TestCafé: Web Testing Framework - <AUTHOR> http://testcafe.devexpress.com <comment><USER2> "Yes, we've filed for a patent"

"TestCafé loads websites via a proxy, thus allowing its engine to inject scripts that can access and manipulate the Document Object Model"

That's exactly how Selenium 1 worked when we created it 9 years ago. It also sounds like the approach used in Sahi, Windmill, JsTestDriver -- other web testing tools. Not cool.

"While loading via proxy is not a new idea, our implementation is unique. Our framework is the only one that automatically configures that proxy and allows direct communication with the page via JavaScript."

I look forward to reading your patent application.

<comment><USER3> The US patent office does not care/have the resources/have a clue how to enforce that patents are non-novel and/or obvious. It is an entirely corrupt system driven by a mass of lawyers, all encouraging their clients to build patent portfolios for "defence".

If you want to combat a patent, the best stage to do this is during the application stage, it's far harder to combat it after it's approved.

For those that aren't aware of the StackExchange patents site [0], this is the best site I'm currently aware of for collecting evidence against patent applications. I would encourage you to actively seek out this patent application, start a thread on it and submit evidence against it.

The US needs a cultural change on patents, to make it clear that the patent system is corrupt and companies that file software related/non-original patents as an excuse to not having to innovate any further/at all need to be shunned.

[0] [http://patents.stackexchange.com/](http://patents.stackexchange.com/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I'll look into it. This is a serious issue.

<comment><USER4> Peer-To-Patent is another good one - [http://peertopatent.org/](http://peertopatent.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently watching the 27minute video. I was expecting a quick sample of what TestCafe does, but it is a full-on tutorial of using all their features. Also it goes into a VERY deep yet simple level (like here's how to change the port#).

I'd recommend a shorter, marketing style video just showing why TestCafe is great. I haven't gotten there yet, at more than 5 minutes in...

<comment><USER6> I agree, I don't care about config files, just want to see them write a simple test and see it run.

<comment><USER7> definitly, if you want to push the product with a video, it should not be longer than 2, max. 3 minutes and you should only show the key aspects.

additionally, you could have a look at some conversion rate bascis (I cannot find a call to action button above the fold,...) or SaaS marketing tips on how to push your product out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the visual method of writing scripts, but having used Selenium + SauceLabs.com on a real app and dealing with functional browser tests every day, I'm concerned about:

* Timing issues; most of the time spent writing functional tests is knowing when to wait for the next click (e.g. waiting for AJAX response and change in a certain DOM element)... and doing this in a clean way (e.g. WebDriverWait conditions instead of putting Sleep(1000) everywhere).

* Ability to expand the tests to do other things; for example, Selenium can take screenshots of the browser window because it works at a lower level. We use this for regression testing our web pages.

<comment><USER8> > Timing issues; most of the time spent writing functional tests is knowing > when to wait for the next click (e.g. waiting for AJAX response and change > in a certain DOM element)... and doing this in a clean way (e.g. > WebDriverWait conditions instead of putting Sleep(1000) everywhere).

This can be answered in a fairly simple way. How does your user know when to proceed? What changes?

<comment><USER6> Ian, I agree that's the right mind frame to be in, but I notice they (DevExpress) didn't address it in their demo or docs.

They have a 'wait' function that waits for a period of time, but this is just a sign of bad test writing and something sure to break when testing against different browsers or environments (localhost v.s. staging).

<comment><USER8> Hi, sorry I didn't see this reply before.

Only a wait function would be worrying, it'll lead to unstable tests and more annoyingly tests that don't do what they say. Decent async support is the first thing I look for in testing libs like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I skim-read their website and watched a good chunk of their video. I _still_ have no idea what this actually is, and why I would use it over my existing toolset (Behat, Selenium + WebDriver, CasperJS, etc).

If any DevExpress guys/gals are reading this, please consider making a shorter (2-3 min) video showing some tests being written and run.

<comment><USER2> I'd also recommend they reach out to Selenium developers and having a conversation with them to see if what they've done is really patentable. [Disclosure: I created Selenium]

<comment><USER10> Thanks for creating Selenium _hugs_.

<comment><USER2> :-) Although I kickstarted the project, I can't take a lot of credit for what it has become. It's a huge project now, with many people involved. Now, I'm just the crazy old uncle who can tell a good story about "the olden days". In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, Paul Hammant is the one who came up with the HTTP proxy JS injection technique. Dan Fabulich, Nelson Sproul, and Patrick Lightbody rewrote it and refined it. (Some sources: [http://paulhammant.com/blog/selenium.html/](http://paulhammant.com/blog/selenium.html/) [http://docs.seleniumhq.org/about/history.jsp](http://docs.seleniumhq.org/about/history.jsp))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We've been using Selenium to test a large enterprise ASP.Net webforms application and it's been kind of a hassle. Configuration was horrible but once that's out of the way it's sort of straightforward.

What benefits does TestCafe bring against Selenium? What's the elevator pitch?

<comment><AUTHOR> What was the hassle you had with using Selenium. Only the configuration?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We're on the verge of running a Selenium Grid server with a ~1000 Selenium nodes connected to it.

I'd like to see how their offering stands up to that.

(Actually, I don't know how Selenium will stand up to that... maybe I should have left this comment until I've got the results!)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Haven't used it myself, but i would love to hear from someone who has used this, or something similar. How useful is this kind of testing? I'm thinking that tests would have to be re-recorded a lot, if this is used while developing the site.

<comment><USER2> It sounds like their approach is the same one we took with the first version of Selenium. The approach is JavaScript injection through an HTTP proxy. Because of the same origin policy and JavaScript security model, we abandoned this approach when moving to Selenium 2. Selenium 2 goes for the most native approach for clicks and key events. (Continuing in that native-is-better approach, I'm now experimenting with robots, but that's another story.) I'm amazed they think their approach is better.

I'm surprised they think the Selenium 1 JavaScipt proxy-injection model is a better approach. But hey, I'm getting old... Get off my lawn, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I'm stunned they think it's better _and_ trying to patent it. I really hope I'm missing some new key insight here. Please enlighten me, people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. From what i have gathered here in the comments, it seems that I need to look into Selenium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where is the 2 min intro?

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't understand their video at all and the voice is annoying.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Yes, we've filed for a patent"

Instant boycott.</comment>


Ways people trying to do good accidentally make things worse - <AUTHOR> https://80000hours.org/articles/accidental-harm/ <comment><USER2> A thoughtful classification of the ways one can cause damage to emerging fields, cultures, and organizations through participation, and some ways to prevent it. Long, but not unnecessarily so. I highly recommend reading the whole article through.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The road to hell is laid with good intentions" \- ?</comment>


Watch Wired Get Rich Quick With A Sleek Bitcoin Miner - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/butterfly_live/

<comment><USER2> Spending real resources (electricity/CO2) to produce money, then destroying the money, reducing the eventual money supply of this currency _permanently_ , doesn't seem like the best way to handle any worries of journalistic integrity. They could've donated it just as easily.

<comment><USER3> Destroying currency is not wasteful in the sense that destroying an equivalent amount of food is wasteful because the total value of all the BTC is almost completely independent of the number of BTC in existence: if there were half as many BTC in existence, each one would cost twice as much. Consequently, your destroying some BTC enriches everyone else holding BTC to almost exactly the same degree that it impoverishes you.

I anticipate objections to the above on the grounds that "deflationary currencies are bad". The most chartitable interpretation of, "deflationary currencies are bad," is "the downward stickiness of the price of labor": during a recession, unemployment tends to go up in part because most employees are irrationally averse to taking a pay cut when times get rough, and enlightened monetary policy can sometimes negate or ameliorate that particular irrational reaction by employees by inflating the currency, which has the effect of fooling the employees into thinking that their "real" compensation has not decreased. But that is a minor effect compared to the basic "invariant" described above -- especially since almost no employees are being paid in BTC.

<comment><USER4> But the bitcoins are still in existence. It is impossible to distinguish between a bitcoin that can be spent and one that cannot. Unless you could actively tell the bitcoin servers "I am destroying these coins", nobody can determine which bitcoins are inaccessible. So won't they continue to maintain the value they would if they were still accessible?

