Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Not really a startup in the sense of a VC backed multi million dollar company but three working friends and me have bootstrapped a fitness websites with science based health advice, mostly free, to basically the largest fitness related website in the Netherlands. Currently employing people, which i think still sounds insane for a hobby project. [https://www.fit.nl](https://www.fit.nl). 700.000 pageviews a month. App, 2 books, system for training and meal schedules etc. One now works full time as a lead/writer.

As a day job I'm a full time resident of orthopedic surgery. Busy days. I've done most of the programming of the website (custom theme on wordpress), product comparison engine and other custom pages. And server admin for discourse, mattermost etc

Some important findings:

\- You have to care otherwise it becomes a chore. In this case it keeps people healthy. We give free advice that i think is pretty good, e.g on the forum, I love that part. The link with the day job is here. Lots of stuff i tell people during clinic hours applies here as well

\- As its completely different it still feels like a hobby. Learning to do stuff is fun

\- Clear separation of responsibility, do stuff you are efficient in

\- A ticketing system for jobs, pick up stuff when you have time. Anybody can add to the ticket list but the list owner decides what comes first.

\- Keeping the tickets bite sized. GIT to deploy, deploy often

\- A time tracking system (Toggle) tracks time spent.

\- Mattermost for private discussions and planning

\- Meetups and fun activities to keep the group focused

\- Managed main server (websynthesis) in case the website goes down and the other technical guy or me are unavailable. More expensive but less stress this way.

<comment><USER3> What inspired a doctor to code? I assume that must have an inspiring story

<comment><USER2> Not really. Picked it up as a child, loved programming and tinkering. Had to choose between computer science and medicine. There are actually lots of things in common, debugging complex systems, building a mental model, abstraction, looking up solutions based on certain hints. Orthopedics is a highly technical field, working with implants, computer surgery, imaging and such so its very useful. Programming trains your problem solving abilities. I really believe everybody should have the opportunity to learn to code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've got two cash flow positive side-projects while maintaining full-time employment, having a life, wife, and kid.

BreezyPDF - [https://breezypdf.com](https://breezypdf.com) \- Dead simple PDF generation from URLs. Comes with a rails middleware so all you have to do is add .pdf to the end of a URL to download a PDF of that URL.

HOALife - [https://hoalife.com](https://hoalife.com) \- A CC&R Inspection and Enforcement tool for property managers.

<comment><USER5> I love how one of the Breezy testimonials is from HOALife. Way to dog-food!

<comment><USER4> Ha, I should probably update those to customers that are less biased

<comment><USER6> You are not the first, you won't be the last :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's what I do currently, I'm a full time product manager in a normal company, and I'm also working as a CTO at a startup, we are 3. Two people are working full time, and I only work part time (about 30h per week). I do that, because I like doing multilple things at the same time. But I think it is a very difficult life.

I can do that because I have no social life and everything is optimized so that I can work all the time. But I don't think I would recommend that to everyone.

Benefits are :

* You are never bored

* If one of your job annoys you, you can always balance with the other one

* You have a lot of money, because you have two salaries, but you also don't have the time to buy anything

* And you dont waste time on useless things

Disadvantages:

* No social life

* No time with familly

* No leisures

* Very tired all the time

Honestly having a startup is usually not only something you can focus on only the night, you need to answer clients during the day, you need to monitor everything all the time. But if you love working, this is definitely something that you can enjoy

<comment><USER8> "Very tired all the time" \- Where I come from (EU) this is the reason why it's not allowed to work two jobs (>40h) if the employer doesn't approve.

<comment><USER7> I'm from France, it is not allowed to work more than 44h per week for a period of 12 weeks. But honestly it is difficult to set the same bar for everyone

<comment><USER9> that is bellow the minimum in japan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tread carefully. If you're going to do this, read your current employment agreement _carefully_ especially the parts about Intellectual Property. Every medium-to-large company I have worked at has asserted ownership of everything I build, at work or away from work, using my own equipment, on my own time—it doesn't matter. If your employer can imagne a conflict of interest (for example could what you are working on potentially compete with a current _or future_ business of your employer's?), you're screwed. I've had to end involvement with open source projects and home hobby projects because of the IP threats in my employment agreements. Feel free to take the risk yourself, personally I don't feel like fighting a room full of corporate lawyers.

EDIT: jobsandjobs, sorry to have derailed your good Ask HN question but I thought this was an important and often-overlooked pitfall that people should be aware of.

<comment><USER11> "asserted ownership of everything I build, at work or away from work, using my own equipment, on my own time—it doesn't matter"

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Assuming you're not stealing technology, or doing it on their time or machines, there is no way a court would uphold that. If I build a house, or rebuild a car in my off time, they own that too? Corporations don't own your entire life.

<comment><USER12> Sadly this is fairly commonplace in IP contracts. Though some companies provide potential hires with an option to list "own inventions" wherein he/she can list projects they may continue to develop in their own time and retain ownership of. Granted, all entries therein are subject to approval by the company - obviously they won't let you pursue a project that is actually in competition with their business.

<comment><USER10> My understanding of the "list all inventions/projects" activity is that its purpose is to let the employer know what _past_ projects they can't grab, but it is not a way for you to continue working on them while still owning the IP. Their lawyers will say, "we can't go after the parts of this project that were disclosed to us, but we can go after it based on the parts you've worked on _since_ joining us."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Might not be your typical answer, but I launched an ecommerce store that's been profitable since the first month. At first I targeted solo devs without much digital design skills, but it turns out that blank sketchpads are very useful to designers and design agencies as well. It's done well enough where I continue to run out of each batch of inventory and it's turned a small profit as I continue to order large and larger batches of product.

[https://sketchpads.co](https://sketchpads.co)

<comment><USER5> I love these. You should make whiteboard magnets!

<comment><USER13> That's an interesting idea! I'll look in to that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I didn't build one from scratch, but I recently purchased [https://introcave.com](https://introcave.com) for low 6 figures. Though my background is more full stack, my current day job is mostly front end. Most of the product/ux/ui work is done before things hit my desk (agency work), so I really enjoy being able to run something on the side where I'm making those decisions.

It's profitable month-to-month, but until it recoups the purchase price I'm thinking of it as a really expensive hobby. I recently purchased a better domain ([https://intromaker.com](https://intromaker.com)), and at some point in the future I'm planning to build a more dynamic render engine and do some sort of subscription service (less targeted at youtubers and more geared towards agencies).

<comment><USER15> May I ask how did you know the website was for sale?

<comment><USER14> There are brokerages. I read about the codetree sale on HN a few years back (just google "codetree sale") and signed up for the FEInternational list.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the good read: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12654277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12654277)

And good luck with your hobby!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I, along with two other co-founders, have bootstrapped a profitable SaaS startup over the last two years while we all three maintained our day jobs. We all have families but have put in nights/weekends to get it where it is. I just made the jump and quit my day job and the other two are just about to do the same.

In retrospect, it was a much safer way to start a business because it took much of the uncertainty out of the equation and eliminated the financial stress. It was possible for us because our startup is a SaaS business, not all businesses can be bootstrapped or built with only nights and weekend efforts. I often wished it would go faster and still think we could have been profitable a year earlier than we were but with time being our biggest constraint it didn't happen. That was the tradeoff we made for financial stability. You have to be OK with small successes and slow progress that evolves into a business/product over time rather than one massive sprint to get an MVP ready to ship in a couple weeks/months.

<comment><USER18> What kind of SaaS business?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I built bonsai.io/websolr.com while working at Twitter in 2010. I left in 2012, keeping a promise to a co-founder that I'd leave if we hit $1M ARR.

There were definitely a couple months of pager/ops overload where I hit 100hr workweeks and multiple hundreds of pagers per week. Hypervisor bugs meant that some tasks were hard to automate, and that automation would stochastically fail, so I stayed up til 4am watching the logs and correcting issues, then went back into the office at 10am.

Basically, it was a reasonable hedging strategy against either company's failure, but given both succeeded, I lost a good chunk of what I would have made if I was "all in" on either. Plus, it was about as miserable as it sounds, though I learned a ton.

<comment><USER20> Any insightful takeaways from "watching the logs" and "correcting issues" in terms of what you would do differently?

<comment><USER19> If you aren't automatically rolling instances frequently, you will inevitably have some machines that were theoretically cattle but in practice are pets. (This is much easier today with k8s/mesos)

More generally, when you claim in system design that you have invariants, if you aren't using automation to enforce your invariants, they will inevitably be bypassed to your detriment by eager and/or lazy engineers. You will find this out at the worst possible time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a finance career, plus I built CanadaPups.com. Very little maintenance and costs, but lots of fun to tinker and improve it as a hobby. Just letting it grow on its own as I'm kinda out of ideas of how to kick it up a notch - suggestions welcome!. [https://canadapups.com](https://canadapups.com)

<comment><USER22> How did you get the first few customers to achieve enough critical mass to make website successful?

<comment><USER21> I needed traffic from the buy-side and sell-side.

On the sell side (breeders), I can just google for new customers! Many dog breeders have their own websites. I search for dog breeders and then contact them through their website (either their webform or their published emails).

On the buy-side (people looking for pets), I pay for google ads on certain keyword searches. As my website became more relevant, the cost of the ads dropped significantly and I started getting more organic searches. Getting buy-side is more difficult for me. Once you find your new pet, you don't need to visit my website anymore, so customer retention is bad... something I need to work on.

