Twitter will open-source Storm, BackType's "Hadoop of Real-Time Processing" - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/08/twitter-will-open-source-storm.php

<comment><USER2> There's a lot more details about Storm on the actual announcement: [http://engineering.twitter.com/2011/08/storm-is-coming- more-...](http://engineering.twitter.com/2011/08/storm-is-coming-more-details- and-plans.html)

If you have any questions about Storm, feel free to ask me here or on the Google group (<http://groups.google.com/group/storm-user>).

<comment><USER3> I'm interested in hearing about how you guys upgrade topologies in production (assuming you do). It's designed to be able to run forever, but obviously once in awhile you find a bug, want to track a new stat, etc. I guess if you're pulling data off of a queue, you might be able to get away with letting things queue up for a few seconds as everything restarts with the new code and then catching up. Is that how you handle it, or do you do something more clever?

<comment><USER2> Currently you let things queue up while you redeploy, but I'm working on a new feature that lets you "swap" two topologies. The new one is deployed in an inactive state, and then the two topologies are swapped. This lets you minimize the downtime to almost nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Twitter Engineering Blog post is way more interesting [http://engineering.twitter.com/2011/08/storm-is-coming- more-...](http://engineering.twitter.com/2011/08/storm-is-coming-more-details- and-plans.html)

Despite having a "master" node, it sounds like this actually has no single points of failure. Since all the state for the master is in ZooKeeper, I think you could just fail over to another server running the master if your first main one gets messed up. Pretty cool. (I may be totally wrong here ... All my distributed systems knowledge has come from being around people who know about distributed systems.)

Though one thing that's not especially satisfying is that if his answer for when a Bolt needs to store state is "use a database". I guess the Hadoop answer is that if your reducer fails, it just runs it again, and there's no real analog to doing that when your bolts are meant to run infinitely

<comment><USER2> That's correct, the design will make it easy to cluster the master node later on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll believe when I see it. Not that twitter never open some of it's code (<http://twitter.com/about/opensource>) but ... in the past they've said they'll open some tools and end up not doing it (I'm thinking about Crane here).

It's nice to even think about opensourcing things and even better when they though :-)

<comment><USER5> (I am one of the authors of Crane) The thing that happened with Crane is that it grew a lot of Twitter-specific cruft and separating that from the generally-useful bits is a serious undertaking -- and I'm not sure how much useful stuff would be left once we cut the twittery bits out. Now and then I chat with the Sqoop folks about how we can merge the two but that path isn't clear either.. so it's in a bit of a limbo, as far as being open-sourced. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER4> Not a problem you have to be sorry about, it happens. But the thing here is that announces like that implies expectation. So, IMHO, you shouldn't announce to much time ahead and announce when you know for sure there will be an actual release. Otherwise grumpy sceptics like me criticize ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an almighty big deal. I missed it (everyone was talking about distributed computing), but what Hadoop's done is make conventional BI providers look increasingly unimpressive. Systems like Storm are going to do the same - as the Twitter Engineering blog post points out - to CEP.

</comment><comment><USER7> Frankly, I'm getting tired of the hype. Just release it already. It has been promised for a long time now, with no code in sight. Now new owners have re- promised it and it is a hackernewsworthy item all of a sudden?

Don't get me wrong - the description sounds great and I'll be one of the first users. But this is not techcrunch.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps this will help quell some of the skepticism about them actually releasing it–the abstract for the talk in which Nathan will be releasing Storm as open-source: [https://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/storm-twitters- scalable-...](https://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/storm-twitters-scalable- realtime-computation-system)

</comment><comment><USER9> Twitter acquired a good team with BackType. Too bad for BackType's customers though. Not the end of the world, but yet another example of the perils (in addition to benefits) of using other company's web services.

<comment><USER10> I think that goes further than 'a companys web services'.

Every business should be looking at their weaknesses. If you are using someone else's service at the core of your business, that could go away at any time- you should have a contingency plan. The same for if you source something for manufacturing from another country, or have your factories in another country. What if that country becomes unstable? What will the impact on your business be?

There is nothing wrong with building your business on something that might disappear, you just need to understand that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _If_ this is true, I'm glad that Twitter is choosing to honor a promise that Backtype made pre-acquisition.</comment>


Health insurance options for startups - <AUTHOR> http://sachin.posterous.com/health-insurance-options-for-startups

<comment><USER3> I found this sort of interesting, mostly because it's written from a different angle than I usually think about health care. For instance:

> I'd rather optimize for the common case (random doctor visits) than for the > edge case (major medical emergency).

In my case, I'd prefer to let health insurance work as insurance and have another tool to pay for routine medical care. The plan they opted out of is meant to be paired with an HSA, which is a pretax fund that pays for medical services. It also _goes with you_ when you leave a company/insurance provider. I don't know what the cost difference was between the HSA compatible plan and the one they went with, but I'd like to!

My ideal employer would pay for a high deductible health plan and and fund as much of an HSA as they could each year. This is a better deal for me (and I suspect many people here). It allows me to make more nuanced decisions about how my benefits are allocated. If I have a cold, but it's not quite bad enough that it's worth the $80 or whatever out of my "retirement account" to pay for it, I'd rather have the $80. Similarly, if I injure my knee, rather than paying the $800 for an MRI I might choose to put it off and try other things (that one I've done, it worked out well!).

Health is one of those things that a health care plan isn't very good at maximizing, which is why it seems odd that companies/employees treat plans this way. The best possible things people can do for their health are: eat healthy and maintain an active lifestyle. Besides that, early detection of giant problems is a huge deal. Standard health plans don't really do any of that, unfortunately. Companies that want more healthy employees should address those things specifically, I think. Sadly, they're some of the first benefits to go (as I sit here sobbing about a 50% cut in my health club allowance for 2010).

<comment><USER4> I'd rather pay a fixed price and never have to worry about medical care again. And I do this, and it's great. $300/month and everything is covered - doctor's visits, medication, surgery (if necessary), etc.

<comment><USER3> I think that's weird! :)

The scope of medical care is really pretty insane, though. I don't really understand why I have a plan that covers both seasonal allergies and life ending testicular cancer. Those seem like services you'd "shop" for separately if they were, say, care related (oil change vs wreck), I don't really understand why people would do it differently.

That said, there's no reason you couldn't have what you wanted and me still get what I want, other than the fact that the market's so perverse no one's offering it. If you could use those HSA funds to buy into a "health maintenance plan", would you opt to do that instead? I'd rather have them be discretionary so I can pay for things like laser eye surgery or pec implants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This entire class of problem obviously doesn't exist in Canada. Never had to even think about this in the 5 years we build our company.

How much mental bandwidth of creating a startup goes into these things?

<comment><USER6> _"This entire class of problem obviously doesn't exist in Canada."_

Unless you need to go to a dentist.

<comment><USER4> Same problem in the US -- small group and individual insurance just doesn't cover dental work. But dental work isn't really that expensive, at least not compared to medical work.

Budget $300/yr for your two checkups, and you will be fine. (Even a root canal is not that expensive. I think it was $1200 for a specialist to do it.)

<comment><USER6> It's about $1800 here in Canada.

I found out the hard way there are many things you still have to pay for yourself. For example, a doctor prescribed me Advair for asthma-like symptoms I was experiencing. It costs $200 per unit, and as someone who recently quit their day job to start my own business, it wasn't in the budget. So I just went without.

<comment><USER3> Good doctors respond pretty well to your budget constraints. There's likely another option for you, you should ask. It may not be quite as effective, but I bet it's much, much cheaper.

Or, you could buy from an evil Canadian pharmacy that sources generics from some place like India. We spent two years doing that for my wife's Singulair, it saved us a fortune.

<comment><USER7> _Good doctors respond pretty well to your budget constraints. There's likely another option for you, you should ask. It may not be quite as effective, but I bet it's much, much cheaper._

Tangentially related fact: in the US, doctors don't do this since it poses a significant risk of lawsuits.

<comment><USER3> My doctors all have. "I can't afford that medication, is there something that's available as a generic that I might be able to use instead?" has worked really well for me.

I've also had their front offices recode stuff at lower rates when I explained my high deductible health plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Call a broker. They can tell you the best choice for insurance given your circumstances and preferences. It's their job to know the ins and outs of various plans; it's a lot of work to figure all this stuff out.

The added bonus is that they'll be up to speed with all of their plans all the time, and if your company takes off they can help you with group policies as well.

Using a broker won't cost you anything more than going directly to the carrier, and as an added bonus you have someone to call if things go wrong.

<comment><USER9> I didn't have a good experience with a broker. They were typical sleazy salesmen type. They pushed way too many options on me, instead of really trying to figure out the best plan for us.

Ultimately what it boiled down to is there were so many plans, with so many options, that I did ultimately have to understand it thoroughly to make a good decision.

<comment><USER8> It's too bad you didn't give him or another broker a chance, because you spent a lot of money you didn't need to spend. He could have told you how COBRA works, saving you at least 2 months of premium (you have 60 days to sign up for COBRA, you can sign up at any time during this period and make payments retroactively - payment is due 45 days after you elect to use it).

While I'm sure you spent the time to really research the plan you selected in depth, not everyone may be able to do this. Plans that look the same can sometimes have subtle but important differences, especially with regards to coverage caps and qualified coverages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone have advice for startup founders with pre-existing conditions?

I am very close to taking the startup plunge but my Type I Diabetes makes it really hard to give up my current (awesome) healthcare.

