Things to Learn from Uber's Implosion - <AUTHOR> https://eand.co/five-things-to-learn-from-ubers-implosion-a1a71aac6b0a <comment><USER2> This statement may be nice to believe in, but it is wishful thinking:

"You should see bad eudaimonics as a deferred cost: every bit of well-being that you destroy will one day have to be repaid in some way."

There is no cosmic law of "karma." It is a type of logical fallacy, one that may make us feel good, but it is not real.

</comment><comment><USER3> Despite all the crises, Uber the service seems to be running fine with no discernible impact. Maybe less is more, as far as headquarters is concerned. The more execs leave, the fewer management initiatives, and the greater the chance of profitability.

</comment><comment><USER4> In essence the author seems to be arguing that Uber is experiencing bad karma.

</comment><comment><USER5> As much as I want Uber to implode for all the negative things it has done, I don't believe that it is, just like I don't believe the big American banks will despite all the negative things they have done. If anything, I see companies that create garmonbozia, not eudaimonia, flourishing.

<comment><USER6> American banks didn't implode because they simply weren't prosecuted. Partially because the prosecutors know that they would implode if properly prosecuted and are morally opposed to the "innocent" employees and shareholders losing. Nevermind the actually innocent employees and shareholders at honest banks losing to the dishonest ones.

It's true, you get ahead in American business by cheating and playing the game right. There are revolving doors between prosecutors and big law firms, lawyers looking out for themselves don't make waves because it's bad for careers. If you do cheat and "get caught" it's in your favor to cut a no-fault deal with the government and take your profits with you. So long as you don't piss too many people off (just make sure your cheats are too complex to be easily understood), you get away by paying small fines that mostly just make lawyers rich with internal audits and such.

It's simply corruption, through and through, but it's not simple corruption. It's not a bribe or a cheat, but a system that's incentives line up in a way to maximize profits of cooperative cheats and the lawyers on both sides.

It would take a president and congress who don't spend their time arguing about vapid bullshit to correct the problem and an electorate that was either much more educated or respected and trusted those who were (were it they deserved trust).

If you think the constant cries about abortion and gay rights and such are about those actual issues, you're a fool. Everything but the details there is all figured out, but if people keep arguing about it, they won't have any attention left for the real problems facing the Republic. (and that is precisely the idea)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't it a little early to be calling it an implosion? Did something happen that I'm not aware of?

<comment><USER2> The author's wishful thinking.

<comment><USER8> Losing the London license was not wishful thinking. That happened!

<comment><USER9> Uber's in over 600 cities. It wins some and it loses some. But mostly it wins.

With the SoftBank negotiations Uber's big investors have a chance to sell and get off the Uber train before it goes off the rails, but they're not selling. They like it there. It's nice.

[https://www.axios.com/softbanks-big-uber-deal-rests-on- gover...](https://www.axios.com/softbanks-big-uber-deal-rests-on- governance-2486730275.html)

<comment><USER8> That's ok, London government has done the right thing and is better off for it. They win no matter whether Uber succeeds everywhere else!

<comment><USER7> Note that this has happened before -- Uber has left a city, then come back to it later, see Austin, TX (they returned in the last 2 months or so)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is an idea that I _want_ to believe, but the piece lacks substance. The author seems insistent that this is universal truth, but doesn't provide any examples outside of Uber and (barely) Facebook. What other companies are out there that have suffered consequences by acting antisocial?

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow. I think that's more of an anti-American article, rather than something to learn.

</comment><comment><USER12> The thing to learn from Uber is that Uber is losing because it is unethical? As if companies that are succeeding or are avoiding sanctions _are_ ethical. Here's the concluding paragraph of this essay if you want to preview its inane arguments:

> _People like things that are bad for them. But in good ways. Staying out all > night dancing till the sun comes up is fun. It might be harmful to your > health, your job, and maybe even your relationship, but for precisely those > reasons, it's good for the soul. These things? They're too often just bad in > a bad way._

</comment><comment><USER13> Here I thought it might be a good overview on corporate strategy and how things went wrong at Uber. But I open this only to read about Uber's bad "karma" is biting them. The problem is a similar article could be written for say Snapchat too but then they are doing moderately fine hence nothing to learn from them, at least for now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oracle is in massive trouble if the central thesis of this article is correct.

And oh brother, I hope they are right.

</comment><comment><USER14> Uber has good karma. The writer of this article clearly had no post traction experience.

They have an investment thesis that isn't playing out as planned due to regional push back. Economics.

However, Kalanick should never have written a public apology as that gave journalists and their SJW counterparts grounds to stand on.

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought this was good, unfortunate to see it flagged.

</comment><comment><USER16> click-bait title, no support for claim.</comment>


Ask HN: Is social networking a done and dusted business? - <AUTHOR> A little context: I was browsing through my Facebook profile, and wanted to check my login history (in case my account was compromised, yes I am paranoid), a little googling revealed I could download all my archived data, and I did. It would be an understatement to say I freaked out. Facebook knew me! Their ad targeting was brilliant and stored a lot of info that I would not want stored anywhere.
The question: is social networking a done and dusted business? I hope it isn't, and if not, what would the next major social network be like? What would it's characteristics be?
Would privacy be an important factor for the masses?
I know all answers can at best be speculation and educated guesses, but I would like to see a discussion on this topic. <comment><USER2> don't think anything is done, people will continue to create better mouse traps in every field.

Next in social networks could be more interaction options that will deliver new kinds of "fun" between people

</comment><comment><USER3> _Would privacy be an important factor for the masses?_

No.</comment>


Amazon Kindle Fire Teardown - <AUTHOR> http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Amazon-Kindle-Fire-Teardown/7099/1

<comment><USER2> For some reason, the cleanness and crispness of their photographs always prompts me to look through all their galleries, even though I'm not very interested in the guts of a Kindle Fire.

<comment><USER3> It's all in the lighting - specifically, having a "light tent". There are lots of DIY light tent instructions available via Google if you want to try to reproduce the effect -

<comment><USER4> Just FYI, while I agree that it is all in the lighting, as of March of 2011, iFixit did not use a light tent. I don't work there anymore, but when I did, most of iFixit's lighting equipment could be bought from Home Depot. I thought there was a blog article on the setup, but I can't seem to find it.

<comment><USER5> I believe that it's in this combination guide:

<http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing-A-Guitar-String/718/1>

It looks like "Use two lamps on the object, one on each side." is the recommended lighting scheme. A light tent would certainly be an asset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope people take any BOM costs that might come up with a huge grain of salt. The hardware component costs are only one part of the costs of getting a complex product such as this to market.

The way people repeat these iFixit teardown costs as net costs and imply that there is a huge margin is utterly misleading (as has happened with various iProducts in the past).

These tear downs are useful and nicely done though - a great resource.

<comment><USER7> You are thinking of iSuppli: They do the BOM cost estimates. iFixIt only does tear downs. Easy to confuse, I know.

<comment><USER6> Ah, yes - thank you, that's who I was thinking of.

iFixit are a fine mob indeed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is crazy, the CPU is _under_ the RAM chip (step 9). Is this kind of layout frequent? I guess you can't have a high power (and high heat dissipation)...

<comment><USER9> Yep -- this is referred to as Package on Package (PoP).

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_on_package>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, is there _anyone_ using Freescale's iMX SoC anymore? TI is cleaning up in the non-iOS market.

<comment><USER11> I don't think the iMX was ever targeted at smartphones or smartphone-ish tablets. And as far as I am aware it's still in things like digital photo frames, appliances, automotive infotainment, and other applications where it's nice to have Linux driving a big color TFT, but there's not a big demand for processing power.

<comment><USER10> The first Kindle, Sony Reader, and Microsoft Zune (AKA Toshiba Gigabeat) were i.MX designs. The i.MX5 series has the same ARM Cortex-A8 core as the OMAP3 and Apple A4. Processing power isn't the factor here, but OMAP definitely is easier to fit into a design with the stacked RAM.

<comment><USER11> Those aren't exactly comparable devices to the Kindle Fire. And the i.MX5 is a relatively new device as far as I know.

<comment><USER10> Is the Color Nook comparable? How about the Galaxy Tab 7?

The i.MX5 and OMAP4 were both announced in early 2010. Here's someone showing a tablet reference design with the chip:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUk296efZE8>

As for running Linux, I've had a usuable mx51 reference board running Ubuntu on my desk for over a year now. It's driving a 21" HDMI monitor.

<comment><USER11> Isn't the color Nook OMAP based? And as I recall, the Galaxy Tab has a Hummingbird.

