Big Integers in Zig - <AUTHOR> https://tiehuis.github.io/big-integers-in-zig <comment><USER2> Zig is really interesting, and the explicit allocators is a feature I miss in many other system languages (like Rust).

Presentation by the Zig author is a good introduction to the concept [https://youtu.be/Z4oYSByyRak](https://youtu.be/Z4oYSByyRak)

<comment><USER3> Custom allocators are coming in Rust: [https://github.com/rust- lang/rfcs/pull/1398](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/1398)

While I haven't had a need for this myself, I believe you can use that feature on nightly today.

<comment><USER2> Excellent, thanks for the direct link to RFC!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea I had good fun writing my own bignum library many years ago. I initially did it because I was writing a computer algebra system to do symbolic integration and didn't want to include (or maybe didn't know about) libraries like GMP.

On my first attempt I just couldn't figure out how to use the full word for each "big digit". So I ended up using the highest power of ten I could fit in a word as my big digit radix. It took me a while to free myself from decimal notation of numbers. I remember being absolutely blown away by the performance of GMP compared to my implementation.

I revisited it later and that time I could figure out how to use full words (the key I think is knowing how to check for overflows without having access to the overflow flag). I actually started to get closer to GMP performance for addition and subtraction. I then did the core routines in x86-64 assembly which got me so close I was just a constant time off. As this article mentions, though, you need to change the algorithms to get close for multiplication and division, though.

<comment><USER4> It certainly isn't out of reach to get a fairly close speed to GMP implementation-wise if you are willing to optimize the low-level loops in assembly. I think the simple cases are rather straight-forward to reach parity but once you start needing to optimize your algorithm thresholds, it requires much more testing to find the optimal values [1].

It is also easy to overlook how well optimized GMP is across a wide range of less common architectures and chips and I wouldn't be surprised if my particular implementation lost a bit of ground on other architectures like ARM (would be a good thing to test).

[1] [https://gmplib.org/devel/thres/](https://gmplib.org/devel/thres/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Karatsuba I'd not that hard to implement, and Toom-3 and then Schönhage- Strassen will also give a huge boost for huge bigints.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone interested in using a big integer library, but unwilling to subject themselves to GMP's viral licence, check out LibTomMath (no affiliation): [https://www.libtom.net/](https://www.libtom.net/)

<comment> cup-of-tea Copyright is viral and copyleft is the cure. But these are just religious issues these days and as such I couldn't convince you to think otherwise.

GMP is available under the LGPL.

<comment><USER7> > _GMP is available under the LGPL._

GMP is not a common system API like POSIX, so if you rely on it, you actually have to bundle GMP, or otherwise handle the dependency.

LGPL is fine for things like standard C and POSIX, because your program is not tied to that LGPL-ed implementation. The GPL itself recognizes "system library" as a special status. It is permissible for GNU programs to depend on proprietary libraries if they are system libraries. Under very similar reasoning, depending on LGPL-ed libraries is okay in an otherwise completely free program if those LGPL-ed libraries are system libraries.

LGPL limits you to dynamic linking, which is gross for this kind of thing. (Have you looked at a dynamic library function call lately?)

If you make a language depend on a LGPL library for numbers, that turns into GPL if you have to build a static image for an embedded system.

This is not a problem with malloc or printf which you just get from that system, rather than by carrying the GNU C Library into your program.

Legally you may be able to get away with adding a LGPLed library to a MIT or BSD program; in practice, licensing is not purely about "what can I legally get away with". What kind of hassles and restrictions will there be factors into it. Also philosophy factors into it: it's ideologically inappropriate for a liberally licensed (BSD, MIT) program to depend on special-purpose, non- system GNU libraries.

<comment><USER8> You can statically link a LGPL'd library without releasing the whole under the LGPL, but you need to provide a way for the user to modify the library and re- link it. See: [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#LGPLStaticVsDynami...](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#LGPLStaticVsDynamic)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Get SMS Notifications When Your Friends Send You Stellar - <AUTHOR> https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/08/stellar-cryptocurrency-sms-notifications.html

<comment><USER2> This is really neat. I'd love to be able to send and receive Stellar with SMS commands too, though I suppose that could remove some of the anonymity.</comment>


Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/02/why-bitcoin-matters/ <comment><USER2> Been a long time since I've read an article which says "Bitcoin first, blockchain next". Finally someone emphasises it.</comment>


Ask HN: Review Our Product - <AUTHOR>

We've just built a Time Tracking app that integrates with Xero (online small biz accounting) called MinuteDock.
http://minutedock.com
It was built nights+weekends, around "pay-the-bills" work and a never-ending stream of other projects ;)
Basically, we decided to build MinuteDock as an exclusive add-on for Xero (using their API - http://blog.xero.com/developer). They've been really good to us - offered a possible blog post and a spot in their newsletter.
Before we get sent out to ~12,000 Xero customers though, we'd really like to make sure we've got the product somewhat right. I usually enjoy the Review my Startup posts on HN, and this seemed like the perfect time to give it a go for myself.
US-based HNers: Do many people use Xero for their startup's accounts? Have you guys even heard of it? <comment><USER2> My thoughts -

1) I really like the landing page. It explains exactly what you guys do very quickly and it just looks great.

2) I'm a big fan of no-signup demos. I wanted to play with it, but not so much that I'd go through the proccess of signing up. I have no need for your service, but hey if it was zero-effort to play with it for a minute maybe I'd recommend it to someone that does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, we're trying to figure out some sort of demo. It's hard to jig up with the way Xero does OAuth (they only allow access tokens that last for 30 minutes. Twitter's access tokens last forever. They assure me they are working on it though!).

I guess we could do one that doesn't connect. We'll push it up the priority queue. Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://minutedock.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> FYI, the site loads with a rails error for me. Not sure if you guys are aware of this.

<comment><USER4> Same for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, we've just fixed this up - sorry about that :)

One of the problems with having too many things to focus on, I think :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Jq-in-the-browser -– jq compatible JSON processor in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://kantord.github.io/jq-in-the-browser/ <comment><USER2> jq is awesome, but i wish it'd know to ignore broken json and not just fail and exit.</comment>


An open question for dang ... - <AUTHOR>

It's great to see the moderators stepping up and being more explicit about their actions and motivations.  I welcome that.
One of the things that's clear is the call for more HN users to flag things that are inappropriate by some suitable standard, helping to increase the Signal:Noise ratio.  I welcome that too, although I observe that there will be differences in opinions as to what constitutes each of those categories.
But that's OK.  Here's my problem and question.
In the past I've not gone through these sorts of duplications and inappropriate (in my opinion) items and flag them all because I'm concerned that I'll lose my flagging rights.  It's April 1st (in some places) and there are lots of April Fool submissions.  If I flag them all, what's to say I won't then get marked as an excessive flagger? <comment><USER2> Bugger. I've been flagging the AF submissions because I can't (yet) downvote. Didn't realise this might be a bad thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can never down-vote submissions. Or at least, I've not yet hit the karma threshold where it's possible to down-vote submissions, so I suspect it's not possible.

And yes, it might be a bad thing, but we have no idea what the thresholds are, and that's why I've asked the question.

<comment><USER3> You can never, ever downvote submissions here on HN. Downvoting here is strictly for comments. Flagging can be applied to either submissions or comments, for reasons that should be apparent to the moderation team if a moderator looks at the flagged content.</comment></comment></comment>


Network programming with Go (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://jan.newmarch.name/go/ <comment><USER2> This book appeared very shortly after Go hit 1.0. It was an invaluable resource at the time. Now, maybe not so much, but thanks to Jan for putting in the work when it was dearly needed by the community.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, I was looking through the examples in the HTTP chapter and they're not very idiomatic Go code by today's standards. For HTTP at least, you're better off following the examples from the official Go documentation than following this book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't speak to the rest of the book, which seems like a pretty ambitious effort, but the crypto content needs to be burned out of it with a scorching torch.

<comment><USER5> What resources on security would you recommend for developers that are not specializing in security?

There are a lot of land mines of misinformation on the Internet today.

<comment><USER4> "Security" is a big topic. For cryptography, a good (but inadequate) starting point is _Cryptography Engineering_. If you write cryptography the way this book suggests you should, you will implement egregious vulnerabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is quite dated considering it says "v1.0, 27 April 2012".

It also is for Go version 1 which explains why some of the packages are no longer available.

<comment><USER7> Go is backwards-compatible since version 1. All standard library packages are still there. Only chapter 14 and 15 predate Go 1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We thought the book had some good parts. If you want to see more examples, Russ Whites' blog [http://ntwrk.guru/](http://ntwrk.guru/) actually dissects a network protocol stack written in go. He goes fairly deep as the protocols are open sourced and written in go. He mainly focuses on BGP in GO. Fun read. Very insightful.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is off-top a bit (sorry for that) but does anyone know a good auth framework that plugs into a martini, etc.

I basically am hoping for something written in go that works almost as seamlessly as django auth module (or ROR if you prefer ruby).

<comment><USER10> For martini specifically, there are a couple libs found under martini-contrib community [1], but nothing on the maturity level of django/rails. It's still fairly wild-west unless you're content using http basic auth.

[1] [https://github.com/martini-contrib/](https://github.com/martini-contrib/)

<comment><USER9> thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


So *that's* how Breitbart is still making money - <AUTHOR> https://branded.substack.com/p/so-thats-how-breitbart-is-still-making <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: They are committing ad fraud.