<comment><USER3> Good question :)

There are basically two uses of bitcoin: a medium of exchange and a store of value. My "invariant" above can be rephrased to say that the total value of all bitcoin is approximately equal to the total amount of value people ("investors") want to store in it. (Entities, e.g., Silk Road, that use BTC as a medium of exchange can immediately convert the BTC they receive from their customers into dollars if they do not want to hold BTC.) So, if an investor has $10,000 he wants to store in bitcoin, it is almost completely immaterial to that investor whether he can buy 100 BTC or 10 BTC with that $10,000; all he really cares about is how well his $10,000 investment will hold its value, which is sort of independent of the current price, since for example the fact that 1 BTC costs about $100 today is pretty good evidence that they will cost about $100 a month from now -- and if 1 BTC cost $1000 today, that would be pretty good evidence that they will cost about $1000 a month from now.

The point is that withholding BTC from sale increases the price of BTC whether or not the reason for the withholding is so that one can sell them a month from now or because one has destroyed them (i.e., destroyed the relevant private key).

That is an example of the "Fundamental law of microeconomics," which says that in an efficient market, the price is determined by supply and demand -- "supply" meaning the number of BTC for sale _today_ , not the total number of BTC in existence.

Thought experiment: how would the price of BTC be determined if no one knew how many BTC are in existence? Would people just give up on trying to buy or sell BTC because that figure is unknown?

P.S. Comments like these where I answer a technical question tend to stay at score 1. Since I am making an effort to increase my average comment score (currently 2.0) I plan to stop answering technical questions in comment threads _unless_ this comment gets upvoted at least to 2 or 3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd never considered that there would be journalistic ethics issues around making money during the course of a story.

The solution of effectively destroying the earned money is pretty funny, given that that's an occasionally expressed concern.

<comment><USER6> At least they're sensitive to the issue. BFL customers who paid in full 11 months ago are pissed to see Ars and Wired (aren't they the same company?) getting free equipment before paying customers.

<comment><USER7> I believe 11 months ago, the price for a Jalapeno was $150, and they increased the cost to $270, while giving it just a slight jump in speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Something about how the real people that get rich during a gold rush are the ones selling the shovels.

<comment><USER9> Not exactly true.

More people made money selling shovels. The people that got the richest owned the mines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How are people getting such huge variances in the wattage drawn for the 5GH/s miners? Wired measured it to be 43W-44W, Ars measured it as 50W [1], while David from Coding In My Sleep [2] measured it to be 30W.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/weve-got-a- butterfly-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/weve-got-a-butterfly- labs-bitcoin-miner-and-its-pretty-darn-fast/)

[2] <http://codinginmysleep.com/bfl-jalapeno-unboxing-and-demo/> (see 7:33)

<comment><USER11> Likely because they're using different revisions of the hardware. BFL didn't meet their power usage promises and have been going through several design changes over the past few weeks to try to get the power down more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Uh, the bitcoin minor that they linked to costs $2,400. So, at the same rate it will take more than 20 weeks for ROI.

[EDIT] They linked to the wrong one. The one they are using does cost $274. Not bad ROI.

<comment><USER13> The $2,499 miner is 10x the speed of the $274 dollar miner, so the ROI is actually better.

<comment><USER14> lol yes but this is a product that has within itself the seed of its owners undoing... the more they sell, the more bitcoins are mined and the harder the next is to be mined

<comment><USER13> the sustainable part of their business is not this product, but their process.

<comment><USER6> BFL actually moves very slowly (planned schedule: 4 months, actual schedule: 11 months); Avalon are the ones moving fast.

<comment><USER13> agreed; edited

my point was that these businesses that produce products with short life cycles are process oriented; can be very rewarding... VC won't come knocking, but that isn't always a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sorry for my ignorance, but can anybody explain what makes the Butterfly Labs machine special?

What kind of propitiatory knowledge do they have that there are these long waiting lines for the machine?

What is they key issue that makes these boxes so hard to replicate?

<comment><USER6> _what makes the Butterfly Labs machine special?_

Marketing (for example, BFL equipment is much prettier than Avalon).

 _What kind of proprietary knowledge do they have, that there are these long waiting lines for the machine?_

None. But they do have capital, which they got by having a fairly good reputation from making cheap FPGA miners which they could do because they found a way to buy obsolete Altera FPGAs really cheap.

 _What is they key issue that makes these boxes so hard to replicate?_

People who know what they're doing don't design Bitcoin mining equipment. There are probably a lot of different reasons why, mostly due to very high financial risk. The only people designing this stuff are incompetent noobs, with predictable results.

<comment><USER16> >But they do have capital, which they got by having a fairly good reputation from making cheap FPGA miners

The capital they have is from taking pre-orders and not delivering. They've also burned a lot of that capital spamming the internet with ads to sell more pre-orders. If they ever had a good reputation they have squandered it by letting their loud-mouthed-pompous-ass spokesperson loose on the forums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If I understand their graph, they are generating about 0.29 BTC / day with this. Current BTC exchange is $118, so $34.22 revenue / day. At 44W, they'll spend ~1kW/day on power so only around $0.10 or so depending on where their power is coming from. So their break even point is somewhere around 8 days if I have everything correct.

It seems that if these devices can be produced at scale, the marginal cost of mining 1 BTC will be only about $0.30 for now, thereby possibly pushing down the market price for BTC significantly.

<comment><USER18> Bitcoin are mined at a (relatively) fixed rate, around 3600 per day right now. Mining has little impact on the market price (10,000s of bitcoin are crossing Mt Gox each day).

What will happen is that the 0.29 BTC / day will go down as more people plug in their asic miners.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that line from the story:

>So in just two weeks, those lucky enough to have snagged one of these rigs will have paid off the initial investment. Everything after that is gravy.

That's the biggest joke ever. The difficulty will go up substantially once thousands of people get their ASIC miners. It will take a lot longer than two weeks to pay itself off.

<comment><USER19> From the very next paragraph:

> Meanwhile, with more and more computers joining the network, mining > difficulty is quickly getting harder. So the amount of money these machines > can make per day is slowly declining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pretty awesome watching the technological innovation around Bitcoin. I personally don't have any, but just from following the progress and learning, I am starting to dabble with technologies (FPGAs, for example) in my research that I completely did not anticipate getting familiar with. Great hardware opportunities today for those traditionally limited to software (like me!).

<comment><USER20> This sort of thing has actually been pioneered by high frequency traders. Utilizing FPGA's & ASIC's is pretty standard fare for high frequency trading and algorithmic trading. What's novel about bitcoin is that it has been driven largely by end consumers. Thus, it is easier to see the technical landscape around it evolve.

<comment><USER13> exactly my point... all this technology just got a lot closer to mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The economics of this makes 0 sense. Why wouldn't the company that built these just plug them in and keep the money for themselves?

<comment><USER22> In a gold rush don't dig for gold, sell shovels.

<comment><USER16> After this thread, I'm down-voting commenters that repeat this comment. Enough is enough already.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get my first developer job after graduating from a bootcamp? - <AUTHOR> I've recently finished a full stack web development course and I'm finding it difficult to land a job right out of the gate. I have a fairly extensive background in marketing and advertising but I'm hoping to make a career change in tech. I've had some interviews and tech challenges and they've said that they were impressed with my experience and ability to complete the challenges but they ultimately passed. Wondering if anyone can share their experiences or offer any tips. <comment><USER2> I graduated from a boot camp < 2 years ago, got a job 2.5 months after graduating. (I'm in a smaller market, ~150k residents in the area.) I found networking to be my key to success. I began going to Meetups before I started boot camp, and started inviting key people to coffee after I graduated. I landed a few interviews that way and had a couple of offers quickly probably because they knew me a little bit.

If I can be any more help my contact info is in my profile, feel free to reach out.</comment>


New Internet freedom report ranks Estonia first, Iran last - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15021424,00.html <comment> guard-of-terra Where is the data we can feed on? Didn't see any links or tables.

Australia is green and Russia is "blocking the Internet".