<comment><USER23> Maybe curated lists or targeted marketing of stuff people might buy for pets? Maybe training or pet health advice you've collected from experts selling at a low cost? Just brainstorming here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think a lot of people who visit those two websites:

[https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/)

[http://sidehustlehq.com/](http://sidehustlehq.com/)

<comment><USER25> Just want to second, [https://indiehackers.com](https://indiehackers.com) is a great site!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Spent the better part of two years building a local food and drink promotion side gig. Building connections, making money, social life, growing photography skills and traveling for something I'm already doing in my life, eating and drinking. Cliche as it may be, that's the key, particularly when adding ANOTHER job on top of your day job. You have to enjoy the shit out of it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I built my startup while keeping my job until it was impossible to sustain. I tried really hard to make it work as long as possible.

At the time I quit my job the startup was profitable and growing really fast. A few months later we started negotiating an acquisition and closed the deal after working less than a year on it full-time.

</comment><comment><USER27> For what it's worth, it's still work in progress (not really profitable, but getting there). I've been working on it for more than 5 years now for about 2 hours a day on average, steady. Basically, I spend my "hobby time" working on it. Evenings, weekends, late nights, wherever I can squeeze some spare time in. Sometimes it gets hard and frustrating as you would like to push more but don't have the luxury of going full time on it just yet.

It gets easier to balance with time as you learn how and when to squeeze in some time to work on it while still maintaining a normal life with job, family and friends.

</comment><comment><USER28> I built Artpip ([https://artpip.com](https://artpip.com)) whilst working fulltime. Spent the odd weeknight and some weekends developing it over the course of a few months, then the same again when I added the pro mode once I realised it could actually make me some money.

Not sure you could classify it as a startup, but it makes me a few hundred dollars per month. I'd actually love to grow it more but I'm not sure what the best direction to take it in is. If anybody has any feedback or feels like getting involved, feel free to drop me a mail at "tom @ artpip.com"!

<comment><USER29> Nice!

How is the legal situation with these paintings? They are from well known artists (van Gogh, Monet, ...) - is it now possible to sell them because the artists are dead for a long time - I thought that maybe some descendants hold the (exclusive) right to sell them, but I may be wrong ...

Good luck with your endeavor.

<comment><USER28> They're all in the public domain due to age since the death of the creator. You can do whatever you like with works in the public domain (yay!).

See the section at the bottom of [https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_- _Starry_...](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_- _Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) for an example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I built a high frequency cryptocurrency forecasting system [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz) and few games in my spare time [http://www.wordsmashing.com](http://www.wordsmashing.com) [http://bigmultiplayerchess.com](http://bigmultiplayerchess.com) [http://multiplicationmaster.com](http://multiplicationmaster.com)

hasn't made that much money but allowed me to get paid more at work and tipped our income over the edge so we could get a mortgage on our first house which was nice :) great decision and learning experience building products from the ground up and exciting/grounding interacting with customers who always like to push the limits of your product :)

I have noticed others who have a lot of job experience coding but not the business/product experience can find it difficult to prioritise things from a users point of view and or build reusable/extendable systems by anticipating how things are going to change in future.

Even if it fails terribly i think its a good learning experience and can work out in your favour... Word Smashing made some money from ads but $0 from listing on the android app store :D -$20 on app store ads actually...

<comment><USER31> In big multiplayer chess the king/queens are mixed up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My day job was steady consulting work, but I used that to provide stability while building a company my partners and I sold last year. It wasn't a huge exit (in truth my cut barely covered the extra hours I put into it over four years) and one of these days I'm going to have to write up the history of this project as a cautionary tale about all the mistakes you can make getting involved with a startup. But it was mildly profitable, and with better marketing we probably could have tripled our valuation on exit.

</comment><comment><USER33> If you are going to try to do this, working remote is the ideal situation. When working remote I save about 2 or so hours. Traffic, packing a lunch, office politics, getting dressed, eating breakfast vs. eating breakfast in front of the computer... etc.

</comment><comment><USER34> I run starterstory.com with a full time job and this month it's on track to make $1,700 revenue.

I actually wrote a blog post about balancing side project and full time job: [https://starterstory.com/blog/full-time-job-and-full-time- si...](https://starterstory.com/blog/full-time-job-and-full-time-side-project- how-i-stay-productive)

Not sure if that's what you're looking for but hope it helps.

</comment><comment><USER35> Not me - but, I think one of the prime examples is Warby Parker. At least according to 'Originals' by Adam Grant.

Mr. Grant scoffed at the founders meekness at not going full ahead and passed an opportunity to invest. After WP became successful Mr. Grant realized he had no idea how to gauge peoples tendency to succeed - which prompted him to write the book. Which is an excellent read.

</comment><comment><USER36> I built stratascratch.com working a full-time job and teaching at a university 1-2x a week in the evenings. The idea came from the amount of headaches and inefficiencies I experienced trying to teach non-technical students how to code. I built a platform that made my life easier. It's fairly profitable but not at a scale where I can quit my day job. Since I don't have much free time, I have to hire several freelancers to help with product improvements and sales.

For the record, I don't charge my students to use the platform :P

</comment><comment><USER37> I built a nice shed while keeping my day job. Does that count?

<comment><USER38> If it increases the value of your house that's good in itself. For fun I did a side project while my friend built a new deck for his cottage. His cottage increased value about the same amount that I sold my side project for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Echoing what many have mentioned in this thread. Read your employment agreement for mentions of Intellectual Property, inventors clause, etc. I work full-time and I am launching a side business, but I have a licensing agreement in place with my employer that clearly states my ownership of my businesses IP in exchange for a free license of the product. There is a lot of grey area in employment agreements. Even if there isn't anything that is clearly stated (from your understanding) that would cause issues, it is up to debate in the court of law. The best plan of action is to speak with a lawyer. It took me six months and multiple revisions to my licensing agreement before it was signed, but I can now sleep better at night and launch my business!

</comment><comment><USER40> I run a non-profit outside of my day job. Whilst not a startup in the sense you are probably asking about, there are many parallels. Even though we are non profit we still require well into 6 figures per year to operate and deliver on our charitable purpose. This requires us to pitch for funding at large corporates and investors. We have a big team of enthusiastic people working on the charity, without any scope for renumeration, so the vision has to be compelling. We have to manage regulation, risk, and financial standards. It takes a lot of time. But it's well worth it. You could always consider a 'non profit startup' if you are interested in making an impact other than financial. Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER41> Bootstrapped [https://artcall.org](https://artcall.org) and trying to gain traction on [https://ezzl.art](https://ezzl.art) while employed full time elsewhere.

<comment><USER42> FYI, I cannot scroll down on on artcall.org.

<comment><USER41> Oh strange, can't reproduce. Are you on mobile or desktop? Browser?

<comment><USER43> Same for me on Chrome. There's a 'mousewheel' event listener attached to the window that is calling preventDefault()

<comment><USER44> This absolutely infuriates me to the point where I'm struggling to remain civil. My blood instantly began boiling after reading that sentence.

Why the @#$% does some web designer think it's a good idea to disable mousewheel scrolling?! What does this accomplish? What feature do you gain? What was the goal?

I just can't for the life of me grok what would be going through someone's brain when they decide "Hey, you know what would make this page better? Disabling scrolling with your mouse wheel!"

EDIT: Maybe the intent was to do something else, like implementing smooth scrolling in JavaScript, and it's not working properly. But if that's the case, the answer is that web devs need to stop trying to mess with scrolling. Implementations rarely work correctly in every browser and it just ruins the UX. Just stop messing with scrolling!

<comment><USER41> In this case it's a bug, as I'm not trying to 'disable' the mouse, but track scrolling and then make the menu 'stick' to the header when the user scrolls down the page. A common design pattern which increases usability quite a bit.

<comment><USER44> Isn't that usually done with CSS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Not a start up per se, but my Medium blog is fairly profitable, ~2k on a good month.

<comment><USER46> Can't tell if you're serious or not. Is there a way for people to monetize their Medium blogs? If so, what's yours about?

<comment><USER45> Been a partner for about a year now, which pays you an undisclosed cut of the members fee from those that engage with your content (meaning claps).

Mine is about, uhm, me being a disillusioned 30 year old developer hating how things are done now? Rants like this [https://medium.com/commitlog/how-to- design-for-the-modern-we...](https://medium.com/commitlog/how-to-design-for- the-modern-web-52eaa926bae2) tend to alright.

Throwing in an amazon link when its appropriate, or funny in the above case doesn't hurt either. Kinda got an on-going thing with always pushing K&R books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> With a founding team of six for a hardware startup, we couldn't all be paid without going bust, so the best thing was for most of us to keep jobs and accept the reduced speed of development. I've been working one or two evenings a week for 4 years, totalling 1500+ hours, which is close enough to a full- time year now.

As the software guy, I also found I spent much of the rest of the week subconsciously thinking through issues and solutions anyway, so by the time I did get that six or so hours to code I was pretty damn productive.

</comment><comment><USER48> We had a different turn of events in our case. Me and my co-founder we were working on the startup, while on our full-time jobs, and we got some grants from governments to allow us to quit and persuit it full time. This was 4 years ago and we are still going strong with sales and grants. Never underestimate the opportunities for free money! Governments, councils, schemes, all have projections, agentas and budgets and if your startup aligns with them you can get 10k to 150k usd just by writing a few proposals..

<comment><USER20> Can you post some sources to this information?

<comment><USER48> Dont have any guide tbh, it is all luck and prercistence. Just to give you an idea, we apply to multiple grants every 1-2 weeks from websites like younoodle, f6s and we keep an spreadsheet with all the deadlines of each grant (that might have their own website). All this while doing a hardware product and running the baby/startup.