<comment><USER11> Move to Massachusetts. I'm serious. MA has a regulated health insurance exchange. You can compare plans on the exchange website; plans as well as premium increases have to be approved by the exchange administrator. So if an insurance company decides to raise premiums by 80%, they'll be kicked off the exchange. Plus, in MA it is illegal to refuse coverage for pre-existing conditions. They can't even vary the price based on factors other than age/gender/location and maybe smoking. Check out [https://www.mahealthconnector.org/portal/site/connector/menu...](https://www.mahealthconnector.org/portal/site/connector/menuitem.0c5d8e0f63bf313ea6c05667d6468a0c/?fiShown=default) to see for yourself.

On the down side, you have to have insurance or pay a big fine every year. And healthcare, just like everything else in MA is expensive. But probably cheaper than CA.

<comment><USER12> Uhh MA is going bankrupt and hemorrhaging money on its healthcare system. Who knows how long it will last.

<comment><USER11> Do you have a cite? I ask because I believe the growth of health care costs in MA over the last year has been lower than in other comparable states.

I believe the consensus amongst health care economists is that MA made the right choice in pushing for universality first and tackling cost growth later. And that's exactly what they're doing: MA has now started some very aggressive cost control plans, plans that are much easier to enact because of the regulated exchange and mandates that MA created.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My employer uses Trinet: <http://www.trinet.com/>. Essentially, we outsource all of our HR functions like payroll and health insurance to them. Though we've grown quite a bit over the last 10 years, we've used Trinet since back when we had as few as two full time employees.

I can't speak to the cost side since that's not my domain, but as an employee I think they've been pretty great. It's also a huge benefit to our company not having to hassle over HR-related management issues.

<comment><USER9> I looked into Trinet. Their cost shocked me. It wasn't something I could justify spending money on, especially since setting up health care and most other HR tasks are one time costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As of 2014, there will be a perfect solution. Don't buy insurance and pay the penalty, which will be a small fraction of your income. Since you are an early stage startup, you won't have much income, so the penalty will be low.

In the unlikely event you get sick, the insurance companies will be forced to give you coverage.

<comment><USER14> So if you get hit by a car or your appendix ruptures, you're going to hold off going to the hospital for a few weeks until you can enroll in insurance? And how does the address the points raised in this post -- that people will avoid going to the doctor and allow a slow problem to become a big one? Not exactly a perfect solution.

<comment><USER7> If you have a medical emergency, go to the ER. They can't turn you away now and this is not scheduled to change in 2014. You may eventually have to pay for the first few days of treatment out of pocket, but that's just a moderate financial risk which is much smaller than the financial risk of doing a startup.

Continuing care will be paid for by the insurance which you buy after your accident.

Lastly, if you believe going to the doctor will be useful, either enroll in insurance or pay for the doctor out of pocket, whichever is cheaper. Up until you find yourself in that situation, you will be saving $(cost of insurance - cost of penalty).

<comment><USER15> > that's just a moderate financial risk which is much smaller than the > financial risk of doing a startup

If you do it the wrong way, a startup is a big financial risk. But a lot of brilliant startups get started without their founders ever putting their lives on the line. Case in point: this article.

I think there's a tendency for people whose lives are unstable for other reasons to chalk it up to being brilliant.

<http://gapingvoid.com/2004/08/14/dying-young-is-overrated/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd stick with this advice (in addition to the post):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144905>

</comment><comment><USER17> I would recommend getting short term health insurance. I had a 1 year policy from Assurant health which cost me about $50 a month.

Alternately, you could get insurance policies against the sort of things you are hugely expensive/unexpected (Cancer insurance, heart attack insurance, accidental injury, etc) and put a reasonable amount of money into a health savings account for typical expenses.

<comment><USER12> Short term insurance is a bad idea. If you get an illness that requires ongoing care or treatment then they're going to stop paying when the contract is up and not let you sign up for a new one.

<comment><USER17> It's definitely riskier than having a permanent policy, but when I made the decision I felt like I would give the startup thing a year then find a regular position again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here in France the mandatory health regime (what we call "sécurité sociale") is covered by taxes, and I added around 1500€ per year in what we call a "complémentaire" (which complements the mandatory coverage).

This covers my wife, my kid and I, including a good dental protection.

People here often shout about how much taxes they pay, but I do know why :)

</comment><comment><USER19> The startup I work for, <http://www.gobloomhealth.com>, is working to solve this exact problem. Employers outsource all their health benefits administration to Bloom Health, and we match employees to the health plans best suited to them. Two of our early customers are small software dev shops.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you like your current coverage, call the provider and ask.

Example: I like Kaiser. I paid less than $400/month for great coverage when I was over 50 and single. (I could have paid less.)

If you're under 40, you'll pay a lot less.

<comment><USER21> I'm 27 single and healthy. I signed up with Kaiser a year and half ago and my rate was $90/month, for a 2700 deductable HSA. It seemed like a good deal, but they've raised my rates twice in 18 months, and now it's 140/month. I've never used the insurance.

<comment><USER20> > now it's 140/month.

And your rent is?

My point is that for the vast majority of people, healthcare isn't a huge obstacle. It's comparable to transportation and food, and behind shelter.

I don't see folks complaining that they can't do a startup because rent is too high.

<comment><USER21> My boyfriend and I pay 1000 rent, and he has the same insurance plan as me. So insurance is 25% of our rent. And that doesn't cover anything until we've each paid 2700. We're doing a startup, and it's a big part of our monthly expenses.

And actually, we moved out of SF to buckle down on our startup, because rent was too high. Also, people have to pay rent whether they have a startup or a regular job, and they get a lot of special discounts to their healthcare via the regular job that you don't get with individual plans.

<comment><USER20> > So insurance is 25% of our rent.

And your transportation and food costs how much?

> And that doesn't cover anything until we've each paid 2700.

And your car insurance has a deductible too. If it included maintenance, as you seem to want from health insurance, it would be far more expensive.

> We're doing a startup, and it's a big part of our monthly expenses.

Umm, your personal expenses are shelter (including energy), food, transportation, healthcare, and entertainment. Do you really think that any other than the latter can be small?

Look - I want to be subsidized too, but changing payers can't make things cheaper.

Before you say "govt health care" or "single player", I'll remind you that the US govt already spends 8% of US GDP on healthcare and only covers a fraction of the population. The UK, Canada, France, et al also spend 8% of their GDP and yet manage to cover the vast majority of their population, and their GDP/person is significantly less.

In other words, the US govt spends far more per person than other countries on healthcare.

If you're going to argue that the US govt can provide healthcare for less, I'm going to point out that it doesn't.

When you fix govt healthcare, then we'll talk. (And no, you don't need universal to fix things. Those other countries have private systems that co- exist so accounting isn't an excuse.)

Yes, I know that the "overhead" category for Medicare is a smaller fraction of the total than the "overhead" category for private, but much of what we'd call overhead isn't counted in that category wrt medicare. For example, fraud.

<comment><USER21> I'm really not sure why you're being so argumentative with me. I didn't mention anything political or about who pays. Just that the tax situation is different if you get health insurance via an employer vs an individual plan. I spend 10% of my income on health insurance. I'm okay with that, but I also have just about the cheapest possible health insurance that isn't major medical and is from a reputable company.

Your original argument was about it being an issue in starting a startup. If I had preexisting conditions, the plan I'm on now would not be available. It's also difficult to find plans that cover pregnancy. I'm healthy, so it's true that it's not much of a concern for me. But if the situation were different my insurance could easily be 30-50% of expenses. Or if I got pregnant, I could afford to cover the 10,000-20,000 cost of a normal pregnancy, but if anything went wrong it would cost hundreds of thousands. I'm not saying someone else should pay for my pregnancy, but women shouldn't have to roll the bankruptcy dice when they get pregnant. This is what risk pools are for.

The problem is also that it take lot of time to deal with. The plan we're on is an HMO. We've moved a little bit away, so now I'd have to drive 85 miles to see the doctor. I could change plans, but then I'd have to do a lot of research again.

I don't want health insurance to cover maintenance, people need to be aware of how much things cost and make economic decisions with respect to health care. Which is why I purchased the plan I did. But the plan is really difficult because price comparison shopping for health care is an unreasonable process. I got a blood test last year. I asked the doctor how much it would cost. He was very surprised by the question and said about 100. I got a bill for 500 for the test, plus all the doctor's fees.

I don't have dental insurance and I need a filling. The first quote I got was 363 dollars. Which according to some internet research is far too high. So now I have to spend the afternoon calling around dentists. Some of them won't even give quotes without a visit to look at the cavity. It's hard to price shop and the prices are inflated due to insurance.

<comment><USER20> > I'm really not sure why you're being so argumentative with me.

I'm arguing with the claim that healthcare is an especially big deal. In almost all cases, it's smaller than rent and comparable to transportation and food. It takes less time than transportation and food. (Seriously - <USER2> the amount of time you spend on each.)

As far as pre-existing conditions go, they're only an obstacle for folks who go bare for a while. In other words, the reality doesn't match the fears, again.

> Just that the tax situation is different if you get health insurance via an > employer vs an individual plan.

That is a problem (albeit one that isn't as bad as it was - insurance is now deductible in more cases) but if you don't have an income, deductibility isn't worth much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm curious now ... how many people reading this haven't had some form of health insurance or regular health care for an appreciable period of time? (A year or more.)