The sad thing, the more you abuse the words like freedom, the less they actually mean. And you no longer can cry wolf when you need to.

<comment> guard-of-terra <http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=664>

Link to what seems to be the actual report.

<comment> guard-of-terra The actual report seems to be well-written and knowledgeable, but does not reveal how they assign points.

<comment><USER2> This seems to answer some of your questions: [http://www.freedomhouse.org/images/File/FotN/MethodologyandC...](http://www.freedomhouse.org/images/File/FotN/MethodologyandChecklistofQuestions.pdf)

edit: huge table with points: [http://www.freedomhouse.org/images/File/FotN/MainScoreTable....](http://www.freedomhouse.org/images/File/FotN/MainScoreTable.pdf)

<comment> guard-of-terra This huge table of point isn't broken by subcategory.

So we don't know how much country was punished for flaky phone lines and how much - for seizing .com domains, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This is where the report comes from apparently: <http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=664>

I would have been interested in seeing France ranked in there. Reporters without Borders put France "under surveillance" in part due to the HADOPI law on copyright (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI_law> ) which, amongst other things, can lead to Internet access being suspended. Reporter without Borders report: <http://en.rsf.org/surveillance-france,39715.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> The Economist had an article about this last week: [http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/04/internet_f...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/04/internet_freedom)</comment>


Aviv Ovadya on impending information apocalypse - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/the-terrifying-future-of-fake-news <comment><USER2> I'm rather unsurprised this, and similar stories, get almost no votes or comments on HN. There's a massive cognitive dissonance in the tech community about the peril of technology, believing only that it's generally good and any evidence to the contrary is to be ignored. There's no solution for the problem even if by chance the vast majority don't have an emotional attack upon contemplating tech might in fact be worse on average than good on average.

And I think that's because of the lack of history, ethics, philosophy, and imagination by people in tech. At best they have no interest in these things, and at worst they actively consider them less important for society than science, technology, engineering, math. Good luck though with getting off the planet while being surrounded by so many ignorant and willing saboteurs.</comment>


Fugitive, blogging for hackers - <AUTHOR> http://gitorious.org/fugitive

<comment><USER2> The name is misleading. It reminds me of this git vim plugin: <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2975>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, there's a link to fugitive.vim on fugitive's gitorious page for this reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why not use ikiwiki? Much more mature, more features, git/svn/hg/bzr support and its written by joey.

<http://ikiwiki.info>

<comment><AUTHOR> Because ikiwiki has editing via a web ui (less is more), because fugitive does not "support" git but embraces it and integrates within its workflow[1], and because it's written by me ;-).

Edit: [1] by that I mean that once you have used fugitive to setup your repository, you don't need fugitive anymore, you just use git as usual.

<comment><USER3> NB: When I said it was written by joey I did not mean to imply anything negative about you or your code.

All I meant was that it was yet another great piece of software written by joey:

* etckeeper (/etc under git)

* git-annex (dark git magic that i am only starting to fully appreciate)

* moreutils (growing collection of the Unix tools that nobody thought to write long ago, when Unix was young)

* tons of trivial debian infrastructure like debian-installer, tasksel, debhelper:)

<http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Woaw I didn't knew the same guy did all this! I'm a huge fan of moreutils, in particular the sponge command which I use almost daily. Thanks for the link.

PS: I never assumed that you were implying something negative about my code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> build.sh is broken on my machine (os x, with coreutils installed through homebrew), requires this fix:

        diff --git a/build.sh b/build.sh
        index 854aeb6..4e1c80f 100755
        --- a/build.sh
        +++ b/build.sh
        @@ -2,11 +2,12 @@

         include_file() {
           f=`echo -n $2 | sed 's/\//\\\\\//g'`
        -  tmp=`mktemp`
        +  tmp=`mktemp helloXXXXXX`
           cat "$2" | gzip | base64 > "$tmp"
           cat "$1" | sed "/#INCLUDE:$f#/ {
             r $tmp
        -    d }"
        +    d
        +    }"
           rm "$tmp"
         }

<comment><AUTHOR> It's really sad that even those small utils are not perfectly compatible from one platform to another. The `mktemp` from GNU coreutils don't require the model :-(.

Luckily the changes you suggest seems to also work with the GNU coreutils, so I'll apply them everywhere (there's a lot of call to mktemp and another similar sed call in the hooks). Thanks :-).

Edit: It's done, I credited you as the author of the commit (see here: [http://gitorious.org/fugitive/fugitive/commit/00626055595612...](http://gitorious.org/fugitive/fugitive/commit/006260555956124bf11997e59dca4ee9e1351841)).

<comment><USER4> Yeah, you really have to read the posix specs carefully to catch all these bizarre inconsistencies (or, if you're like me, wait until you find a system something breaks on and then fix it). It's a shame.

Thanks :)

I'd have sent you a merge request but I don't have a gitorious account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The integration with git hooks is an awesome idea.

<comment><USER5> Hm, I want to do --install-remote on my server but I am getting:

There's already a git repository here, aborting install.

Why? I already have my site in a git repo, I want to install fugitive onto it instead of a new one? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> If your git repos already exists, use `--install-hooks` and `--install- config`. Since it's the remote repository, you may also need to `git config receive.denyCurrentBranch "ignore"` depending on your configuration. :-)

<comment><USER5> Ah, thanks. Had to do some more stuff, e.g. copy default_files to _templates. Also the fugitive-install macro wasn't set. Still have problems with some CSS I think..

will look into it later.

<comment><AUTHOR> The fugitive.css and print.css files should be in the "_public" directory (or whatever the value of `git config fugitive.public-dir` is).

You know what it would be easier to have fugitive only warn and ask for confirmation if there's already a git repos. Doing that right now.

EDIT: Done. You can update fugitive source using `git pull` and then rebuild the install script with `./build.sh`.

<comment><USER5> Cool :)

Have you thought of supporting what Wordpress calls "pages"?

That way it could be used for more generic CMS tasks, having one template file for both pages and articles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, and it would be easy to add, but I never needed it. I don't think that's coming into fugitive itself but a few users with different needs already forked the project to adapt the hooks, not to do that though, but you could fork it to and make it manage pages (which would be like articles except that they won't go into the previous/next chain, and not in the archives or the rss feed either).

If you need some help to do it I'll be glad to help.

<comment><USER5> I'm a bit repelled by the fact that it's .sh .. oh well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wildcard Routing Is an Anti-Pattern - <AUTHOR> https://blog.praveen.science/wildcard-routing-is-an-anti-pattern/ <comment><USER2> I'm very confused, what problem is wildcard routing causing? They talk about having to do an extra DB call but I don't see how that is the problem of the wildcard routing?

In the example (and from what I've seen in practice) wildcard routing is often used to make urls more human-readable. Something like mydomain.tld/post/123/here-is-the-post-title-but-its-not-used-for-lookup where only the "123" matters.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main issue here is the catch-all. Even I was suprised to find out this was an anti pattern. The concern here is unnecessary requests and routing for a brute force attacker.</comment></comment>


Steve, you were right - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/10/20/steve-you-were-right/

<comment><USER2> If ever you needed proof.

Not sure when the "Steve talks about iCloud" video was (10 years ago?), but it's one hell of a speech. If he knew then what Apple's launching now, what did he know now about what will be launched in 10 years time?

When people say visionary, this is exactly what it should mean.</comment>


Looking for usability link that I found on HN - <AUTHOR>

Sometime within the last few months, I found (and sadly later lost) a great link in an HN article or comment that had random usability tests.
In the top left corner, there was a button to "show me the next test" and once clicked, a submission would appear with a question at the top for the submitted screen snap (eg, "Where would you click to find new videos?"). Once you clicked on the image, I think I remember two links – "see the results" and "take another test".
It was fun to take the tests, check out projects that folks are working on and (hopefully) help out the designers/programmers – and eventually I'd want to submit my own site designs/redesigns, if I could $%&# find it again.
Searches on HN pull hundreds of testing sites, but I still haven't found the right one. I also don't know whether it was a paid service or free, but it seemed to be free.
Thanks very much in advance! <comment><USER2> Is it this one - <http://www.usaura.com/> ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Revorad - Usaura actually looks a little slicker than the one I remember, and there wasn't a signup or signin, the one I saw just went straight into tests you could do.