<comment><USER2> Unsurprising.</comment></comment>


The MakeGamesWithUs Online Academy - <AUTHOR> http://makegameswith.us/online-academy/ <comment><USER2> I definitely recommend this course! I've met the founders and have participated once in a flappy bird class. definitely a program considering if you want to have something to show recruiters when looking for jobs

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks absolutely amazing. And as was said, i am really looking forward to enrolling once swift will get added since i suck at learning new stuff.

<comment><USER4> Step 1 to learning new stuff: stop using self-defeating language. Step 2: Jump in and give it a try. There's no substitute for actually building something.

<comment><USER3> That is very true, i need to give it a go sometime. Thank you very much for the encouraging words!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like there is a market mechanism missing here. We shouldn't be handing out free spots just for free. It should be in the form of, "I'll pay for your free spot if you commit to X hours of programming in return." Perhaps we use Karma as a proxy for trustworthiness and commitment?

So here's the deal I will offer. I will sign up over the weekend, and will give the free offer to someone. If you have over 1000 Karma, list how many hours of programming you'll offer me on a silly TBD side project (don't offer anything ridiculous like 100) and I'll pay for at least one of you. (I'm between gigs, otherwise I'd offer this to a dozen folks) You just have to promise that you'll finish the class no matter what, and give me a couple hours.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like an awesome way to teach coding. I'd love it even more if there was a way to test run the first week, just to see what the style is like before dropping $100.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there any online game development course for desktop games ?. Or how to go about learning game development for desktop games like Warcraft, Doom etc.

<comment><USER8> I think you should be looking for courses targeting particular 3d game engines like Unreal, Unity etc. I found one for Unity which seems to be pretty popular. [http://walkerboystudio.com/html/unity_training___free__.html](http://walkerboystudio.com/html/unity_training___free__.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone has a friend spot available I would love to learn how to create games with this course.

email@example.com is my email. If everything works out I might even work with someone on a small project too, I'm an artist in my spare time and must admit my game programming skills aren't very good.

<comment><USER9> Oh, I should mention I've lurked HN for quite a few years, I just never had a reason to sign up until now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would seriously appreciate a friend spot if anyone has one that they aren't going to use. I would sign up for this in a heartbeat but I just had to blow my whole paycheck renewing my license and registration. Happy birthday indeed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Out of curiosity, are there plans to introduce Swift development?

I see that it's primarily an Objective-C oriented course, which in light of recent revelations from Apple, may not be nearly as worth it as it was before WWDC.

<comment><USER12> There absolutely are! Note that most companies will be hiring Objective-C devs for many more years since existing code bases are not going anywhere and it's still unclear how much adoption Swift will get amongst non-hobbyists.

<comment><USER11> True, true. Either way, good luck, I think what you guys are doing for tech education, especially for the age group that you're addressing, is really awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is anyone enrolling in this that has a friend spot they're not using? I'm interested, but not so much so that I'm able to justify spending $100 on it right now.

<comment><USER14> I'm giving a spot for $50 if you're interested

<comment><USER15> micmcg at gmail if you are still selling it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We need to set up a swap system that allows people to gift their friend place to other interested parties.

Do you accept BTC? paying in USD would he a pain for me.

</comment><comment><USER14> I signed up with a friend to split the costs in half but he didn't go through with it. Anyone interested in grabbing a spot for $50?

</comment><comment><USER17> As long as we're looking for free stuff, my email is in my profile, if someone is incline to unburden themselves of a friend spot.

</comment><comment><USER18> If anyone is willing to go 50/50 let me know! theadictspunk (a) gmail

</comment><comment><USER6> I'll take a guest spot if anyone's got one - rod4400 at yahoo

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there a list of games that the founders or past students have made?

<comment><USER20> Students from our in person course: www.mgw.us/games

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If anyone has a quest spot, I'd really appreciate it.

rafael at dataminded.net

</comment><comment><USER22> Is anyone enrolling in this that has a friend spot they're not using? I don't have $100 :(

<comment><USER23> yes, what's your email address?

<comment><USER24> can I have that friend spot? :) me(at)karlcoelho.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Only iPhone game development? Sorry, no interest... Why limit your potential students by offering only one platform?

<comment><USER26> Especially, why limit the development to mobile devices when you can create much more impressive games for desktops and the like ?

<comment><USER27> Why learn basic addition when you can learn calculus?

<comment><USER26> And that comparison would be valid for what? Are you suggesting Mobile games are more sophisticated ?

<comment><USER27> No, I was suggesting that it might be better to learn one thing before learning another.

<comment><USER26> Sure, but why would mobile should be learnt first, then? I'd just like to understand your train of thought.

<comment><USER28> How about "Because you like mobile games?"

Of course, if you prefer desktop games, learn to make those first. Either way, go with what you enjoy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the end goal of your life? - <AUTHOR> Where do you see yourself at +40 years of age? What about 50 years of age? +60?  And beyond that? <comment><USER2> Same as it ever was: 1\. Raise two children 2\. Plant a tree 3\. Build a house

Children are now teenagers, everything else is done. Almost ready to leave.</comment>


[benchmarks] MongoDB kicks MySQL's ass no matter the circumstances - <AUTHOR>

A recent post in HN claimed that MongoDB doesn't scale well, because the performance drops after the indexes are bigger than the available memory.
Scaling with MongoDB (or how Urban Airship abandoned it for PostgreSQL) - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2684423
I decided to put this claim to the test, so I set up an Arch Linux virtual machine with 128M RAM and wrote a quick and dirty benchmark test. The test is a simulation of a simple blog with N user accounts and M posts per account. It creates all accounts first, then it creates the same number of posts for each account. The posts are not created in a consecutive order, and they are indexed by their "account_id" field.
Once all accounts and posts are created, the script runs a query to find all post per account for all accounts.
So this script does two things: 1. Writes a lot of records. 2. Reads all records using an index.
You can download it from Github and use it to test in your own environment: https://github.com/naturalist/MongoDB-MySQL-compare
I used MongoDB v 1.8.2 and MySQL 5.5.13. My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite with Intel Core i5 @ 2.53GHz, and the virtual machine I set up was with 128M RAM, running Arch Linux.
Here are the results of my tests:

  MongoDB
  5000 accounts
  50 posts each
  using MongoDB's native _id

  Create: 317 secs | 185.94 CPU
  Read: 595 secs | 480.64 CPU

  ---

  MySQL
  5000 accounts
  50 posts each

  Create: 322 secs | 99.77 CPU
  Read: 740 secs | 487.50 CP

  ---

  MongoDB
  5000 accounts
  50 posts each
  using an auto incrementing int for _id
  Create: 252 secs | 112.31 CPU
  Read: 520 secs | 218.29 CPU
 So it looks like that MongoDB is significantly faster not only when writing but when reading too. The above test completely exhausted the VM's memory and kept using the swap partition.
Next, I decided to really push the limits of both and ran the MongoDB test with 10,000 accounts and 300 posts each. That's 3 million records. It created the records in 3643 secs using 1831.45 CPU, and read the records in ~8000 seconds using ~3000 CPU.
MySQL could not complete the above test. The MySQL server froze and I had to manually kill the process and restart the server.
Disclaimer: I do not work for 10gen, I don't even know them. I'm just a guy who's considering MongoDB for his next project. <comment><USER2> From the perspective of that topic IMHO it would be better to 1) use Postresql 2) use tests that are more complex than random gets/puts by key, i.e. a few consecutive updates that modify intersecting sets of indexes.</comment>


Devops for Everyone - Beanstalk's hosted deployments now can run SSH commands - <AUTHOR> http://blog.beanstalkapp.com/post/16350863487/deployments-redesigned-featuring-ssh-command

<comment><USER2> Congratulations on the new release.

However, if we're talking about Devops for Everyone, I consider myself pratically obligated to tell people about the Salt Stack[1], even though I have no association with the project, just because it is awesome.

It is, IMHO, Remote Execution Done Right. Also, it does not use ssh at all, and I believe it will be able to handle thousands of simultaneous machines in no time. To see what I'm talking about, just take a look at the FLOSS Weekly episode about Salt[2], where the main author himself admits this is his fourth iteration in trying to make a remote execution engine that does not suck.

[1] <http://saltstack.org/> [2] <http://twit.tv/show/floss-weekly/191>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey all - Alex here from the Widlbit team (the company behind Beanstalk). Happy to answer any questions you might have about our newest release.</comment>


Hundreds of practical ASP.NET Core samples to learn the fundamentals - <AUTHOR> https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HundredsOfPracticalASPNETCoreSamplesToLearnTheFundamentals.aspx <comment><USER2> I love these massive code dumps but its going to be hard to piece them all together.</comment>


PadMapper Maps Out Crime Levels of Cities - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5663251/padmapper-now-displays-heatmaps

<comment><USER2> I'm not too sure about the visualization they're using; I see red in the heatmap for San Francisco, but Austin and Englewood on my Chicago map are yellow/green --- nothing is red. There is no neighborhood in San Francisco that has, for instance, a recurrant problem with dog fighting, as these Chicago neighborhoods do.

I wonder if they're averaging something out over the city and diluting the scores that way.

<comment><USER3> Is dogfighting the kind of crime people are worried about though? I suppose it's an indicator that a neighborhood is home to undesirable residents, but I'd imagine most people are more worried about theft, vandalism, and violent crime.