I think we're talking past each other a bit. I know that Freescale has some newish parts that they are marketing for tablets. I saw one of their reference designs at a conference recently too. But as far as I know, no one has shipped a device intended to directly compete with the iPad (which is what a "tablet" seems to be basically understood as these days) based on a Freescale SoC. So it doesn't exactly seem to me that Freescale is losing share in that area - rather, that they have not yet broken into that particular market at all. What I was trying to say is that _historically_ the i.MX have been lower end parts that were designed into different kinds of applications, and as far as I know, they are still doing OK in those markets. (The current generation of e-ink Kindles do have i.MX SoCs, for one thing.)

Incidentally my understanding is that the Kindle Fire was done by the same ODM as the Blackberry Playbook and that they're fairly similar in terms of the component selection. Makes sense that the ODM would go with parts they're familiar with.

<comment><USER10> Sure, historically iMX was winning in those low-end markets. I think Freescale still has a large footprint in automotive thanks to Motorola's history of doing automotive-grade components and related parts (airbag accelerometers, etc). The early iMX parts were decendents of Dragonball.

I would think Freescale really wants a high-visibility design win in the multimedia tablet/eBook market. You don't put all that CPU power and media acceleration on the die for nothing. My original point is that TI is capturing all of these wins for _some_ reason over Freescale. I'm curious to know what the advantage is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone rooted the Fire yet? Ssh into it?</comment>


Michael Crichton once thought his unconscious mind was trying to kill him - <AUTHOR> http://joshwhiton.com/?p=129

<comment><USER2> Jungianism calls this the 'self' (I believe; not a Jungian); the wider potential human that you aren't being. Andrew Hodges a psychiatrist discovered something like what's described, too ('Deeper Intelligence'), a subconscious concern with integrity and boundaries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. Usually the Jungian usage is written 'Self' with a capital 'S'.

I quite believe in it now and looking back, credit it as the source that allowed me to quit various dead-end jobs, even when they paid a lot and were held in high regard by everyone around me. My ego said, "Hey, be content this is a great job!" But the Self doesn't care how much money a job makes. It cares about 'individuation' and growth.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is part of a theme I've been writing about lately. It seems that many people reach a point in life where they begin to experience the unconscious mind as a distinct and separate intelligence from their conscious mind.

For me it started when I began to view the unconscious mind as a separate processor I could offload work to. But since then things have snowballed and I've found that the unconscious can behave, not just like another processor, but like a whole other person. And apparently I'm not the only one.

At any rate, these past few months spent hacking my mind has been quite a ride.

<comment><USER3> If you're interested in this area, you should explore the work of Milton Erickson, who was a great pioneer of interaction with the unconscious mind.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fterh/heimdall <comment><USER2> > _Known Limitations_

> Currently, attachments are not supported.

That's kind of a biggie. What happens when someone sends an attachment? Does it bounce? Are they warned? Do I get a notification? Is it silently dropped?

From reading the code it seems like it just doesn't include the attachment and then deletes it from S3?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, silently dropped.

Yeah, this is an issue I'm planning to work on. The reason I chose to release it before supporting attachments is that for my use case for receiving marketing emails (this project is primarily for my personal use, rather than as public software), there are almost never attachments.

<comment><USER3> This statement is pretty vague. Exactly what is not supported? Virtually all email is in multipart mime format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Self-managed email means using SES? The dream of the 90s exclaims "ouch". It's a realistic choice and I am not judging it, but still, ouch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was born in the 90s so I'm not familiar with the "dream of the 90s" haha - care to explain?

<comment><USER5> We don't run our own infrastructure anymore :(

<comment><USER6> Yeah and seems like the big providers don't like self hosted emails. I know someone who runs a hosting company using cPanel and his clients email go to spam a bunch even though not spammy emails, his answer is to just pay extra for Google Apps and that running a email server is too complicated. Not sure how true that is... For my own future projects I plan to run everything in containers, Node, etc so not PHP/MySQL so still need to host the email somewhere, kinda hate the idea of paying a third party and wonder how they would handle shared inboxes(like piping email to a script like you can with a cPanel server). Probably other email solutions though to look into though but haven't looked into it too much yet but kinda hate how we have to rely on large providers it seems for email.

Then sounds like people running WordPress or support help desk scripts with contact forms forwarding to their Gmail, etc is a problem too... Those services think your server is the source of spam.

But maybe it's worth paying for a third party email server for your staff and also a service with APIs for programmable sending/receiving since you don't want emails to customers like password resets, receipts, etc going to spam. I noticed even when I mark someones emails as not spam they keep going to spam, I don't check my spam daily but sometimes they have to send me a IM to let me know they emailed them...

I feel like might be forced paying though instead of self handling email. Kinda feels like giving the mafia some extortion money for protection though in away. Plus email is a bit broken in the first place, open and all is great but opens itself up to abuse to spammers and scammers.

<comment><USER7> Hosting company cPanel servers are a bit of a special case though. I've run these before and once customers start installing WordPress it can be a matter of hours before a bad plugin gets turned into a spam bot. It's at a point where blocking port 25 outbound is a responsibility imo.

WordPress contact forms are routinely abused - I regularly see forms where enter a victim as "my address" and then it helpfully copies the message to the spam recipient. There's always a web designer who wants it this way for UX reasons, even when I shown how it's abused.

<comment><USER6> Yep, contact forms in WordPress but even non WordPress sites too. Then of course if you got a plugin to detect brute forces, seem like WordPress sites get ton of them! Probably because you can detect if a site runs WordPress or not, so bots use that.

Sounds like the only solution to contact form spam might be rate limiting and/or captchas but even bots can bypass captchas too unless you use one like Google reCaptcha maybe but sucks your system has to rely on third party services then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a really cool project, so I don't mean to be overly negative, but personally this workflow feels quite a bit more laborious than just having a catch-all email address. Before signing up for a service, I need to email myself to get an address to use for the service?

I have all emails for my domain route to me, so when I use a service I just do [service-name]@my-domain.com. If a bad actor gets a hold of it I set up an inbox filter or black hole the email address at the service level. The big advantage of this project seems to be that you can reply, but I've found that a huge proportion of these email aliases are inbound only for me.

I'm using GSuite for my personal email but I've been considering Fastmail. Just checked and it looks like they also support sending from those catchall aliases: [https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/alias- catchall.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/alias-catchall.html)

<comment><USER9> Totally agreed, I do _not_ want to manage my own workflow in a manner like this. I actually just put a doc together[1] last month for anyone looking to do the same through providers that support this workflow.

The one killer feature that is missing in Fastmail right now is the ability to reply to email as the same alias it was received as. I.e. if Airbnb support emails me at email@example.com, it'll default replay as firstname.lastname@example.com unless I go manually setup the airbnb alias.

[1] [https://btmiller.com/2019/12/12/regain-control-over-your- inb...](https://btmiller.com/2019/12/12/regain-control-over-your-inbox-by- rejecting-email-with-a-custom-domain-wildcard-and-aliases.html)

<comment><USER8> I remember thinking the same thing last time I looked into Fastmail, but earlier when I was checking before posting, it appears that's gotten much, much better. From the Fastmail docs[1]:

> Creating an [wildcard] alias also creates a matching sending identity. This > means you can also send mail using this wildcard alias. When sending from a > wildcard alias, you'll be able to manually type the From address (to > email@example.com or email@example.com, etc) when writing a message.

So, yes, it appears you still have to manually set the from address, but at least you don't have to actually go do anything outside of the composition interface anymore!

[1] [https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/alias- catchall.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/alias-catchall.html)

<comment><USER9> Oh neat! Now this needs to be in the native iOS Mail client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> FYI, the developer has a writeup about the design behind this project: [https://medium.com/@fabianterh/how-i-built-heimdall-an- open-...](https://medium.com/@fabianterh/how-i-built-heimdall-an-open-source- personal-email-guardian-68e306d172d1)

At first I was confused and trying to figure out what AWS services Heimdall uses to work, and this was the section that explained it:

      Infrastructure

      I'm using AWS's Simple Email Service (SES) to send and receive emails, S3 for storage, and Lambda functions for serverless computing. Here's how it works:

      All received emails trigger SES to store the email as a file in a S3 bucket, which triggers a Lambda function. Depending on the email, one of several things could happen:

      1. The email gets forwarded to your personal email address
      2. The email gets forwarded to the original sender (when you reply)
      3. A command is invoked by you (e.g. to generate a new alias)
      4. Nothing happens (when someone emails an invalid/disabled alias)

      I chose to use AWS for practical reasons: I'm totally new to cloud computing, and AWS being the most popular cloud computing service means it is easier to find guides and resources online.