I wonder whether it was a usaura test that someone posted and I just went from one test into the next. I'll keep digging around and post here if I find it...</comment></comment>


YouTube to mp3 download proxy android ios app - <AUTHOR> https://vidmp3.net <comment><USER2> Nice stuff,is it open-source? Some frontend improvements would make it even better ;)

<comment><USER3> as legal as youtube and all the other video portals I just tried this

[https://vidmp3.net/karaoke](https://vidmp3.net/karaoke)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> used it to download backing tracks for home recording, or put some mp3 music on my phone. various formats like aac mp3 m4a ogg vorbis opus mp4 bitrates up to 320k/sec</comment>


Facebook iOS App Battery Explanation - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/arig/posts/10105815276466163 <comment><USER2> _" The second issue is with how we manage audio sessions. If you leave the Facebook app after watching a video, the audio session sometimes stays open as if the app was playing audio silently. This is similar to when you close a music app and want to keep listening to the music while you do other things, except in this case it was unintentional and nothing kept playing. The app isn't actually doing anything while awake in the background, but it does use more battery simply by being awake. Our fixes will solve this audio issue and remove background audio completely."_

So after all the accusations of Facebook exploiting background audio to steal cycles for downloading content or tracking people's location it's just another case of Hanlon's Razor.

<comment><USER3> Combined with auto-playing videos to make the bug a ton more pronounced.

<comment><USER4> I deleted the facebook app because of this horseplay. Auto-playing videos I don't care about is not ok.

<comment><USER5> There's a setting that tells your Facebook app to not autoplay videos.

<comment><USER6> I actually looked for this and couldn't find it. Where is it? Should definitely be more obvious, unless I'm completely missing something :)

<comment><USER5> More > Settings > Account Settings > Videos and Photos

Autoplay: Never Autoplay Videos

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We (Spire, building breath tracking wearables) have an unfortunate amount of experience troubleshooting these issues. The developer tooling around measuring battery drain/energy usage is not useful for debugging this sort of thing.

We ended up wiring a disassembled iPhone to battery simulation hardware and are now able to measure battery drain while stepping through a debugger/pushing the phone through an integration test to identify power usage regressions.

Curious how other folks handle these issues.

<comment><USER8> I remember a presentation by Amazon at AnDevCon describing a similar setup they use internally as part of their validation. The built in Android battery profile wasn't sufficiently accurate to what was actually causing drain (most OEMs don't modify the default AOP power profile to represent what their system components actually consume in power). They actually went to the point to connecting into the battery electronics on the battery side to monitor drain. Unfortunately I don't see the presentation available online and this was at least 4 years ago.

<comment><USER9> Recent talk by John Carmack mentioned the same, in their case they hooked up a measured DC power supply in place of the battery to measure power usage for GearVR

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Importantly, this explains why a number of Facebook on iOS users were reporting that the app was showing background usage even when background refresh was turned off. Many people thought Facebook was using a private API to track people when they weren't using the app. In reality, it was just a mistake. This is a great example of Hanlon's Razor [1]

[1] "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor)

<comment><USER11> However, either case is an equally valid reason to uninstall the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be helpful if Apple included tracking on background time and other battery-usage metrics along with crash reporting for users that opt into it.

Facebook has no by-the-books way to realize some issues like this are happening, largely because iOS makes this difficult to watch.

<comment><USER13> iOS 9 _does_ include a breakdown now.

"To see how long each app has been open and onscreen, and running in the background, tap <clock icon>.

[https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201264](https://support.apple.com/en- ca/HT201264)

Screenshot of the feature, since that page lacks it:

[http://cdn.iphonehacks.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/ios-9-...](http://cdn.iphonehacks.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/ios-9-battery-usage.jpg)

<comment><USER14> I think the OP was talking about (aggregate) telemetry going back to facebook (crash reports yes, battery usage stats nope).

Battery stats telemetry is almost certainly only available to Apple, and not shared with third parties. (If you dig into your device's settings->logs, there are log files that seem to record every imaginable interaction with the device)

Also, for a long while, ios devices that have mounted the developer disk image provide some extra battery logging in settings, but that will only provide insight on the developer's own devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Li-ion can't handle our scale.

<comment><USER16> iOS SDK can't handle our scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't an iOS app have to declare that it is going to do background audio? If so, what was their original legitimate use case for having background audio?

Edit: Here's a link to the apple docs that show apps have to declare what tasks they will perform in the background.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/iPhone...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/BackgroundExecution/BackgroundExecution.html)

<comment><USER18> It plays sounds when you interact with the app (liking a post, etc.)

<comment><USER17> An app does not have to request the special permission to play background audio in order to play sounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I read the title I got excited because I thought that Apple had implemented some battery abstraction for iOS that gives a virtual battery to each application. Now I'm curious to know if there would be any benefit to something like that, or if it would be at all useful in any way?

<comment><USER20> Would allow app-specific battery usage, and an upper limit on how much power an app can use? But you could already do both of those things, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hope there's a fix soon, because I'm tired of having to force-kill the app.

I don't know what tipped me off that Facebook was the culprit but I was driving one day and my podcast went quiet, like a notification sound was about to happen. But nothing came and the audio stayed quiet for at least 30 seconds before I pulled over, opened the app list, and killed Facebook. Problem solved.

Also, coincidentally, I forgot to kill Facebook last night and when I picked up my phone this morning it was warm. Glad I remembered to leave it plugged in.

<comment><USER22> >> Also, coincidentally, I forgot to kill Facebook last night and when I picked up my phone this morning it was warm. Glad I remembered to leave it plugged in.

Maybe, just maybe, it was warm because it was being charged.

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't have mentioned it if it wasn't out of the norm after leaving it plugged in for 8+ hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone know how to disable those Facebook notifications that say "Do you know X?". Can't find it in the options at all. Feels like an attempt to get engagement.

</comment><comment><USER24> I really want access to the code base so I can diff the changes.

I guess we'll just have to trust this explanation?

<comment><USER25> Of course. Why would they show you their proprietary code for a totally unnecessary app?

<comment><USER26> Alternately, you can grab the binary from the .ipa and decompile it. Objective-C/Swift code effectively _can 't_ be symbol-stripped; objc_msgSend takes a string selector, and those selectors remain evident in the binary. (This also makes writing cracks/keygens for Obj-C apps very, very easy.)</comment></comment></comment>


The Little Coder's Predicament (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://viewsourcecode.org/why/hacking/theLittleCodersPredicament.html <comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion (2009): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=476536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=476536)</comment>


A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/world/europe/netherlands-dropping-children.html <comment><USER2> I too have fond memories of droppings in my boyscout times (Belgium) ... I remember a particular one where we had to find our way through a forest before midnight ... it was then followed-up by midnight (catholic) mass at an abbey close to the edge of a forest to calm us down (bummer) ... another one was a multi-day thing where we had to find our way in small groups. As described in the article there were adults observing us but refusing to help. There were also staged "kidnappings" where we had to free the kidnapped at night. Pretty crazy thinking about that today but it was pretty much normal at the time (eighties) & I am sure a lot more vivid for impressionable kids ... overall I give a 9/10 rating ... "would recommend let your kids get kidnapped at night in the forest"

<comment><USER3> Yeah same here, fond memories of the 'droppings' I did as a kid.

It's probably worth pointing out that Belgian (and Dutch) woods are relatively safe: it would be difficult to get truly lost. The wooded areas are never more than a few km from civilization. I wonder if there is a spot that is more than 10 km from the nearest road/house/suburb. Also, there are (almost?) no acutely dangerous animals. The only thing we were watching out for were wild boar, but there weren't that many of those around back in the 80's/90's. These days there may be more wildlife to watch out for.

When we went on a 'dropping', there were no cell phones nor gps receivers. Just 'stafkaarten' (topographic maps) and a compass. It's easy now ;)

<comment><USER4> We did 'escape and evasion' orienteering courses that ran 12hrs from 6pm to 6am from about 13 years old in the 90s. This was through bush and farmland in Australia.

