true of _everything_ you buy online that, if purchased in a store in your home state, would otherwise be taxed. Almost all states technically require purchasers to self-assess if the item is taxable, whether the vendor tells you about it or not. And again, as part of my job, I have to know which products we must self-assess, and which we don't have to, and fill out our purchase orders accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ?

<comment><USER5> hey saurik how are you doing these days?</comment></comment>


Is Jira is an "antipattern"? A rebuttal to the recent TechCrunch article - <AUTHOR> https://www.adaptavist.com/blog/is-jira-is-an-antipattern-we-bust-the-myths/ <comment><USER2> All three of these "rebuttals" can be countered by one simple fact: Jira does not allow multiple owners on a story. That misguided restriction creates much administrative headache, and is not shared by most other agile boards, such as Trello and Pivotal.

We have this truism/platitude in software that you should never blame your tools, so if a tool isn't serving you then you just aren't using it in the proper place, but there are times when a tool really just isn't built on a solid foundation for the general problem space it's designed for, and Jira is one of those.

<comment><USER3> But there's a very good reason for that, and it's because single ownership provides clear accountability for progress. When multiple people "own" something then everything thinks that someone else is in charge of moving things forward, and orgs with multiple responsibility are generally dysfunctional as a result. If responsibility for action has moved to another stakeholder, then the Assignee should be changed to reflect that.

Of course, Jira allows multiple stakeholders to be kept in the loop by adding them as watchers. The UX could be better by making it easier to add user groups to the watch list of a batch of issues, but that's beside the point that single-responsibility is strictly better.

<comment><USER2> Jira is a bit of a kitchen sink, so it's strange for them to be doubling down like this. Lots of customers have complained about the restriction and the other trackers don't have it. It would be great to see some research supporting their opinion or if they could just accept that it is a legitimate need for some customers.

One negative result I've seen in Jira (that I haven't seen using other trackers) is that management is very careful to split up stories individually and assign each person tasks. As a result, team members are only concerned with their own tasks and don't want to help each other, which is disastrous on an "agile" team.

<comment><USER3> > team members are only concerned with their own tasks and don't want to help > each other, which is disastrous on an "agile" team

I think there's a delicate and nuanced balance here. On one side of the spectrum, there's dysfunctional teams where team members constantly interrupt each other and make it impossible for other team members to get anything done, because nobody can reach any level of focus. Team velocity stays a constant low, and incompetent management accepts low velocity because it's perceived as the stable and predictable output of the team in question. But on the other end, you have teams which don't communicate at all, and that's a different kind of dysfunction.

I guess the question is, how much does any tool shape team culture, and how does that compare to management's influence and responsibility in shaping culture. Ultimately it's management's responsibility, but management also chooses the tools which a given team will use. I think that management has much more influence over team culture than any tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We also wrote a rebuttal. =)

Regarding myth 1: Agree! That is actually one of the reasons we built our tool, Delibr. And we don't aim to replace Jira. Instead, we will probably replace Confluence to a large extent.

Please have a read and let me know if you have any questions!

[https://blog.delibr.com/jira-is-in-desperate-need-of- refinem...](https://blog.delibr.com/jira-is-in-desperate-need-of-refinement/)</comment>


Show HN: Log the Crux – A rock climbing log book - <AUTHOR> https://test.www.logthecrux.com <comment><AUTHOR> This is version 2 of a project I started three years ago (hence the test domain). I'm rebuilding the website/home page now, so not many of the links there work, but the web app (click the login link) is about 85% functional. There's still things that need to be built out in the app, like the statistics module, but I wanted to get it out there for feedback up to this point.</comment>


Ask HN: Traveling to China for an extended period - <AUTHOR> I'm headed to China for 2-3 months for my job. C++, writing docs, etc. I have been learning Chinese for a while.
What advice does anyone have for equipment safety? Things to think about, etc.
Examples:
1. Someone told me to not take my "expensive" iPhone 7+ as it is a high priced item and a target for pick pockets. Same thing with my ceramic Apple Watch series 3. Buy an iPhone SE or even an Android phone as HTC phones are very common there and not really an item to steal.
2. Same with my cash and id, don't carry in pants pockets, hide it in a backpack someplace.
3. Laptop. Same thing as my phone. Don't take my 15-inch MBP, but an Air or something.
How valid is this advice? My employer is sponsoring my trip, obviously.
Any other advice on laptop setup? <comment><USER2> I've lived in mainland China for almost 4 years .. It depends on the area you go to, but I'd say China is fairly safe as long as you behave responsibly (don't leave your laptop alone on the coffee shop etc). I never had any problem in this time (I lived in Shenzhen and Jieyang). But, protect all your communications with SSL or similar, and for gods sake don't use wechat. I uninstalled it recently because of the new privacy announcement. As for privacy and accessing blocked websites, I found this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnQDiGBFIXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnQDiGBFIXk) to be very effective