<comment><USER11> > Infrastructure

> I'm using AWS's Simple Email Service (SES) to send and receive emails, S3 > for storage, and Lambda functions for serverless computing. Here's how it > works:

> All received emails trigger SES to store the email as a file in a S3 bucket, > which triggers a Lambda function. Depending on the email, one of several > things could happen:

> 1\. The email gets forwarded to your personal email address > 2\. The email > gets forwarded to the original sender (when you reply) > 3\. A command is > invoked by you (e.g. to generate a new alias) > 4\. Nothing happens (when > someone emails an invalid/disabled alias)

> I chose to use AWS for practical reasons: I'm totally new to cloud > computing, and AWS being the most popular cloud computing service means it > is easier to find guides and resources online.

<comment><USER12> thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wrote and use a web service called Tamarind for managing throw-away mail aliases:

[http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/tamarind/tree/README](http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/tamarind/tree/README)

It integrates into Apache as a CGI program serving up a web UI for managing your aliases.

It works by managing the content of an alias file read by your mail server.

Authentication of the webUI is via IMAP or SASL.

Each throw-away alias is associated with a memo in which you can have text and URL's (that get rendered into links), and a creation time. You can regex search through the aliases, edit the memo fields, rearrange their order and delete them.

<comment><USER14> Not sure how this is relevant to OP's post aside as an attempted hijack. You don't even address the differences between the product you're pushing and OP's.

If you want to Show HN something, make your own post; this is just rude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You might consider using a different name, as there's already a pretty popular dashboard called Heimdall [1]

[1] [https://github.com/linuxserver/Heimdall](https://github.com/linuxserver/Heimdall)

<comment><USER16> My mind went to the Kerberos implementation, despite the slight spelling difference: [https://github.com/heimdal/heimdal](https://github.com/heimdal/heimdal)

</comment></comment><comment> VvR-Ox I like the idea but I do not understand why someone would want something self- managed/hosted and then use AMZN SES to send/receive mail and S3 to save mail/attachments.

1\. AMZN has access to your mail (inc. your contacts) so you could just use any other service you do not trust. 2\. Why would I process mail just so save it on another machine and not do both on the same server?

Probably it has to do with "serverless" (you have to use at least 2 "servers" now, don't you?) but maybe I am just missing the point.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love you. Thanks for this

</comment><comment><USER18> This service is offered by most domain registrars out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER19> And if you don't want to host this yourself there's [https://IdBloc.co](https://IdBloc.co)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm confused. Why do you want this? You don't trust a provider to forward your email?

Email isn't a trusted method of communication anyway.

<comment><USER21> Providers usually don't give you (unlimited number of) aliases.

<comment><USER18> If all you want to do is forward all mail for a domain somewhere you can easily do that at most domain registrars. I use this with Monicker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > With Heimdall, you completely own and manage your data and the service. No > feature limitations or having to trust a third-party company with your data.

> Pre-requisites: You need to own a domain and have an AWS account. For > reasonable use cases, you should not exceed AWS's free tier (which is very > generous).

Erm ... wut?

<comment><USER23> Unless you physically own a server you have to put your data somewhere, whether that somewhere is Digital Ocean, some shared hosting provider, AWS, or whatever else. You're still more in control of your data than you would be using a closed third-party product.

Sure it would be nice to have other options in addition to AWS, but I don't think those two statements are contradictory.

Also, I don't know if it is, but the data stored on AWS could be encrypted by the app, in which case you're really not trusting AWS.

<comment><USER22> > Unless you physically own a server you have to put your data somewhere, > whether that somewhere is Digital Ocean, some shared hosting provider, AWS, > or whatever else. You're still more in control of your data than you would > be using a closed third-party product.

The claim was not "you are more in control than with a closed third-party product". The claim was "No [...] having to trust a third-party company with your data.". When you _have_ to use AWS, then you evidently _have_ to trust a third-party company with your data, unless you happen to be AWS. And not only do you have to trust _a_ third party, you even have to trust _one particular third party_ with no alternative if they misbehave somehow. That's pretty close to using a closed third-party product, if you ask me. I mean, really, you _are_ using a closed third-party product--it just happens to be the infrastructure that you build on.

> Sure it would be nice to have other options in addition to AWS, but I don't > think those two statements are contradictory.

So, AWS is either not a third party or could not access your data, no matter how much they wanted to? Or what other alternative do you see to make those statements not contradictory?

> Also, I don't know if it is, but the data stored on AWS could be encrypted > by the app, in which case you're really not trusting AWS.

Wut? Am I just completely misunderstanding what this does? This uses SES, a service by AWS that _handles your emails_ , right? As in: That speaks SMTP for you, and thus sees the plain text of the emails, right? And then, somewhere there is code that handles those emails that runs on machines that AWS has physical access to, right? As in: Code that AWS can trace and modify however they like, right? As in: Code where AWS trivially could extract any possible encryption keys from, right?

Unless I am completely misunderstanding this ... what would possibly stop AWS from reading all your emails if they wanted to?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you're not misunderstanding. I guess I made that statement with the implicit trust of AWS so I didn't think to qualify it.

You're absolutely right that if AWS is a bad actor it has access to all the information, but I'm working on the assumption that it's more profitable to AWS to be a good actor than bad.

<comment><USER22> > No, you're not misunderstanding. I guess I made that statement with the > implicit trust of AWS so I didn't think to qualify it.

But that doesn't change that you are trusting a third party?! I mean, if that were to count as "you don't have to trust a third party", then anything does. Use gmail, so you don't have to trust a third party (except for the implicitly trusted Google)! Use Facebook, so you don't have to trust a third party (except for the implicitly trusted Facebook)!

There is nothing necessarily wrong with trusting any one of those. But then you don't get to claim "no trust in third parties required!"

> You're absolutely right that if AWS is a bad actor it has access to all the > information, but I'm working on the assumption that it's more profitable to > AWS to be a good actor than bad.

Well, for one, see above. But also: is it? Is it really more profitable to keep your data safe than to give the NSA access and in return get some of the good government contracts, say? Plus, trust isn't just about them not screwing you over intentionally, it's also about incompetence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you update your YC application after the deadline? - <AUTHOR>

With YC now accepting late applications, the answer is yes, but it is unclear if doing so will get it tagged as "late". Any clues? <comment><USER2> If you edit your application now it gets transformed into a late application, so I would not recommend it. I suppose I should add some kind of warning in case people try that.

Edit: Don't worry if you submitted your application a little after the deadline. We don't switch over precisely at 10pm. Unless it actually said "Late" at the top of the application page, it wasn't treated as late.

<comment><USER3> Is there any way to know if our applications were successfully submitted / received?

<comment><USER2> If you clicked on the submit button and it was replaced by some text saying thanks, then it was.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your best information security war story? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I have a really good one, but I cant tell you.

I suspect many people here are in the same boat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair. My NDAs that lasted 7 years are expiring and I still remember a number of them. Buuuut I was also hoping to hear other's experiences.</comment></comment>


War for tech talent in NYC - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/war-for-talent-hits-new-york/

<comment><USER2> I would love to know what the average startup is paying now in NYC v.s. what the average Wall Street Firm would pay for the same programmer.

<comment><USER3> They can't compete. They'll never be able to compete on the money front.

If you're a senior C++ lead dev working in the front office of an Investment Bank you can make 250k-500k/year.

If you join a startup as an early employee and get 1% equity , assuming a 10% chance of exit after three years, the company would need to have a $1 billion dollar exit for the risk-reward equation to break-even.

There are a lot of ex-finance developers in the startup world, but overwhelming they're there as founders, as that's the only way they'll get enough equity for it to be worthwhile.

<comment><USER4> Your risk reward equation doesn't account for preferences. There are a lot of folks out there that would be turned off by a 0% chance of a big exit, which is what 250-500K/year is. Every startup offers a tiny chance of fame and fortune that a normal salaried position lacks.

<comment><USER3> Even if you want a chance of a big exit, it makes more financial sense to just put 20% of your salary into angel investments every year.

Sure there are other factors at play such as lifestyle, corporate culture, etc. But when it comes down to hard money startups can't compete with investment banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a thread in Quora listing a fair chunk of NYC startups that are currently hiring, and it grows almost daily: <http://www.quora.com/Which- startups-in-NY-are-hiring>

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a pet theory about the apparent shortage of 'experienced engineers' in the midst of high unemployment.

Software development as we know is an inherently unstable activity - it's very hard to gauge how much a project will cost in time and money. Supposedly 50% of IT projects fail and 70% don't meet all their targets (or something catastrophic like that).