There were always incidents like cases of hyperthermia, being chased by wild pig, running into things blindly etc. But the 1000's of kids partaking always ended up ok at the end.

<comment><USER5> >> 'escape and evasion'

From who? Wow. I can't read the article because I used up my free, so I don't know if this is mentioned, but ee sounds paramilitary, and not just orienteering skill. What is the reason behind this?

<comment><USER4> Nothing that dramatic. Was school camp for cadets. Kinda like Boy Scouts but with more of a military bent. Guys in older years would try, and usually succeed, to catch you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't think of this as dropping your kids in say, the High Sierras or Death Valley ;-)

This is actually an extremely safe thing, nothing much can go wrong. Some supporting facts:

Our entire country (The Netherlands) measures roughly 161mi by 93mi and is densely populated. There's always a dwelling nearby. Consequently it's impossible to get really lost.

We also have no natural dangers to speak of, no deadly animals, no dangerous terrain, no raging rivers (we don't have mountains).

<comment><USER7> >> (we don't have mountains).

Woah, you forgot about the Vaalserberg?

<comment><USER8> Technically not a mountain, since mountains start at >500m and Vaalserberg is only 322m high...

On the other hand, we do (technically) have mountains, as Saba has Mount Scenery (887m) and Sint Eustatius has The Quill ( 601m)...

<comment><USER9> There is no universally accepted definition of what a mountain is. For whatever it's worth, Wikipedia says things like "official UK government's definition of a mountain, for the purposes of access, is a summit of 600 metres or higher", and "At one time the U.S. Board on Geographic Names defined a mountain as being 1,000 feet (300 m) or taller, but has abandoned the definition since the 1970s".

<comment><USER10> "is a summit of 600 metres or higher"

I didn't think this had been officially metricised (metricated?), I was wrong.

Anyway, found an interesting related article.

[http://metricviews.org.uk/2008/09/what-is-a-mountain- mynydd-...](http://metricviews.org.uk/2008/09/what-is-a-mountain-mynydd-graig- goch-and-all-that/)

<comment><USER11> Broken link, has a quote at the end that's too much. Here's the right one: [http://metricviews.org.uk/2008/09/what-is-a-mountain- mynydd-...](http://metricviews.org.uk/2008/09/what-is-a-mountain-mynydd-graig- goch-and-all-that/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks, fixed mine also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did that a couple of times in the last classes of primary school and it was fun.

One time the organizers, seeking to spice up the proceedings, had planned a mock-kidnapping. One of the kids (who was in on the joke) disappeared during the hike and soon enough we received something of a ransom note. Kids excited, kids crying. At the climax one of the organizers jumped out of the bushes with a nylon stocking over his head. The biggest and strongest kid in the group (who if memory serves me went on to become a bouncer at a local pub) hit him on the head with his flashlight, almost knocking the guy out. Good times indeed.

Of course nowadays the school would get sued into bankruptcy by angry parents for a stunt like that. :-)

<comment><USER13> It's kind of the same with "apekooien", no? At least I heard that's no longer done either. I don't know why adults don't understand that if there is one thing kids love more than running around screaming, it's running around screaming while risking sprained ankles and other minor injuries

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Dutch woods are not very big and not very far from the cities. You could get lost but you can always hear the highways and there is cell coverage everywhere. And the most scary thing you could come across is a wild boar, there are no dangerous animals. There were 2 or 3 wolf sightings the past 2 years, but they stay away from noise. Anyway I think Dutch kids are balsy enough to scare any wolf away. (Or a human predator, if they would even roam the woods..)

I've always enjoyed "droppings" as they are called. There were no cell phones when I did it as a kid..I can't remember if we had a compass or not..

Oh and its not exclusive for scouting, it's also done on birthdays, I guess it happens more in places where there are woods nearby, so more towards Germany and Belgium.

<comment><USER15> Back when I was a kid, at the ripe old age of 12, we did this at the Hoge Veluwe, and I can assure you that there were no highways in hearing distance and we didn't have cellphones yet. It was also a pretty good experience, if a little cold.

<comment><USER16> The Hoge Veluwe might be one of the few places where this can happen. And even then, the Hoge Veluwe is 55 sqkm. Worst case scenario you walk for a few hours to reach one of the edges. Just keep walking in the same direction.

Hoge Veluwe, one of the few things I miss from my home town. Such a great place to hang out as a kid.

<comment><USER9> > Just keep walking in the same direction.

AFAIK this is surprisingly difficult, many (most? all?) people end up walking in circles when placed in a forest without any clues for orientation.

Edit: Some random sources: [https://www.livescience.com/33431-why-humans-walk- circles.ht...](https://www.livescience.com/33431-why-humans-walk- circles.html), [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/08/why-we-walk- circles](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/08/why-we-walk-circles), [https://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)...](https://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(09\)01479-1)

"participants repeatedly walked in circles when they could not see the sun ... participants walked in often surprisingly small circles (diameter < 20 m), though rarely in a systematic direction"

<comment><USER14> All Dutch woods have man made paths. Most forests even have some sort of grid of roads for logging. Check a random dutch forest on Google Maps to see it. As far as I know we ware the only country that has this in almost every forest..

<comment><USER9> Looking at the above-mentioned Hoge Veluwe I do see the grid of paths and roads you speak of, though there also seem to be a bunch of places where there is plenty of room to go around in 20 or even 200 meter circles without hitting a path.

Nobody said that that you can get lost in a Dutch forest forever, but I can totally believe that you might not immediately find out if you're dropped in the wrong spot in the middle of the night. After daybreak you'll be out in no time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > 'It shows you, even in very hard times, to keep walking, to keep going,' > [Stijn] said. 'I have never had to do that before.'

I recently read Dinner of Herbs and Going to the Wars, two books by a fellow who was a British commando in the Second World War who was captured by the Italians, escaped and had to make his way across country, living off the land and thanks to the kindness of local peasants.

One of the things which really struck me was the mettle he & his comrades showed. I don't know how many folks nowadays would have the same character — but I think young Stijn has a better chance than most. AS do probably many other Dutch kids.

<comment><USER18> I found the book you mentioned - _A Dinner of Herbs_ by John Verney. Looks good.

Somewhat confusingly there is another book called _Dinner of Herbs_ by Carla Grissman which is also a travelogue describing close contact with 'peasants', but this time in Anatolia in the 60s. It also looks good.

(There's even another book with the same title, but it's a fiction novel by Catherine Cookson).

Edit: I've just found that the title is a reference to Proverbs 15:17, 'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than feasting on a fattened ox where hatred also dwells', which explains its multiple use.

<comment><USER19> Is that a fancy "i'd rather eat crumbs with bums than steaks with snakes"?

<comment><USER20> i might be inclined to argue that the number of things fancier than two pairs of contextual rhymes which present a clear principle of morality in one simple sentence could be infinitesimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We regularly did this in Scouts in the UK in the eighties. We would have map and compass and know where we were supposed to get to, but there was general disorientation and disinformation about the starting location. IIRC we were always dropped somewhere such that the obvious path would lead us away from roads and there were certainly adults and/or venture scouts (16-21?) keeping some kind of track of us, but usually done subtly enough that we weren't aware that they were around

<comment><USER22> We did it in the late 90's/early 2000's as well.

I hope they still do it but I guess they don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My kid had a Palo Alto summer camp around 2009 where they did this. It was a new camp for kids too old for Foothills. Just a week, and they did several things, the last one being dropped away from camp and told to find their own way back (in groups of three). One group made it in 45 minutes, a couple more in an hour, and the rest...ranged from 3-5 hours later.