</comment><comment><USER3> I've lived in HK, not mainland China, and I avoid China personally (air pollution, increasing nationalism, politics, etc.), so take this with a grain of salt:

\- violent crime is rarely an issue, and I'd feel safer taking an MBP and iPhone 7+ there than, say, in the Americas. Having said that, don't flaunt them.

\- opportunistic property crime (theft, pick-pocketing) might be an issue, particularly in crowded urban areas, but I think with some basic measures as you mentioned you can handle the risk.

\- There are many (non-violent) scams, such as the tea house girls on popular shopping streets, etc. Check wikivoyage for your destination, and the general scam page ([https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Common_scams](https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Common_scams))

\- I'd look into setting up a good VPN/proxy before you go, or buy a Hong Kong SIM with roaming and massive data allowance and tether. Also, might want to enable disk encryption. (If you use WeChat etc., assume that you're monitored.)

There are many other issues more relevant/specific than the risk of robbery/theft.

</comment><comment><USER4> That reads like pick-pocket advise for any country, it might fit New York City or Paris subways as well.

[https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/New_York_City#Stay_safe](https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/New_York_City#Stay_safe) "The most common crime against tourists (not including being overcharged!) is bag snatching. Never let go of your handbag (putting other bags down is OK, as long as you guard them carefully), especially in the subway but also when eating at a restaurant. Take special care if sitting outdoors or in a crowded self-service restaurant. Leave your passport and other valuables that you don't need to carry in a hotel safe or hidden in your suitcase. Don't flaunt a wad of money if you can help it; if you want to be safer, count your money in your room before you go out and take only what you think you may need. Unless you have protective outer wear, consider not wearing expensive jewelry, and hide valuables like cameras when you're not using them. [...] While muggings are rare, they do happen."

[https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Paris#Stay_safe](https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Paris#Stay_safe) "The métro is also a popular place for pickpockets. Hold things tightly and be aware of your surroundings. [...] Pickpockets are most likely to be found working at crowded tourists hotspots, so keep your wallet and phone in your front pockets and hold your backpack tightly when in a crowd."

</comment><comment><USER5> Bring a Dell. Nobody will want to steal it. Pickpockets might even stuff one into your bag when you are not looking.</comment>


Ask HN: Customising a WordPress Theme to Launch My MVP, Bad Idea? - <AUTHOR> As a founder with 0 coding chops, I've been exploring my options to get my MVP out the door.
One idea is to modify an off the shelf WP theme to produce a workable product. My goal would be to get an off the shelf theme like this:
https://www.appthemes.com/themes/clipper/
In the ball park of:
https://www.hotukdeals.com/
In terms of UI/UX; the needed features would be ability for a user to upload content, upvotes, plus some basic forum functionality, comments profiles etc.
How viable is this approach? <comment><USER2> Why are you worried it might be a bad idea? I think whatever the shortest path to a functioning product is the best psth forward, and there are plenty of successful sites on WordPress.

After you validate the idea you may need to shift platforms (or not). So be prepared for that possiblity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Eh, it's perfectly viable. The average user doesn't give a toss about what 'powers' a website or app, they only care it does what it needs to. If a customised WordPress theme is the fastest/most convenient way to get your MVP out the door, go with that. Go with whatever you're most comfortable with.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very Viable. Time to market is the key. If you can get an MVP quickly using WordPress, then do that. Once you have paying customers, you can always improve/enhance as needed. You are thinking about this correctly. Build it quickly, get customers, do validation etc. Everything comes later.

</comment><comment><USER5> No need to reinvent the wheel, especially as you're one man band. A plus for starting on Wordpress is should you get traction and need _ultrafeature_ there is an army of developers that can give you _ultrafeature_ , given you specify it well.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's viable. They have an active community support forum that can assist in your endeavors:

[https://forums.appthemes.com/report-clipper- bugs/](https://forums.appthemes.com/report-clipper-bugs/)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a great idea for an MVP. It's amazing what you can do with WordPress sometimes. You do not want to be writing custom code for months just to validate the idea. You can ship quick and get feedback.