Well here's my theory. When you can't tell how much something will cost or even whether it's really possible, when there are no guarantees, the only thing that can comfort you is that your competition wont fair any better. To ensure _this_ , you just need to employ the top programmers/architects. If you have people of the best calibre, you can rest easy, because if they can't deliver, nobody can.

Thus, companies looking to launch risky software ventures need what is by definition a scarce resource (the best developers). Unless the nature of software changes drastically, there will _always_ be a shortage of the 'experienced engineers' necessary to placate the anxiety of this high risk business. Human expertise is finite, the capacity of software projects to fail is infinite.

(particularly if you're talking about launching web apps and new platforms and such... if you just need some simple engineering then not so much)

<comment><USER7> um, if you want to build any great products, you need really good people inboard. Average is just not good enough.

I noticed this is the same for sports. I play soccer frequently, and I noticed that in order to win, you really need few good players in the team (way above average). Not everybody has to be really good, but you need few good pl

In a team of 11 you need a great: Goalie Defender 2 Midfielder (one center and one runner on the sides) One great Scorer/Forward

The rest of the team can be OK, (i.e good enough or average), but with good organization this team will excel.

Now think of a startup that instead of being able to field 11 players on the field, they can field only 7-8. Then everybody on the team has to be really good from the get go for it to have a chance.

Once it grows, it can afford more warm bodies. People that can do useful work (fix bugs, create additional features), but that are not able to do groundbreaking work by themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You'd think they'd want to hire someone in philli who's willing to work two days a week onsite and the rest from home but no. It's like I have the plague whenever I mention it.

<comment><USER5> I think that there's a certain dynamic with people that work in person that doesn't happen as much remotely; In person someone could walk into a random conversation after overhearing an idea, start adding their own twist to it, and eventually someone starts scribbling on a whiteboard and a new iteration of your product is born. I just don't see that happening as easily over groupware.

<comment><USER9> Having everyone on site is almost essential for an early stage startup, but the more established the business the less frequent the dynamic you describe, imo. I think many companies would benefit from hiring a few remote workers. It is one of the many ways a company can win the war on talent. I think one underrated aspect of Google's success in attracting top talent is that they do R&D in many more locations than e.g. Microsoft. Also IIRC the main engineer on Chrome/V8 started working for Google from his home in Denmark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Right now in New York City every technology company is hiring engineers, programmers, Java developers or PHP/Perl developers," Carvajal said. "I haven't seen it this hot since 1997..."

Ummm, did they get the quote from 1997 too? I find these stacks to be in the minority these days for a startup anyways. Or is this a NYC trend?

<comment><USER11> This quote struck me as a bit outdated as well. Not because it mentions Java and PHP, but because it seems to imply that those are the big two skill sets. The "what does your startup use?" polls that show up on HN every know and then suggest Python and Ruby are in heavy use (though PHP and Java do still get a decent showing)

<comment><USER12> Believe it or not the self-selecting group represented on Hacker News is absolutely not representative of the developer majority.

Furthermore, it's very unsettling that even on hacker news there's this prevalent anti-PHP attitude. With the release of PHP 5.3, and the current maturity of the numerous frameworks there's never been a better time to use PHP.

<comment><USER13> That there hasn't ever been a better time to use PHP doesn't make it a good time to use PHP, cf. <http://vimeo.com/17675268>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who here is an NYC startup and who here is hiring?

<comment><USER15> I'd like to add a further question, if it's not frowned upon.

Are there any that might be interested in folks who would start remotely (but willing to come out for bits of onsite time) and then relocate to NYC in a few months?

<comment><USER16> Yes - what kind of tech are you interested in? Email me (email in profile)!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "I haven't seen it this hot since 1997. It's white-hot."

Sounds bubble-icious to me ...

<comment><USER18> Sort of.

The problem with calling everything a bubble is the implication that bubbles inevitably pop.

In our industry, good programmers tend to create a vastly disproportionate amount of value compared to what they're paid. It's easy to pay programmers hundreds of thousands of dollars because with programmers, a few thousands of dollars of computers and some electricity you can make millions.

Maybe it's a bubble but I think it's simply a market correction. If your output is valuable you can and should be compensated well for it.

<comment><USER19> Well, bubbles do pop. The market was hot 96-2000, then cold say 2001-2005, then got hot till the mortgage crisis, then cold until a few months ago etc.

Great programmers can create a lot of value, _in the right context_. Boo.com ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com> ) might have had developers as bright as Amazon's, working just as hard - but in the end they created $0 value.

<comment><USER20> As an aside, (and apologies if you've read it) "Boo Hoo", the corporate biography of Boo.com's rise and fall, makes for both hilarious and scary reading: <http://www.amazon.com/Boo-Hoo-Dot-Com-Story/dp/0099418371>

Their technical people did pull off some great feats but ultimately it was a shambles from start to finish.

<comment><USER19> Nice! I wasn't aware of this book, will add it to my list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm a programmer in NYC who doesn't have a work visa. (But I've worked as a freelancer in the city for years, so I have lots of experience.) How should I bring that up to potential employers? During the application or during the interview or after I get hired? How much would it affect my compensation?

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm actually starting on the hunt for an employer in NYC right now, but there are so many co's hiring its somewhat daunting as to where to start.

Is there any NYC-specific tech job board out there?

<comment><USER19> <http://nextny.jobthread.com/>

Also, if you attend meetups in your field (eg NY Python/PHP/Android/etc meetup) they often allocate a few minutes for job offers/seekers. The article's right, there's a strong demand now. Make sure to save some of your income once you get a job (NYC can easily eat up any wad of cash you'll throw at it ;) - the bubble will inevitably pop, make sure you can wait the next one comfortably.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for that!

Yea the cash-eating qualities of NYC have kept me dealing with job hunt from the economic safety of my family home 3 hours away in PA. Not so easy to do under 2ft of snow ;)

Definitely a little wary of super early startups if only for the inevitable bubble pop. Under-capitalized and in a competitive talent market is a surefire pathway to quick collapse when the investment starts to dry up...

<comment><USER19> Good thinking. Like anything in NYC, startups tend to get overhyped and there's a lot of dumb money from rich kids or people who had a good run at finance etc. I wouldn't work for below market wage in this kind of economy.

When the bubble pops, you can use your savings and take advantage of the lower costs (and the fact you might not have a job anyway..) to start your own thing.

(Edit: I guess the downmodding means I need to add some disclaimers here... There are also smart rich kids and ex-bankers. Sometimes working for under- market wage does make sense, eg. if you're trying to break in to a new field. Some things are not overhyped in NYC. Your dreams may vary from those of Globex Corporation, its subsidiaries and shareholders)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Seems to be true in the Bay Area as well.

</comment><comment> joe-mccann Austin, SF/SV and NYC are all in the same boat: Tech talent demand is unbelievably high. If you have a LinkedIn profile with reasonable skills (hell, put "HTML5" in your profile and watch what happens) you probably are already aware of this.

<comment><USER24> What does it mean when companies are trolling around looking for "HTML5"? Is that just the new buzzword? Or are that many companies actually interested in building things with Canvas these days? (I hope it's not because they think you need some sort of special HTML5 experience to learn how to embed video.)

<comment><USER5> For the most part, I've noticed it means "do things Flash does, but on an iPhone/iPad." So yeah, canvas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Pick me, pick me. :)

<comment><USER26> Are you the same Skywing that used to post on Genmay like 6-8 years ago? I think I bought a Toshiba laptop from you.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail Released - <AUTHOR> http://releases.ubuntu.com/raring/ <comment><USER2> Warning: according to the known issues in the release log [0]:

* Skype won't start (without a fix [1])

* Google Chrome won't install (without a fix [2])

[0] <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseNotes>

[1] <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/skype/+bug/1155327>

[2] [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=226002#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=226002#c3)

<comment><USER3> "Actually, having a workaround by definition lessens the severity, as if someone wants to still run Skype, they can."

I don't think everyone is on the same page about Ubuntu being a consumer distro and not a hacker's only distro... I have definitely noticed a decrease in the stability of Ubuntu releases over the years and it's attitudes like this that seem to be in part responsible for it.

EDIT:

Oh I kept reading, this is better:

"Rainer, a better solution for international calls is to stop using Skype (which is closed source, and frequently has problems with its Linux client) and change to a service that supports standard protocols (SIP etc.), e.g. using Ekiga"

Yes, the client should change their software and infrastructure to better suit your product...

This makes it pretty much impossible for me to "sell" Ubuntu to any of my friends who aren't programmers AND tinkerers (many of my programers are too busy being productive to be interested in dicking around with making things work anymore, and increasingly I hold this view).