Talking with people, the first barrier we see is that people think they _can 't get or don't deserve grants_. They give excuses like, "Oh I never been to country X", "I'm not a resident there", "It's just an idea", etc etc.

Most grants will ask you to go to country X, incorporate there in some cases (to attract talent), or get involved and help the ecosystem of that region. For others you just submit a proposal with milestones and you have check, presentations and writeups (and ultimately you do the things you promised).

Some examples of grants are, startupInsertXCountry (e.g. StartupChile, StartupPeru, Startup Puerto Rico - P18), LaunchKC (Kansas City), EU H2020 (hard) but also H2020 sub-programs that got H2020 funding for a cause and pass it on to startups as a challenge (robotics challenges, Big-data challenges), HotDesQ (AUS), and many many many more countries that want to be like Silicon Valey)

Hope this helps!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Whether or not it will be profitable is yet to be seen, but I am in the process of doing this.

As has already been mentioned, make sure the IP is in your name. My employment contract is one of those generic 'everything you think is ours' kind of affairs. I don't know if it would hold up in court but wanted at least some security. I'm in the UK, so this may not be appropriate to where you are.

After I proved the idea will work but before I started building the product for real, I went to a solicitor (lawyer) and explained my situation. They draw up a Deed of Understanding and Assignment. This is a document that gives scope to the work and states that my employer has no claim to any work inside that scope. My employer (eventually) signed it, as did I, and a witness. It wasn't free, but I feel safer having it.

Even if you're building a product that won't compete with your day job work, do all you can to make sure your employer can't claim it. If you do start making profit and your employer isn't (or is just greedy), it's not outside the realm of possibility that they could find out and claim all rights to it. I also don't see why this couldn't happen after you've left your job, if you built the product while employed.

If you think it's going to go somewhere, speak to a lawyer as soon as you can.

</comment><comment><USER50> Unfortunately it's not profitable and I'm not even sure I'd call it a "startup" but I do have a day job and enjoy building web apps in my free time. My most recent project is [http://www.famsnap.com](http://www.famsnap.com). I built it after becoming frustrated with the process of finding a photographer to take family photos while we were on vacation.

I have around 300 members currently but it has been slow growth. Every photographer I've told loves the idea but there's no place to really promote as posting on Facebook groups or forums is seen as spam and deleted. So I'll keep on growing slowly I guess using Instagram to contact photographers and see where I am in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER51> Sort of, I consulted in the day time and built my company in the evenings, after 3-4 years I switched to full time on my company, 6 years after that I made an exit.

While it worked for me, it came at a cost and I did not have a family at the time or any other obligations.

</comment><comment><USER52> I would call it a profitable side-project rather than a startup but I've built a price comparison browser extension : [http://www.shoptimate.com](http://www.shoptimate.com)

I'm currently busy launching a SaaS tool [http://blockedby.com](http://blockedby.com) but having two small children, a full time job and Shoptimate.com limits the time I can spend on this.

<comment><USER53> Whats the pain point that "blocked by" is trying to solve? Let's say the google analytics or marketo munchkin scripts are blocked by Ad Blocker, what's the marketing team supposed to do?

<comment><USER54> Seeing as the page mentions "help you solve it", they will help them bypass the filter rules that exist. Deeply unethical IMO, but without adversaries I guess things wouldn't be as interesting as they are today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My brother and I built TinyTracker([https://tinytracker.co](https://tinytracker.co)) after getting frustrated with Jira. We're not charging yet but we have a handful of businesses happily using it who (I hope) will come on as fully-paying customers once we get out of beta.

</comment><comment><USER55> I work full time and get/test/ship washer/dryer/dishwasher spare parts in my, uh, spare time. It's profitable at 2000 pounds/month, and can go much, much higher. Fuck this shit because no one should just work 6-8 24/7.

<comment><USER56> You buy and sell spare parts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Might be easier to combine a day job with freelancing rather than having a startup.

<comment><USER16> It depends, serious freelancing often requires some kind availability/responsiveness within business hours which may be tough with full-time day job. Of course the same applies to any high touch customer startup too.

<comment><USER58> Yes, I tried doing this for a while and it's frustrating for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Based on my experience, I think it is a extremely difficult thing to do!</comment>


Unf: UNixize Filename – replace annoying anti-Unix characters in filenames - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/io12/unf <comment><USER2> Standardising file extensions to lowercase and short forms might be a useful option;

        JPG -> jpg
        jpeg -> jpg

I'm not aware of file extensions conventionally presented as mixed case, though ePub might be a possible case.

Does this handle collisions in generated names?

<comment><USER3> Amen. The Mac goes one level wonkier by allowing file names to visually appear mixed-case, but treats them as if they're upper/lower only one way.

For example, Thing.JPG, thing.jpg, THING.Jpg are all the same file name even though under Linux they would not be.

I didn't look, but does unf check to make sure renaming Spaced Filename.txt to Spaced_Filename.txt check that it isn't clobbering a pre-existing Spaced_Filename.txt and offer a different remediation? Bulk collisions could be very messy.</comment></comment>


JS2Coffee: The JavaScript to CoffeeScript compiler - <AUTHOR> http://ricostacruz.com/js2coffee/

<comment><USER2> Very cool. I ran a quick CS->JS->CS test with this, and much of the generated CoffeeScript makes sense.

There are obviously areas missing, like the bound "fat arrow" functions. But maybe those can be improved on.

</comment><comment><USER3> This makes me not like CoffeeScript more. Using with a javascript library is no bueno.</comment>


Show HN: Termplay: Play videos in your terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/legolord208/termplay <comment><USER2> I see these every so often, but they never mention Sixels, which could be used to display videos with much more detail (like with [https://github.com/saitoha/FFmpeg-SIXEL](https://github.com/saitoha/FFmpeg- SIXEL) ).

Sixels aren't widely supported, and the implementations I tried were lacking in stability, but they offer some interesting possibilities, like embedding images into your text browser (and not with a hack like w3m uses), or playing Battle for Wesnoth inside your terminal [ [https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel](https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel) ]

<comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for image libraries. I couldn't really find more than /dev/fb0. Cool, I'll look into sixel!

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: Sixels now work. I just need to fix scaling. The image turns out REALLY small.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Mplayer can do this by default e.g.

        $ CACA_DRIVER=ncurses mplayer -quiet -vo caca video.avi

Here's the Silicon Valley intro in glorious ASCII: [http://i.imgur.com/YKP6nfP.png](http://i.imgur.com/YKP6nfP.png)

I had some audio sync issues with mplayer, and it sounds like termplay avoids that. I'm also not sure if there's a way to use true colour with mplayer.

<comment><USER4> mpv has a true color terminal renderer.[1] It's not the fastest though: [http://i.imgur.com/919Rez5.png](http://i.imgur.com/919Rez5.png)

      $ mpv --vo tct https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=PA4InNa0NSQ

[1]: [https://mpv.io/manual/master/#video-output-drivers- tct](https://mpv.io/manual/master/#video-output-drivers-tct)

<comment><USER5> I had to --vo=tct (xterm was not happy around the letterbox borders!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should allow the user to specify a pixel ratio that describes the width/height of each character of their terminal font. Otherwise, your images will be distorted, because your output pixels are not square.

Here's a screenshot demonstrating this issue, when converting a GIF to text in a terminal:

[https://monosnap.com/file/HwrGbSHEwxWlTQCCeXyd9qcFxwL38V.png](https://monosnap.com/file/HwrGbSHEwxWlTQCCeXyd9qcFxwL38V.png)

On the left, the original image. In the center, a ratio-perserved resized render in a terminal On the left, a pixel-ratio aware resized render.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look into it, thanks!

EDIT: Done :) [https://github.com/legolord208/termplay/commit/2263a5c5e385c...](https://github.com/legolord208/termplay/commit/2263a5c5e385cb9f6042eaab2c37722ae11582d1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great! Now can we get this integrated with Lynx so that can be my default browser?

<comment><USER8> I can't wait

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've written something similar myself in C++ before, but I'm curious if people actually have interest in using something like this regularly. I had thought I would do something like configure lynx to use it but the novelty quickly wore off and instead I went and started playing with the Mandelbrot set in the terminal and forgot all about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool!

I think that playing YouTube in the terminal today is just a fun idea because the videos look so goofy. But like people say... Sixel... Everything is apparently possible!

Someday, somebody will make the whole YouTube platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's 2017 and we still don't have a single decent bitmap terminal.

<comment><USER11> xterm and Konsole allow to display images in the terminal. To check it out, install w3m with the w3m-img patch (in Debian, the "w3m-img" package; in Arch Linux, the "w3m" and "imlib2" packages) and open a webpage that contains plain <img src="..." /> tags.

Example screenshot from Konsole: [https://imgur.com/a/D98Kl](https://imgur.com/a/D98Kl) (showing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xterm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xterm))

The rendering is really buggy. Images glitch away all the time, possibly until w3m issues a redraw event, but it kinda sorta works.

Some day, I'll have to dig into either the w3m source or the Konsole source and figure out which ANSI escapes are being used for that. (If someone has a link to a spec or sth, that'd be much appreciated.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You could do like the "fbi" tool, which uses the framebuffer (/dev/fb0) to draw to the screen. And that works for the TTY, but doesn't in Konsole.