It's not integrated with Craigslist but this site is pretty good at showing details: <http://www.crimemapping.com/map/ca/sanfrancisco>

Funny story, the first time I looked up my address on there I was horrified by the number of "public urination" citations - it was ridiculously high even by San Francisco standards. Then I remembered that Bay to Breakers had gone by my apartment 3 days previously.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I'm using it as a synecdoche for "intense gang violence".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be even more informative if the map could be adjusted for population density.

Compare two neighborhoods: Neighborhood A has a population of 100 and crime rate of 1 per month. Neighborhood B has a population of 10000 and crime rate of 1 per week.

Assuming the crimes are equal, in neighborhood B you are ~4% as likely to be a victim of a crime as you would in the smaller neighborhood A. But in the current map, neighborhood B would look like it has a bigger crime problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm... What I really need is foot traffic - Commercial areas have a huge amount of foot traffic but very low population density.

<comment><USER4> Foot traffic would be great for places like suburban malls or the weekends, but is less relevant for things like burglaries and car thefts (unless its burglaries at businesses). For city centers, worker population density would work just as well during the week, since workers are going to be the most likely to be in an area from 8am-6pm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know where you can get data to feed something like this? I've been wanting to do a visualization for my current city, but don't know where to go about getting the info and our police department is far from technical...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, as mentioned in the article, the data is from SpotCrime.</comment></comment>


What do you do when programming sucks? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.klimczyk.pl/2017/05/04/what-to-do-when-programming-sucks/ <comment><USER2> As others have said go do something else if that can happen then switch domains and work on something you consider fun either because you like the domain or the challenge.

Trying to push through with coding doesn't work.

Another trick would be to step out of the editor and hit the white board while on your feet. Programming isn't typing and if you are trying to figure out a problem at the keyboard theres a good chance you already failed (unless your learning the language). Get it on paper/chalk/whiteboard and reason about it, talk about it with someone or a rubber duck.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I'm feeling miserable about the code, I generally shift gears and work on a more straightforward area of my project. Ideally some class which is self- contained and easier to reason about. More often than not, an hour of that gets me back into "flow" and I can go back to what I was originally doing.

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the rules of Extreme Programming: _Quit when you 're tired._ Go home. Get at good night's sleep. Don't think about work, and don't feel guilty.

If you're in a place that forces you into insane hours for long stretches, start looking for an alternative. When you find a decent one, take it.

<comment><USER5> From either The Zen of Programming or The Tao of Programming (can't find my copies to narrow it down):

Eat when you are hungry.

Sleep when you are tired.

Program when the time is right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Take a break from it. Go for a walk. Ride my bike.

Walks in the woods are great for thinking and problem solving.</comment>


Brace yourself, I'm in an expansive mood (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://leancrew.com/all-this/2019/09/brace-yourself-im-in-an-expansive-mood/ <comment><USER2> I once saw and saved this snippet that prints 30 English words:

        echo {w,t,}h{e{n{,ce{,forth}},re{,in,fore,with{,al}}},ither,at}

</comment><comment><USER3> brace expansion is also useful for renaming/changing hierarchies:

      mv topo{lo,raph}ical.data
      mv proj/src/{main,test}/com/org/proj/Test.java

<comment><USER4> How can that work?

<comment><USER3> Actually, the first one does need the _g_ , should be

      mv topo{log,graph}ical.data

It works because it expands to

      mv topological.data topographical.data

try it with _echo_ instead of _mv_ to see how it expands. Other uses:

      mv myfile.txt{,.tmp}   # add extension
      mv mymusic.{mp3,mp4}   # change extension
      mv myarchive.{zip,jar}

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Outstanding title, both topical and unexpected.</comment>


Quantum Machine Appears to Defy Universe's Push for Disorder - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-scarring-appears-to-defy-universes-push-for-disorder-20190320/ <comment><USER2> And almost offtopic, in a scifi story, an advanced civilization found a way to extract energy from these systems billion of years ago (or use them just to store stuff, lot of it). Taking positive energy out of the system creates negative energy which is inflating the universe faster and faster. Most of them don't care because it will take billion of years for matter to be stirred into pieces. Some of them think it's not a good idea and should be controlled somehow but cheap energy is too tempting.

<comment><USER3> That's a pretty blunt metaphor for fossil fuels.

<comment><USER4> Did they have Global Schrodingering deniers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The more they study quantum phenomenon, the crazier the things they find. I suspect quantum computers will take longer than expected to make practical, but researchers will find interesting phenomenon along the journey that may eventually lead to other practical tools.

</comment><comment><USER5> Purely intuitively, the 'scarrig' seems to limit the state space for this 51-qubit quantum system.

So it is not clear why the authors believe this development will lead to better quantum computers.

<comment><USER6> The state space is constrained because the Rydberg blockade forces it to grow in a certain manner like the Fibonacci sequence. Lukin and Ho come up with a toy model that shows some features but it's not clear it captures all the physics. The authors make this statement because people want passive (not optimal control) ways of preserving quantum information that aren't (quantum) integrable. (I can go into detail on the definitions here if you want.)

NB: my department chair was Rick Heller's grad student and we've been discussing these preprints here just like everyone else

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe an example or related to time crystals?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal)

<comment><USER6> Time crystals generally require active driving of some sort. They have a periodic behavior the opposite of parametric oscillation. A key feature of most time crystals is their long 'prethermalizing' behavior which is to say that it behaves like it isn't thermalized for some very long but finite time. Whether these scars decay similarly especially within this constrained SU(2) space Lukin has cooked up is still out.

<comment><USER6> Here's a nice paper on prethermaliztion - [https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04776](https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04776)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is the Second Law dead?

<comment><USER9> There's a saying in physics that if your theory predicts the demise of General Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, you might have just earned a Nobel Prize, but if your theory violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, there's no hope: you better go check your work again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love how they are giving cows grazing grass as an analogy leading to the possible explanation of the quantum effects. Of course, as cows are lazy to climb hills, atoms are also lazy to climb the invisible hills so they roll back to the valley). It's proof that a farmer heard the "whoever solves this gets a nobel prize", and wanted to give it a go.

I 'll give it a go too. IT'S A RACING CONDITION!!!! See. In the latest patch, we switched universe rendering from QT to Electron, because we read a very compelling argument on twitter. As you know, certain CSS properties cause reflows, repaint, relayouts. Here, outside of time, WASM still didn't get the needed adoption, so in order to optimize universe rendering, we split it into different threads. However, these threads do not have shared memory, so what happens is you change state in thread A. In order to have you see a loading gif, we make the change locally to your system but it is not propagated everywhere yet, then the render loop runs again, and it overwrites the local change you made. You need to hit the particles with an attribute that will trigger a recalculate style call, not just a repaint, because repaint is overwriten and does not actually modify the element's width and height.

I will stop being throwaway when you need an address for the mr Nobel please! :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to stand at the last paragraph of the article above stating "There is some beautiful structure that somehow coexists with a totally random environment," Papić said. "What kind of physics allows this to happen? This is a kind of deep and profound question that runs through many areas of physics, and I think this is another incarnation."

This comes as a blow in the face for those who believe that the universe is the result of randomness or that intelligent design is a fairy tale.

My response to Mr Papic is that this is the kind of physics our Creator has built! The kind of physics causing another familiar entity, the DNA, to refuse to submit to entropy as well. It is another proof of the existence of God and He's greatest creation, the Soul!</comment>


Ask YC: Why should I care about Twitter? - <AUTHOR>

Are many of our news.YC users also Twitter users? What do you find that you like about Twitter? <comment><USER2> Twitter reflects the overrall california lifestyle and the shallowness of conections made in here. Comming from the east coast, I can tell there is a huge difference on friends I have in SF, and friends I have in Boston. I know more people, and have more "friends" in california, but for some reason they tend to be more of the "good times" types, while in Boston I had less friends, but more people I could rely on and stronger connections.

So, with twitter, you just broadcast something to a bunch of your "friends", while in the east coast you would just normally text few of your friends directly.

And, there is a good reason they call it "California RSVP". Some people call it shallow, some call it "laid-back", it depends on your point of view, but I have gotten used to it.

<comment><USER3> Hm, not exactly sure how a question about Twitter became an indictment against California / Californians. Lets stay on topic.

<comment><USER2> Honestly, it is not an indictment, just an observation. I actually like having many friends, getting invited to many things, but I also don't like when many people RSVP to things, and they just don't show up. I actually can directly quanitfy and compare this at soccer games. In boston about 80% of yes-es would actually show up at games. In SF about 60%.

I guess, you could also argue that in the east coast, people are less friendly, so you have fewer friends and people have to keep them closer and dearly, or that in SF there is a lot of stuff to do, and people can get easily ditracted.

BTW. I am european, so don't want to transform this in a west coast vs. east coast thing.

When it comes to twitter, I am not sure how much the general crowd would be interested in it. Taking example something like blogs: it has instant appeal in a lot of people, because basically it is an online diary.

A lot of people have diaries, and bringing them online was something natural.

But twitter? I am not sure it solves a need to the general masses, except for the hyperconnected ones.

<comment><USER4> > Taking example something like blogs: it has instant appeal in a lot of > people, because basically it is an online diary.