<comment><USER4> > many of my programers are too busy being productive to be interested in > dicking around with making things work anymore, and increasingly I hold this > view

This. I switched to OS X from Ubuntu about a few months ago simply because of this reason. I was too tired of tinkering and configuring endless .conf files, adjusting my GNOME/Xfce panel layouts for optimum productivity, and changing my display manager because all of them sucked.

In my final days with Linux I was running Ubuntu Minimal with twm -- I went completely old-school. Fewer things at the core, fewer things to go wrong.

I caved and bought a MacBook Air. While I miss the endless configurability of Linux, I find that most of the time I spend trying to configure OS X is only spent to make things more suitable for my workflow -- changing the number of desktops I have, changing the applications in my dock, or adjusting Exposé to show all app windows.

I never have to configure something because it breaks or isn't compatible with something else. I could have gone the FreeBSD way, but then, well, you know. OS X just works. As a Ruby and Java developer I find it perfect. I probably will try the 13.04 release on the Mac (I tried the beta and liked it), and I'll see how it goes.

It looks like a solid release, so I'd really like to keep it (but I probably won't because I'm cheap and only have the 120gig SSD).

<comment><USER5> Except for a few driver issues, (Nvidia and Optimus, doh!), I haven't had a issue with Ubuntu or Mint. Any other issues with configuration, I would have also had with Windows or OS X since they were application or server specific.

But I don't spend days tweaking the UI, I have a baseline of UI expectations that's not too difficult to meet. (But Windows 8 doesn't meet it... 'nother story for 'nother day...)

<comment><USER6> I've had tons of issues. Especially around power management, multi-monitor support etc. When I "Hibernate" I also need to roll a d10 to know if it'll actually come back up. This is anecdotal but on same hardware there are no issues under Windows and everything works as expected. Eclipse seems less stable and slower under Ubuntu which is probably related to the Java run time. Firefox also less stable. Webcam sometimes doesn't work. Audio suddenly stops playing until you touch the volume. Couldn't get WebEx working under Ubuntu (tried lots of suggested workarounds). The kind of stuff that just works in other OSes.

<comment><USER7> On what hardware?

<comment><USER8> I have the same issues on an Asus laptop. It was well supported on 12.04 LTS but the 12.10 is obviously a big failure. Not to speak about the system that slow down by itself, some swap mess I don't have time to fix, and the overall growing instability of the system tools. Memcheck segfault, then the report tool activate itself, inspect, segfault, launch again... I also upgraded a pc of a friend from an good old athlon xp to a new shiny i3, and guess what the official, libre, graphic driver is just unable to run correctly, apparently because of a bad switch in an internal opcode.

Something is wrong here. The massive shift of devs from linux to OSX should warn some people somewhere about the overall quality of their stuff. A quality that we have been proud for decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I played with the beta and I have to say that it is way more polished than 12.04/12.10. I have played for many years with Linux (since early 1990s) but it was always to much of a hazel to use it as my main os. But since 12.04 I fully switched from OSX to Ubuntu the only thing I kind of missed was the polish of osx. 13.04 makes lots of things nicer and more fluid. I actually like Ubuntu better than osx. One thing left to do is to get some descent icons and getting rid of the default orange :)

<comment><USER10> It's weird, I've been on Linux for almost 20 years and Ubuntu as my main computer for 10 and for me it's the opposite. I find OSX has finally almost caught up to Linux with Mountain Lion.

It's crazy how many OSX features come from the unix world but in a delayed, better looking fashion.

The last missing major piece for OSX was good multiple workspace management, which came in the form of mission control and the touchpad gestures that makes it so efficient. I don't know if its any good with a mouse though.

Efficient multiple workspaces is a critical productivity feature for me. It's like having multiple monitors without having to carry a desk and a bunch of monitors with me all the time.

The previous OSX implementation called 'spaces' took too many actions to switch workspaces unless you had your hands on the keyboard and had setup shortcuts. This made OSX unusable to me.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu also regressed by getting rid of the single-click workspace switcher (which was working beautifully since like 1995) and doing a multi-workspace UI that resembles Lion's 'spaces'. However, I was able to remedy this by setting my middle mouse button to bring up the workspace switcher which is really fast.

The other Ubuntu regression which annoys me to no end and again is the same in OSX is that clicking on a dock icon when you are in a workspace and there is an instance of the app opened in another workspace makes you automatically jump to the other one instead of opening a new instance in the current workspace.

This assumes I separate applications on a per workspace basis which is stupid. I already have a dock to get access to different applications. Workspaces are used to separate projects or workflows.

Each workspace needs its own browser window that holds the tabs related to the project being worked on and also its own terminals and text editors. I don't want to be yanked out of a context because I tried opening an editor and there wasn't one already in the workspace.

Hopefully this is eventually fixed in both OSX and Ubuntu.

<comment><USER11> > The other Ubuntu regression which annoys me to no end and again is the same > in OSX is that clicking on a dock icon when you are in a workspace and there > is an instance of the app opened in another workspace makes you > automatically jump to the other one instead of opening a new instance in the > current workspace.

If you middle click the icon it will open a new one instead of taking you to an existing one.

<comment><USER10> I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip. However, since I set my middle button to go to the workspace switcher there's a conflict.

I just tried it and it does open a new instance _and_ go to the switcher which is not great.

Also most of the time if there is already an app window in the workspace, I would want it to be made visible not a new instance to be opened.

<comment><USER12> You can also hold down shift and click on the icon to open up a new window.

Similarly if you use a keyboard shortcut to open your icons (like Win+1 to open the first icon) holding shift while pressing the shortcut will open a new window (Shift+Win+1 will open a new window for the first icon).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In case anyone else was wondering what the difference was between the Mac and non-Mac releases is:

[http://askubuntu.com/questions/37999/what-is-different- about...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/37999/what-is-different-about-the- mac-iso-image)

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been using it for a month and haven't regret a single second of it. by the way, Nexus 7 and other MTP device users: plug your device in and enjoy full read write support by default :)

<comment><USER15> Wow, thats a great new feature.

This is one thing that really infuriates me about new android devices. Their lack of syncing support with linux boxes.

Does anyone know if this support is something that can be backported to 12.04?

<comment><USER16> I had some success following this[1], though it didn't seem to handle transferring lots of files at once very well.

[1]: [http://www.webupd8.org/2013/01/upgrade-to-gvfs-with-mtp- supp...](http://www.webupd8.org/2013/01/upgrade-to-gvfs-with-mtp-support- in.html)

<comment><USER17> Thanks, that was an incredibly helpful link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now what about releease notes? :-) (edit: some information is here <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/TechnicalOverview> )

Currently i am thinking of switching to LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) because i don't really like the way Ubuntu is going with Unity, Mir, upstart, doing too much stuff on its own.

Anyone with experience from LMDE here? Is it stable? Pros? Cons?

<comment><USER19> My experience with Mint less than a year ago was that the Cinnamon interface was so bugridden I actually looked forward to going back to Unity. The only real bug I've encountered in Unity is the integration between it and LibreOffice that renders menu keyboard shortcuts inoperative (Alt+F doesn't open the File menu, and so on). It's a known problem but the Ubuntu, Debian, Unity, Gnome, LibreOffice and OpenOffice people all keep passing the buck and nobody is considering it a high enough priority to get in there and fix it.

If Unity had a functional Alt+Tab interface (swapping between open windows instead of open applications) I'd have no further complaints at all. I've grown used to it. Can't wait to see how 13.04 improves things.

<comment><USER20> Alt+Tab is done the same way in Gnome 3, that is, if you don't know about Alt+`, you're going to have a bad time.

Honestly I try to use E17 whenever possible (there is a bug against vmware player that makes it impossible to use them together at length, virt-manager and kvm-spice is only so helpful in comparison, but that means for me it's mostly E17 and some time in another system with Windows loaded in a VM)

In E17 the Alt+Tab behavior works as described (within the current desktop only, to keep large numbers of windows manageable... this may be an option, if you want Alt+Tab to switch between all open windows, there are a lot of options)

I know it's fashionable to use the desktop environment that comes with your distribution/pick a distro that has the DE you want, but I like to push E17 at every opportunity, it can usually be installed in any distro without too much trouble, and especially now that you can't claim it will "never be released" there should be stable packages in your modern repos :)

I don't care too much about the next Ubuntu release personally, I am waiting for eLive Gem ~3.0 (whatever version is next) on Debian Wheezy which should be out soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just a word of warning to anyone who may be thinking of installing this release on a MacBook Pro w/retina. I don't believe there is a window manager available that will play nicely with high DPI. I do hope that the linux community is planning on better supporting very high resolution displays.