Others have also told me about Sixels, so I'll probably add support for that at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: Sixels are now supported :)

Try it out with one of the terminals listed in [https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel#terminal- requirements](https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel#terminal-requirements)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the creators of April Fools day…</comment>


Atomic Light - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/08/20/atomic-light-akademgorodok-laboratories-scientists <comment><USER2> _There is something else that does not appear in these photos, that could not appear, and that deserves to be mentioned. Many of the main ideas of perestroika emerged for the first time from laboratories like these ones. Soviet science, Soviet laboratories were genuine islands of freethinking. Accustomed to thinking for themselves, the scientists had begun to draw conclusions about the failed communist experiment._

This reminds me of a Soviet sci-fi book I recently read, _A billion years before the end of the world_ , translated to English as _Definitely Maybe_ [1].

I've read a fair amount of Soviet / East Bloc scifi, and it usually tends to avoid directly commenting on contemporary issues by placing the events in a distant enough future that the inevitable victory of communism on Earth can be assumed to have occurred. (In other words, even dark Soviet scifi quietly presumes a short-term timeline that would be acceptable to Soviet orthodoxy.)

In contrast, _Definitely Maybe_ takes place in Leningrad in the early 1970s and the main characters are successful Soviet scientists. It's a quite interesting glimpse into the assumptions of that society, and the latitude of free thought that scientists still retained.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_\(novel\))

<comment><USER3> It's funny that the same authors wrote [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_Begins_on_Saturday](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_Begins_on_Saturday).

e: I went to college with Yuri Manin's grandson. I'll have to ask him what he thinks of that book (Definitely Maybe)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The photos look like anything you'd find wondering the ground and basement floors of science buildings at most major research universities today.</comment>


The hidden history of SEAL team 6 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/world/asia/the-secret-history-of-seal-team-6.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9670994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9670994)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, haven't seen that one.</comment></comment>


Stephen Fry on the iPhone, Bold, Storm, and G1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/2008/12/11/gee-one-bold-storm-coming-up%E2%80%A6/

<comment><USER2> For his sparky wit, his flawless prose, and his unabashed geekiness, I think Stephen Fry should be given the title of honorary hacker.

<comment><USER3> He's a hacker by my definition. He's very bright, he thinks about a lot of things, and he tinkers with everything. There's more to hacking than writing code, and Fry's messed with humor and the English language more than enough to get the title.

</comment></comment><comment> old-gregg _iPhone version of Safari to be Flash capable._

Noooooo!!! I am actually hoping that the growing dominance of Apple will accelerate the death of Flash. I bet we _already_ seeing the benefit of an iPhone - how many web projects have made a conscious decision to stick to standards-compliant tech in order to be easier available for an iPhone/Touch? I bet quite a few.

<comment><USER4> And how many developers have instead opted to make an iPhone-specific version that _does not work on other browsers or phones_ ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now THAT is a review.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Watching someone writing an email on a Storm is like watching an antelope trying to open a packet of cigarettes." - Hilarious.

Thanks for posting! Made my day...

</comment><comment><USER7> Any chance that the Blackberry Bold could be given an Android personality?

I've had a chance to play with the device itself. But RIM's software is kind of, less than thrilling.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very insightful,well balanced, beautify written and entertaining.</comment>


MongoDB 3.6.0-rc0 is released - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mongodb-user/--STTJpGkcE <comment><USER2> I'm curious to hear how many people are using open source persistence libraries such as mongo vs whatever is supplied by their chosen cloud platform? I wonder what the long term trend would be, also.</comment>


Ask HN: How does your company handle scheduling jobs? - <AUTHOR> Is there a "run-at-datetime" library/framework out there that works well in production? At my last company we hacked together an event queue + cron process to replicate the functionality, but I'm curious how others have handled scheduling jobs like this. <comment><USER2> We're on Google Cloud Platform, so we use Google Cloud Scheduler for this. It's nice because it's for distributed systems, so it will pick the least busy instance for new work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Jenkins? [https://www.jenkins.io](https://www.jenkins.io) ???</comment>


The Toaster Project - Building a Toaster from Scratch - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetoasterproject.org/

<comment><USER2> I like the "build a toaster starting with raw materials" angle. But if the real goal is "toast" and the real starting point is "nature", I would grab a bunch of sticks, start a fire, and hold a piece of bread over the fire like a marshmallow. That reduces the problem to that of making dough and baking bread, of which the most difficult problems I see would be (a) grinding the wheat and (b) leavening the bread.</comment>


Drowning in Garbage - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/global-waste/ <comment><USER2> For anybody interested in the totality of their garbage output, I can't recommend this book enough:

[https://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Land-Secret-Trail- Trash/dp/03...](https://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Land-Secret-Trail- Trash/dp/031615461X/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1)?

I had my book club read this book, and so many times, for so many other books this books came up in conversation.

Interesting facts:

* Glass is recycled in order to grind it up and spread it over landfills to keep down dust. In this way the glass is counted as recycled and not garbage despite it ended up being in the dump.

* Roman era landfills are still leaking effluant.

* Plastics might be marked and marketed as recyclable but many plastics are better off as garbage. Better yet, never created and used in the first place.

* Whenever a natural compost toilet has a problem, more sawdust is almost always the answer to fixing whatever ails it. (Not really in the book, one of our bookclub members had hippie parents).

I would follow up this book with another set in Mumbai:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400067553/ref=as_li_ss_tl](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400067553/ref=as_li_ss_tl)

Somehow we need to do a better job at reducing poverty and imroving consumer recycling habits. No miracle solutions in this book. Just griding, abject poverty, living in the garbage of Mumbai.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Is this just garbage, or is it a resource?

About 10 years ago I looked at using engineered extremophile bacteria to mine metals from dumps. The tech was complex but doable even then and there were other things we could have done too in terms of remediation.

What killed it? Local government. They pay to manage and maintain dumps. I offered to take over their "brownfield" sites and change their cost center into a revenue stream. Everyone I talked to thought it would be a great idea...but wanted so much in royalties that it would not be worth doing. They'd rather strangle the goose.

<comment><USER4> Could you give us an idea of how that could work? I can't even begin to imagine how that could be done.

<comment><USER3> Briefly:

1: grind up the middens (sorry archeologists!)

2: put the resulting slurry in a bioreactor (an open tank would work) with your bacteria and stir for a while

3: rinse and drain tank. Spin down the rinsate.

4\. Profit!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In our moral crusade against impending environmental disaster, it astounds me that packaging is still given little thought beyond what we should do with it once we already have it. I think it would be a good idea to place some kind of rating on packaging to encourage purchasers to be more cognisant of what they are actually taking responsibility for beyond just the contents.

I can't help but feel like we are going backwards here - especially when I see things like individual bananas being sold on trays[1].

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/WPaVBTv.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/WPaVBTv.jpg)

<comment><USER6> In Germany consumers are legally allowed to unpackage items directly in the store and the store is required to handle the leftover packaging.

<comment><USER7> Very few people do that, though. Certainly not enough for the stores to do anything about packaging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> AI can help us here. This is an example of automated trash sorting (optical sorting) from 4 years ago. I expect today we can sort trash even more efficienty: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc)

Another idea would be an army of cleaning bots that can be let loose in a forest, on a beach or on roadside to methodically collect all trash. Even underwater drones could be used to clean up beaches. I think cleaning bots is the way forward.

</comment><comment><USER9> I really appreciate the authors of this post for their effort in raising awareness but I think it will fall on deaf ears.

A few things that they mentioned that they didn't go into crazy depth are origination of plastic(s), transportation costs of waste, and taxation as a policy to reduce waste.

Did you know that glass is reusable, unfortunately it's so heavy that it's worth nothing to recycle.

The other problem is where the funding for recycling goes.

In the New York City metro area, a bottle deposit tax is used towards education. If everyone recycles, where/how is the government going to plug that hole, however small it may be?

The better question that the author should be asking is what type of policy(s) should be implemented in order to make it so that people want to or are forced to reuse verses to not even think about throwing things out.

The only conclusion that I see is a super high tax.

Unfortunately,most people don't really care unless it hits them in the wallet.

You would be suprised. You could make the fines incredibly high or jail people like they do in Singapore.

If Singapore can do it, why can't New York City?

<comment><USER10> I think the failure to reuse glass is a failure of imagination.

Why not have consumers refill product? Get your shampoo refilled at a machine in the aisle. Tax the plastic bottle.

<comment><USER11> You would have to make it punitively expensive for that to sway me. I pay $10 for a giant bottle of shampoo from Costco, if it suddenly became $10 + $5 plastic bottle tax I'd probably still just pay the $15 rather than refill the bottle.

<comment><USER12> The evidence is overwhelmingly against you[1], given how the plastic bag tax in Ireland and now the UK has shown it does significantly increase reuse, even for nominal amounts like a 5p charge per bag.

You might not want to save money, but most consumers do.

You're falling into the trap of "everyone is exactly like me", where you're in fact the exception, not the norm.

[1][https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/30/england-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/30/england- plastic-bag-usage-drops-85-per-cent-since-5p-charged-introduced)

<comment><USER13> I think bags are quite different: the hassle of reusable bags is really low, they weigh almost nothing, and they have other real advantages over the plastic bags (they don't break).

Many US states have bottle deposits for a similar "nominal" amount per bottle and the majority of people don't do it: when I was a broke college student some friends and I did it for a little while but the math really didn't work out even then.

<comment><USER12> My Aunt & Uncle and in Holland did it all the time and as far as I could tell everyone did it (I'm from UK, we don't have a scheme like that).

In this article after a very quick google they report a 90% return rate in Holland (I'm not going to spend time digging into where the 90% comes from):

[http://www.greenglass.org.hk/en/?p=69](http://www.greenglass.org.hk/en/?p=69)

So it might be a cultural thing or it may be the deposit figure is too low. As far as I remember in Holland it was 10 cents when I was a kid in the 90s, which would be about a dime per bottle.