</comment><comment><USER8> BBPress will be your friend. It's the most robust forum software for WP and has a lot of additional Add-ons that can be used to get the other stuff you need.

It's a lot of customization though if you don't like the look.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Looks like there aren't any gaping holes in the approach. So, I'm off to build something. I'll keep you posted

</comment><comment><USER9> Highly recommended. After all, your customers / clients, don't care about tech, as long as you solve their problems.

</comment><comment><USER10> Should be okay..

</comment><comment><USER11> I would give this approach 3 out of 5 stars on yelp</comment>


US Cyber Weapon Classification Marks Beginning of Cyber Arms Race - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/455143/20130409/classification-cyber-weapons-marks-beginning-arms-race.htm

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's an DC/UK/Govt/MassMedia thing, but when technically competent people around here see or hear the word "cyber" used, they usually have to try to not snicker visibly.

      $ grep -oi cyber cyber-weapons.htm  | wc -l
         138</comment>


The Problem With Email - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-love-charts/the-problem-with-email-99bb2eeb0bf7

<comment><USER2> Not my problem with Email. I see one problem with Email in the need of everyone to find _the problem_ with Email. Most often the problem described is not with Email but a culture created around the tool that the person has an issue with.

</comment><comment><USER3> hey its 1 of the key attributes that make me like email! its asynchronous!</comment>


Project Dyslexie - <AUTHOR> http://www.studiostudio.nl/en/project-dyslexie/

<comment><USER2> This project really needs to release a True Type font of their dyslexic friendly font. What's the point of creating such a thing and then net letting it out into the world where it can do some good.

EDIT: I commented too soon, after reading the auto-translated Dutch website I found links to where you can buy the font.

Minimum cost looks to be 165 Euros. For a 5 person license.

[http://www.lexima.nl/school-en- behandelaar/categorie/lettert...](http://www.lexima.nl/school-en- behandelaar/categorie/lettertype-dyslexie)</comment>


Betterment raises $10 million financing - <AUTHOR> http://www.finextra.com/news/announcement.aspx?pressreleaseid=46570

<comment><AUTHOR> Betterment does some useful innovation in finance and we can hope for even more now.</comment>


Show HN: Minimalist Google Play Music Wrapper – Electron - <AUTHOR> https://pmsaue0.github.io/play/ <comment><USER2> I think it's pretty cool, great job.

I just wanted to give a positive comment, specifically about the things that people are giving negative comments about. The website design isn't boring, and emphasizes that the app differentiator is that it's looking to be a better design and have things like "album art first".

Electron does have a small resource problem, but that doesn't stop plenty of people from downloading the desktop version of Slack, or other popular electron wrappers. There's a reason a lot of people put up with Electron, it fills a gap.

Whether you did this to try Electron or design, comments on HN can be very subjective and not representative of actual reception. I personally never thought album art was super important cause I grew up with Napster, but like "cover flow" was REALLY well received. Artistic design is especially highly opinionated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your positive feedback! I appreciate it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _It is essentially like running Google Play Music in your Chrome browser, but as a native standalone app with some extra controls, nicer styles, and without having to use Flash._

So why not just deliver this as a plugin for Chrome that reskins Play with alternative stylesheets and so forth? At least then my OS can use COW to share memory across Chrome processes instead of requiring a dedicated WebKit instance just for Play.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds cool... I've not tried making a plugin before. Do you know of a good reference / demo?

Another reason that I wanted a standalone app, is that I hate when I have to flip through tabs or browser windows to find Google Play. I much prefer having the app by itself.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Probably logical to start here!

[https://developer.chrome.com/getstarted](https://developer.chrome.com/getstarted)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can minimalist and Electron be put in the same sentence with a straight face?

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, yea. "Minimal" in the layout of Google Play is what I meant. obvs the most minimal engine for Google Play is just Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also see [https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/](https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't call it minimalist -- hard a super hard time reading the following:

> the U N O F F I C I A L G O O G L E M U S I C P L A Y E R with M I N I M A L > I S T S T Y L I N G S.

with all those icons and mixed fonts and the background image.

Is this just a skin for loop? I see that it's based on loop, and I can't seem to find any differences in functionality.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, yes the website is just a fun thing. Boilerplate websites get so boring ;)

Yes, it is in part a skin for loop. Some of the added functionality is to replace the small album art with larger album art when in the album-view. But really, I just wanted the keyboard shortcuts that I like, and I wanted the look that I like. Pretty much, that's it.</comment></comment>