If you think back 8 or 10 years, a lot of people didn't understand blogs. They were dismissed as being the online diaries of a bunch of self-centered 20-somethings and teenagers. Who would want to read that What were they good for?

I think Twitter (microblogging) is in the same place blogs were, and where the web itself was in 1994 and 1995. We're still determining what can be used for and how it can be used. Already, the Twitter community has changed the rules. Twitter isn't what Obvious originally thought it would be two years ago. Keep in mind, Twitter began in March 2006.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, I've tried twitter for few weeks and ended up turning most of it off, because honestly, I don't give a damn that you're eating lunch at some new restaurant, or giving your dog a bath, or watching TV with your wife.

I find the service is basically a big giant intrusion into my life. 99% of the crap that pops up I just don't care about. 99% I put into the thing I can guarantee others don't care about either.

I think this social networking stuff has huge scaling problems outside of the navel gazing that happens both in the valley and during one's college years. Most people outside of these zones feel neither the need nor the desire to be _that_ connected to others.

This isn't a knock on twitter as a service, just a general observation. It's going to take a profound change in thinking to create a world that twitter and others can truly exploit. This could also just be this Gen X'er showing his age, so take my comment with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER4> But again, if You don't care what I am doing, that whatever possessed you to "follow" me? You only follow the people you WANT to follow. You only read what you WANT to read. You turn on SMS (or IM) notifications at YOUR preference. The only way Twitter can be a "big giant intrusion" into your life is if YOU turn that on!

It's like saying, 99% of the stuff on television is crap but failing to realize that you control the tv and you don't have to watch that stuff!

<comment><USER5> No, it's like saying 99% of the stuff on TV is crap, so I don't see the value in having a TV.

Like I said, we're talking personal preferences here, so don't get so emotional about it.

<comment><USER4> I think "it's a giant intrusion into my life" was getting emotional. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best description I've read of Twitter..

"ShoeMoney: Sure you follow people you care what they say and then are alerted when they say something. Its a great cross between a instant messenger and a blog."

</comment><comment><USER7> It just turns out Twitter focuses conversation in a different way than email, IM, blogs, status messages, etc. And if you are interested in that type of conversation, then you should care.

</comment><comment><USER8> I personally don't think you should. I myself find 'social networking' to be a large waste of time.

people like to play silly games, and change things like mood, or the music they are playing.

the social notice I want? was the phone call I got a 7am a few weeks ago a friend telling me her fiance and my former room-mate had died.

or how about a text saying, "wanna meet for lunch?"

I haven't used twitter, but the whole social thing seems a waste of time. I have better things to be doing, like building a business, or school, or finding a job to help me pay the bills in the mean time.

<comment><USER9> I've found Twitter to be a great aid to me w/ networking. For the most part, I add people I try to add people I meet at business networking events. I've gotten to know several people in the Seattle startup scene by going to real networking events and then continuing to follow up and build the relationships through Twitter.

Speaking of lunch, I've used it for that as well. Once your friends start using Twitter enough, it's easy to shoot them a message and ask if they want to grab lunch especially if they're in the same area.

<comment><USER8> see this is part of the problem with social networking.

'once your friends start using twitter enough'

it's proprietary and unstandardized, unlike email or phone numbers where it doesn't matter as much what network you are on, you can still make and receive messages. (I know cells are very proprietary, but you can still get calls right?).

<comment><USER10> > it's proprietary and unstandardized, unlike email or phone numbers where it > doesn't matter as much what network you are on, you can still make and > receive messages.

That's the thing that bugs me about Twitter.. It's essentially just another walled garden. But that aside, maybe the model is cool, and a good way to follow friends and acquaintances. So is anyone creating open/unwalled pub-sub software that anyone can use on any server for a similar purpose?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just don't get twitter. I saw some idiot who wrote an article using twitter. So of course each paragraph was 140 characters or less.

Just because you can use a tool to do something, doesn't mean you should.

IMHO, IM/IRC/email/blog all work far better for communication.

<comment><USER4> So, you saw one person use Twitter in a certain way, thought that way was silly, drew a generalization to the entire service, and you decided you knew everything abut it?

Someone uses the telephone to do telemarketing to try to sell you carpet and from that you understand what the telephone is "for"?

IM/IRC/email/blog are all different - from each other and from Twitter. As is the telephone. Or SMS. Or...

<comment><USER11> ok. To clarify... I've seen many many articles showing how you can use twitter to do X. When it just seems that there's already a far more suited way to do X.

I'm sure it's sort of useful for some things for some people, but I can't see it going mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Twitter has an extremely low barrier of entry and it's so off-the-cuff that it's a great place to non-blog without cluttering your blog with stuff that's less topically relevant or more random. I find that valuable, though I could live without.

It's not terribly "social" for me yet as only one friend also has an account. People have remarked before that if you live in the valley or work in certain types of companies or communities then you'll get more activity (and, potentially, more disturbance as well).

<comment><USER4> Make new friends. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Try taking a look at part II of this: [http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2008/05/twitter-imagined- ident...](http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2008/05/twitter-imagined-identity-and- flux.html)

(complements of HN a day or two ago)

Personally, I'm still not a user, but the conceptualization of Twitter as more than a simple messaging service significantly raises its value in my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER14> Twitter is well suited to certain kinds of lifestyles, and pretty much useless for others. I don't use it because none of my friends use it, and I find it more cumbersome and limiting than other services, but if you run with a crowd with which it's reached a critical mass it can be a useful tool for quick-hit communication.

<comment><USER4> Some of us find that, as we use Twitter, we make new friends.

Not all of my friends need to be people I see (physically) just as not all of the people, I see (physically) are my friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We're using twitter as a microblog for the latest info about priceadvance (<http://twitter.com/priceadvance>). The twitter widget is sitting on priceadvance.com. Easy way to keep users up to date without installing wp or something custom.

</comment><comment><USER4> Twitter is stories, vignettes, small slices of people lives.

Twitter is a 24-hour come-as-you-are blockparty. People come and go, talk and listen. Some of them already know each other, many of them don't.

Twitter is lifestreaming, 140 characters at a time.

Twitter is quick updates, questions, answers. Twitter is "I've got a 2-hour layover at SFO. Anyone want to grab coffee?"

Twitter is microblogging. Twitter is nanoblogging!

Twitter is writing practice. How much can you say in such a small space?

Twitter is a tool. Use it (or don't use it). As you use it more, you may come to see its value to you. If you don't, that's alright too.

</comment><comment><USER16> i've been using twitter for a while now. I mainly use it to quickly mine my friends for information, 'anyone know a good designer for cheap?', 'having problems invoking a ruby method from a cron job', 'in LA, need good tacos, and fast'.

</comment><comment><USER17> Twitter is micro-LiveJournal.

</comment><comment><USER18> I find myself explaining to people why they should care about Twitter quite often, so I recently wrote up a comprehensive blog post about it.

Twitter-Me This: <http://www.gee.ky/blog/2008/05/twitter-me-this.html>

My reasons include: Social Network, Keeping in Touch, Minutia Can Be Meaningful, Mobile Chatroom, Information On-The-Go, Privacy Shield, Accessibility, Forced Short-Form Communication, Pulse of the World, Proxy, and Brand-Monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER19> I personally don't. I like to listen to the 'This Week in Tech' podcast, and those guys are obsessed with Twitter. I groan loudly every time the conversation comes back to Twitter which is like every ten minutes or so. It has almost become unbearable. Between that and TechChrunch, I've entered backlash-mode on the service, and I have never even used it.

</comment><comment><USER20> its a non-intrusive way of sharing statuses.

<comment><AUTHOR> The status updates are sent to your phone/mobile device, though. Here you are, reading news.YC, and _buzz_... Stephanie doesn't like what she just had for lunch. That's not a little bit intrusive?

<comment><USER21> Ummm...Do you use twitter? That is wrong. If you want updates on your phone then you can turn them on. If you don't then it is trivially easy to turn off all phone updates or set it up so that you only get updates on your phone during certain hours. That doesn't sound intrusive to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The importance of Twitter is hugely overblown in the web/software geeks circles, and virtually no one outside has ever heard of it, and probably will never care.

Facebook encompasses Twitter's functionality too, but no one really uses the status updates like they do with Twitter.

<comment><USER23> The problem is Facebook's status updates are not accessible, for either reading or writing, outside of Facebook (at least it used to be true, I deleted my Facebook account a while back). This changes the way people use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At 1st Twitter seems so stupid, but time and users have shown otherwise! It's a substitute txt messenger, a way to instantly survey the crowd, a journal of your life and great for researchers, marketers/branders, as well for emergencies!

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that the question "What do you find that you like about Twitter?" is being answered here as "it's intrusive, you shouldn't use it." This isn't about "personal preferences". It's "Why __should__ I care about Twitter."

</comment><comment><USER25> Twitter frees Blogs from all unimportant and trivial stuff like "i arrived at SF", "i unpacked my new iPhone", "i'm back from vacation" etc. and thus separates personal stuff from the actual topics of a Blog.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's where the net's pulse is at the moment.

<sidenote>Who knows where the pulse will be in a few months time. Everything changes so quickly.</sidenote>

</comment><comment><USER27> Twitter is like sex - <http://michaelmartine.com/2008/04/11/twitter-is-like- sex/>

</comment><comment><USER28> You shouldn't care, but if you want to use it, use it. But, with most things, don't put it down until you try it.