<comment><USER13> It certainly is cultural: in Switzerland the rate of recycling is extremely high without and deposit.

To clarify, in my experience what happens in the US is most people recycle bottles at curbside pickup, rather than drive somewhere to get 5 cents per can. In cities homeless tend to go around and collect all of the cans from the curb and redeem them.

<comment><USER14> This is not only cultural and has nothing to do with the Swiss being more ethical or better people.

As always, in Switzerland _the system_ is very smart: The main reason for the high recycling rate in Switzerland is that a 35 liter trash bag costs around 80 cents. The cost for the garbagemen etc. is included in the purchase price of the trash-bag. (Also, the trash-bag is of high-quality and never rips, so garbagemen who get a >4000 CHF monthly salary, almost never waste time picking up trash from ripped trash-bags.)

This is unbelievably smart because this nudges people recycle everything: Paper, carton, glas, metal, and plastic bottles are all thrown away in extra containers that are distributed conveniently within the neighbourhoods. People really fill the expensive, high-quality trash-bags mostly with non-recyclable stuff. If you put in recyclable stuff there is no punishment or anything, you just have to buy more bags, which hurts your pocket.

Compare that to Germany where they rolled out a machinary of expensive plastic-bottle-bar-code reading robots in each and every supermarket that had to be engineered, maintained and protected against tampering/hacking/fraud with false bottles (from Eastern Europe).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > On average, Americans throw away their own body weight in trash every month. > In Japan, meanwhile, the typical person produces only two-thirds as much

That surprised me with the quantity of garbage due to overpacking in Japan, I'd have expected more. For example, I just bought 2 salads to eat at home, each salad is in a plastic container with some ice sticked to it and enveloped separately in a plastic bag. Then those two salads are in a plastic bag. It's an amazing amount of waste for no real reason.

<comment> Joe-Z Plastic bags don't really weigh that much. Maybe Americans use a little less plastic bags (do they, though?) but throw away more other stuff, like plastic gadget crap.

<comment><USER6> Having personally dug hundreds, perhaps thousands of those evil little fuckers out of the sands of beaches all over the world, I would say that gram for gram these are one of the worst kinds of pollution man has created.

Plastic shopping bags are a real bitch when they get into the sand. They often fill up with sand and become like a 10kg buried beachball. One literally needs to dig completely under them to get them out without tearing them up and leaving part of the bag under the sand. All of those plastic bags basically glue together the beach so that the normal erosive action of the sand being moved around by tides and waves no longer grinds things up like it normally would. That means the whole beach gets stagnant and rotten like a swamp. Really nasty.

<comment> Joe-Z Oh sure, I despise the ubiquitous hand-outs of plastic bags as much as anyone, I was just making that comment to give a reason for the weight-difference in spite of the perceived over-usage of packaging in Japan. I make it a point to refuse plastic bags whenever possible (which is pretty much always). I find it incredible that they are still considered the standard mode for packaging your shit. If shops would only give them out when asked for it, the number of used plastic bags would surely plummet.

One anecdote I found amusing is when I was in Yosemite: I bought a couple of t-shirts and told the lady at the check-out she doesn't need to give me a plastic bag for them, since I have my backpack with me anyways. She was pleasantly surprised and thanked me. It's one of the most well-known national parks in the US, where they make it a point to educate people on taking care of your environment, yet they hand out plastic bags with every purchase in the souvenir shop.

<comment><USER16> The two major retailers in Switzerland started to charge ~ 5 cents for those small, crappy plastic baggies.

Usage went back by ~ 80%.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand there is still a lot of packaging per good in Switzerland: a lot more things are sold individually wrapped in plastic (cucumbers, peppers, etc) and things like baking soda are sold in much smaller packets.

<comment><USER16> Both, cucumbers and peppers are usually sold open. With the exception of organic produce.

That's so that the cashier is able to make the distinction, since prices for organics are usually higher.

Usually, because there are exceptions, like a three pack of peppers. Fennel also comes often pre-packed. Other veggies usually not.

That's not to say that not a lot more could be done.

What I tried to do with my comment is to pôint out that a tiny fee can really change behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When we moved to a house in an area with municipal composting, we were amazed by how much our trash volume was reduced by diverting compostable materials to the compost stream. Some of that is food waste, but a lot of it is things you'd never consume -- vegetable peels, eggshells, old coffee grounds, even food-soiled unwaxed corrugated cardboard (i.e. pizza boxes). On any given week, it's half or more by volume, and well over half by weight.

</comment><comment><USER18> Unrelated but the scrolling on site is super weird. Clicking on Lagos takes to the top of the page.

<comment><USER3> Not really unrelated — if the article is hard to read it's a problem. And what's with the scrolling that sends small "fortune cookie" messages scrolling across the photos? That all simply distracts from the article and makes you have to find your place again. Sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> we need to get more clever with this elephant in the room. some startup needs to come up with a Garbage > Energy solution. The rest can maybe go into making bricks for construction.

its a slow boil and we are not focused

<comment><USER20> Aren't those called incinerators? We have those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looking at the numbers, I just don't see a real problem here. Landfill is three dimensional, and can be built on top of; it would take quite a lot of orders of magnitude population growth before we started running low on places to put it.

<comment><USER22> Landfills emit gases and things collapse as the waste changes over time. They aren't perfect foundations for future construction.</comment></comment>


Tesla Cybertruck Won't Be Legal in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://carbuzz.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-wont-be-legal-in-europe <comment><USER2> Knows next to nothing about the vehicle. Has no idea about actual implementation details or safety because vehicle does not currently exist.

Still makes blanket statements of fact anyway.</comment>


The EM Drive is here to get us to the Moon in 4 hours, without fuel - <AUTHOR> http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/134760-the-em-drive-is-here-to-get-us-to-the-moon-in-4-hours-without-fuel

<comment><USER2> Please read: "No, German Scientists Have Not Confirmed the "Impossible" EMDrive" [http://io9.com/no-german-scientists-have-not-confirmed- the-i...](http://io9.com/no-german-scientists-have-not-confirmed-the- impossibl-1720573809) (HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9973528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9973528) (5 points, 5 hours ago, 1 comment))

My abstract: It's very strange that the thrust don't appear almost instantly when you turn on the device and disappear almost instantly when you turn off the device. It's Is suspiciously similar to what you would expect from a measurement error due to thermal effects.

The only comment in the HN submission is mine, and I'll copy it (with a few modifications) because it's (more) relevant here.

Some numbers to compare:

The German experiment got 20uN with a 700W magneton, that is 20uN/700W = 0.03 mN/KW. (Probably some energy is "lost" and the "real" efficiency is higher, but when you claim to break the physics law the measurements must be foolproof.)

The maximal theoretical output of a device that don't break the currently accepted physics laws is 1/c = 0.0033 mN/KW. So the German measurement is 10x bigger than the theoretical maximum.

The 18-month-to-Pluto and 4-hous-to-Moon calculation use 0.4 N/KW = 400 mN/KW, that is approximately one half of the maximum claim of any of this device family, but most experiments get much smaller results. The 0.4 N/KW is 130,000x bigger than the theoretical maximum and 13,000x bigger than what they got in the German experiment. So if a device with the same output of this experiment, the trip to Pluto or the Moon will be much longer.

(Disclaimer: Just to be clear, I think this is only an experimental error.)</comment>


Betrayed by a bitfield (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/478657/ <comment><USER2> It was fixed in 4.8 [https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=52080](https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=52080)

</comment><comment><USER3> "The chances of good things resulting from this sequence of events are quite small."

That's putting it very mildly.

In a way they were lucky, in this context there was a possible fix, if you're assembling a packet to be sent across the network then you won't be able to solve it that easily.

For more fun like this look up all the caveats around packed structs.

<comment><USER4> I took your advice and went looking for it. I came away with the feeling that some people think they are useful some people thin they are evil. Did you have something specific in mind that you thought packed structures should be avoided for?

<comment><USER3> Packed structures seem to bring out compiler bugs like not much else does, no idea why but they have caused me many nights of lost sleep over the years to the point where if I see packed structures, there is a bug and the data does not get sent over the network my first instinct is to disable the packing to see if the problem goes away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Eh, that use of a bitfield is asking for it. What could you possibly gain from using a single bitfield in the entire struct?

I also thought it was well known that using bitfields you are just pushing the burden of generating the bit shifting code on the compiler, and that implies accessing other fields. I don't think there is a processor out there that has single bit writes for general purpose memory (some do for config registers).

<comment><USER6> > Eh, that use of a bitfield is asking for it. What could you possibly gain > from using a single bitfield in the entire struct?

A (buried way down) comment explains this:

> if you can even replace two int variables with one bitfield, you may shrink > your datastructure enough to have it fit within a CPU cache line. The memory > access that can then be avoided can be enough to make a noticeable > difference.

[https://lwn.net/Articles/479402/](https://lwn.net/Articles/479402/)

<comment><USER7> Right, but there's only one here. Is it just an attempt to future proof in case they add a second?

<comment><USER8> Likely their standard practice so the addition of a second field is immaterial. Does look funky though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks like a compiler problem.

If you turn that bit-field into a plain unsigned int, the problem goes away, right?

If an unsigned int can be accessed all by itself without involving the adjacent lock.

This strongly suggests that the compiler should be using "units" for bit-field allocation which are no larger than unsigned int.

It's odd for for a bit-field derived from, the type unsigned int to cause an access which is wider than unsigned int.