He thought it was great, but Palo Alto being Palo Alto that was the only week that particular camp operated. Sadly.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can confirm (Dutch). I've been on a few droppings at night. Notice the woods in Holland are incomparable to an American scale forest. I can even nuance that you don't need to be a scout. This is fairly normal even to do on school trips or any other group/club of friends. We didn't even have GPS at the time, but just a map and a compass. You just need to have enough volunteering adults to catch any kids that go rogue. As long as you instruct the kids to stay together (they will, as they are typically a bit scared) it should be fine, especially if you place a few volunteers not too far out.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yes, I have fond memories of these. These were often seen as the highlight of a week of camping. In my youth we did not have mobile phones, even not everybody had a phone at home. Because the Netherlands is so densely populated, it is very difficult to find a place where there are no lights visible. I remember that usually, we knew within 10 minutes where we were and in which direction we had to walk. Never met any wild animal. Never felt I was in danger. I remember that in my youth, it was very normal to be away from home on your own. When I was about 12, I would go on biking trips of 20 miles and more, all on my own. When I returned after some hours and my mother would ask me where I had been, I just told her that I had been biking and she would be happy with the answer. Of course, she knew me and knew that I was careful person and would not do stupid things.

<comment><USER25> I also remember Austerlitz. Camped there in the woods two or three times. One time in the winter. I also remember that we biked there from our home town, a little more than 20 miles. This was when I was 14-17 years old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This gives me a little hope, knowing that some societies are still raising their children rationally. While we never had anything formal like this, when I was younger we were allowed to hike into the woods with a chance of getting lost. Of course, even when I was a kid, some parents of children I went to school with were far too protective. -- Late 60s, early 70s

</comment><comment><USER18> A little bit tangential to this: bushwalking at night can be a very beautiful experience. I remember doing a ~15km section of the Abel Tasman track in New Zealand during the night so as to catch the early morning low tide for a tidal river crossing. It was glorious being on the track (and briefly losing it at one point), tramping under the night sky.

</comment><comment><USER27> U.S. scouts have a special society known as Order of the Arrow ("OA", [https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2008/04/10/the-secret- behin...](https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2008/04/10/the-secret-behind-the- order-of-the-arrow/)). There are various ceremonies and rituals involved, but I remember the trial my father described to me -- being sent out into the woods overnight with an egg, a single match, and not much else.

<comment><USER28> It's been ~25 years since I was initiated and went through the "Ordeal".

Your father's story sounds about right. We were led through the woods (in the middle of the night, after the "tap out" ceremony, with no flashlights) all the way around to the other side of the lake at our summer camp and that's where we spent the night. I _think_ we were given a light blanket to sleep on/with but I might be wrong. The next morning we were "picked up" and began the physical work part. The entire "Ordeal" lasted ~24 hours -- during which you were not allowed to speak.

Honestly, it's a lot scarier than it sounds. I grew up out in the country and spent a lot of free time as a kid out in the woods so that was no big deal to me (later, I participated -- as "Kichkinet" \-- in other initiation ceremonies). Many of the "city kids", though, did not sleep a wink that night.

I've still got my "Brotherhood" sash somewhere around here. Around the time I received that, I "discovered girls" and my time in the Boy Scouts quickly came to an end.

<comment><USER29> My ordeal ceremony was around 15 years ago and was pretty similar. IIRC I had a sleeping bag plus tarp and and no tent (you are definitely not allowed a tent when participating). I remember this rather vividly because the night of the ordeal it rained and I had to roll up in my tarp like a burrito to stop from getting wet.

Yes, you are not allowed to speak during the labor part. I remember this vividly also as we were assembling large teepees as our given task (~20ft in height) and we were very briefly given a rare exception of being allowed to speak if there was some imminent danger of the teepee falling over and injuring someone.

What they fed me in terms of food was honestly pretty gross. IIRC I didn't get any lunch and only got basically a nasty green hard boiled egg plus a tiny mandarin orange for breakfast. by the time you're allowed to talk again when the ordeal is over there is a feast shortly thereafter though.

The "brotherhood" second stage ordeal is actually a whole lot easier, it basically involves a night ceremony with a lot of rituals and a handwritten letter to your local "lodge" if I am remembering things correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yes, as a Dutch scouts leader, can confirm we do this at least once a year. When I was a youth member, no GPS and no cell phone either as far as I remember.

At our yearly JOTA-JOTI event we up the ante by going 'hunting' for the kids by cars or bike so they try to not get spotted by the leaders until they reach the main camp site.

For Dutch scouts here: [http://www.hikeandseek.nl/](http://www.hikeandseek.nl/) is super awesome (but typically fully booked).

</comment><comment><USER29> Quite topical as Jamboree starts this week. I was flying out of Ecuador late last week and saw a bunch of excited scouts on their way to Jamboree and it made me smile. Are there any other bizarre coming-of-age scouting traditions that other countries follow? This article immediately made me think of USA's similar tradition, the snipe hunt:[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt)

<comment><USER31> We had a tradition of sending new scouts over to other camps to ask for a "left-handed smoke shifter" to better control the smoke coming off of the camp fire. No such thing exists of course, but sending off new boys (and receiving similar new boys from other camps) was a hilarious tradition and a bit of light hazing that nobody ever broke.

One older scout even crafted a piece of equipment he instructed the newbie to take with him to ask for a replacement part.

<comment><USER15> Other professions have similar initiation rituals: automotive mechanics get sent out to get boxes of blue sparks and people in the clothing industry have to find a spool of yarn with some specific pattern on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction"

... so these kids are more at risk of being kidnapped than they are of getting lost.

I'll admit that I think it's a bit weird to make kids walk home in the night, but the author does a terrible job of making it sound suspenseful. This activity has gotten a lot safer since GPS became widespread. I kind of feel bad for anyone that went through this in the 80's, they might have actually gotten lost and had to knock on a farmer's door for directions.

<comment><USER33> Kids being kidnapped is not the first thought of Dutch (and Belgium?) parents.

Example: We were at the Zoo with friends from the US and one of their small kids was out of sight for minute at the very large playground.

My first thought: Will show up, but is there any water nearby? Their thought: he's kidnapped!

(kid did show up few seconds later)

I guess you're far more likely to drown than to get kidnapped in The Netherlands... (Most children learn to swim before they are 6 years old here)

Droppings were really cool by the way and in the eighties when I grew up we only got a compass or nothing at all (no gps or cell phone). I was no boy scout, it also happens at school trips and birthdays.

<comment><USER34> I just got back from visiting a friend in Amsterdam, and it was a delight to see how much everybody just assumed kids would be safe on their own.

I'm pretty sure the US had the same attitude when I was growing up; I know I spent the bulk of my summer days roving the neighborhood. It's weird to me how much that has changed. Especially given that kids can be constantly tracked and contacted via cellphones, you'd think that they'd be roving farther!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> My scouting group was fond of "dot-arrow" droppings. We were dropped blindfolded in the woods and only given a piece of paper with arrow symbols on it indicating the turns to take on the route. Of course we missed turns and got lost, but we had a radio for calling in for hints. In bigger forests, we would get survey maps of the area. Then it was a matter of figuring out where you are on the map at the drop point.

I have fond memories of those nights.

</comment><comment><USER31> Grew up in the U.S. mid-atlantic, and spent many weekends camping out during my teens with the boyscouts -- at various levels of difficulty. The culmination was the annual "winter survival" campout where we were dumped miles off in the woods in the middle of the winter for 3 days with food, a sleeping bag, a box of matches and our pocket knife and had to survive for three days.

As it was often at freezing and sometimes snowing, we had to build warm shelter (fast), start a fire, dig a latrine, find water, and get a meal prepped before dark on the first day and basically survive the cold with everything we knew. Our shelter had to be weather resistant, warm and sustainable enough to make it a couple of nights.

Boys below a certain age and rank weren't allowed to participate as it was simply too dangerous. Night temperatures often went far below freezing and I remember waking up with my camp mates to see who's shelter had fallen in under the snow, and who had the most leaves stuffed into their sleeping bag for warmth -- despite that we'd all not be able to feel our feet for a few hours until we got moving. It was an amazing lesson in how the body's survival mechanisms work.

We had two adult chaperones along who "glamped" in full gear and were available for emergencies. More than once boys had to leave early due to the cold, or a shelter falling in on them or simply giving up and throwing in the towel.