</comment><comment><USER29> AIM Away Messages for Geeks.

<comment><USER30> That is EXACTLY what it is. It just pushes AIM away messages around. Just add song lyrics aimed at your ex-girlfriend and you have AOL circa 2002 in a "social network" of high school kids. The only reason I would want to use it is for mass texting, i.e. Want to meet for lunch? type messages. For that a better feature would be grouping on your cell phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> twitter: celebrating character restriction since 2006

<comment><USER32> sms: celebrating character restriction since 1992

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> it is like a simpler IM</comment>


Show HN: Syntactor – (JSON-)editor that prevents syntax errors - <AUTHOR> https://gregoor.github.io/syntactor/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I'm interested in turning this into a full code editor, probably starting with JS (since I already got JSON). But first I want to get some feedback on the principal idea, I hope this version already gets it across.

Anyway, a few more words on it: I very much believe that our current editors are too literal and too close to the actual texts. While there certainly already exist tools that treat the base programming language structures as primitives, instead of the literal symbols, few programmers use these (as they are mostly mouse/menu based). Even more advanced IDE's still fundamentally make you edit text, which must bring some cognitive overhead with it (even for pros). We, as programmers, should be more generous with ourselves here and allow us to introduce a layer of abstraction, which I believe will yield many advantages (yes, even speed).</comment>


Telecommunications company Avaya files for bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-avaya-bankruptcy-idUSKBN1532JY <comment><USER3> Not to take away from challenges of the legacy telecommunications industry right now, but this article slides in the private equity LBO part of Avaya's story at the very end - and then only hints at what happened here.

I hope the pensioners and benefits obligations get paid the money they are owed ASAP, because this is a classic story of private equity (Silver and TPG) financially engineering a cash-siphon from a dying dinosaur and then "phoning it in" when it came to the manage out/re-price of new risk.

I don't have a problem with mega private equity and I can see some kool-aid drinkers saying "any acquisition made in October 2007 (the technical peak of the pre-crisis market) was going to have a tough time working out as played". But this was a deal designed to fail from the start.

 _Basically the private equity stunt here was: find a company that has $100, take $99 of it, use the company 's last $1 to buy a lottery ticket, try to convince other investors that $1 ticket is a winner. They failed huge here._

<comment><USER4> "But this was a deal designed to fail from the start."

Can you elaborate on this further? I just made a comment earlier about how Avaya ended up in this situation and I have had a feeling, based on how the last few years have played out, that you might be right: I just dont understand how the owners could have run the company the way they did and make out with a profit.

<comment><USER3> What would you like to know? I read your comment and I think you pretty much get the gist of it, but if you have q's about how private equity (PE) works in this situation I'm happy to try to answer.

As for this deal. First it was 10+ years so feel free to call bullshit on my memory but it felt like amateur hours as if SL/TPG let their new MBA hires run it or people just screwed up when structuring the deal and unsurprisingly it's been a disaster ever since. Some examples of what I mean:

 _TL;DR buying a knowingly bad business, buying it at auction for a 28% premium, overloading it with clearly too much debt (even by risk-lovers standards), showing little commitment as owners to planning /doing the hands on operations work needed to fix/change/revive a mature obsolescing tech company, nor put in a management team that seemed serious about it either._

It appears SL/TPG saw the prospects for Avaya were weak and did the deal anyway[1]. In case you don't have access to WSJ, article talks about TPG viewing Avaya as a "buggy-whip business" at risk of being outmoded.

That's not so bad on its own. Obsolescing/dying "buggy-whip businesses" are just a reality of the business world. Such companies can still have value and potential. But what's odd is SL/TPG not only stayed in the deal but they bought in at a premium on auction. Meaning they had to fight against other buyers to win the deal and then they paid a premium of ~28% for it. OK guys...Auctions are a joke of a way to buy any business to begin with and such auction deals deserve the little to no respect they get in the PE industry.

(side note: This inevitable obsolescence in a business model is especially true in the tech space lately where the moment you launch a startup or introduce a new product the process of it becoming outdated has already started. All tech companies, big or bedroom, worry about keeping up with the next tech wave and there is no formula to avoid being a one-hit wonder. Of course some companies are able to hang on longer and stay big longer than others (ie "the by luck or by fuck clause" also known as the SV/DC two-step), but anyone who thinks the big FANGs of today will for sure be around in 10 years should read more tech industry history. Every tech business is dying just some faster than others).

As for the Avaya debt. LBO's need debt and debt is not necessarily bad when it comes to buying companies. The analogy for LBO debt is often that it's like buying a house. I guess in the Avaya case it's maybe like a house in Detroit. But if you have a $1MM and want to buy a house it may be better not to use the whole $1Million on the house. Put down $100k and take a $900k mortgage from a bank. Put your other $900k into other investments. At the end of it one should hopefully be better off vs. putting all your eggs in one basket. So while debt to buy companies can be a good idea in theory it doesn't always work out due to just chance and also because the investment industry has a small but news- worthy population of criminals and fucking idiots.

In the case of Avaya it was clear as day they used too much debt. Everyone could see it and there were journalists/articles where the high debt issue was brought up with Avaya management. I don't know if it was negligence or malice or what.

If things don't go well in an LBO and the company has to file for bankruptcy the bondholders lose. But that's not so bad, the bondholders should have known the risks of the investment going in and they were paid for that risk. Don't cry for them.

This reply has gotten long. I will add Kevin Kennedy has not done a good job as CEO...Avaya is spending money on soccer stadium names and has fake filed for IPO how many times then changed its mind? Also what really happened with Louis D'Ambrosio? He leaves suddenly due to medical reasons then went to be CEO of Sears a few years later. SL/TPG put Charles Giancarlo in as a replacement who lasted a year with them?

Lastly, Private Equity and LBOs have the potential to be good for companies and investors and employees. Businesses die and if someone sees a chance to make some money trying to revive it or wants to get paid to dismantle it, that's ok. But this should be done _primum non nocere_ from day 1. This includes accurately telling employees and future investors of the risks of doing the turnaround and it should not be done with outstanding liabilities owned to employee pension plans. Frankly, in my personal opinion Avaya has been run so poorly over the last few years, with risks that did not make sense, that a crime with lapse of fiduciary duty may have occurred.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/avaya-how-an-8-billion-tech- buyo...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/avaya-how-an-8-billion-tech-buyout-went- wrong-1482321602)

<comment><USER4> Great, thanks for your response. You sounds like someone who is on au fait with these kinds of deals so I'll ask you your opinion on who were the winners and losers here.

So, presumably TPG lose what ever the initially put in now that it has hit the wall. Does that mean that they will have lost money over the course of the investment or would they have found a way to slowly extract money from the quite reasonable revenue that Avaya was generating over the last 10 years? Their only regret being that they werent able to offload the company before it hit the wall. With the mortgage/LBO analogy: when the bank repossess the home it is theirs to manage. By what process does the venture guys give up ownership and wash their hands of the day to day operations?

Since this was a leveraged buyout presumably the big loser here would be who ever holds the bonds that were created to fund the buyout and whatever else debt the company holds. Is there anyway to know who they are and why they thought it was a good idea to put their money into this? Are likely to end up owners of this company after the bankruptcy is resolved?

I guess the employees will take a large hit here, layoffs all round and whatnot.

The leadership members that were put in to run the place: do they typically take any kind of a hit in scenarios like this? It seems common knowledge that KK was getting paid serious compensation for his time but it looks like the only downside for him is that he didnt get the big bonus for selling off the company. Can we expect a clearout at the top or is this up to the new owners who result from the chapter 11 process.

<comment><USER3> Honestly, I don't know enough details and the Chapter 11 process needs to play out still, so I think it's to soon to really say who were the winners and losers here. Also it depends how you want to define winners and losers. Well the lawyers are the winners for sure, but as for other parties it is tbd.

As for info on where TPG and your debt holders stand, along with other details on what the hell is going on, it should be mostly publicly available. SEC's Edgar is where I would start to look and a multi-page google search session should find other stray legal documents.

Here is your Edgar page: [https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&C...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001116521&owner=exclude&count=40&hidefilings=0)

Also here is a Bloomberg article from last year when the shit hit the fan while eating spicy food from a dirty foodtruck, the article has some names of who owned the debt and who represents them and what your bonds were trading at (even back then it was already 28 cents on the dollar, Oy)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-08/avaya- sai...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-08/avaya-said-to-meet- creditors-as-it-wrangles-6-billion-debt-load)

I don't know nor can I predict if there will be large layoffs. You work there, so hopefully you know.

It should not "seem like common knowledge" how much KK is getting paid, it should be common knowledge, this is publicly available information. Click on that Edgar link above, the info is in there. Look at the 10-K forms the company filed they disclose executive compensation.

Other questions like what will happen to leadership or how will ownership of the company change or what assets may need to be sold, this is all part of the Chapter 11 process.

Unfortunately, and despite popular opinion, _people on Wall St cannot predict the future_ ;). I don't know why CNBC and WSJ keep asking investors and economists what they think will happen, these shmuks have no fucking clue. So my apologies, but I just don't know how this will play out. But Chapter 11 is quite a public process so you can follow it as it happens.