Also, nowhere in the standard does it say that the bit-field "units" can be shared with adjacent non-members. In C99 the wording is, _" If enough space remains, a bit-field that immediately follows another bit-field in a structure shall be packed into adjacent bits of the same unit."_ I.e. unit sharing takes place when a bit-field follows a bit-field. I can find no other text which specifies or permits unit sharing between a non-bit-field and a following bit- field.

</comment><comment> Const-me I wonder why people still use Itanium CPUs? And Intel is still producing them, they even going to release the next one, named Kittson?

Hasn't x86-64 architecture basically won?

Or there're some specific niches where Itaniums work better for some reason?

<comment><USER10> the niche of "software written/licensed for itanium"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Curious how this was solved, anyone have a link to a followup?

<comment><USER8> This was resolved in GCC 4.8 here: [https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=52080](https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=52080)

"Here is a candidate patch (it ICEs one Ada testcase, see PR52134). It enforces the C++11 memory model (as far as bitfields are concerned) upon everyone and builds on the machinery that was implemented for it (changing the implementation for when we compute "an underlying object" and permanently store it, to make it possible to use this information for optimization purposes)."

If I'm not mistaken they could have ensured 64-bit alignment when a bitfield immediately follows a lock, although that likely wouldn't have been fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bitfields seem to be a perpetual problem. We've used them a lot in firmware on ARM processors. Most compilers (even x86) generate inefficient code sequences compared to what I can do in assembly though Clang/llvm seems to be the best. The ARM official compilers had some bitfield bugs in some particular releases that caused us headaches.

</comment><comment><USER13> Compiler and compilation-related bugs are quite interesting to come across, since they can produce truly mind-boggling behavior.

A while back we ran into this one in the .NET jitter while working on ASP.NET Core: [https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/8825](https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/8825)

</comment><comment><USER14> Packing should be fine.. I think the real bug is that the lock is not being handled properly. It should be marked with volatile, and this should signal the compiler that it can not be part of a read-modify-write to an unrelated item.

<comment><USER15> Volatile is never the answer if your question is about locking.

<comment><USER14> Well you are right in the sense that volatile should not be used in place of locking primitives, and that even when implementing locking primitives, it's not enough (you need memory barriers, probably in an assembly language snippet market as __volatile__).

That being said, if the lock variable itself if marked as volatile, the compiler should take the hint based on its simple definition "value could change at any time", and not try to combine in with unrelated read-modify- write accesses.

Otherwise why wouldn't you want the compiler to speed up or compress bitfields?

<comment><USER15> Not only is it not enough, using volatile for locking primitives is a bad idea and should not be done. It slows down the program with no benefits.

A correct multi-thrraded program is correct with or without volatile, and so removing volatile can only speed things up and should be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shouldn't they file a bug report with the C standard instead of with GCC?

<comment><USER17> The argument that it was once a bug of the C standard makes absolutely no sense. It is not allowed by C11. C99 does not talk about that because C99 does not officially support multithreading, but that has not prevented largely C99 compliant compilers from supporting multithreading, while this kind of "optimization" intrinsically prevents multithreading.

So the situation is just that, at one point, "optimizations" have been added by people who did not know what the where doing, and tried to hide, as usual for modern compiler authors, behind the literal wording of the C standard to justify their incompetence and the risks they force on the world.

<comment><USER16> > It is not allowed by C11.

I see. Does GCC not support C11, or does it behave differently in this matter depending on whether it is in C11 mode or not?

> tried to hide, as usual for modern compiler authors, behind the literal > wording of the C standard to justify their incompetence and the risks they > force on the world.

I think that it's even worse to rely upon something that is not guaranteed by the letter of the standard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ummm, if it's going to be hit by more than one thread, you should lock it. I don't see how this is GCC's fault, wait till you learn about write barriers.</comment>


Mastering Bayes with R - <AUTHOR> http://www.machinegurning.com/rstats/bayes_r/ <comment><USER2> Author of the featured package, bayesAB, ([https://github.com/FrankPortman/bayesAB](https://github.com/FrankPortman/bayesAB)) here. Thanks for the mention!

I'm glad to see others making Bayesian theory/methods accessible.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to work through this, but I'm allergic to R.

Is there something like this in Python?

<comment><USER4> Check this tutorial on PyMC3: [https://github.com/fonnesbeck/intro_stat_modeling_2017/blob/...](https://github.com/fonnesbeck/intro_stat_modeling_2017/blob/master/notebooks/2.%20Basic%20Bayesian%20Inference.ipynb)</comment></comment>


Reported Leak of 1.5TB of Only Fans Data - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/broderick/status/1233097681742049281 <comment><USER2> Article: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/terabytes...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/terabytes- of-stolen-adult-content-from-onlyfans-have-leaked)

</comment><comment><USER3> fwi OnlyFans is a porn website where amateur sex workers can charge for their content.

<comment><USER4> I thought this was some kind of overclocking crowdsourced data at first.</comment></comment>


'Sophisticated' armed robbers hit Fremont high-tech company - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidebayarea.com/top-stories/ci_17504429

<comment><USER2> Amazing that 15 people are alleged - that is a lot of people to have in synchronicity with so much at stake.

Thankfully no one was hurt -</comment>


Ask HN: Are there still companies that don't use version control systems? - <AUTHOR> If so, what alternatives do you use? <comment><USER2> At the first place I worked at: Zip Files. $customername-YYYYMMDD.zip. "Branches"? Easy. Just create a new folder. Merging? WinMerge is your friend :-D Deployment was sending a Zip File with DLLs to the customer. Obviously no build system, but built on the dev's local system.

Thank god I could convince the team to move to SVN.

<comment><AUTHOR> It sure feels archaic!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely. I currently support a team of developers that flat out aren't interested.

The "alternative" is they log tickets with helpdesk going "can you please restore this file from backup from a few weeks ago". It's awful.

It's a startup you may have heard of.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting how they're using the flexibility the lack of hierarchy allows startups counter-productively.

I can't think of any startup that would do that, can you give me a hint?</comment></comment>


Apple not interested in 'traditional gaming' - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/171340/Apple_not_interested_in_traditional_gaming_says_CEO_Tim_Cook.php

<comment><USER2> Something that people forget is that the Apple II was a powerhouse of videogames back in the day -- the industry goes through phases from general use machines to the console business depending on what hardware is out there and also where the creative energy is as well.</comment>


MAME is going completely open-source to be a 'learning tool for developers' - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/view/news/243598/MAME_is_going_open_source_to_be_a_learning_tool_for_developers.php <comment><USER2> How does this work for people who contributed code under one license (thinking it would stay that way) and don't want their contributions released under another license? In practice, I doubt they'll run in to any issues, but what if they wanted to release all the code under a more commercially permissive license and contributors had a problem with that?

Does MAME own all contributions? Could they change the license to require license fees? If not, why can they change the license after the fact?

<comment><USER3> Answering to _" why can they change the license after the fact?"_ , I think the answer is something close to "Licenses can be changed after the fact, provided the owners/maintainers get permission from each contributor, or rewrite the problematic parts".

VLC went through a similar transition (from GPL to LGPL); jbkempf's blogposts about this experience may be of interest to you:

\- [http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly- relice...](http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-relicense-a- large-open-source-project)

\- [http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly- relice...](http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-relicense-a- large-open-source-project-part-2)

\- [http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly- relice...](http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-relicense-a- large-open-source-project-part-3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, Gamasutra really has no understanding of Free and Open Source Software concepts. That is really not a good place to announce this kind of things. When you read "going completely open source" and see what it actually means, there's only one appropriate reaction: faceplam.

<comment><USER5> Gamasutra targets game developers. And there are not many of them that would like to use license that would force them to release their source code. Such licenses (as GPL for example) may be used only for internal tools, and even then it may be a problem (GPL3). For example if you need to work with third- party outsourcing company that would hire people to do extra art for your project, and you need to give them the custom tools, if the latter are using GPL, then who knows what the third-party artists might request.

if MAME is released under MIT/BSD then it can be freely put in consoles, gameboy, psp, etc.

<comment><USER6> >and you need to give them the custom tools, if the latter are using GPL, then who knows what the third-party artists might request.

At most, source code to those custom tools which contain GPL licensed code.

>if MAME is released under MIT/BSD then it can be freely put in consoles, gameboy, psp, etc.

MAME (as a project) is now to be released under GPLv2 unless I'm missing something, but there is also a lot of BSD licensed code in MAME which can be used in proprietary projects.

That said I don't think the MAME code is of particular interest to game developers, as it's basically cpu and video/sound chip emulation coupled with drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _" MAME's source code has long been freely available, but it's never > technically been open source. Instead it's been available under a modified > BSID license that prohibits, among other things, commercial use of the > code."_

Sounds to me that it has long been open source, but not Free software.

<comment><USER8> "source available" and "open source" are not the same thing; it was neither open source nor free software, the definitions of both of which explicitly disallow restrictions on commercial use.

And if you're suggesting that there's another meaning of "open source": that ship sailed a _long_ time ago, and attempting to use that term for any other purpose can only lead to confusion.

<comment><USER4> > "source available" and "open source" are not the same thing

To be fair "open source" is a bastard wording in the first place. It was created by people who did not understand the Free Software movement and did not want to relate to RMS. The only true legal term is Free Software, Open Source is close to meaningless without a license attached to the term.

<comment><USER8> That's a little over the top. While it's true that Open Source was effectively company-friendly branding and marketing for Free Software (and rather effective at that), it still refers to the same software (modulo very nitpicky differences in definition), and Open Source has a clear definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent news. I might buy an arcade machine to put MAME on it then. Friend of mine had two imported from Japan but unfortunately sold them while I wasn't around. It's a ton of fun to play games with actual arcade controls and the good nostalgia feeling.