I've been without for -- hmm, wow, around 10 years now. :-/

</comment><comment><USER23> For companies with more than a couple of employees, try a professional employer organization (PEO). Administaff is probably the best known; we used Ambrose at our startup.</comment>


Amazon has agreed to acquire Ring for more than $1B - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ReutersTech/status/968589365646647296 <comment><USER2> Expect flood of Ring zero days in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...</comment>


Matt Dillon: Intel Meltdown bug mitigation in master, performance effects - <AUTHOR> http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2018-January/313758.html <comment><AUTHOR> Matt Dillon hardly needs an introduction, however, I'd just like to point out that he's one of the few folks that I trust on estimating these CPU bugs, as back in 2012, he actually found a bug in AMD CPUs that resulted in an erratum from the vendor:

* [http://www.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2012-03/msg00...](http://www.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2012-03/msg00006.html)

* [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/07/amd_opteron_bug_drag...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/07/amd_opteron_bug_dragonfly/)

He was also involved in providing a public analysis of the Intel Core bugs back in 2007:

* [http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070630105416](http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070630105416)

</comment><comment><USER2> Has anything come out of the OpenBSD community about this? I've searched but can't seem to find any official statements.</comment>


Show HN: I made this simple YouTube playlist maker. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://playr.me/?v=2Ni8oFtgoAI,mZcOJgdC9R0,--wy8QmLlM8,9dmIzdegLzg,ANzKrSuUblc,WrO9PTpuSSs

<comment><USER2> This is really well done & solves a pain point that I mostly never realized even existed. This is my default youtube client now.

That being said here are some improvements that you might want to consider:

1\. I almost dismissed this as another thing that I'll never use until I found that search bar on the top right. You want to make sure it's visible at first glance.

2\. Allow me to drag the volume slider.

3\. The button next to the cross/remove is not very intuitive. Took a good 10 seconds before realizing I could drag it. Make tooltip available everywhere.

4\. The default video width can be bigger.

5\. If a video from the search result is playing, change its play button to a pause so I know that when I scan that list.

6\. If there is one thing I'd want to carry from youtube here is recommendations. Sometimes I might not know what to search for. So have a tabbed view between search results & recommendations.

7\. You'll probably come to this anyway but I'd like to create an account so I can save my playlists.

Best of luck.

Edit: PS: Just realized I could use a next/previous button.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. Yes, 1 through 5 are in the works!

About accounts: Right now, everything is entirely client-side. What it does do though is update the address-bar whenever you add / remove a song to the playlist or rearrange the playlist, etc. This means that you can simply bookmark a playlist after creating it!

Previous / next: For now, we can double click on videos in the playlist to play them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice. Bookmarked. I never liked how Youtube solved playlists. I like the URL pattern, because it makes it easy, to write a bookmarklet that turns all Youtube links on a page into a playlist. :)

Some room for improvement: Please add title attributes to the buttons. Also the loop-button is a bit confusing to me. Maybe standard icons as seen in many other players are easier to understand. It would be nice, to have the volume slider slideable.

Mixtube did a similar thing, but seems to be broken at the moment: <http://mixtube.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, for sure. I'll have nicer buttons with title tags soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like it! Very clean and simple, personally I find YouTube's built-in playlists pretty clunky so this is nice to see. As a bonus, with something like this I never have to read youtube comments.

I would make the "Search youtube" thing more visible... it took me a while to notice it, I think most people might miss it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to make the "Search youtube" visible for first-time users without making it in-your-face for repeat use. I'll play with the contrast a bit more. Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I seem to have maxed out the number of songs you can keep track of in one URL. See: <http://bit.ly/10kZyKg> which loads 130 songs, but my playlist is 156 songs long (until I close the tab I presume).

I'd love to see:

1\. Way to save a playlist as a shortened URL for sharing purposes.

2\. Previous/Next buttons

3\. Max-width for the playlist that keeps each song on one line

4\. A means to save several playlists in one place

5\. More obvious shuffle/repeat buttons

Overall, I really like the simplicity of the interface. I hardly comment on HN these days, but I wanted to provide some constructive feedback for you.

Best,

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!! Yes, I'll make all of these happen in upcoming updates. =)

<comment><USER5> Great! Is it possible you could let me know when the features go live?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love it. finally!

Things I love:

1\. Search while you watch 2\. minimalist interface design 3\. dark color scheme 4\. drag and drop sortable playlist

Things to add:

1\. Mobile compatibility (doesn't work on my Galaxy Nexus) 2\. Mobile compatible UI (bigger buttons, search bar, etc) 3\. Ability to log in to save playlists, user settings 4\. Ability to hide video, but leave audio ;)

Excellent job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh man.. mobile compatibility. I have a nexus 4 coming in soon, so I might just give it a go. Making the video go away would make a few people happy for sure.

<comment><USER6> PS. This project seems perfectly suited for AngularJS. Also, check out Foundation framework for making both the desktop and mobile versions of the site ;) good luck. I will surely check back soon. This is a great project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Beautiful interface! I actually was throwing around the idea of an audio only Youtube player, can is there a way to toggle the video?

<comment><USER8> Audio only Youtube player is against the Youtube terms of service. You have to display the video at a certain minimum size.

A friend of mine made something similar to this, but audio only, and - if I remember correctly - got a cease and desist. (Or, at least, he got some kind of "you're in breach of terms of service, cut it out" message, which freaked him out and prompted him to take the project offline).

<comment><USER9> I'm just speculating out loud here...

They can mandate a minimum playback size, but do they mandate a minimum playback fps?

If you played the video back at a rate of 1/60fps (dropping all intermediate frames) would that satisfy their requirements and still save battery life or whatever for the people who would prefer not to see any video at all?

<comment><USER6> Just make it simple. Give users the ability to toggle the video display. That shouldn't violate any agreements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey, I also played with this idea a while ago in tinycassette.com. I added soundcloud support too. I do not have the search feature yet, but I also made a chrome extension to control the player within the browser. Give it a look, we should partner :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats pretty nifty too. Would love to meet up if you're in the Bay Area =).

<comment><USER10> Maybe some day. I'm from Portugal so it's a bit far from the Bay Area. Is this just a side project, do you have any greater plans for this? You already have a very nice domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a side-project. I made it for me and my friends and anyone who appreciates the limited scope of what it does - quickly look up videos, create playlists, share them and bookmark them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hah! I've been building something similar for personal use: <http://bchanx.com/jukebox>

I also like your interface, props!

<comment><AUTHOR> Your's is pretty slick too. Are you going to keep working on it? Why did you create your particular player?

<comment><USER11> I give it some love whenever I have some spare time!

Mostly built it so I could generate playlists purely with songs that I enjoy, and be able to easily access that from anywhere and on any computer. I figure you're coming from a similar angle? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! Same idea. Easily create playlists and share them. I decided to go with updating the address-bar instead of storing playlists server-side. That has it's limitations but saves me from storing anything on the server, for now.

Yours looks like you're going with accounts creation instead, which might end up being something I'll have to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can you add a feature to make the videos one minute long. It'd be a killer app for making power hour playlists for college kids.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL. That is something I did not think about! =). What do you use right now to create them? Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does clicking on the video names do? I mean, other than toggling the existence of a gray bar above the name.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can double-click to play a video. You can also click and drag to rearrange the playlist! This will automatically update the address bar so you can then share the rearranged playlist.

<comment><USER13> I noticed these two features. What feature does the gray bar that you can toggle by single-clicking pertain to?

Gray bars: <http://i.imgur.com/hic2avC.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> That particular feature is pure eye-candy =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's reasonable not to support it, and it might not be your fault, but you should know that I can't interact with the site at all with Conkeror running on Xulrunner 19.0.2.

</comment><comment><USER15> Love it! Simple is always good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats the plan! Simple and clean. Thanks =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Clean easy to use, good job !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is really cool! good job

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet! Thanks :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> source code pls</comment>


Nvidia CEO demos DirectStylus capacitive pen tech (Computex 2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUQp4l_4a3E <comment><USER2> Never going to be better than pen and paper and a scanner.</comment>


Lessons learned from helping over 150 startups with marketing (from my Offer HN) - <AUTHOR> http://insight.io/blog/2010/11/lessons-learned-from-helping-over-150-startups-with-marketing-part-1-fundamentals/ <comment><USER2> Ilya was kind enough to review my startup, an online rave gear retail site:

<http://www.plurty.com>

Previously, I had this giant "Sign up" button on the home page, but what I had forgotten was that most of the value of the site came from the ability to _not have to sign up in order to buy our products_. We built anonymity into it so much that you don't even have to enter your email address. This was crucial for us because nobody wants to sign up for a website that is unknown.

Also, Ilya pointed out that the most distinguishing feature of our site were the extended exposure images and that we should use it as a marketing tool. We are currently planning on replacing our text-only adwords campaign and using the images to get more clicks.

Anyway...just thought I'd add my $0.02 and thank Ilya again. It was useful advice that we really needed.

<comment><USER3> Just adding $0.02 of my own about your site. I went there really quick but took a while to figure out what you were selling. I'd simplify the design and add a headline somewhere about what the site does. It's just too busy.

<comment><USER2> Thanks jscore! We're in the process of a redesign that will greatly simplify the whole thing, but I will see what I can do in the short term to make it more obvious what we sell. Thanks again :-]

<comment><USER4> look at the site with fresh eyes.

Load the homepage and only allow yourself to read the most obvious 5 words on it.