If you are unfamiliar with how Chapter 11 works, the Planet Money radio show/podcast did a story on Ch.11 that was pretty good. Here it is: [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/05/437628996/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/05/437628996/episode-647-the- benefits-of-bankruptcy)

One more thing on the winners and losers. Sometimes a company can go down and there are no big winners or big losers. Not by how I would define a loser here. I am sure TPG and Avaya bondholders wished things had turned out better on this investment. But they made an active investment decision, in a risky company, as part of a diversified portfolio of multiple bets similar (well hopefully). The portfolio overall also hopefully isn't losing money even when one of the deals turns out to be a dud. Companies can go down even when giving a 100% honest effort to improve it. Look at VCs and startups, some/most startups in the VC's portfolio inevitably fail, are these companies and their VCs losers? If people are fully informed on the risk and rewards, and nothing was taken away, then the founders, employees and investors knew they were taking a risk when they signed up.

My main concern when I read news stories like this is if people were lied to, or misled or company directors & officers did not act in good faith while making decisions when running the company. Being dumb still not a crime on its own. But if a company's D&O put their employees pensions on the line while enriching themselves, or if management mislead employees and small investors about the health of the company/their efforts to fix the company's problems while really planning their own exit behind the scenes - that's fucking disgusting and it may be a crime (and if it was a crime send their asses to jail plus a lawsuit to clawback their BS gains).

I don't know how this will play out but if I worked there I would for sure be looking for another job asap as part of the uncertainty of who, what, where over the next few weeks in Ch.11. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been working at avaya for the last couple years and I have been scratching my head trying to understand how this company works and how it got into this situation. On one hand its a company thats hasn't made a profit in 10 years but on the other it takes in a billion every quarter. When you look at the numbers it turns out it is paying tens of millions to service the interest on its massive debt... it would be quite profitable if it was not for this. So where did the debt come from? Most of it seems to have come from the leveraged buyout it underwent 10 years back. So now they file for chapter 11 bankruptcy but who is getting burned here? Anyone who bought an avaya bond will lose out but what about the private equity company that owns the place? The way the company was allowed to grow its debt seems like they just didnt care as if it wasnt going to hurt them when bankruptcy finally beckons.

<comment><USER5> This is classic Wall Street private equity behavior. Use borrowed money to buy the company, loot the place, and flip it. It's pure parasitic behavior but not illegal.

I would advise anyone working at a company acquired by private equity to bail out ASAP. It is just a matter of time before you get screwed. Especially don't get left with a bunch of company stock.

I do wonder why creditors keep funding these PE deals and why anyone participates in their share offerings. You're asking to get taken.

<comment><USER4> Here is where I am struggling with... did the venture guys actually make money in this case or did they make such a balls of it that they actually lost significant amounts of their own money? Would they have 'Looted' the place by paying out bonus to themselves as employees, could they have done this to such an extent that over time it covered the initial capital they put in to take Avaya over?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Off-topic tale: This brings back the memory of my first serious security job, 14 years ago or so. I had to pen test a big corporate-like network from the inside so I was left with my laptop in a cubicle and the mission to own something. I was young, inexperienced and a bit scared by the size of the network. After some minutes I had a general map of the network, there were some separated LANs and in the middle of them all it was this Avaya Cajun managed thing. I ran some google queries and the second or third result showed up a CVE, the Avaya firmware had a hidden admin account. Total time used, 10-15 mins.

I did not have to go any further, owning the Avaya was game over and got some pats on the back from my employer and the clients. I had prepared a quite extensive plan of action, been my first gig I had to show. The laptop was loaded of tools, even some "cool" exploits but at the end it all came down to a few nmap scans and a google query. I felt dissapointed. Also, after the pen test I spent some (very) boring weeks documenting, inventorying, and documenting again. It made me reconsider how deep I wanted to dive into security audits.

</comment><comment><USER7> A friend of mine closed his company in 2013 and had a full avaya system with 40 phones and latest software that he could not even give away. Eventually some kids from a local hackerspace came and hauled away the whole lot. They were after the headsets and lcds.

<comment><USER8> I think this is pretty standard in the pbx business. The manufacturers don't give out the complete documentation for the system, so it is useless without paying money to your local dealer. Your local dealer doesn't want to help you with a used system, he'd prefer to sell you a brand new one. Source: I work for a dealer.

<comment><USER9> I worked for a dealer. The configuration utility for Cisco PBXes (piece of crap, by the way) can only be downloaded by certified Cisco partners. Or BitTorrent.

<comment><USER10> Hell, even the firmware + config can only be downloaded that way. This means if you got used phones that were configured for the proprietary SCCP, you wouldn't be able to reconfigure them as SIP phones without paying the big bucks. Yes, I know about Asterisk's chan_sccp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They really went too hard with the whole proprietary software thing (but who am I kidding, telecom _loves_ proprietary). Even though I know _very little_ about Avaya, my assumption every time I have tried to look them up is that they are locked down and difficult to integrate with.

If I'm wrong, they sure as hell spent a lot of time leading me to believe I'm right.

<comment><USER12> Not at all surprised.

"my assumption every time I have tried to look them up is that they are locked down and difficult to integrate with."

Yep exactly this. We are working on a project where we have to integrate with Avaya. It is a nightmare and ancient technology. Why would a company spend tons of $ when you have just as good software in open source world (free switch)

<comment><USER13> Ass coverage for the execs...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A bit off-topic, but a call-out to those tech consultants who often work remotely (using VOIP to interface with POTS):

At the previous tech company I worked at, we used Avaya VOIP phones (5000+ employees). The phones could be used at home (with a remote access point - <USER2> - plugged into your router). One thing that always impressed me was just how clear, crisp, and low-latency the audio was for VOIP. I'd pick up the handset and the dial-tone was immediately there; while on conference calls, I could easily interject comments (whereas with Skype, there is always an annoying delay). While working at this company, I would literally bring this big ol' corporate deskphone with my while traveling (e.g. south america, London, etc), and it was great having a perfect call connection anywhere there is decent internet.

My question is - for those folks who work remotely 100% (or often): Have you found a VOIP phone solution that really works well for you? I bough an Ooma handset, and I'm sorry to say that the audio is still clouded, muffled, and has latency. Plus, the handset (the home/residential one) just feels... flaky. Without having much experience with other VOIP phone systems, I'm really looking for a solid corporate desk phone (handset, but also very clear remote headset) - it's got to be as good as an in-office phone, interface with POTS, and also be portable for travel. I do a lot of consulting, and am on phone calls sometimes 4-5+ hours a day, so it'd be great to have a comfortable powerful solution that can handle this.

Would love to hear anyone's thoughts and experience on this. My Ooma purchase was an bit of a costly experiment...

<comment><USER15> I'm surprised how much, as consumers, people will put up with in terms of bad audio. I think cell phones really helped lower the bar when the connections were bad but the mobility was unrivaled. I used to hate calling someone's cell phone because the land-line was generally crystal clear and responsive.

Granted, things have improved a lot over the last 10 years, both in cell phones and internet calling. However, video conferencing still seems pretty obsessed with figuring out a way to get high definition video and both audio quality (from the connection and the equipment) and latency haven't improved significantly for major video conferencing solutions.

<comment><USER16> Mobile audio is awful because we are oversubscribed. My first mobile was a CDMA PCS phone. My first call on it was for a date. My date assumed I was calling from home on a land line. I was at her front door. The audio was so clean it was indistinguishable from a landline.

Later on, as CDMA phones grew in popularity, the multiplexing grew and the bandwidth shrank. Also codecs got more efficient by flattening the audio. All the atmosphere is stripped from the audio and voice calls got very sterile.

<comment><USER17> That's the beauty of FaceTime Audio. Awesome quality, as long as you aren't driving. Unfortunately, only ,y wife and I seem to use it!

<comment><USER16> I use FT Audio and whatsapp as well. FT calls are answerable right away while Whatsapp calls have a whole process: swipe, unlock, find app, open app. By the time I get in my Whatsapp caller has given up. 10 seconds later they'll make a normal cellphone call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They took a huge loan, bought the company and funneled its "profits" to the loan and now it's bankrupt? How is that legal?

<comment><USER19> That is the basis of the private equity industry. Sometimes there's more cashflow than they expected so the firm doesn't go belly-up before they can peddle it, but that's not because PE dudes are any good at running a business. It's just as common to get less cashflow than they expected, and have the whole thing collapse without paying them.

In a previous life I got a close-up view of Carlyle attempting this with a former Verizon business, only to discover that Verizon can put short pants on crooked business execs. That office tower was stacked to the ceilings with deadwood. Equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

<comment><USER20> "... only to discover that Verizon can put short pants on crooked business execs"

This phrase interests me - what does it mean? Like they can dress them down, or make them look foolish?

<comment><USER19> It means that compared to Verizon crooked execs, Carlyle crooked execs were like children, who were new to the game of being crooked executives. (Traditionally it was children who wore short pants.)

<comment><USER20> Wow ok, thanks :) I hadn't considered that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So does this mean our company will stop forcing this Avaya plugin into all the browsers? Just hopeful thinking. It has caused many hours of troubleshooting as it injects it's code into every page.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't understand till today how they (and others) are capably to sell PBX hardware when there are free and low cost software alternatives which runs on common x86 hardware.