There are also multiple online posts about building your own, maybe I'll do that to be even more open. This is the one that I stil have bookmarked: [http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/stepprojectmame.htm](http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/stepprojectmame.htm)

<comment><USER10> Why does it matter for your use case? Or are you planning on putting it somewhere public, like a bar (so the "no commercial use" term might have kicked in)?

<comment><USER9> For me, it only matters for a strange use case. We wanted to put one up during a community/neighbourhood festival and it was somewhat icky so we didn't. Would be fun to see them in bars, too. I know at least one patron that'll probably put one up someday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anybody know what license they're going to be going for?

<comment><USER12> From looking at their repo, it looks like standard BSD-3-Clause. They've been tagging all the files with license comments at the top as they go through identifying authors and making sure everything is re-licensed consistently.

<comment><USER13> from their site "MAME is free. Its source code is free. Selling either is not allowed."

Wonder how that works with the BSD-3-Clause?

<comment><USER14> That's referring to the old license. The "selling either is not allowed" part is going to go away under new licensing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess the MAME guys want to create an itunes for the games, that way companies like Namco and so on can sell their games thought Mame. And the Mame gusy would get a 30% as ususal.

</comment><comment><USER16> That is a misleading headline. MAME always was open source, but it was distributed under its own custom license, which forbade distributing it with ROM images. For example, if Nintendo wanted to distribute its Arcade/GB/GBC/GBA/NES/SNES rom images wrapped with MAME, the current license forbids that.

The reason for that restriction is that the MAME devs were concerned about getting sued by the copyright holders.

That's like saying "Nethack isn't open source", because it has its own custom license rather than one of the more traditional licenses. A lot of older projects have their own custom license, because they started before there were a couple of standardized popular licenses.

They plan to switch to a more traditional license. I think they picked the GPL.

Their plan is to get permission from all the authors, and rewrite the code of people who don't give permission.

Some of the core contributors are POed and refuse to give consent, and they left the project.

I'm not sure how rewriting works, since the hard part really was figuring out how to emulate the rom correctly. If you change the variable names, refactor it, but keep the same core logic, does that count as "different"?

<comment><USER17> No, the reason it wasn't open source wasn't that it had its own custom license, it was that that custom license didn't meet the Open Source Definition. The license didn't forbid distributing it with ROM images, it forbid any form of commercial distribution or use. That's clearly not open source.

<comment><USER18> I don't know who decides the term "open source", but looking at the wikipedia article, availability for commercial use, does not seem to be a core concept of the definition, but rather that source code is available and that people are allowed to modify it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source)

<comment><USER19> [http://opensource.org/](http://opensource.org/)

Their definition usually is accepted (and the MAME project refers to it in its roadmap when describing why they weren't open source before)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> glad to hear it. not to start a debate over aesthetics, but I've never been terrible impressed by video game art in museums and galleries - not that the work itself isn't impressive, it's just so hopelessly introverted and codified, that it just hasn't been capable of translating into the gallery/fine art setting yet, in my experience. The two worlds don't undertand eachother, and I'll say the same about 'outsider' art - I never enjoyed it's curation although I've loved the art. I'd love to be proven wrong by someone though, on the video game front, and I'd love that person to be me of course haha, here's to dreaming.

</comment><comment><USER21> So I can't use the or borrow the mane source code without triggering a derivative?

This whole code base is now forever useless. All of that effort is officially gone to waste.

<comment><USER22> How so? Why is it useless?</comment></comment>


Rails Magazine Issue #5 - <AUTHOR> http://railsmagazine.com/issues/5 <comment><USER2> The PDF was created by 'CrowdPub.com' which isn't an active domain. Anyone know who they are and what they do?</comment>


With NameTag, Your Photo Shares You. - <AUTHOR> http://nametag.ws/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some interesting related pieces:

* [http://www.refinery29.com/2014/01/60361/nametag&ct=ga&cd=NDc...](http://www.refinery29.com/2014/01/60361/nametag&ct=ga&cd=NDc3MzQ2MDkwMjU3NzAxNzQwMA&cad=CAEYAA&usg=AFQjCNFswDLMAYG83zDtL0WZ6_CCt59Znw)

* [http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/01/09/stalker-friendly-...](http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/01/09/stalker-friendly-app-nametag-uses-facial-recognition-to-look-you-up-online/&ct=ga&cd=NDc3MzQ2MDkwMjU3NzAxNzQwMA&cad=CAEYAg&usg=AFQjCNFAsM573pLvhieSeXt3jjW58vsfWw)

Personally, I think this is very scary, especially since they're planning to make it opt-out, so you're in the results, unless you sign up and opt-out. I'm guessing some legislation is necessary to prevent all out abuse of this sort of technology. There's obviously benefits to this sort of technology, but in my opinion, should be tightly controlled.</comment>


Ask HN: Who wants to start a body cam company with me? - <AUTHOR>

Self - explanatory title. It is time that the citizenry of the United States hold those that are assigned to protect and serve us in our communities accountable for their conduct. For too long, people of color have lamented their relationship with law enforcement personnel. It is time to provide a cost - effective, simple body camera solution that is accessible to all law enforcement agencies.<p>About me: I am a software guy. This will take people smarter than me to execute, but I think it is important. If you are interested in taking part, email me at my username at the Google Mail. <comment><USER2> I think part of the hesitancy of body cams is how do you solve the problem of hours of useless video of them sitting in a car, etc.?

Is it worth it for a municipality to have a body cam going when they hand out a speeding ticket? Or any of the 99% of the boring stuff they do (loud neighbor, minor traffic accident, etc.) That is likely to cause a lot more BS court time. Each $50 device could end up costing taxpayers $1000's if the idea is to record every encounter.

Maybe somehow tie the body cam to start recording on key events: police person exits their vehicle, they start running (gyroscope?) or when they un-holster their weapon (gun or taser), and ability for manual start.

I don't have any expertise but it would be cool to have it just recording to some device in their vehicle, then if they are too far away it records locally and syncs up when they return. Vehicles could be transmitting event data to HQ and live video after an event triggers. This could help with officer safety where an officer might need backup but can't ask for whatever reason.

If a person wants to do something malicious, they just need to cover the camera or make it "malfunction" \- its not going to stop that activity.

I think the path to sell this type of thing is officer safety and officer CYA for their own careers. Also for more experienced officers - video of expertly handled encounters could serve as training to recruits on how to handle difficult situations like domestic violence.

</comment><comment><USER3> You want to develop a body cam for law enforcement? I don't think current systems or costs are holding them back at the moment. Instead, most law enforcement agencies simply don't want them. Even if they were mandatory, they would likely be disabled, or _accidentally_ broken or obscured during key events.

If you want to see officers wearing body cams one day, you're better off getting involved in politics.

</comment><comment><USER4> How do you plan to compete with existing solutions such as those from Taser who have scale and established ties to enforcement agencies?

How do you plan on selling to government agencies who only deal with established (high credit) vendors?

How do you plan on differentiating your product?

Is there a reason why Gopro hasn't pursued this market?

If I were pursuing the market, I would focus on small rural departments to establish scale - the Walmart scale up model. But, do small town cops desire to be recorded while they work?

If you can answer those questions, you may be on to something. I wish you luck.</comment>


Zunzun.com – curve-fitting website code released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zunzun/pyeq2 <comment><AUTHOR> I used this website for a simulation course a couple of years ago and wondered what happened to it. Seems like the author cannot run the site any more due to health issues (eyes). He decided to release the source code on github. See these two links for a little bit of info:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zunzun_dot_com/X1rH2...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zunzun_dot_com/X1rH2Iyaqk0)

[http://www.zunzunhelp.com/](http://www.zunzunhelp.com/)

There should be a lot of interesting stuff for anyone interested in statistics and Python (and node). The site was incredibly useful, among other things it allowed you to upload a csv data file and calculated the distribution that best fit the dataset.

The author even provided a tutorial for setting up your own site with Flask, maybe someone here wants to give it a shot: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zunzun_dot_com/nFMH_...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zunzun_dot_com/nFMH_l13rZE)

Thanks James for the great site when it was up and running and thanks for releasing the code :)

<comment><USER2> That's truly tragic. It's wonderful that he released his code into the public, but terribly sad circumstances. Thanks for letting us know the story behind this.</comment></comment>


How to forge a man out of yourself. Story of my life - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/how-to-forge-a-man-out-of-yourself-story-of-my-life-d9121e01c05c#.a3h4j60rk <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this!

It's not easy to admit one's weaknesses and grow from them.

Glad you were able to and doubly glad you were able to share the story :)</comment>


Stanisław Lem - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem <comment><USER2> The thing that really struck me about sci-fi from the other side of the iron curtain was the fundamentally different look it took at communication with extraterrestrial intelligences. Lem, and the Strugatsky brothers (probably the best known off of the top of people's heads from that side of the world, thanks to Tarkovsky) both wrote extremely well-received books about how it's likely that this sort of communication would be impossible.

<comment><USER3> Impossibility of communication (because the very physical means necessary are way beyond our capacity as a species) is also a far more plausible idea than anthropomorphic beings (speaking some language that can be deciphered and uttered by humans).

An ocean-shaped or a polymer-based "lifeform", while formidably uncanny, are still somewhat fathomable.

What about a radio-waves-based "lifeform"? Or a star whose plasma interactions are so complex that some form of artificial "life" emerges within it?

Lem's narrative is indeed intellectually teasing. And, yet, critical of our approaches and behaviors as a species.