13.04 works absolutely wonderfully, on my 2012 MacBook Air. Everything works perfectly for me on that machine.

<comment><USER3> How high resolution? My laptop looks great and works perfectly with Ubuntu @ 1920 x 1080. What doesn't work?

<comment><USER22> What he's referencing is displays that are meant to display the UI at twice the pixel density. It will run just fine on the macbook pro with the retina display, but it will run at a 1:1 density instead of a 2:1 density (which is what it's designed for). Here's a little image I drew quickly to illustrate: <http://i.imgur.com/4gizfp0.png>

On that screen size, OSX will appear like the top image on a non retina display, and like the middle image on a retina display. Ubuntu will display like the top image on a non retina display, but will appear like the bottom image on the retina display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Running Ubuntu on a regular Dell laptop that is sometimes docked in a dual- monitor setup has been quite frustrating after versions 10 or 11 or so. I've had issues, repeatedly, with either setting up Unity for dual screen, or getting X to work at all. Going back to plain Gnome served as a partial workaround, until I switched to the new laptop - and then I started having issues initializing the screens after logging in (one of the screens would randomly remain blank when going into 1280x1024, I have to repeatedly logout/login to make it work).

Eventually, I gave Kubuntu 13.04 beta a try and, surprise, it works perfectly. No Unity nonsense, X works great.

It's a bit strange switching to KDE now. I've actually used KDE 1.0 back in the day, and Gnome 1.0. I've been a Gnome user most of this time. But now I'm starting to find even plain Gnome quite frustrating.

<comment><USER24> The same problem here. If I start it docked with the lid closed, it doesn't get past the Ubuntu splash screen and hangs in some weird state where the only possibility is hard power-off. I have to start it with the lid open, then close it after logging into desktop and then manually setup the second external monitor, because although it detects it, it keeps it "disabled". This entirely sucks in 12.10 I hope 13.04 will be better, but I'm little reluctant to upgrade so early after upgrade to 12.10 broke my system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It does feel slightly odd to (finally) have arm listed as an available architecture for the images. And I say that as someone who has run Ubuntu on my "Android tablet".

I guess I'm just not yet used to "proper Linux" being something you can download for embedded-type architectures and devices without heading to XDA first.

Still. Definitely Good to see Ubuntu expanding support to the sort of devices which are actually new and interesting.

<comment><USER26> That's been a common sight for Debian users for ages :)

<http://www.debian.org/ports/> <http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.7/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Poor GPU support (lack of drivers) is still a major deal-breaker for home and media use. As of now hardware should still be selected on the basis of available driver support and it's a major obstacle and the situation doesn't seem to have improved significantly since 3-5 years ago.

<comment><USER5> The only problem I have is with the Nvidia drivers, especially Optimus/separate video card on my laptop which doesn't work. :(

But the stock Intel driver works well enough, just don't want to figure out what sort of CLI cargo cult fixing it will take to get it going.

<comment><USER28> Have you tried using bumblebee[1]? I use it on my Samsung QX411 which has an NVidia GeForce GT 525M video card along with the onboard Intel. The Intel card is used by default at all times. If you want to run a program using the NVidia card, just prepend 'optirun' to the command.

[1] <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee>

<comment><USER29> I tried bumblebee it on 12.10, after unsuccessfully trying to install Nvidia drivers. It was...not a good experience. Ended up reinstalling 12.10 just to get Unity and a reasonable resolution back. I have no doubt that there was a fix (possibly involving xorg.conf editing) but I had already spent so much time it and I needed to get work done. Hopefully the new release is better here, but I don't hold much hope.

I'm not blaming bumblebee specifically here, it's just a pervasive side effect of Linux and the modular approach. I can really appreciate the integration that goes in to a Mac.

<comment><USER28> I'm sure experiences vary greatly depending on the mix of hardware. I remember having to tweak some things to get bumblebee to work properly (or maybe I had to recompile from the source) but it's worked flawlessly since. This is on Ubuntu 12.04.

pkolaczk does bring up a good issue about the DisplayPort not working properly though. I don't use an external display on my laptop and have never played with that.

On another note, I remember installing 12.10 on my desktop right around the time it came out. My desktop has a Radeon HD3870 video card which was completely incompatible with Unity. I don't remember the issue exactly but my choice was either to use the open source drivers or have the desktop environment fail to show at all with ATI's drivers. I just did a search and I guess the fix is to downgrade X-Server and install a legacy driver. It's a shame something as central to the user experience as GUI performance still doesn't work out of the box or worse yet, critically breaks on an upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The minimal CD can be found here:

[http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/raring/main/installer...](http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/raring/main/installer- amd64/current/images/netboot/mini.iso)

Always use that instead of the official desktop CDs, to avoid all the extra programs that I never need.

</comment><comment><USER31> I was looking around youtube for unity videos and found Richard Stallman talk about Ubuntu: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8CNp-vksc>

</comment><comment><USER32> Why do they still recommend 32 bit for everybody?

I have been using 64 whenever possible. I wonder if any weird behavior can be attributed to it?

<comment><USER33> A few drivers and Flash used to have issues with the 64-bit versions. Also 32-bit works everywhere, whereas 64-bit doesn't. Ubuntu tries to be n00b-friendly and recommending the 32-bit version stacks the odds in Canonical's favor that inexperienced users will have a better first impression during install and first use.

<comment><USER34> We've now crossed a threshold as there are millions of Windows 8 computers with UEFI by default which won't boot 32-bit operating systems by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35>
      esennesh@lap282:~$ sudo do-release-upgrade
      Checking for a new Ubuntu release
      No new release found

<comment><USER36> Their timing, especially for us in Europe is really bad.

If they announce update it should be available for us before we start doing actual work.

<comment><USER37> They didn't announce the new version. The post is premature.

<comment><USER37> Now they did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have been using it for about an hour on my x64 desktop. I was using Ubuntu 12.04 beforehand. The 12.04 is still on one of my disk partitions.

Canonical is apparently going more in the way of pre-installed crapware. There was an Amazon icon on my Launcher, which I removed. People have also been warning the Ubuntu Dash sends your searches to Amazon, I went to System Settings -> Privacy and removed that.

Haven't noticed that much. It may be a little faster, although my Ubuntu desktop usually runs faster when I reboot it, so I can't tell if it will stay this way yet. Doing horizontal resizing of windows seems a little more difficult, some setting must have changed. Firefox's plugin service seems hosed right now, maybe due to all the new Ubuntu installs. The Firefox edit window is acting a little odd as well. It has crapped out a few times in terms of display.

There were no workspaces until I turned them on in settings, they seem down on workspaces - something I had without a problem since fvwm back in the mid-1990s. Hopefully there will still be workspaces in the next Ubuntu version.

It seems like they've added a little more customization ability for the launcher, sizing the launcher, hiding the launcher etc. Or at least made it more obvious. It doesn't work that well but at least it's there.

I noticed they changed other things...grub now just says Ubuntu on top, and has simplified options under that. I guess I'll bump into more things as I go on.

<comment><USER39> >> Canonical is apparently going more in the way of pre-installed crapware. There was an Amazon icon on my Launcher, which I removed. People have also been warning the Ubuntu Dash sends your searches to Amazon, I went to System Settings -> Privacy and removed that.

Thanks for the tips, when we move to 14.04 LTS we will need to know them.

>> There were no workspaces until I turned them on in settings, they seem down on workspaces - something I had without a problem since fvwm back in the mid-1990s. Hopefully there will still be workspaces in the next Ubuntu version.

Do you mean the cool workspace switcher on the Unity Launcher panel is going to be gone? That's odd.

<comment><USER40> The workspace switcher is still available, and I don't think there are any plans to remove it. It's just disabled by default. I guess it's a mixture of saving space in the launcher and avoiding the potential confusion when new users hit the wrong button and suddenly see their windows vanish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Doesn't seem to be any point for me [1], I don't use Python, or Libreoffice. And I use gnome-session-fallback, can't stand Unity, and just wish they'd give me an OOBE setting for having an 'old-school' Gnome 3 session!

Although Linux 3.8.8 might well make me upgrade.

[1] <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/TechnicalOverview>

<comment><USER42> Don't update, then, and use whatever distribution suits you better. It's one the greatest things about Linux, choice.

No change/upgrade will ever fit every user. I use Python, Libreoffice (not that these are really dependant of the new release) and I like Unity, can't wait to try it out.

<comment><USER43> You do not have to change distributions because you do not like the desktop, you can simply install another one.

<comment><USER44> That's not entirely true with Ubuntu. With most other distros, yeah, you don't need to change everything else to change a DE, but because unity integrates with _everything_ , which means that Gnome and Cinnamon don't work well with ye-standarde Ubuntu.