What do you read? At the moment when I do that, I read: "plurty cart checkout light gloves".

Just put a nice bright tagline under plurty that says "Number 1 for rave lights" and bam!

<comment><USER5> First thing I noticed was "top product" which is pretty generic. Might be better if that said "green lasers - our top seller" or similar?

<comment><USER6> Serious Ravers Love Our Lasers -- Pew Pew

You may want to take off the "pew pew". I am not plugged into that community. Alternate phrasing "Like Glow Sticks, Without The Suck"

Edit:

 _Want an intense effect for your next rave? Try a green laser -- it is magical in a dark room or at nighttime. Each laser pen is effectively a laser pointer with a detachable kaleidoscope light filter on the top. When this filter is on, the single, solid laser beam transforms into hundreds of different points of light on a surface. Too dangerous to point at a face._

<comment><USER7> As the co-owner of this site, I highly approve of the pew pew and have added it to the description. Now to figure out how to add a cross-browser compatible sound effect...

<comment><USER8> Oh god, next thing you know you'll have gif backgrounds and have your whole level middle management walk out. Don't go down that path.

<comment><USER2> I have an even better idea: _animated_ gifs. Think about the revenue possibilities!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _It pains me to see so many startups emailing me who have already spent months or even years building a product without thinking about promotion or validating their idea at all before launching. "Launch first, then figure out marketing" is a recipe for disaster._

This should be repeated again and again, and I think this is a point missed by many enginers. (Disclaimer: I'm an engineer.)

I've seen people spend months (or years) building that perfect website, wait anxiously for the proverbial "launch day," and then be highly discouraged when customers don't magically come. Figuring out who your customers are (and how you are going to get them!) is as important (or even more important) as picking the best framework, optimizing your code, or whatever else we spend time on.

</comment><comment><USER10> _If you're building a B2B app to manage payroll, "Cloud hosted SaaS payroll for your business" is not a good headline. "Spend less time worrying about payroll" is a better one. "Cut payroll management costs by 37% instantly" is even better._

From my experience, the user needs to first know what your product is. After that, you can sell the benefits. Benefits are not easily understood without knowing what the product is.

You should get better results with "Hosted payroll for your business" on the frontpage than "Cut payroll management costs by 37% instantly" (Unless of course all your visitors are already aware of you and what you do - this is never the case). The "Cut payroll management costs by 37% instantly" should be used on the "take a tour" page to describe the benefit and drive conversions.

I'd be curious to know if you have any stats related to this that you can share? It seems a bit counter-intuitive that a "flat" descriptive headline is better than flashy benefit, but the data I've seen shows that.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Articulate a Clear, Specific, Compelling Value Proposition"

Great advice. Linking the value prop of any B2B service with a crystal clear ROI makes for a great sales pitch.

The fastest way to make $1 is to make (or save) your client $10.

</comment><comment><USER12> _List Benefits, not Features_

If your actual features are so far removed from your listed benefits that people who ask "how?" don't also have an answer within 5 seconds (or at least a clear obvious path to that answer), you haven't solved the problem.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ilya, this is a great article. There is just some tiny style issue on the landing page of insight.io in Chrome.:)

</comment><comment><USER14> Great article! Some asides on MVP, inspired by this line:

 _[Marketing is] everything- product, price, placement, and promotion. Start thinking about these things before you launch, learn from them, and iterate quickly before wasting a lot of time and money._

Since "product" is part of "marketing", it would be nice to include it in the iterative cycle. Instead of working it out _before_ launch, launch prematurely, and work out the product simultaneously with the rest of the marketing. That is, "release early, release often", and iterate the whole thing. This helps for those products that you didn't know you needed until you saw it. It worked for me for a software library; I haven't tried it with an application.

Reflection: the idea of "assessing the market first" is waterfall-style, even though it is agile-style _within_ that stage. The idea of "pivoting" attempts to incorporate an iteration, but at a much longer time-scale. It would seem better to be even more agile, by assessing the market _with_ the product within each iteration, and pivoting within each iteration. This would need instant prototyping; and rapid feature changes (for pivots). One obstacle is that software takes too long to build, and too long to adapt. Consider: if you could make a prototype as easily and as quickly as a webpage to gather email addresses, wouldn't it be better to do that? If you could create different feature sets that would appeal to different markets as quickly and easily as making different landing pages, wouldn't that be better? Like "A/B testing for products".

Sounds like a hacker-philosopher's stone? While we can't eliminate essential complexity, only accidental complexity (by Brooks) and so it's hard to make much progress in this for general programming, for the subset of programming which is SaaS websites, we have already made great progress, with frameworks, RoR, AppEngine etc. It could be made much easier, if we focussed on the goal of an initial prototype, where bugs and lack of features don't matter, _provided_ you get feedback on them (eg: have a "search for help" facility, and store the searches). Then, you can iterate and change direction quickly. The task is to seek traction. You don't need to hit it perfectly (like the iPhone), but just to get a nibble, and then you adjust. At first, you just want to know where the fish are.

Of course, product features are only part of marketing, and you also need to iterate quickly on graphic design, copywriting, adwords and so on. And pivoting may be intrinsically slow, because it takes time for your message to diffuse, be trialled, be adopted, word of mouth etc - though twitter, facebook etc may also speed this up too.

</comment><comment><USER15> You really need more line spacing on your blog. The text is quite hard to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you suggest I change? I don't really know CSS.

<comment><USER16> Add this to the bottom of style.css

.post .post-content { line-height: 1.6em; } p { line-height: inherit !important; }</comment></comment></comment>


Too Good to Check - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/opinion/17friedman.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

<comment><USER2> The brilliance of this tactic is that if you repeat some outrageous number, the only way to defend it is to produce the real number which is bound to still be quite large. You can't respond with, "It is only $5 million/day!" because that is still a lot of money.

It doesn't matter if every President does it to these people. What matters is that they get to demonize Obama.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, but $5 million a day is a lot for you and your family to take a vacation. It is NOTHING when the POTUS is on an international trip. Anyone who thinks that is a big number relative to what it's for is completely out of touch with reality, and you'll have a hard time arguing about ANYTHING with them when they don't even have a basic understanding of the way the world works.

<comment><USER4> It may be unrealistic, but personally I can't fault them for having a problem wasting that much money -- there really isn't a reason he should need thousands of people, 10% of that should have been enough.

But hey, if you don't have to pay the bill you might as well enjoy the show.

<comment><USER3> The "thousands" figure is part of the bullshit. Clinton did it with about 1,300 people. That is far from "thousands". They talk about this in the article.

And I'm curious what your experience and understanding of how that all works is to be able to say something like "10% of that should have been enough". I'm not being antagonistic. I'm genuinely curious if you understand the role that all people on this trip play, and how 90% of them could, in your opinion, be eliminated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand that willful ignorance and propagation of false facts is an important issue. However, the reason that the story propagated so widely ends up being mostly political and doesn't really pique my hacker fancy.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. There's this nice gray area about what is "politics" and what is "politics, but with a huge element of ..." (I really paused for a second looking for the right words, and not coming up with it, I'll take your words if you don't mind: "hacker fancy").

When submitting, it would be nice if folks asked the question _Would you find this interesting if you were diametrically opposed to the political or religious elements of this article/post?_ If the answer is _yes_ than it's likely fantastic, if it's _no_ then it's likely to be seen as tea party/%palin%/%obama/SEIU/ACORN/Fox News/MSNBC/ZOMDL!

Hacker News does a pretty good job of weeding this sort of stuff out, and I'm guessing this one will float off soon enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 200M Indian rupees is about 4.5M USD, that might explain the rumor.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't disagree with the general premise of this article but I find it ironic that Friedman says "Cooper also pointed out that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the entire war effort in Afghanistan was costing about $190 million a day and that President Bill Clinton's 1998 trip to Africa with 1,300 people and of roughly similar duration, cost, according to the Government Accountability Office and adjusted for inflation, about $5.2 million a day," without mentioning that this CBO report specifically excludes the costs of the Secret Service and that the security costs after the 9/11 are likely significantly greater than what they were previously. $5.2 million/day is likely just as bad a number as $200 million/day, yet Friendman repeats is without stipulations, just like Bachmann did.

<comment><USER9> If you want to dispute the numbers, fine. But it's ridiculous to accuse Friedman of the same dishonesty as Bachmann.

First, he explicitly said he doesn't know the real cost of the trip, and explained how he arrived at his estimate. Second, his source is a _lot_ more authoritative than Bachmann's: the GAO, a department of the U.S. government whose raison d'être is to monitor government spending, vs an unnamed Indian official cited by an Indian reporter. Third, he provides context that helps his readers understand the scale of the numbers being thrown around - are we really to believe that this trip is spending money faster than the war effort in Afghanistan? Do we really think Obama is spending 40 times as much as Clinton did for a similar trip?

Friedman may well be wrong, but I'll take his number over Bachmann's any day of the week.

<comment><USER8> No, it's not any better. This estimate is useless, because of the things I mentioned. The Secret Service costs are likely the bulk of the spending, so unless they release them, we won't know the real numbers involved. Clinton did not spend 40 times less than $200 million/day.

I'm not sure why you don't understand my point. Friedman cited a falsehood without saying that it was untrue. Clinton's trip did not cost $5.2 million a day. The CBO clearly specifies that the SS costs were excluded multiple times. Friedman did not mention this, so he is just as bad as Bachmann.