This was all way before cell phones were common. At the end we'd have to break camp, clean it up as if we had never been there (leave no trace), hike and landnav our way back out of the woods with a rough map and directional reckoning using nature (no compass!) where we'd be treated to a hot meal, a hot shower (in that order) and an immediate blow-by-blow of what went right, what went wrong and awards were given out for exceptionalism in various facets of the camping arts. Most boys also earned various scouting badges and things during the event just by way of making it the entire way.

I didn't care much for the Boyscouts, but I eagerly looked forward to that activity the years that I could do it.

I'm pretty sure we were all secretly being trained for a Red Dawn scenario. The in-joke in my troop was that the Scouts were America's premier youth paramilitary organization.

<comment><USER36> > The in-joke in my troop was that the Scouts were America's premier youth > paramilitary organization.

... That's not terribly inaccurate, actually. Baden-Powell was influenced by his experiences in the Siege of Mafeking, where boys of that age were organized in effectively a military unit, albeit a noncombat unit that was operating closer to a civil defense role. There's a heavy military context to scouting, and it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of scouts go on to join the military or that a lot of military brats end up joining scouting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Many fraternities do this in the us, but here it's considered hazing and gets you expelled if you're caught.

</comment><comment><USER38> This isn't done in other countries (except Belgium)?

Who knew!

I did droppings many times as a kid. Never did I feel unsafe. We did walk quite far. I remember it was 4 hours, we walked next to a highway for quite a while once. Since I was a kid, I have no clue whether we _actually_ walked 4 hours.

</comment><comment><USER39> The writer calls it peculiarly Dutch, but then describes it taking place in Belgium, as well.

<comment><USER40> As a dutch I've only been dropped in Belgium forests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This remind me of the Wilderness Survival merit badge in the boy scouts. We had to survive a night in the woods with no gear except a pocket knife and the clothes on our backs.

<comment><USER42> Good call on that merit badge! I remember vividly we got to bring along a hot dog and a fire starter (maybe flint and steel?). We had rain so the forest was soaked. Despite our best efforts there was no fire and we dined on cold hot dog.

<comment><USER41> You got food? Pretty sure ours was without food. But our forest was dry (Camp Winton in the Sierra Nevadas, in the summertime).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Ah yes we would do this in the Ardennes with a compass and some instructions! Few hours of hiking and drinks and snacks by the campfire at the end. Good times!

</comment><comment><USER44> These sound like night exercises from infantry school.

</comment><comment><USER45> As someone that would want this for their kids: Is there am equivalent in the United States? Perhaps through scouts, or another org?

<comment><USER29> I left this in a sibling comment that we (I'm an Eagle Scout with long history of scouting) used snipe hunting as a somewhat equivalent rite of passage: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt)

In my experience it was somewhat less dramatic than described in the article (I wasn't left alone more than a half hour hike from camp and the few times I did it I never let the "victims" out of sight). It seems like these teens from the article are expected to put in a good few hours hike before getting back to a certain location. It was still a similarly formative and fun experience for me, especially because I got to do it with a couple other kids my age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> How very beautiful.

If I ever have kids, I'll drive them off a thousand kilometers or two. A measly forest next door is no challenge.

It is suprisingly easy to travel without money nowadays. But it takes some communication with the world, and children must learn that. I'm of opinion that hitch-hiking is one of the most effective solutions.

So, make them travel 2Kkm in a weekend, repeat that some times.. like we had back then. There even were sports - competitions over 3-4-8K km distances.

</comment><comment><USER47> In Belgium we do this as well. It does sound a bit strange perhaps, but for us it's not something worrisome.

</comment><comment><USER48> [http://archive.is/xJnkK](http://archive.is/xJnkK)

</comment><comment><USER49> I have a premonition what Ari Aster's next film will cover.</comment>


How I Got More Than 4500 Visits Through Blog Commenting - <AUTHOR> http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/11/how-i-got-more-than-4500-visits-through.html

<comment><USER2> It`s an old traffic method but it does work. Not that I do it anymore. But back in the day I did make some interesting connections with it, getting to know people and their blogs.

I prefer to be the content creator and focus more on delivering value than trying to skim off others value.

But it`s not really spamming you are adding some value. It`s just low value content generation.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's like spamming, but with slightly more effort.

<comment><USER4> I think most blog comment forms have a "website " field for a reason, though. There's a tactic quid pro quo there. Leave a comment, add value to the discussion, maybe a few people will click on your link. And the vast majority of bloggers I know are happy to get comments. A well-placed comment on an unknown or up-and-coming blog can make the author's day.

<comment><USER3> The impression I got (and the impression I get as a blog owner) is that he was leaving a link within the comment body, as opposed to the URL field. People do this all the time on my site and it sort of immediately invalidates their comment for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know, he could have just taped bacon to a cat.</comment>


Kim Dotcom Releases New Raid Footage Captured By In-House CCTV - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-releases-new-raid-footage-captured-by-in-house-cctv-130613/ <comment><USER3> I remember reading somewhere that the policemen in the raid did not know what were going on, or even who the target was. I wouldn't be surprised if they thought they were taking down a terrorist cell, given that the personal used was the counter-terrorism special tactics Group.

Reading the Wikipedia article about the task force, their job is in dealing with high risk situations involving armed offenders and possible terrorism related events. They also train with New Zealand Special Air Service Commandos. In that context, the raid makes much more sense in how it was conducted, with silencers, helicopters, dogs and 20-30+ personal. The real question then comes to who in the command structure decided to use such group for serving a warrant, and collecting evidence for an assisting copyright infringement case. Given the nature of the crime, the low threat level (admitted in court), this is rather uniquely in history. One might also wonder how much influence the FBI had in the decision.

<comment><USER4> I obviously don't know much but it seems stupid to not tell your team who they're going after. They would use that information to plan the breach and I'd suspect a good squad leader would demand to know before going in.

<comment><USER5> It's obviously not true. How else would they know who to arrest? In that case, Schmitz could've just walked off the compound.

<comment><USER6> Having a photo and name of someone isn't the same as knowing who they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Regardless of your stance on the entire Mega issue, no-one can deny that the raid is simply terrifying.

Personally I have no clue how they justified such a heavily armed response particularly considering the fact that Dotcom never posed a physical threat to anyone let alone the fact that there were a number of children in the building at the time.

<comment><USER5> > no-one can deny that the raid is simply terrifying.

It looked pretty amateurish to me. They had trouble climbing a 3 foot high gate, which after they had 'scaled' it, turns out was easily opened.

> such a heavily armed response

I counted 5 police officers who approached the house together, only one of them was armed with a rifle. I saw no violence whatsoever, it was pretty laid- back. At no point in the video did they point a gun at any of the suspects, and they lowered their fire arms before they entered the building (highly unusual if you think you're in danger or if you want to intimidate someone).

> Dotcom never posed a physical threat to anyone

When you're dealing with a rich suspect who loves expensive toys and has a large staff, you have to be prepared for anything. In the US, they would've sent an army to surround and comb through that enormous mansion. Given that Dotcom is morbidly obese, I doubt the agents saw him as a physical threat, it's his staff and the presence of weapons they needed to worry about.

<comment><USER8> Wow you really have no idea do you?

Seriously just cause you live in the US and everything is over the top including police force, that doesn't mean its the norm. I can ensure you police force in the US and the use of guns is over the top and unjustified, so was this in the case for Dotcom.

<comment><USER5> I don't live in the US. Even in the Netherlands, where I live, police raids are a lot larger than just 5 agents and one rifle.

In your country, police officers don't carry guns and tactical units are armed with flowers?

<comment><USER9> >In your country, police officers don't carry guns?

Correct. UK.

<comment><USER5> The norm is that police officers wear guns, the UK is an exception. But even in the UK, police carry guns and rifles during raids – especially if they suspect to be met with armed resistance (as was the case with Kim Schmitz).

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

<comment><USER9> Not that much of an exception.