<comment><USER43> Its been a while since I configure my CPU, but I am currently running Ubuntu 12.10 (upgraded incrementally from 10.04), with an alternate desktop (Awesome). I have never* noticed a program not work because off this, including the applet icons. The main point to consider in this is that most of the programs that Ubuntu runs are not written, nor maintained, for Ubuntu. Therefore, they should work perfectly well with other desktops. The only incompatibility that Unity introduces is when you are actually using Unity. When you are using another desktop, a program that works in another distro should work just as well. If you install, for example, the package "mate- session-manager", you will install a traditional desktop, and still be running Ubuntu. There are many other desktops to choice from in the Ubuntu repositories. Admittadly, installing one not in the repos will be more complicated.

* I have actually run into 1 problem (with java) arising from the fact that Awesome is a non-re-parenting WM. This rarely came up, and was solved by claiming to be running 'LG3D' as my window manager, as that is on java's hard coded list on non-re-parenting WM`s.

<comment><USER45> To be fair, that's a Java issue and not an Ubuntu issue. It came up for me with xmonad on another distribution entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> They supposedly address the privacy bug:

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/04/ubuntu_13_04_review/>

<comment><USER46> Well, I wish I saw the other review (or downloaded it) before getting my hopes up. It looks like they didn't fix f*ck all.

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/25/ubuntu_13_04_review/>

Note to self: continue to expect the worst in people.

(Edit: no malice understood, just brooding...)

<comment><USER40> There's a simple off switch for all online results in the dash, and it works. The dash is being improved so you can disable individual result sources, but that work wasn't ready in time for this release. I don't think there's any particular malice in the delay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Just recently switched to Mint (Cinnamon) and found it to be quite good actually. Using the search via the start menu _actually works!_ Can't say that this was always the case with Unity.

</comment><comment><USER48> Changelog: [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/TechnicalOverview#New...](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/TechnicalOverview#New_features_in_13.04)

</comment><comment><USER49> Are there any security improvements worth mentioning in this release? Ubuntu used to be at the forefront of security on Linux and kept track of improvements made per release on their wiki. This effort seems to have stalled after the departure of key personnel and nothing has changed in a year or more.

<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Features>

<comment><USER50> The Security/Features page remains up to date (mostly, see below) and while new security features did not land in 13.04, a lot of work was done on client application isolation and better supporting using AppArmor with LXC. Many of these features will land in 13.10 and 14.04 LTS.

The list of applications compiled with PIE is not currently up to date, but is being worked on (part of the problem is a lot of developers started compiling their packages with PIE and we now have to find them. A nice problem to have :). Also note that incremental security features are not usually mentioned. For example, seccomp2 is used in a number of places now and AppArmor improvements such as mediation of mount or the upcoming DBus work are/will not be specifically mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Is it now possible to perform basic tasks like specifying font and icon sizes without installing third-party tweak tools or manually editing text files?

I know a lot of work goes into these releases but when basic desktop functionality has been missing/broken since the 11.x series and fails to be addressed with each new release it starts to become depressing.

<comment><USER52> Ubuntu is a lot more tolerable when you just decide to live with the fonts, window decorations, icons, as the defaults. Just like you have to on the Mac.

I could tweak a Linux box _all day long_. On a Mac I just turn it on and go to work. Now the hard part is deciding between GNOME3, Unity, LXDE...

<comment><USER51> I guess I find the icons and fonts sizes for the default Ubuntu desktop are (for lack of a better term) Fischer-Price sized and I just can't comfortably work with it.

While I can deal with installing additional packages in order to gain control over such settings it just strikes me as a little ironic that such things are not easily configurable in one of the major desktop focused Linux distributions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This version isn't so bad, only by comparison of the last two. I usually download and run each version for a few weeks for fun, I ran some beta builds of this one and didn't have any major problems.

The Unity interface still sucks but they're making some subtle changes that make it better. I still don't like it.

What worries me most about Ubuntu's rising popularity is the fact that they're trying so hard to nail the tablet market. I would like to see a good Linux distro reach the popularity Ubuntu has, but offer more flexibility and focus on the desktop. Linux Mint is making strides in this direction, and looks to be a very nice candidate for it.

My prognosis is much the same as it has been for a while now:

For goofing off / watching movies/ checking email - Ubuntu 13.04 will be great.

For productivity I'm still using Mint, Gentoo or Ubuntu 10.04

For a server it's Gentoo all the way.

</comment><comment><USER54> What happens after the Z release (coming up in 5 years)?

<comment><USER55> Aahing Aardvark

<comment><USER56> Oohing Oompaloompahs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I've been using 13.04 on a new MacBook Pro for 2 months now. Everything is great except that I cannot seem to get sound working no matter what I try. It looks like it recognizes the hdmi sound output, but it can't seem to see the normal sound output. I am a sad man.

<comment> iso8859-1 Did you see this: <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro> ?

<comment><USER57> Thank you very much! I don't think that this existed when I installed it, but I will try to get it working at some point when I don't have client work.

:)

Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> They still haven't updated the main page, nor the download page - <http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop> still suggests to get Ubuntu 12.10.

</comment><comment> o0-0o Mmmm Debian based distros rock. That's why I run Debian

</comment><comment><USER59> Can't wait to get back from work to update from 12.10 !

</comment><comment><USER60> Does anyone know if this will run on the Raspberry Pi (at least the Ubuntu Mini version)?

<comment><USER61> <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/848154>

Looks like it never will, unless there's a Raspberry Pi with an ARMv7 (or up) arch.

Is there any particular reason you want it though? I use Raspbian on mine, and it works just fine. I couldn't be arsed with a GUI though, since the RasPi is just too underpowered to run a GUI alongside all the other crap I have running on it.

<comment><USER60> Not really, just because of familiarity with Ubuntu Server. Raspbian has been pretty great so far, no complaints here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I wish the pay-what-you-want page earns ubuntu a decent sum. Go Canonical!

</comment><comment><USER62> It's interesting to see that 13.04 comes with Mongo 2.2.4 pre-installed. If it's always running, it's going to make getting started with Mongo that much easier.

</comment><comment><USER63> Is it possible to make an update from 12.10 without having to reinstall the system?

EDIT: "sudo do-release-upgrade -d" did the trick. I will keep updated on progress.

<comment><USER64> You shouldn't need the -d, because it's no longer the development release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Am I now able to install it in addition to an UEFI Win8 installation without any tricks?

</comment><comment><USER66> Anybody have the link for Ubuntu Gnome 13.04 release note or for download links?

<comment><USER67> Here you go, [http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu- gnome/releases/raring/relea...](http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu- gnome/releases/raring/release/)

This is the closest to any release notes: [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseNotes#Ubuntu_G...](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseNotes#Ubuntu_GNOME)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Who will be upgrading from 12.04? :-)

<comment><USER69> I'd imagine most people on 12.04 will stick with it until 14.04 comes out. 12.04 is an LTS release, and is supported for 3-5 years from the release date where 12.10 through 13.10 are normal releases, and are only supported for 9 months from release.

However, anyone on 12.10 should be able to "do-release-upgrade" and upgrade themselves to 13.04.

<comment><USER70> I wanted to stay on 12.04, however 12.10 came with the option to encrypt your whole hard-disk straight from the installer with dm-crypt, which is much better than ecryptfs, at least when it comes to performance. And manually encrypting your hard-disk with dm-crypt can be quite painful.

The downside of that is that 12.10 and non-LTS versions in general only get bug fixes for critical bugs, otherwise the bug fix is the upgrade to the next version, in this case 13.04. So you end up on the upgrade treadmill, whether you want it or not.

I'm waiting for a month at least before installing any new Ubuntu version though. At release they tend to be a little unstable.

<comment><USER71> 12.04 and earlier versions always had the option for full disk encryption with dm-crypt, but you had to use the alternate install CD with the curses installer. It wasn't complicated at all. All they did with later versions was to roll the option into the standard live CD installer.

Regarding bug fixes and the need to stay on the upgrade treadmill, it's much easier nowadays to stick with LTS versions since they implemented the LTS enablement stack (<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack>). Essentially it's the kernel and X.org of the current release backported to the LTS release, so you don't miss out on new hardware support while getting all the bug fixes and stability that come from the LTS.

That being said, however, I'm finding 12.04 to be extremely buggy when you're using Unity+Compiz.

<comment><USER72> I've got one box running 12.04 and one running 12.10. Unity+Compiz is definitely buggy for me on 12.04, but they managed to make it worse on 12.10.