<comment><USER10> When (attempting to) think critically, you can't just choose to ignore the entire context. And when you're talking about both the kinds of sources and the order of magnitude or so difference, one estimate is not "just as useless".

One estimate is based on the retelling of a made up number by some anonymous source accompanied, with other information that was verifiably not true.

Friedman's estimate is based on real honest to god numbers produced by the accounting agency of the government in question minus an unknown amount. He did not mention the missing amount for SS, true. But given the context, I can see why he may have not -- it does't really matter when you're at least an order off [1].

Drawing a false equivalence here is not thinking critically.

[1] The budget for the __entire year __for SS protection was 689M in 2008 [[http://whitehousetransitionproject.org/resources/briefing/Pa...](http://whitehousetransitionproject.org/resources/briefing/Patterson- Cost%20of%20WH.pdf)].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is a recap of a TV show really worthy of an NYT op-ed slot?

And is it really worth posting here?

IMO, no on both counts.

<comment><USER3> Then flag it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty smartly done - but the White House could easily have saved it if they had told the actual number, now they just look like idiots.

And if the right wing really wanted the story to stick, they should have invented a much, much more accurate number: $191.635.000 sounds much more impressive and accurate than $200 million.

<comment><USER12> The right wing will gleefully call a complex planetarium projector an "overhead projector".

They don't care about being accurate, and accuracy isn't needed for their stories to stick. They've pretty much checked out of reality and into World of GOPcraft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is interesting about this is that the huge numbers being thrown around by the gorvernment for the last three (or so) years have numbed us to the point where such an absurd number as $200M/day does not trip the BS meter at first utterance.</comment>


Where Are the New Instruments? - <AUTHOR> https://www.jefftk.com/p/where-are-the-new-instruments <comment><USER2> It may be because music industry is hype-driven. It is based on the beliefs of the consumer. Like Steinway is so great. Whether or not it is what matters is the people's adoring attitude towards something great. It is like expensive French wines, they're really not that great but they are expensive, hence wanted.

In electronic popular music you got to have Fender Strato-Caster or Gibson Les Paul. Nothing lesser will do. That is because of the star-myth perpetrated by the music industry.

It's a bit like the diamond industry. Diamonds are expensive because every girl is taught to want one.

So a new instrument? Musicians don't trust them.

<comment><USER2> Or maybe it's like perhaps counter-intuitively you can't be the best on something which very few people play. You got to be the best on playing the same instrument that the stars play. You can't start your own sport, that would be the equivalent of playing a new instrument. Just a thought, don't know how much truth there is to it</comment></comment>


Elisabeth Sladen (Doctor Who - Sarah Jane Smith) has passed away - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13137674

<comment><USER2> Sad news. We still watch Doctor Who and Sarah is one of our favorite Dr Who companions.

RIP Elisabeth Sladen

</comment><comment><USER3> That is very sad. My kids particularly liked the Sarah Jane Adventures.</comment>


What the World Will Look Like by 2050 - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1890927,00.html

<comment><USER2> Simply put, that is ridiculous. I find it remarkable to see apparently very intelligent people predict insane xenophobic doomsday scenarios as the future. Often, they seem to be reminiscing about a simpler past they were familiar with and how we [the young] have shot it all to hell, and are thus on a path towards self-destruction and reckoning.

<comment><USER3> I love that they claim they're predicting things from the past, but actually aren't. They claim the future will see a 'polycentric' (see: multipolarity; they got the name wrong) world where we will be ruled by many powers instead of one.

Aside from the fact this has rarely been seen in history, and only during transitional periods (After WW2, briefly we had USA, USSR and the British Empire as superpowers) when it has been seen. When we look back, with hindsight it becomes clear that there is a direct line of superpowers back to the dawn of civilization and, largely, one superpower passed off the power to its successor. The example here would be that the British Empire, instead of fighting to the death stepped aside for the USA. This has been played for thousands of years, during the Classical period it was passed between Greece and Rome, who was the super power. After the Roman Empire was defeated by the Hunnic Empire (Atilla the Hun) the power moved so far to the east no one in Europe had a clue, which led to the Dark Ages, because the people who had spread their technology (the Romans) rarely taught the locals how to build it themselves.

This meant that after the Roman Empire, and the fairly swift collapse of the Hunnic Empire with the death of Atilla, Europe was left without a power and so was the world. It was quite ironic, it would be like if the USSR had beat the USA in 1990, and a year later still collapsed. The effect was profound, especially moving into the medieval period, due to the fact that people relied on these Empires to shift around technology and without them there was no one big enough to move the information.

(Ed: This is also why when moving into the late Medieval Period and the Colonial Era, we had multiple powers all handing the superpower status between them as one got a clear advantage. In hindsight this largely centered between England and France, a play reminiscent of how Greece and Rome passed the superpower title between themselves many times during the classical period, but at no point was there two true superpowers.)

I find that their predictions are based on personal opinions, and they choose to use history to back themselves up whenever it's convenient, but in many of the examples they wholly ignore it. There's no historical basis to assume suicide bombings, it's an exceptionally rare development with the invention of compact explosives and religious brainwashing. Why would a pirate perform a suicide bombing, it's absurd they're in it for personal gain not religious gain.

This article is very stupid merely for trying to predict the future. I'll trust a Sci-Fi writer on the future before I trust an economist, if we could trust economists to predict the future then we wouldn't be in the financial crisis we are.

<comment><USER4> >The example here would be that the British Empire, instead of fighting to the death stepped aside for the USA.

Uhh, no. There will always be a premiere power and the British Empire was it, but they weren't head and shoulders above everybody else the way the US is now, or Rome was in its day. Neither was any other power ever an undisputed champion between Rome and the post Cold War US.

Edit: not in Western Europe, anyway. The Mongol Empire and the Caliphate were supreme at certain times and places.

>After the Roman Empire was defeated by the Hunnic Empire

WTF? That never happened. The Romans defeated the Huns at Chalons and were then conquered by Goths a few decades later.

<comment><USER3> > WTF? That never happened. The Romans defeated the Huns at Chalons and were > then conquered by Goths a few decades later.

We're discussing superpowers here, not military battles. The Hunnic Empire overtook Rome in power and size long before Rome fell. However, after the battle at Chalons the Roman army was fatally weakened, it didn't help that the Vandals sacked Rome for 14 days only 2 years after the battle at Chalons. Sucks to be Roman when coincidental invasions happen, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love these articles.

Ten years ago, the same dreck would claim 2010 would see us away on extended vacation while WebVan and Pets.com delivered goodies to our internet-automated homes. Of course, everything would be paid for by effortless automated day- trading, with the Dow at 50,000 and markets headed higher due to Western nations celebrating some multi-decade milestone for time without conflict.

If someone claims to have the future figured out, it's pretty safe to assume you can ignore 'em.

</comment><comment><USER6> > As the cofounder and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction > and Development, Attali won fame for calling the U.S. financial collapse as > early as 2006...

But somehow he managed to not predict Europe's own financial troubles. Yes, quite the soothsaying there...

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish more people would read Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Just as we could not predict in 1968 what the world would look like in 2009 - similarly we can't predict what the world will look like in 2050 today.

I've heard some crazy predictions... world will end in 2012 (when the Mayan calendar ends)... USA will break down into 2-5 different countries and there will be a civil war there... the arctic cap will melt submerging all the major port cities: NY Tokyo Mumbai...

Not gonna happen!

<comment><USER8> Would you have predicted in 1975 that by 1995 there'd be no Soviet Union? Big changes and breakups do happen; they're inevitable over long enough. I'll agree, though, that prediction (especially of technology-affected things, which is more and more of the world) is getting considerably harder, and that _that_ trend, at least, will continue absent some other radical change like an asteroid strike or a US police state.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Would you have predicted in 1975 that by 1995 there'd be no Soviet Union?_

I know a man who is now a United States diplomat who predicted to me (when he was still a student of Chinese) in 1984 that the Soviet Union would be around well into the twenty-first century. Sometimes empires that have little press freedom are especially hard to make predictions about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem with prediction on this scale is that it's becomes a function of chaotic effects. i.e., Some small unpredictable thing like an invention or some trait of a president can have very profound effects over time akin to the butterfly effect.

Even solid statistics will fail horribly over a longer time period.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why would a pirate blow themselves up? It makes no sense.

<comment><USER6> Because they're in the news now and Time has a pessimistic opinion of its readers' attention spans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This guy is kind of an over-the-top doomsayer, but I would note that he's also a Jewish pied noir (French people born in Algeria) born during WWII, probably regaled with stories about relatives back at the mainland who ended up in concentration camps from an early age, and who would have been ethnically cleansed out of Algiera as a young man if he hadn't left already. If you could go back to the time of his birth (or a little before) and tell people what actually happened, they'd probably think you were over the top too. I'm sure this has influenced his way of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the Ingenuity Gap by Thomas Homer-Dixon, he covers the prognostications of futurists and discovers that they are wildy wrong something like 91% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER12> To me the article reads like an extension of current popular news stories.. which don't all reflect reality.

</comment><comment><USER13> I didn't see anything in here that was stricking or insightful. Pretty run of the mill introspection will lead you to the conclusions in the article.

</comment><comment><USER14> Thank you for giving me something to think about instead of, "Was this last request part of the origInal spec or not?"

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with the statement on water. Other than that, thanks, but I have to get back to work.

</comment><comment><USER16> _In the belief that past experiences are indicative future events ..._

Epic mega-fail.