<comment><USER4> > Impossibility of communication (because the very physical means necessary > are way beyond our capacity as a species) is also a far more plausible idea > than anthropomorphic beings (speaking some language that can be deciphered > and uttered by humans).

Lem's work (at least Solaris) explored the _intellectual_ inability of our species to communicate with a vastly superior intelligence. Solaris did not have any problem seeing what people were doing, thinking, signalling to it, and so on. It's just that what possible difference could it make?

<comment><USER5> The catch is, we simply don't know. We do not know if Solaris is a "superior" intelligence. We may _guess_ it is an intelligence of sorts. There is also very little to suggest that it understands us in turn. My interpretation is that the phantoms were its effort to understand humans, and probably not a very successful one either.

Another fantastic book on the subject His Master's Voice, where a whole massive team of scientists tries to decode an interstellar signal. In the end, they didn't even prove it _was_ a signal, and not a natural phenomenon.

Also - The Invincible. Probably the most western sci-fi styled book among his works, dealing with an interesting concept of mechanical evolution.

<comment><USER4> I have some opinions on that, but for the purposes of the story, I agree that the level of superiority of Solaris's intelligence is pretty much beside the point (or rather, the futility of attempting to parameterize Solaris's intelligence _is_ the point). Maybe it's not even self aware. Maybe it's hyperintelligent but reaches conclusions in geologic time, or something. Maybe it's amused by us and would find the notion of communicating with us in a meaningful way silly.

On the topic of self awareness vis-à-vis aliens, Peter Watts' _Blindsight_ is a recent classic.

[https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm](https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >> "Translating his works is difficult due to passages with elaborate word formation, idiomatic wordplay, alien or robotic poetry, and puns."

>> But he is the only writer of European [science fiction, most of whose] books have been translated into English, and [...] kept in print in the USA. Lem's critical success in English is due mostly to the excellent translations of Michael Kandel.

Anyone know if there's an effort being put into newer translations? A quick check of when Kandel made these translations:

        Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (with Christine Rose, 1973),
        The Cyberiad (1974),
        The Futurological Congress (1974),
        The Star Diaries (1976),
        Mortal Engines (1977),
        A Perfect Vacuum (1978),
        His Master's Voice (1983),
        Fiasco (1987),
        Peace on Earth (with Elinor Ford, 1994),
        Highcastle: A Remembrance (1995),

With notable books missing, it would be great to see the rest, and the above potentially (slightly) modernized.

 _Side note_ \- are there any open source translation initiatives? Where a book in its native tongue is collaboratively translated and seen as a living document to continually be updated with the times. (With the ability for a user to roll back and see the language of 10 years ago, etc. or by preference for specific translators.)

<comment><USER7> I'm particularly impressed by the translation of The Cyberiad. There are some amazingly clever poems in there that must have been impossible to translate. I'd love to see an analysis of how much of those poems was translated, and how much was just rewritten from scratch because some things are just impossible to translate while sticking to such a tight form.

<comment><USER8> > "Have it compose a poem—a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, > timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of > certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the > letter s!!"

> Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.

> She scissored short. Sorely shorn,

> Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,

> Silently scheming,

> Sightlessly seeking

> Some savage, spectacular suicide.

I've found an article that compares the translation the original Polish. The translator had to change the premise of the poem and write a completely new poem:

[https://medium.com/@mwichary/seduced-shaggy-samson- snored-72...](https://medium.com/@mwichary/seduced-shaggy-samson- snored-725b5a8086d9)

<comment><USER7> As I expected: it's a total rewrite, just with similarly restrictive requirements. But the theme changed from cybererotica (though there wasn't much cyber about the original) to biblical tragedy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm reading 'The Invincible' right now by Stanislaw Lem. Not only is it good science fiction but it's good fiction period. Really can paint a scene and make you feel like you're right there in it.

<comment><USER9> The Invincible is my favourite book, period. I just love the theme of humanity bringing its most powerful, most advanced weaponry against an "enemy", and discovering not that it can't defeat it, but that doing so is simply....pointless.

I've just finished reading Lem's Hospital of the Transfiguration - I love that this theme of pointlessness is expressed even in his non sci-fi books, it's just absolutely stellar reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lem made quite a good prediction about ebook readers:

"The books were crystals with recorded contents. They can be read the aid of an opton, which was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, successive pages of the text appeared on it."

In old Polish sci-fi I really appreciated the sociological aspect of some of the books, especially these written by Janusz Zajdel ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Zajdel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Zajdel)). Unfortunately it seems none of his work was translated to English.

In Zajdel's Limes Inferior we have a society divided into classes. The monetary system was divided into points (green, red and yellow) and being in the lowest class you would only earn green points that should cover necessities. For premium items you would need red or yellow points. There is of course a black market exchanges etc. Another interesting concept from this book were 'keys' \- every one had their own andb they were used as an id and a wallet for the points (I think they would perform similar functions to mobile phones of today).

</comment><comment><USER11> Funny coincidence, I just watched both the original Solaris and the remake this weekend. They've been on my list to watch for years. I enjoyed both. The original requires a lot of patience, and it's somewhat less accessible I think to non-Russian speakers who have to read subtitles.

Ebert's reviews are pretty spot on.

[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie- solaris-1972](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-solaris-1972)

[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/solaris-2002](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/solaris-2002)

If you like anything by PKD, or you enjoy 2001, you'll probably like Solaris.

<comment><USER12> > If you like anything by PKD, or you enjoy 2001, you'll probably like > Solaris.

PKD on the other hand (as mentioned in the OP) did _not_ like Lem.

[https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem- is...](https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is-a- communist-committee)

"In September 1974, the FBI received a letter [from Philip K. Dick]. The accusations in the letter were shocking – it told of a communist conspiracy aimed at the hearts and minds of America through propaganda in the subtle guise of science fiction. Major science-fiction publishers and organisations had been infiltrated, and their agents, notable figures in the genre, were abroad in the West. The orchestrator of it all was a communist committee, acting under the name... Stanisław Lem."

<comment><USER13> Which is ironic, because Lem liked PKD's work:

[https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm](https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Humorist, too. The Star Diaries introduced me to recursion back in the day

</comment><comment><USER15> Tarkovsky butchered Solaris.

<comment><USER16> He used is as material to make another point. That's what great artists do. I like both the movie and the book, just for different reasons.

<comment><USER15> I like Tarkovsky's fluid scenes but there was no reason to make the story worse. Lem was trying to make sci-fi into high art and despised the plot-twist endings common in American sci-fi, which is what Tarkovsky does to the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I once read something about spies by lem, was really amusing

<comment><USER18> Memoirs found in a Bathtub, perhaps? One of my favorites.</comment></comment>


Rvm's 'obnoxious' cd override is now off by default - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/commit/9a9fef58731e822b03789445a859fcdb69e57fff

<comment><USER2> Obviously a response to rbenv's README (which has now been changed): [https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv/commit/8685c899ba101a54...](https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv/commit/8685c899ba101a54869914c7df216b411e13275b)

</comment><comment><USER3> u mad [https://github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/commit/59cbec719e9e02d4d...](https://github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/commit/59cbec719e9e02d4d8307b32723c972dadb68ea8)</comment>


Ask HN: What old technology do you feel could do with a revival? - <AUTHOR> My recent comment[1] on the remarkable thread[2] got me thinking about the ideas which in my opinion did not reach their peak before they were obsoleted, not due to technical merits but due to business factors.
I see a lot of people who assume that all of the latest technology is a superset of all the advances that came before it and that everything we have today is better than whatever was created before. What kind of examples prove this assumption incorrect.
In terms of devices, I think these are things that were very innovative, useful and sadly do not have an suitable replacement today:

  a. The palm pilot or any of the PDAs for that matter
  b. The nokia 900
  c. The nokia 810
  d. The pebble

  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13865714
  [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13865108
 <comment><USER2> IMS</comment>


Implementing a Community for Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.peopledelight.com/blog/implementing-community-for-your-startup/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'd be curious to see if anyone has stories of trying to implement a community and it blew up on them.</comment>


Ask HN: Safe? - <AUTHOR> Everyday a new data breach is reported. Is our personal information safe online? <comment><USER2> Probably not. A quick thing you can do is start using a password manager and opt-out of ads and tracking on Facebook and Google. Beyond that? Look into Michael Bazall's (sp?) books on privacy.

Look for yourself though: [https://pipl.com](https://pipl.com)

There was a book a few years ago called "Brave New War". Can't remember the author's name, but he basically argued that it's now possible to run your own semi-competent intelligence agency off of simply internet data. Once this becomes more widely known, that data, combined with with a desire for vengeance, could lead to lots of blackmail, retribution, and general harassment.

The other day I found someone's Facebook profile and he posted everything. Where his kids went to school, where his wife worked.

I kind of think society is like it was with airplanes up until the 1970's, which was called the "golden age of hijacking". Before that sure everyone knew technically you could hijack a plane, but no one worried about it because it hadn't been done yet seriously or frequently. The time will come.

<comment><USER3> > _start using a password manager_

isn't that a point of failure too? why not just use different passwords for every site and make a longest-allowed password?

<comment><USER2> You know I've thought of that too, but if the popular password managers fail, then we have such a big problem on our hands that your personal data will seem trivial in comparison to the larger societal disruption.

You could also use a local password manager that doesn't upload to the cloud and just syncs with your phone.

Also there are lots of guides on Github on how to set up Mac, PC, Linux, whatever as securely as possible. Good stuff to look up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No.

The even is completely insecure, in ways not yet discovered.</comment>