FreePBX for Linux ([https://www.freepbx.org/](https://www.freepbx.org/)) or MizuSwitch for Windows ([https://www.mizu- voip.com/Software/VoIPServer/FreeSoftswitch...](https://www.mizu- voip.com/Software/VoIPServer/FreeSoftswitch.aspx)) are very good free alternatives which can be managed also by non-technical people with zero telecom experience. And there are a good support and a lot of modules for both which can be purchased on low cost, not comparable to Avaya pricing.

<comment><USER23> They have a pretty good name in contact centre technology.

I think the bigger shift is that people don't need desk phones anymore. The move to mobile is killing the need for fancy PBX gear in business.

<comment><USER24> I don't think many businesses are quite ready for this, but a CTO can dream...

<comment><USER25> Some are. The problem is that what is WebRTC depends on Google's whims of the day - so your browsers update and all of a sudden your agents can't work anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This has been coming for a long time. First, AT&T spun off their less profitable stuff into Lucent, and then Lucent spun off their dog investments into Avaya. It's all part of the plan.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get hired in the U.S. after graduation, coming from Europe? - <AUTHOR> I'm a Software Engineering student living in Italy, I'd really like to work in a SV startup/company after graduation, what's the best way to get hired?<p>Edit: I'm an Italian citizen. <comment><USER2> I am not an expert on this subject, but the answer depends on the country or countries where you hold citizenship. If you are a US citizen, it's almost certainly less hard to get jobs when you can physically interview, so moving to Silicon Valley or San Francisco is something to consider. If you are not a US citizen, try asking some people in the USA with the same nationality as yourself how they got in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm an Italian citizen.</comment></comment>


A Python 3 implementation for client-side web programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.brython.info/ <comment><USER2> I can't believe all the negative comments here. Someone has implemented Python in JavaScript. I personally think that is incredible.

<comment><USER3> I think it's the hubris that's putting people off:

> Brython is designed to replace Javascript as the scripting language for the > Web

<comment><USER4> That's a silly complaint. Doesn't every language designer feel that their product is better than the thing it desires to replace?

<comment><USER5> A better question: Is python really any _better_ than JavaScript? Sure, it has advantages here and there. But there are things I like about JavaScript that are better than python. For example, having anonymous functions that are more than a single expression inside a lambda.

Yes, I know you can declare a function inside another and you get a closure. But, JavaScript's syntax is just nicer.

<comment><USER6> Obligatory <https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat>

<comment><USER7> Wow. I had never seen that. There are literally tears streaming down my face I was laughing so hard.

<comment><USER8> I enjoyed it more this time than I did when I last saw it, perhaps because I was more familiar with the showcased peculiarities last time (the theme is garbage in, garbage out).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For the curious, here's _eight_ other fun implementations of "Python in JavaScript" to explore:

[https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of- lang...](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-languages- that-compile-to-JS#python)

<comment><USER10> One not mentioned in that list is Empythoned, which is the actual CPython engine compiled to JS using Emscripten.

Repo: <https://github.com/replit/empythoned>

Live demo: <http://repl.it/languages/Python>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The way they position Brython is pretty off-putting and kind of confuses the issue.

CoffeeScript page: "CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript."

Brython page: "Brython is designed to replace Javascript as the scripting language for the Web."

Maybe that's the end goal, but the reality is far from it. Of course JS is still required, and of course the Python gets compiled into JS.

Finally, the approach seems a bit off. I would think it would be better for the Python to be compiled with a pre-processor, not done on the client.

<comment><USER12> The approach and the phrasing seems exactly right to me and not at all off- putting.

The goal of Brython is to replace javascript on the web, seems straightforward right? The way they go about it is to implement a compiler in javascript, and use that to bootstrap a python in the browser community. Seems like that is much easier than convincing Chrome/Firefox/IE to include a python compiler in their browser.

How would Brython replace javascript if it were precompiled on the server?

<comment><USER13> Why not provide both options, ala LESS?

<comment><USER14> Because that takes time and effort and this is relatively new.

<comment><USER13> tinco seemed to be arguing that allowing server-side compilation would be harmful to the goals of the project. That's orthogonal to your argument about time and effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Skulpt, PyJS and this, all good and fun experiment but all do the first 60% then they linger around. I wish they all started talking to each other and just got one single project to 90%.

Have any of these been used in production with any success. It seems like PyJS had most traction?

</comment><comment><USER16> IMHO, This comment page is an interesting example to how unreasonably emotional programmers can be about their technology.

It looks as though, some developers are almost insulted by the idea, that someone tried to replace a language that is so commonly accepted, and that they have worked so hard to master.

This also happens in many other fields of science/technology, but I'm always surprised to see it among programmers who are considered very practical people.

<comment><USER17> If Chrome, Firefox and maybe even IE came out with support for python as a client side scripting language, the very same people here on this comment thread would happily jump on it and try to use it. The point is not about replacing one with another, but HOW it is done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's too bad it didn't replace it on this page. Without JavaScript, this page is blank.

<comment><USER19> It's not the first time I had to turn on JavaScript to view a page. On the other hand, it is the first time that I have ever done so and discovered a totally logical reason for having to do so.

I got something of value by tweeking NoScript - knowledge, not just ads. Then again, I'm a yokel.

<comment><USER20> I tried it and didn't get much value out of it: What appeared was mostly just JavaScript that should have been there all along, had the page not been broken. That animated clock? Yeah, well, I can do without it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love python and this is awesome. But I _HATE_ magic global objects. 'ctx' seems to be at the heart of everything but is never explicitly passed into the scope or imported.

This should really be fixed.

Also "from html import *"? No no no. Never, not even once.

<comment><USER22> The ctx global and 'from html import *' are just part of the demo code. Look at line 289 of the HTML file where ctx is initialized. It's not some magic thing baked into Brython, it's just sample code. Of course you could write either of these in any way you prefer.

<comment><USER23> A demo of a new way to use a programming language shouldn't be full of these "Oh, that crap is just for the demo, it would look better in practice." It's a programming language demo, show us something that makes us want to use it.

<comment><USER22> I agree completely: sample/demo code should be the best you can make it. And I'm sure the Brython authors would welcome a pull request that improves their demo code.

But the comment I replied to was a bit misleading (no doubt unintentionally): it made two quite valid complaints about coding practices, without mentioning that these are only in the demo code.

When I read that comment I thought, "WTF? Brython injects a magic 'ctx' global into your Python code?" It doesn't, so I thought it was worth pointing out that these are just sample code issues that wouldn't affect any code _you_ write in Brython.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I do like the idea, but it inevitably suffers from the same flaw that afflicts all other compile-to-js libraries: making sense of errors will still require knowledge of how the underlying javascript works.

Perhaps a development plugin for Chrome would allow debugging in python?

<comment><USER25> Source maps should resolve this issue

<comment><USER24> Good point! I ashamed to say I hadn't thought much about how source maps will pave the way for anything-to-javascript web programming... very cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Previous discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5133047>

<comment><USER27> Also, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4923530>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> While I would like to see Python in the browser, this isn't it. I would still prefer coffeescript or dart over brython. Both languages aren't that hard to learn, and brython is lacking many features which would make Python more pleasant to deal with...

However, because of performance reasons, the very features that make python unique, especially the type system, are more javascript-like than python-like.

What I would like to see is a Python-implementation which is mostly feature complete, along the lines of emscripten, but still has direct access to the dom or other javascript objects.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's a really nice demo, and I really like the idea so far (although precompiling to JS would be awesome), but I really don't see Python taking over Javascript as the scripting language.

It's way nicer in my opinion, but I think its fussy white space is likely to be an issue for this use case. All the large Javascript libraries get minified etc, and Python really isn't open to that sort of stuff. It's a great language to use normally, but I don't see it replacing Javascript. I'd much rather write in Python and compile to Javascript though.

</comment><comment><USER30> Link to console demo from that page is broken, sadly.

edit: looks like if you remove "_en" then you get to the right place, <http://www.brython.info/tests/console.html>

Looks like pyjs, in that it has python syntax but JavaScript semantics, for example numbers turn into doubles here (but should be arbitrary-precision ints in Python).

<comment><USER31> Well, python 2.7:

        >>> a = 1/3
        >>> type(a)
        int

python 3.2

        >>> a = 1/3
        >>> type(a)
        <class 'float'>

brython:

        print(type(1/3))
        <class 'float'>

<comment><USER30> Correct, that's a python 2/3 difference. But both 2 and 2 have arbitrary precision integers AFAIK, try this code

        x = 1
        for i in range(100):
            x = x*2
            print(i, x)

<comment><USER31> Indeed. Just to verify that it's not just a difference in (string)representation, something like:

        print(9**32-(9**32-5))

Also works (brython returns 0, python2&3 return 5)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love this. I wish someone would do this for Ruby.

Not CoffeeScript - I want to be able to write Ruby that manipulates DOM objects.

<comment><USER9> Here's _eight_ options for you. Enjoy: [https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/wiki/List-of-lang...](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/wiki/List-of-languages-that-compile-to-JS#ruby)

<comment><USER33> Last time i checked it, it contained links to old/dead projects, which seems still the case. Anyway AFAIK there is no such a similar thing to Brython for ruby, and by that I mean a ruby implementation specifically written in JS and optimized to deal with DOM and browser environment in general (if anybody knows about something like that or is working on it please inform me). It'd be such a great thing to have!