<comment><USER8> Well, leaving out "of" is hardly a mega-fail.

But maybe you meant that the meaning of the snippet, that experience and evidence can guide us in what to expect for the future, is somehow profoundly wrong?

<comment><USER16> I did indeed mean the latter. Didn't even notice the missing "of".

For some things, past experience is of use. For guessing at the general trends of history, past experience should, in fact, teach us that it's completely useless. On a personal, immediate scale, it is useful to try and figure out what's about to happen, but when it comes to large trends, there are too much chaos and wild swings involved for past experience to be of any use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> By 2015 we will have hoverboards

<comment><USER18> But they still won't work on water. Unless you've got power...</comment></comment>


US asks journals not to publish flu virus research to keep info from terrorists - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/45749145

<comment><USER2> This seems like a bad idea. At the same time we're (hopefully!) keeping the information away from the bad guys, we're also handicapping those who could be building us protection from it.

 _the journal was taking the recommendations seriously and would probably withhold some information — but only if the government creates a system to provide the missing information to legitimate scientists worldwide who need it._

I'm concerned with how they might determine who is "legitimate", and who "needs it".

And beyond that, it seems silly to try to protect in this way. I've got to believe that anyone skilled enough to be able to use the information would also be skilled enough to get himself onto the staff of a "legitimate" researcher, thereby getting the information.

<comment><USER3> You assume of course that this research leads to a vaccine that's 100% effective and distributed to the entire population of the planet.

You miss the point that some people can't have the flu vaccine because of auto immune disease susceptibility. Also X percent of the population will not get the vaccination for other reasons.

So this is more like [Sophos|Symantec|Kaspersky] creating a super Windows virus then offering to print the source code in order to "further" research.

Just like with nuclear technology, we can't put this genie back in the bottle.

Just because we can do something, does that always mean we should?

<comment><USER2> _You assume of course that this research leads to a vaccine that's 100% effective and distributed to the entire population of the planet._

No, this is not correct. As I explained elsewhere in the thread where you made the same claim:

A vaccine can effectively stop a virus with far fewer than 100% actually receiving the vaccination.

First, depending on the type of vaccine, the immunity may be communicated to other people through contact. Other people in the household, work, school, etc. are contaminated with the attenuated virus (in such a vaccination, as with the Salk polio virus).

Second, with a sufficient portion of the population immune, they act as firebreaks interfering with the transmission of the virus through the population. This is called "Herd Immunity" [1]. According to the linked article, for example, smallpox is effectively stopped with 83%-85% of the community vaccinated.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't see the problem here. Information, just like everything else, can be used as a weapon. Some information needs to be kept out of the hands of people who aren't responsible enough to use it. This is standard practice with other things.

The knee-jerk reactions against "censorship" in this case doesn't make sense. From what I've gathered from other articles about this research is that it basically lays out a procedure to take bird flu and turn it into a potential pandemic-causing virus. And we're not talking highly controlled lab experiments here, this is something that a rag-tag group could do in a regular building (again, from what I've inferred).

The potential downside to having this information freely available far outweighs the benefits. Any legitimate research group will surely be able to get their hands on the information.

</comment><comment><USER5> If terrorists have the ability to bioengineer and deliver viruses, then I'm thinking published research is the least of our worries. It would be like keeping information on how to increase the yield of a thermonuclear warhead from 5MT to 10MT secret: if that's a concern, we're already hooped.

<comment><USER6> I don't know if there's a name for it, but this is kind of like "security by obscurity". I'm not sure I would just make the assumption that there's no possible way a terrorist group can engineer a virus capable of killing half the world's population and call it good. For example, it's entirely possible that the terrorist organization could kidnap researchers and force them to do it.

<comment><USER5> If kidnapping researchers and forcing them to do it is an issue, why wouldn't they just kidnap the people who did this study?

We aren't talking about a bond villain, here. We're talking about largely uneducated Arab peasants who are perfectly capable of firing an RPG-7 or an AK-47, or strapping on an explosive vest and blowing themselves up, but little else. There's no evidence they're even making their own PETN, which is far easier than engineering a virus. In fact, instructions for the manufacture of PETN, and the constituent components thereof, are freely available.

The rush to ascribe fantastical abilities to terrorists has led to the introduction of some pretty draconian laws. Given that bathtubs kill more Americans than do terrorists, let's lay of the doomsdaying, shall we?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's start a war on information because war is peace and information is the cause for thoughtcrime.

Orwell's timing was wrong but close enough in my book.

<comment><USER8> To me, it's as if 1984 were the past few decades' events and attitudes condensed into a few weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What precisely stops a member of a legitimate research group also being a terrorist ?

Or a rogue government which probably has the ability to reproduce to the research relatively easily from doing so and providing the information to a terrorist group.

If someone wanted to commit an act of viral terrorism they would have done so by now, there are already plenty of dangerous viruses and hybrids in research labs all around the world, most of which have close to zero security.

I think the biggest thing that protects us again viral terrorism is that terrorists aren't crazy enough to use any kind of untargeted weapon.

Probably the most famous act of terrorism in british history - the gunpowder plot of 1605 was stopped because one of the conspirators tipped of a member of their family.

Terrorists don't want to do something that could well kill the supporters of their own cause or their families.

<comment><USER10> > _Terrorists don't want to do something that could well kill the supporters > of their own cause or their families._

That's right.

Insane people, OTOH, have no such restraints. That's what worries me more than any "terrorist" attack. I think we're paying too much attention to "terrorism", blinded as we are by the glare of media. But it's getting more and more easy for some doomsday cultist, sane enough to be able to perform basic engineering tasks, but insane enough to dream of a DIY Armageddon, to make those dreams (or, rather, nightmares) come true.

Even so, I'm still not sure whether withholding information is always good policy. Maybe it is - maybe a slight delay until defenses are built might be beneficial.

<comment><USER9> The odds of a crazy person unleashing a deadly virus upon the world are probably relatively low maybe 1 in a million.

The odds of a random mutation unleashing deadly virus upon the world are probably close to 1.

It's amazing how quickly people have forgotten about the 1918 flu epidemic. It killed around 75 million people and infected more than a quarter of the world's population.

We're going to have another virus epidemic of that proportion, it's a question of when rather than if. We should be building defences because of the risk of random mutations and not because of the risk of engineered viruses.

<comment><USER10> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I took a class in college on Bioterrorism. (Literally, the class was just named "Bioterrorism")

The U.S. used to be big into researching biological weapons until they found that it was far too easy and cheap to build them compared to other weapons of mass destruction (such as nuclear weapons).

Therefore they nearly stopped all biological weapon research merely because it would be too easy for poorer countries (or terrorists) to make those types of weapons.

That approach was very reasonable: It is in the United State's best interest if the only weapons of mass destruction are very expensive to make. I imagine at least some of the reasoning here is a carryover of this. So I highly doubt when they say:

> For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific > journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear > ...

That this is the first time. This is just probably a much more visible (and perhaps more ridiculous than usual) example.

</comment><comment><USER12> Even though the mutations required to get a h5n1 virus contagious between humans haven't been published, the process to generate them has been, and it is trivial to duplicate.

H5N1 in the hands of "bad" people is a matter of weeks or perhaps months (provided they have ferrets and the aviary strain of h5n1).

</comment><comment><USER13> Funding to biomedical research in the US has been essentially flat since 2001. First, it was a downturn in the economy. Then, it was largely driven by a president who questioned evolution and an administration that was outright hostile toward science. Then, it was a downturn in the economy and a rising national debt.

Refusing to increase funding to biomedical research is a side-long way to slowly kill scientific progress in America. This, on the other hand, is irrational fear leading directly to the stifling of science in America.

I think it's fairly clear now, if it wasn't before, that America has lost its lead in scientific progress. I wonder how most Americans will feel when they finally realize that some other country is more technically advanced? Will the added sense of "safety" have been worth it?

</comment><comment><USER14> The cynic in me is unconvinced that this is not a in part motivated by some portion of the US government wanting to keep its edge in regard to bioweaponry rather than a general concern about weaponization.

As others note, if they have the virus and the labs to weaponize it, they are probably a government.

</comment><comment><USER15> The idea that you'd need to keep this information from terrorists is laughable. They want you to picture highly trained and organized militia type groups who are actually competent enough to pull off any sort of attack.

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with terrorists. This is all about trying to keep this information under wraps so they can be the ones who make it a biological weapon that they can hold over the heads of any country who they perceive as threatening.

Terrorist organizations for the most part aren't half as fearsome as the US government want you to believe. Their more akin to street gangs than the organized, resourceful group they want you to imagine. And in the rare case that a terrorist group is capable of weaponizing the flu, some law enforcement agency will most likely have the jump on them before they can execute.

I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm just saying the chances are slim and, more importantly, their reason for pushing secrecy is most likely not the true reason.

<comment><USER16> > Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with terrorists.

Anytime some government agency does something for our own good or "for the kids", run for your lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Isn't this like the evening news not giving the recipe for meth away every night?

Nobody really complains about that.

</comment><comment><USER18> _"I wouldn't call this censorship," Dr. Alberts said. "This is trying to avoid inappropriate censorship."_

Wow. So he thinks that if they don't self-censor, the government will censor for them... And that that makes it not censorship?