Countries where Police do not carry guns as part of normal duty:

UK

New Zealand

Japan

Norway

Iceland

Cook Islands

St. Helena

Falkland Islands

Pitcairn Island

sources: [http://www.policespecials.com/forum/index.php?/topic/32618-c...](http://www.policespecials.com/forum/index.php?/topic/32618-countries- with-unarmed-police/) [http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/50601024](http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/50601024)

<comment><USER7> Add Republic of Ireland to that list

<comment><USER5> I find that interesting, as police officers in Northern Ireland (part of the UK) _do_ carry firearms. I have to admit I know little about either Irelands, perhaps the situation in the Republic of Ireland is a lot less volatile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I find most offensive is that this level of police response is that it's being used against someone that facilitated sharing of content between users that would have never paid for it, yet, good luck getting a third of these resources spent tracking down criminals that did things to hurt someone. Apparently, it's more important to protect imagined profit than people.

</comment><comment><USER11> What were they even looking for? It was a copyright infringement claim - <USER2> reason for any of this.

Did they worry that Kimble had a Dr. Evil escape pod?

<comment><USER12> Worse: "the FBI actually believed Dotcom had a Dr. Strangelove-style "doomsday device" that was capable of wiping out all evidence of Internet piracy with the flick of a switch." [http://bgr.com/2012/08/10/kim-dotcom-raid-fbi-feared- doomsda...](http://bgr.com/2012/08/10/kim-dotcom-raid-fbi-feared-doomsday- device/)

<comment><USER13> That sounds like the type of thing people make up after the fact to justify their actions.

<comment><USER14> If someone can make that up you wonder why they don't just accuse him of being in Al-Qaeda or having WMD and simply bomb him. Would save all the tedious business of due process and evidence...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess the masterminds behind this whole fiasco wanted to impress their friends from the US, but they tried too hard.

A behaviour one would expect from adolescents, not leaders.

</comment><comment><USER16> What on Earth did those police think they were doing? Playing Counter Strike??

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting to see how big is house is. I wonder how much money Dotcom made off MegaUpload.

<comment><USER12> It was considered, at the time, the most expensive house in New Zealand. However, he only rents it. He tried to buy it, but the New Zealand government get involved in overseas investment deals/land purchase, and he was denied permission to buy it because he was "not of good character".

It is known within NZ as "the Chrisco mansion", as it was built by the owners of Chrisco - a Christmas hamper mail order company. People still get wealthy the old-fashioned way down under.

<comment><USER6> What on earth is a "Christmas hamper?"

<comment><USER18> It's a lot of food that you pay for in installments throughout the year. They deliver it at Christmas time so that you don't have to worry about laying out a lot of additional money for food at Christmas.

Yes, it is groceries on layaway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Two things that made me laugh watching the video:

1) That some very official looking people are forced to address him as Mr. Dotcom... which is on my list of the most ridiculous names a person could give themselves.

2) The giant statue of a rino in his yard. Really? A Rino?

<comment><USER6> From what I understand, he rented the house. The rhino is likely not his.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if the endgame to Snowden's exile will be him being accepted into NZ, and taking refuge at Kim Dotcom's estate.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can we all just ignore this attention-seeking thug, please?

His marketing team does its job well, but surely, HN users are smarter than to fall for this rhetoric.

<comment><USER20> First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

<comment><USER21> You sir have just restored my faith in comment systems. Thank you for an awesome reminder from history.

<comment><USER22> not the first nor the last time 'first they came' is used around here [https://www.google.com/search?q="first+they+came"+site%3Anew...](https://www.google.com/search?q="first+they+came"+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Go Kim! Stick it to those dirty MAFIAA copyright gangsters! I hope Mega takes off and helps us share even more culture.

Information wants to be free, man!

Except when it's _my_ information. Then it's just a terrible invasion of privacy.</comment>


Let people subscribe to what you read - <AUTHOR> http://itemsy.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's quick & easy to set up. Here is my profile as an example: itemsy.com/piotrgru</comment>


Warren Buffett Is No Fan of Modern Monetary Theory - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-15/buffett-no-fan-of-modern-monetary-theory-with-its-danger-zones <comment><USER2> Under MMT there is no financial reason for income taxes, so there must be a non-financial reason for them. My guess is that income taxes cause an additional need to require the currency, giving it the appearance of having value.</comment>


Stop Forcing Your Kids To Learn Musical Instruments - <AUTHOR> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114733/stop-forcing-your-kids-learn-musical-instrument

<comment><USER2> I kind of disagree with this.

A lot of the problem of 'should I have my kid learn an instrument' stems from the lack of quantitative data surrounding the practice. Sure, kids that play instruments tend to do better in math or whatever, but is that because they are playing an instrument, or because they are reaping other, more silent factors that are associated with being of a class of citizen that can afford to play an instrument.

Questions like that are hard to answer.

My personal philosophy is terribly flawed, and based on my own personal experience, but I think it's important to open that particular door for a child. Whether or not they stick with it is up to them, but then the question is, 'at what point can I let my kid make up their own mind.'

For me, this was 11 years. For the first 11 years I studied piano, I wanted to quit. I really liked it the first 3 or so years, then I hated it around year 6, then I warmed up to it again around year 9 and finally, in what could best be described as a revelation, I seemingly overnight saw the value in what I as doing and saw the value in those around me who were truly great, both in the past and the present. That was the moment that I had made a concrete, non- emotional decision.

I would have regretted it if I hadn't been forced to stick with it all through my childhood. I'm really thankful my parents made me stick it out, and for me, it was totally worth it.

For better or worse, every kid is different. What ended up being a blessing for me might be a decade of torture for someone who doesn't 'get' music. It might be 'a waste' as it does require some concentrated mental and physical application to ascend out of 'I can play Coldplay' into 'I can play Chopin'. It is a really demanding practice to become a classical musician.

Today, I don't really have an answer, or even a recommendation. I really think everyone should get the opportunity, but after that, it's a terribly difficult problem with no good answer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to offer a counterpoint. I took classical piano lessons, and I didn't like it at the time, but now I'm glad I did. I still play from time to time. I think my appreciation for music in general is much greater because of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> You could make the same argument for sports- most children who interact in sports will not do so professionally. There are physical/mental benefits to sports which at the end of the day 'doesn't matter'.

I feel that the purpose of making your child learn X at a young age is to simply expose your child the possibilities of life. There are so many overlapping ideas or life skills between different disciplines that any experience is good experience. Of course, like the answer to many things in life, moderation is the key.

</comment><comment><USER5> Forcing is not the right word. The arc of learning music is like any other. [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/the-startup- curve.html](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/the-startup-curve.html)

There is initial novelty, then it wears off, and you hit the through of sorrow. Usually in the sixth year. It's important at this stage to recognize it for what it is. If you can guide your child to cross it, then it is the perfect analogy for other endeavors they may chose to tackle.

</comment><comment><USER6> > As for the enduring value of music lessons, I propose an even simpler test. > Go on Facebook and ask your friends to chime in if, when they were children, > they took five years or more of a classical instrument. [How many are still > playing?]

That definitely hits home with me. I took classical piano for years as a child. Hours and hours of practicing, lessons and recitals. I haven't played piano since grade 5 or 6 I think.

<comment><USER7> Me: 7 years piano lessons, 5 years flute and 2 years mallet percussion in band. Today I play piano, clarinet, guitar, and would like to start cello.

I think it's similar to forcing kids to learn foreign languages, math or computer programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't get this to open. I will note there is a known correlation between teaching classical music and math ability. Also, not everything worthwhile in life is about a paycheck.

</comment><comment><USER9> Stop telling parents how to parent.

</comment><comment><USER10> I disagree in my case.

My parents introduced me and my sister to piano at a young age. We both hated it. My parents gave up forcing me to play after a year whereas they continuously pushed my sister to play piano.

Now I can't play piano while my sister enjoys playing pop, jazz, classical pieces on piano.</comment>


For Her Head Cold, Insurer Coughed Up $25,865 - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/23/787403509/for-her-head-cold-insurer-coughed-up-25-865 <comment><USER2> This had nothing to do with the patient, it's plain old insurance fraud committed by the physician and his buddies in the out-of-network company in the same building. Which is why they where so eager to get the bill payed and cover the patient, so no-one would pay too much attention. And why not? They end up paying around 2k to the patient but steal 25k from the insurance company. Considering how badly they carried this out it might be their first fraud attempt, but I wouldn't be surprised if they done it a dozen times before.</comment>