I really cannot fathom what is going on at Canonical. I get that they want a more friendly UI, because that will create a better user experience for a broader set of users. I even use Unity, and like where they're going with it. But can't they see that creating a flaky, unreliable experience is not actually helping? And that they're undermining Linux's major strength, a reputation for reliability?

By all means, Canonical, keep innovating. But stop breaking shit along the way. If the goal is a better user experience, make sure you're actually delivering a better user experience before releasing.

<comment><USER40> Most people seem to say that 13.04 is smoother and more stable than 12.10. Canonical seem to have their ups and downs. I don't think _desktop_ Linux has ever really had a great reputation for reliability, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> All bugs has software.

</comment><comment><USER74> Seriously, can anyone tell me if they fixed the partitioner? I spent enough times dd-ing and rebooting before giving up. :(

<comment><USER75> I haven't had a problem with the partitioner in _years_. What was your experience?

<comment><USER74> There were a number of dupes of this: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1080...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1080701)

Looks like it was fixed at the last second.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Ubuntu names...

</comment><comment><USER77> Have they gotten rid of Unity yet? No?

Pass.

<comment><USER78> At the risk of stating the obvious:

sudo apt-get autoremove unity && sudo apt-get install [xubuntu- desktop|kubuntu-desktop|lubuntu-desktop|etc.]

Or just install the one you want in the first place: <http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/> has images for all eight official Ubuntu flavours.

Seriously, it can't hurt you just by being in the repositories if you don't install it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Ubuntu is spyware

<comment><USER79> Downvoting me doesn't change the fact that your OS sends search strings to Amazon</comment></comment>


My Journey from Struggling Actress to Successful Tech CEO - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@k8gleason/my-journey-from-struggling-actress-to-successful-tech-ceo-f556fc966cb7 <comment><USER2> This is a great story. Great work.</comment>


Ask HN: Haskell more productive than Rust? - <AUTHOR> This question shows up a lot on different venue on the internet, but the answers seem to me as diverse as there are people answering. I'd like to hear from the HN crowd, specifically from people who have an extended experience with both modern Haskell and Rust. I tend to use Python as my weapon of choice, and love how much, most of the time, I can ignore that it runs on a computer and focus on my problem domain, but I run into two issues:
• performance: I've used different solutions to this, sometimes better native library, sometimes pypy, sometimes C for the whole thing, sometimes a different strategy, etc... but I have started to learn Rust to address this space and it seems to be the perfect fit.
• distributing to other users / dependencies: When I need to have other people use my scripts, then I run into the issue of having to help them install packages, and often on platform I don't know (different versions of Windows, etc...). This is where I am wondering if I Haskell would have and advantage over Rust.
Does Haskell allow you to be that more productive than Rust that you still use it for problems where performance and memory size is not an issue?
Do you still start new projects in Haskell? Or tend to start them in Rust now? If the former, where do you draw the line?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> In Rust you have to manually manage memory. It's verifiable (which makes it way less painful than C), but still you have to think about memory everywhere. Even map'ing sequences becomes complex because of this. So I think Rust is not a good choice for, for example, web applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I consider a web application performance/memory sensitive unless it is a small side project that I know will never scale.

I was thinking more about small apps that'll be used by a single user at a time and that deals with a known amount of data, where iterating fast is more important for me than performance/memory.</comment></comment>


Better Way to Prevent Image Hotlinking with .htaccess - <AUTHOR> http://www.tutsplanet.com/better-way-prevent-image-hotlinking-htaccess-736/ <comment><USER2> What needs to happen is a built in setting in the most popular browsers that would always give the referrer to the server be the main domain itself.

I know there are addons for this, but this needs to come standard.</comment>


I finished my web app - <AUTHOR>

www.listeninghall.com<p>Ya ya, it's kinda like turntable.fm, but with Youtube. Wasn't the easiest thing for me to build, but I learned a lot. Would love some feedback. <comment><USER2> Gave it a try. Some feedback:

Signed up then landed on the main screen, but wasn't instantly sure what to do there. Then I clicked the +, searched, and added a couple of videos that immediately started playing, but they were obscured by the "Add Videos" window, and no "Close" or "Hide" link anywhere. Clicking off to the side hid the window.

At that point, it was me watching a queue of youtube videos alone. I could share the room, but there was no interaction possible with the other client I had in the room.

Also, the second client I had started the video from 0:00 vs where I was at. While it would probably be too complex to make it exactly sync'd, starting a newly joined user at approximately the same place in the currently playing song as the others would help.

There was no way to change the size of the video. Since there was no social interaction, I thought I'd just watch my queue full screen, but that wasn't possible.

Keep at it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for the feedback, a lot of the stuff you mentioned are definite problems. Many people have mentioned not really being sure on what to do on the site. As for the syncing, everything is synced within reason (the app accounts for a 10 second buffer delay, in which case it resyncs, otherwise it tolerates the delay).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like it a lot! I would love to learn a bit more about your technology stack (NodeJS I assume?).

Obviously you're polishing it, but I'll give some feedback and hope it helps you:

1) Landing page, the enter key event isn't submitting the login form, right?

2) Time stamp on chat

3) Close button on the search dialog

4) I like cursor: pointer;cursor: hand; on my action buttons

5) Maximize video option?

6) Vote up/down by user to sort queue?

I love the [# of un-viewed messages] in title bar.

You definitely have to use another computer for it to work. Browsers on the same computer isn't working--which it shouldn't anyway. Perhaps you could just detect if it's the same computer and put up an alert ("hey, you're a phoney! you're on the same computer!") then you won't waste a lot of resources to process that request.

The music synched on my 2 computer. Very cool. Please keep up the good work.

-V.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used Prosody (XMPP Server), with a custom module. The whole site is built around XMPP multi-user chat. Front-end is primarily Backbone/Strophe(xmpp library)/Jquery.

1-5) Yea, lot of little stuff I'm gonna need to handle.

6) Since there can be many people in the room, skipping, rearranging, repeating, looping, all of these things are going to have to be voted on.

Lastly, I think it may well be a failure on my part, but the title bar # indicates messages received while you are tabbed away from the window. I detected this by checking to see if the chat input box was in focus (from my understanding that's how gtalk does it). It's clunky, and I should probably figure out a better way to do this.

Thank you for your feedback :)

Also, I've made the Javascript code available on my github (Since I need to find a job): <https://github.com/ahaque/lh>

<comment><USER4> There's a chat input box? Are you sure?

Firefox 3.6 shows no such thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya, just checked 3.6. Might be a knock against the design, but its the gray box, across the bottom of the right column/side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Sorry.. last one... "Finished" isn't really a mindset I'd recommend when developing anything (especially web apps). Definitely pat yourself on the back for hitting a milestone and releasing this version, but unless you won't be updating or improving the service, you're not finished. =)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh definitely, I guess I just wanted to say something about it's current state. Come see my site, its finished, but not really (not the most captivating title ;p).

<comment><USER2> Gotcha... just don't fall into the "i'm done!" mindset

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks pretty good. One thing is when you go to add a video and click in the search box it would be nice if the placeholder text automatically cleared instead of having to clear it manually.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, there's a lot of little stuff I have to iron out. I really wanted to get some kind of working version up, but there are a lot of nitty gritty stuff that needs to be ironed out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> One more - Clicking share should pre-highlight the share link so I have to do a little less work to get the url.</comment>


'Transparent' Wins Golden Globe as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Gets a Shout-out - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2015/transparent-wins-golden-globe-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-gets-shout-stage/

<comment><AUTHOR> With all the discussion about how "off brand" it was for Amazon to think that they could make a premium smartphone (despite making the premium e-reader), it's worth noting that they've just achieved something that's far more of a stretch.</comment>


Ask HN: Bootstrapping data costs? - <AUTHOR>

 I'm working on a bootstrapped startup and have a large dataset (500 GB) that I'm trying to find an affordable way to store online. At this point I am trying to put together a basic prototype. Does anyone have suggestions for cheap online storage? <comment><USER2> Our company is using Azure Table Storage - <http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing> \- $0.15/mo It's great if you can live with it not being relational.

SQL Azure is their 'SQL Server in the cloud' and is a bit more. But the sharding possibilities are great. You can programmatically turn on/off db instances on demand.

</comment><comment><USER3> We'd need more info about what you plan to do with it, but Amazon should have what you're looking for (<http://aws.amazon.com/>). If it needs to be in a relational database, try Amazon RDS (<http://aws.amazon.com/rds/>), where you can pick from 5GB to 1TB of storage.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Notes:

The data is relational

I don't want to host my own server, because that just isn't my strong point.

</comment><comment><USER4> A possible route would be hosting your own dedicated server.</comment>