Ouch.</comment>


The lack of proper "alter table" support in SQLite - <AUTHOR> http://dustycloud.org/blog/sqlite-alter-pain/ <comment><USER3> I am very familiar with SQLite internals. The answer is already in there. SQLite stores each row as each column value encoded sequentially corresponding to the declared order of the columns. Changing column order or deletions/inserts require a rewrite of every row. The one special case that is allowed is adding a column on the end of the schema providing it has a default value.

A SQLite provided ALTER TABLE implementation would do exactly what was stated - start a transaction, rename the existing table to a temporary name, create a new one with the desired schema, and copy data across mangling as appropriate before deleting the old table and finishing the transaction. For plain tables this is no big deal, but for more complicated ones there are a lot of issues such as foreign key references, constraints, indices. The majority of the code would be dealing with all these conditions and interactions.

It also wouldn't be any more efficient than code the developer writes - <USER2> there are no shortcuts available to the SQLite developers that aren't available to developers using SQLite. The net effect would be a larger library (they limit to a 250kb library size so something else would need to be chopped), some complex documentation and a heck of a lot of testing code. For something that is relatively rarely needed (see requests on the mailing lists).

The chance of something like this ending up in the SQLite core is extremely slim, so you could never depend on it being there anyway.

SQLite does have several things to help. There is a user_version pragma you can use to keep track of the schema version and use for upgrading. You can temporarily disable foreign key and constraint enforcing. There are numerous pragmas to get table metadata. The table definitions are stored as SQL strings in a sqlite master table, and a pragma allows you to make that writeable.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you. This kind of functionality is much better implemented in a third-party tool like sqlalchemy-migrate or alembic that OP mentions in the article.

I much rather a smaller sqlite library than one that is burdened with functionality you just don't use 99% of the time.

The benefit of making an "official" migration library for SQLite is probably outweighed by the opportunity cost of having it developed, tested and kept up- to-date.

<comment><USER5> > This kind of functionality is much better implemented in a third-party tool > like sqlalchemy-migrate or alembic that OP mentions in the article.

Yes because now every SQL migration library of every language has its own partial bug-ridden of a full alter table for sqlite. That does sound so much better than having a single implementation in sqlite itself (wait no, it does not even remotely).

<comment><USER6> But now every user of SQLite needs to deal with a library that's larger, and includes non-critical functionality that goes unused.

The whole point of using SQLite in the first place is to avoid such overhead, knowing full well that some non-essential functionality is being lost as part of this tradeoff.

I think it's far more important to keep SQLite small and nimble for the many users who are facing constraints beyond their control (imposed by limited hardware resources, for instance), rather than bloating it for the sake of a small number of users who are unwilling (or too lazy?) to write proper manual migration scripts now and then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ALTER is in itself an odd command, useful only in development, never in production, and bringin with it deep architectural implications and an endless list of problems in basically all SQL systems today.

In SQLite, an _embedded_ database, it is certainly out of place. Drop, rebuild, and move on with life.

<comment><USER8> "ALTER is in itself an odd command, useful only in development, never in production"

How would you then ever modify an existing database?

<comment><USER9> > How would you then ever modify an existing database?

You would use techniques like:

[https://github.com/soundcloud/large-hadron- migrator](https://github.com/soundcloud/large-hadron-migrator)

"""

That is until your tables grow to millions of records. At this point, the locking nature of ALTER TABLE may take your site down for an hour or more while critical tables are migrated. In order to avoid this, developers begin to design around the problem by introducing join tables or moving the data into another layer. Development gets less and less agile as tables grow and grow. To make the problem worse, adding or changing indices to optimize data access becomes just as difficult.

Side effects may include black holes and universe implosion. There are few things that can be done at the server or engine level. It is possible to change default values in an ALTER TABLE without locking the table. The InnoDB Plugin provides facilities for online index creation, which is great if you are using this engine, but only solves half the problem.

At SoundCloud we started having migration pains quite a while ago, and after looking around for third party solutions, we decided to create our own. We called it Large Hadron Migrator, and it is a gem for online ActiveRecord and DataMapper migrations.

The basic idea is to perform the migration online while the system is live, without locking the table. In contrast to OAK and the facebook tool, we only use a copy table and triggers.

Lhm requires a monotonically increasing numeric Primary Key on the table, due to how the Chunker works.

"""

<comment><USER10> .. or you use a real database engine that support schema changes in background transactions, like postgres.

Also, it is good to remember that not all production databases will grow large. Many stay small with a limited number of rows, but will still need to be updated as the product is updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > a successor called Alembic founded by the same core author as sqlalchemy- > migrate

Alembic is not founded by the same core author as sqlalchemy-migrate. Alembic is founded by Mike Bayer who is the core author of SQLAlchemy itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that correction. I updated the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's probably relevant to note that both Android and iOS ship with SQLite as the de-facto database storage engine, so there's very much a use case for having reliable in-place migrations in SQLite on modern software.

I could certainly see the value of having more robust ALTER TABLE support in SQLite itself, and I don't find the argument that such functionality will go unused very convincing. In real world scenarios almost everyone is going to have to migrate at some point, and the easier this is to accomplish, the better.

</comment><comment><USER13> > I'm pre-pledging $200.00 towards fixing the problem

Nice idea, but wouldn't he have to find about one hundred other pledgers to make this financially viable?

<comment><USER14> I believe that's the entire point of this blog post. I'm rather puzzled to see the negative attention it has received. Is this a huge pain point? No, but it is a constant niggling annoyance when using SQLite to power things like desktop apps. If not built in to the core, I believe that SQLite supports compile-time extensions, would someone more knowledgeable comment? I wonder if the OP would be satisfied with one of those? I personally would be fine building my own SQLite to get the functionality and it looks like the author would as well. In short, I'm kind of confused as to why everybody seems so down on this idea. If an extension could be developed to do this, and if this extension would meet the OP's needs, I'm not sure why we're all going on about how it would ruin the sanctity and tininess of core SQLite. I'll put my $200 pledge here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I'm also surprised to see people so upset about the idea of the feature mostly for the argument that it doesn't presently exist. As for the compile- time-extension, my main concern with that as a free software project is that we try to play nice with distro packaging and requiring users to compile their own sqlite would be setting them up for a bit of pain. But I suspect it doesn't matter: if the feature was coded with the aim of pushing it upstream, I'm suspecting there's a good chance upstream would accept it if of good quality.

Then again, I'm not upstream. :)

<comment><USER3> Code is unlikely to be accepted upstream because it very rarely is (assuming you mean by the SQLite team). They are very picky about code contributions and almost always implement themselves. One part is legal - there has to be _very_ clear lineage/authoring to the code, patent clearances etc.

The second part is that the actual code to implement any particular functionality or even a bug fix is relatively trivial. There is far more effort and far more lines of code for testing: [http://www.sqlite.org/testing.html](http://www.sqlite.org/testing.html) \- and implementing code to enable the rigourous testing usually results in a different structure.

The third part would be conflicting with the existing goals: [http://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html](http://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html)

OTOH if the intention isn't to be part of the core then upstream doesn't matter and the code can be distributed in any way you deem fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > but we also want people to be able to run smallish installations for > themselves or their friends and family as well

So, what's the problem in running PostgreSQL or MySQL in small installations? They really need small amount of space and memory to be installed and operated.

<comment><USER16> On a extremely big picture 50000 foot level, there's the windows model where you put everything into one piece of software and you run that one piece of software on one server (real or virtual). Its philosophically anti-windows to have more than one piece of software installed per OS. So you want a "something" and a database server, well now you need two installs / licenses / hardware / images / admins / whatever not just one. And in windows philosophy you never run user stuff on a server anyway so right there you may have issues with a "user" app and a "server" db system requiring two systems.

Its hardly all peaches and unicorns on the unix side either. Seriously, you're going to install 17 completely separate, different versions of "magic embedded mysql" or whatever, and have no way to do joins across DB servers or system wide DB backup system? Crazy talk. Why not have every programmer write their own homemade strcmp() complete with different buffer overflow bugs on each version... So the whole concept of a "private" database violates quite a few unix philosophy principles. Handling multiple versions of DBs across different distros is a puzzler for the devs rather than just including one version and calling it good.

The whole mess from the 100K standpoint is DBs and DB apps are too new, too much technical churn, too much incompatibility. For example, why are you installing a new DB and replacing all your API code if all you want is a different engine perhaps (or perhaps not) better suited to your workload? Its conceptually like switching your whole infrastructure to a new word processor in 1985.

<comment><USER15> No, you just install single software, and dependencies like mysql or postgresql are installed automatically as dependencies (just as other libraries).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> SQlite might be meant to be light, but surely they could implement rudimentary alter table support (perhaps through the create new and rename strategy mentioned here)? The alternative is that each client have to code their own version. I can understand if they say no to features which are rarely used, but if something would be used by the majority of the users, I cannot understand that they would say no for 'lightness' sake.

</comment><comment><USER18> SQLite is a replacement for fopen(), not a database.

</comment><comment><USER19> The H2 open source java database implements "alter table" exactly as per the description of sql alchemy: create a new table with the new structure, copy all the data across, delete the original table, rename the new table to the origina name.

This could perhaps be acceptable for sqlite.

</comment><comment><USER20> SQLLite is "lite"

If you want alter table support, use a SQL database that provides it. There are many.

</comment><comment><USER21> So he gets a free, lightweight, immensely practical tool. His answer: complaint.

<comment><USER6> If you're using a given piece of software, and you run into problems, it's perfectly acceptable to complain. In fact, it's one of the most helpful things you can do. Even if it doesn't help resolve the problem directly, it at least helps make the problem more widely known. This can be very useful information for people investigating the use of such software.