<comment><USER34> opal is very much still alive: <http://opalrb.org>

Most of the work in the recent weeks has been improving the ruby <=> js bridge so that calling js methods/functions from ruby is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> As such, it is theoretically possible to support any scripting language on client side environment. I hope browsers will start shipping with multiple scripting engines in the future. JavaScript is not the best scripting language out there.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but how come opalrb hasn't gotten this much attention on HN (although it is a bit different from this)?

There seems to be this _gah a fucking ruby developer/thing, again_ motif going on around HN (was hurtful at first) that makes it harder to discover cool and new ruby things!

P.S: although Python is nit my goto language, I still find this brilliant!

<comment><USER12> Opalrb has been on the HN frontpage. Why is there always someone whining about their perception of HN user sentiments lately? There's even a post whining about the user sentiments in the comments of _this_ post on the frontpage now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interesting, but it is little more than a novelty.

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't get the point why should I use Python to run Javascript.

JS has been in use around the web for a long time now and I don't see the need why should I go about using Python for the very same? Doesn't one language has a purpose of it's own?

If it wasn't the case, then people would have worked on creating a unified language for all our needs.

<comment><USER39> Nobody says you should, it's purely a personal preference :)

 _Doesn't one language has a purpose of it's own?_

Usually no, most domains are served by more than one language, otherwise we would all be using Perl to write server-side web applications.

While it's debatable whether JavaScript is particularly well suited for client-side web code, the fact is that having only one language of choice is mostly an historical accident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why the hate on JavaScript? I know it's not the most elegant language in the world, but do we really need this? Instead of a program "x" run in "y", how about we just expand our horizons a bit and learn another language with different paradigms?

Python is great for some stuff, but let JS do what it does.

<comment><USER41> I don't hate javascript, and there are good arguments to learn new languages. Absolutely. But it's a bit of a my-way-or-the-highway with client-side web.

I wish I could have a _choice_ of the language to run in the browser, and still do all the things javascript can. Having some kind of a bytecode virtual machine on the browser, that many different languages can compile to, might be the best solution.

an interesting rant from Zed Shaw on this <http://vimeo.com/43380467>

<comment><USER40> The issue with web (although this could be expanded to apply to _most_ languages) is where it's used/interpreted. Browsers aren't a quickly changing environment (haha, IE 6). It takes a few years to adopt the latest and greatest. Shit, it took nearly a decade for us to see native curved corners (border-radius).

Again, not that I don't agree, it's just hard to stay _up to date_ with the greatest while still trying to support outdated tech like html tables.

The W3C is the 'authority', but is really at the hands of the major browser manufacturers. Implementing an interpreted version of Python sounds great, but is it worth the time and effort? Will it increase my productivity or compliance compared to JavaScript? As of now, nope.

I'm happy writing bastardized JS (not that my code is bastardized, rather that's just the language [took way too long to understand == vs ===]) for the web right now. Every day new tools and frameworks are developed to make it easier, and I just don't see the advantage and overhead just to write a weird version of python that compiles into JS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most disappointing part of most -> js languages is that they adopt the async nature of JavaScript, thus making them pretty dissimilar from their native environments. Is it that difficult to rewrite a sync workflow to an async one by the interpreter?

<comment><USER42> You mean async to sync workflow, this is possible with generators [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/New_...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/New_in_JavaScript/1.7) it similar to what is done in gevent. BUT, such sync code for async is just style, the code is still async you just write it like it sync code. In this sens it can be understood as a feature of the language but generators are meant for more than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you want to X to replace Y, shouldn't first order of business be letting me know why?

</comment><comment><USER44> Very impressive work!

Issues with the examples:

I got nobody walking on the 3d walker (Chrome on Ubuntu); also it was psychedelic fun clicking into negative territory on the pie chart.

<comment><USER45> I also enjoyed the negative territory over there : )

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Is it possible to minify and obfuscate python code?

<comment><USER47> Python 'compiles' to .pyc files, but I'm not show how much that compresses them, or if it's possible to reconstruct the source from it.

<comment> mh- .pyc files are _very_ reversible.

there are open source projects that decompile them to runnable code, the original symbol names are even intact - this means you don't lose the original naming of variables, functions, arguments, etc.

<comment><USER48> Doesn't stop you from obfuscating Python separately just like any other language, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Being a front-end developer myself, I find such an idea a complete waste for people like me. We have put in a lot our time understanding how JS functions and most of the interactive interfaces you come across use jQuery. If Brython were to become a standard, then would you be writing a new JS library that would allow me work with DOM faster and in a better fashion?

</comment><comment><USER49> Why not both?

</comment><comment><USER50> What is even the need? And it needs JS to work. Not so convincing demo!

<comment><USER51> You do realize that it's a python interpreter written in Javascript?

No, browsers cannot magically run python now.</comment></comment>


Reddit Reached a half million dollars in donations for Donorschoose - <AUTHOR> http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/viewChallenge.html?id=39361&max=12

<comment><AUTHOR> Some stats from reddit comments thread:

\- 500k reached in 46 days! \- Over 130k raised in the first 24 hours \- Over $200k raised in the first 48 hours \- Average donation size - $48.98 \- Previous donation record from a group - $400,320 \- An average of $10,420.87 raised per day.</comment>


Show HN: Unbox - Stunning Infographics for your Inbox (weekend project) - <AUTHOR> http://unboxapp.com/

<comment><USER2> First impression - A great fun concept coupled with a great landing page. I would use the app, it will give a high level view of my emailing habits.

</comment><comment><USER2> I am not able to access the link. Is there a problem?

<comment><USER3> <http://unboxapp.com>

<comment><USER3> try that, works for me.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I am able to access it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't wait for it to work.</comment>


Ussian Drone with Thermite Grenade Blows Up a Billion Dollars of Ukrainian Ammo - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a27511/russia-drone-thermite-grenade-ukraine-ammo/ <comment><USER2> Title should be "Russian", not "Ussian", which I assumed was some local people in rebellion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, typo by me. good spot</comment></comment>


Web 2.0 scientific calculator - <AUTHOR> http://web2.0calc.com/widgets/horizontal/ <comment><USER3> looks great but I highly recommend better positioning of the controls - <USER2> are too close to the edge of the screen.</comment>


DIY Cryogel Sustains Live Cells - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2018/02/23/diy-cryogel-sustains-live-cells/ <comment><USER2> > ...for up to a week

I was a little disappointed.

I read The First Immortal in the 90s, about a guy who is cryogenically frozen and revived in a future where human biological immortality is possible. I still remember it from time to time.

Since then, I've been hopeful, but I keep seeing the space filled with scams and wishful thinking.

<comment><USER3> This particular article is referring to cryogels, not cryogenics, although I can't say I haven't made the same mistake in the past. Cryogels are much like aerogels in that they are an air-pocketed foam-like substance, but cryogels are made by a different process (freeze drying). If I understand correctly, the cells aren't being put into any form of sleep at all, merely being preserved and fed within the gel.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Yak-Shaving Methodologies - <AUTHOR>

For those of you who follow Zed Shaws "Learn X the Hard Way" series, the term "Yak Shaving" might sound familiar, but for those of you that don't —
>""Yak shaving" is a programmer's slang term for the distance between a task's start and completion and the tangential tasks between you and the solution. If you ever wanted to mail a letter, but couldn't find a stamp, and had to drive your car to get the stamp, but also needed to refill the tank with gas, which then let you get to the post office where you could buy a stamp to mail your letter—then you've done some yak shaving."
What methods/tips do you use to convince yourself to do a boring but important task? This isn't restricted to programming (such as creating environments, installing dependencies), and applies to life in general.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Well, if it's important, I don't need convincing.

Anyways, at work we printed badges similar to this one: [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/449910996832751616/PXOr...](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/449910996832751616/PXOrGYXE_normal.jpeg)

and give one to a person who solves a problem only to be able to continue working. Too bad only a friend and I understand the concept -- makes us laugh even harder, though.</comment>


The Alan Turing petition: a story of Web 2.0, Gov 2.0 and media savvy - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/09/how-alan-turing-finally-got-a.html

<comment><USER2> What exactly is "2.0" about getting publicity for a petition through traditional print and media outlets?

<comment><AUTHOR> Gov 2.0: the entire petition was online. This is part of the UK government's move to using the web. And BTW the code for the petition web site is open source.

Web 2.0: I made extensive use of Twitter, Facebook and my blog to get the word out (as did many others including Stephen Fry).

<comment><USER2> You explain in your post that the biggest boosts to the petition came from celebrity sponsorship and getting coverage by the Independent, BBC, and radio. Throwing around hype about "2.0" just distracts from an otherwise lovely accomplishment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great story. Thanks for sharing the details of how things progressed. It's incredible how much pull BBC News online has.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there's a multiplier on BBC News stories. The Alan Turing story was the top story on the Technology section and on the front page of the main BBC News web site.

That got it exposure to the general public... and, critically, to other journalists who then went on to write about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was disheartened to read some of the tripe published in the comments on the Telegraph website copy of the apology.

Ridiculous how some people can twist anything into political agenda.

</comment><comment><USER5> when is the book of how this happened coming out?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there's been quite enough written about it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> And there I thought it was just a case of a government desperate to do something that looked good but didn't cost them anything.</comment>


Google's voice-generating AI is now indistinguishable from humans - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1165775/googles-voice-generating-ai-is-now-indistinguishable-from-humans/?href= <comment><USER2> Discussion at: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16014047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16014047)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this efficient enough to run real-time on a phone?</comment>