It doesn't matter how much, if any, you may have paid for the software. If it doesn't work in a particular case, let it be known.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I created a website called ServerMonitor What do you think about it? - <AUTHOR> https://monitor.inspiredprogrammer.com/ <comment><USER2> This needs a demo or a link to one in the first quarter of the page. The way it stands now it's just a description some solution of a very generic problem with no specifics. There's a TON of site/server monitoring services already. You have to be very quick to explain (or better yet - to show) what makes you different.</comment>


Conservative councillor says EU support should be treason - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37677973 <comment><AUTHOR> Please, somebody - stop the planet, I want to get off...</comment>


Elering and WePower partnership will bring energy tokenization - <AUTHOR> https://coinpedia.org/news/elering-wepower-partnership-energy-tokenization/ <comment><USER2> Blockchain is good for security, because a lot of people duplicate the ledger. But for the same reason, it wastes electricity. Trading energy credits hardly seems like it needs that kind of security, so using a blockchain for it seems to undercut its purpose.</comment>


New study estimates that 78% of Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic - <AUTHOR> https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1375 <comment><USER2> The discussion of this on the BMJ shows that this is poorly done (if it wasn't clear enough from some of the statements in the article). Best response was:

Yaneer Bar-Yam: [https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1375/rapid- responses](https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1375/rapid-responses)

""" Michael Day [1] claims there are 78% asymptomatic cases in China based on the daily report of China National Health Commission on COVID-19 cases. The report is based on an incorrect reading of Chinese reports [2], and both its scientific and other inferences are incorrect. Given the importance of these inferences, the article should be retracted immediately.

In particular, the article incorrectly assumes the report from China about 36 symptomatic and 130 asymptomatic are both from the same population. It also assumes that the asymptomatic cases are not pre-symptomatic, i.e. they may develop symptoms later, typically within a few days. Both these assumptions are incorrect and lead to an incorrect understanding and conclusions.

For clarity, we report below the details of the Chinese report for March 31 through April 2. The newly reported results by China require careful interpretation as we learn what each category represents.

For background, there are 3 distinct populations that the Chinese reports refer to, A: International arrivals, B: Quarantined close contacts, C: The general public. Understanding that there are more than one populations is essential to understanding the Chinese reports.

CHINESE REPORTS

March 31 (reported one day later on April 1, this is the report Day[1] cites): • 36 new symptomatic, 35 from A • 130 new asymptomatic from A, B, and C

Comment: If these were from the same population, then the percentage of asymptomatic would be 130/(130+36)=78%. However this is not the case, as most of the symptomatic individuals are from population A and most of the asymptomatic are from population B and C (see subsequent days).

April 1: • 35 new symptomatic, all from A • 55 new asymptomatic, 17 from A • 9 asymptomatic cases convert on April 1 to symptomatic, all from A • 226 cumulative asymptomatic from A

Comment: We see that within population A, there are 35 new symptomatic and 17 new asymptomatic for this day. However, the statement that there are conversions shows they may be pre-symptomatic rather than asymptomatic cases

April 2: • 31 new symptomatic, 29 from A • 60 new asymptomatic, 7 from A • 7 asymptomatic cases convert on April 2 to symptomatic, all from A • 221 cumulative asymptomatic from A Comment: As a result, within A, 29 are new symptomatic, 7 are new asymptomatic

Comment: To understand the number of cumulative asymptomatic cases from A on April 2 requires additional information from the Chinese report. The report states that 101 asymptomatic cases, 5 of which from A, are released from medical observation on the day of the report, after a 2-week quarantine and consecutive negative test results. On April 2, asymptomatic cases from A start at 226, there are added 7 new imported asymptomatic cases, subtracted 7 converted to symptomatic, and subtracted 5 released, leading to the 221 cumulative asymptomatic from A.

We note that the asymptomatic number from B and C is much larger than that from A (849:226 as of April 1), but the 16 conversions are all from A. This suggests that many of the current reported asymptomatic cases from international arrival are pre-symptomatic. The high ratio between asymptomatic cases from B and C compared to A makes sense due to the presence of long term asymptomatic cases, that continue to test positively, remaining as a residual from the large number of cases in China. """

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for posting this. Looks like we're going to have to wait for the serosurveys before there's anything more reliable.</comment></comment>


Show HN: PDFFiddler – Intelligent Automation for PDF Processing - <AUTHOR> https://playground.pdffiddler.com <comment><AUTHOR> We all know, how cumbersome can it be to do certain operations with PDF documents, such as data extraction/manipulation of content/form filling, etc.. And, this problem aggravates more in the organization, where a lot of documents come in for processing. It requires a lot of error-prone manual effort, to process those documents correctly and efficiently.

After a lot of thought processes, iterations and years of hard work, we developed a PDFFiddler platform, to solve the above problem. While designing, we mainly focus on three major principle.

-> Simple enough, to onboard any document quickly

-> Flexible to meet any business requirement

-> Cost-Effective for anyone to use

PDFFiddler platform is powered through Domain-driven custom scripting language. Those custom scripts can be quickly written through our intuitive editor with auto-complete capability.

PDFFiddler supports a lot of PDF operations such as

1) Merge, Sort, Group, Filter, Split, Attachment

2) Add/Edit/Delete/Extract content such as Text, Image, etc..

3) Add/Delete/Extract/Rotate Pages.

4) Redaction, Watermark

5) Add/Remove Digital Signature.

6) Add/Delete annotations such as text highlighting, underlining, etc..

7) Add any barcode such as Post

8) Security (Protect/Unprotect with encryption)

9) PDF Archiving

10) Advanced data extraction from tables, forms, etc..

11) Form Filling

and many more

To learn more about the PDFFiddler platform, Please visit [https://playground.pdffiddler.com](https://playground.pdffiddler.com).

We have dozens of predefined templates, to play with.

We will be launching soon PDFFiddler Enterprise to cater to organizational needs for document processing.

To get the latest updates and early bird offers, Please register with us, at [https://www.pdffiddler.com/](https://www.pdffiddler.com/)

If you do have any other business requirements, which you like to incorporate with us, we would love to hear about it. Please contact us at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting project,worked on itext and pdftron SDK but your scripting language much simpler nice work guys. best wishes :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for your kind words

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice and clean. Congrats on getting it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Getting users to use the product, overcoming obscurity - <AUTHOR> I'm the co-founder of venuevortex.com.
We're having a problem with users using the product, a lot of the visits are one-off visits from paid ads, content marketing etc...
How can we make the visits more "sticky" and make them come back and actually continuously use the product?
I've successfully on-boarded the supply side but the demand side I could use some advice on.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> The fact that users have to select a city as the first step is probably costing you 20-50% of your visitors.

You should be guessing what city they're in by IP. [https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-demo](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-demo)

<comment><USER3> In addition to that, is the paid advertising being geotargeted enough that it is only reaching people in those cities? If not, that would definitely explain a lot of the bounces from the advertising click-throughs. (Though in my experience, high bounce rates from search advertising can be common anyway.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'm targeting only folks in those cities. Since we've initially launched in Ontario. We're only targeting Ontarians at the moment. The issue is really with the demand side, is there a real use-case here? Perhaps a pivot may be necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not considering myself an expert, but the front page doesn't look interesting to me. Maybe in your case it would make more sense to learn from front pages, similar to Expedia/Kayak. At the very least, A/B test it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Small point: The site has too many exclamation points.</comment>


The ethical case for eating oysters and mussels - <AUTHOR> http://sentientist.org/2013/05/20/the-ethical-case-for-eating-oysters-and-mussels/ <comment><USER2> When people start to talk about "exploiting plants" my head explodes

</comment><comment><USER3> This guy just wants to eat some meat and trying so hard to rationalize himself (or herself). I wonder if he will eat lizard's tail after it gets cut off. Hey it grows back like an apple tree, and the tail itself is not sentient.

<comment><USER4> The lizard can feel pain when the tail is cut off, and even if it can be cut painlessly it probably prefers to have an intact tail. This is more like lab grown meat - something that's technically an animal but with no more awareness than a plant. If somebody is vegan only for ethical reasons then the article makes a good argument for them eating sessile bivalves.

<comment><USER3> Apple tree can "feel" pain when apple falls off too. I am not a vegan (pretty far from it) but I still can't bring myself to eat mussel or scallops because I feel bad and cruel for eating the whole thing. Yeah so that guy can say whatever and rationalize to himself that it's ethical, but they won't be "ethical" to many other people's eyes (including myself who eats meat). It's stupid to try to prove whether something is "ethical" or not in the first place. "Ethics" is a social contract and naturally subjective, it's like trying to "prove" that God exists--stupid.

<comment><USER4> Unlike mussels and oysters, scallops can swim, and scallops have simple eyes, so the same argument doesn't apply for scallops.

<comment><USER3> haha holy shit i had no idea. Anyway, i can't eat any of them, it just feels too cruel. I know i know it's weird coming from an otherwise meat eater, but that's exactly my point, it's totally fine to feel certain way but it's just a feeling and it's arrogant to think that it can be "proven" to be universal. It's like some french people who eat fois gras judging some asian people for eating dogs and vice versa. Personally I feel they're both cruel but I don't try to "prove" them, it's just my own feeling. Everyone has their own way of living depending on their culture. There's no problem with vegans eating oysters, the problem is when he thinks he can prove that it's ethical.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>