Stonebraker: Send Relational DBMSs to the Home for Tired Software - <AUTHOR> http://marklogic.blogspot.com/2009/07/stonebraker-send-relational-dbmss-to.html <comment><USER2> You know, every couple of weeks an article like this comes up on HN or Slashdot predicting the end of the RDBMS. I don't deny that special purpose data stores can offer great performance improvements in some applications. But there is a reason that RDBMSs are celebrating their 40th birthday (as the article mentions). They are flexible, cheap (except for Oracle and DB2) and easy to manage.

My guess is that we will still be reading about the imminent death of the relational database another 40 years from now.

<comment><USER3> You could be right. But Stonebraker is not "just another guy" predicting the end of the era of the RDBMS. He's one of the guys who _invented_ the RDBMS. If he thinks he's seen something better, well, I think it's worth at least taking a look.

<comment><USER4> He is _selling_ something (he claims to be) better - Vertica.

I've no comment either way on whether it is, and I know who Stonebraker is and respect what he's done, but he has a vested interest here. Just like Netscape programmers needed to kill off their earlier work, Mosaic.

<comment><USER3> I agree. And he's been selling post-relational stuff for a while-- this is not a new observation on his part.

I'm not going to form an opinion on his word alone, but he's got big enough chops in my book to warrant taking what he says seriously, even if he has a vested interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As long as they don't throw out the underlying idea that data can be deconstructed then reorganized into a form that adheres to mathematic principles, set theory and predicate logic in the case of RDBMS's, and from that you can perform logical operations on it that allow you to derive new, additional information from it. I think that was the major breakthrough of Relational Theory, hopefully that is built on, rather than thrown out.

Speaking of which, Chris Date, Hugh Darwen and some others were talking about a significant extension or evolution of the relational database, called the transrelational database, several years ago. Anyone heard of any progress on that front lately?

<comment><AUTHOR> This? <http://www.dbms2.com/2005/11/12/transrelational-23/>

<comment><USER5> Ah, too bad. Thx.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Software Engineering would progress a lot farther as a discipline if we weren't so preoccupied with throwing out the "old" to make room for the "new".

My definition of "legacy" code: code that is field-tested, has a low defect rate, and generally works.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is just a brief summary of the Michael Stonebraker's piece "The End of a DBMS Era (Might be Upon Us)" which appeared on HN a few days ago. As far as I can tell it adds nothing new, am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this article makes some good points. In fact there are times when I've been very frustrated at the "We can't to better than RDBMS" attitude many times. Particularly that time we were storing a tree in a table. Specialized data stores are very neat.

I do however think there will always be a good place for the traditional RDBMS. For instance, there are times when I'm creating that I don't know what the layout of the data will need to be, and where the optimizations will be most needed, so I back an app with Postgres. Should I need to expand later, it will be easier as I have actual data to work with.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is: unless you know for sure that your data will benefit from a different model (e.g. known performance needs, or a better conceptual mapping), not using an RDBMS seems like a premature optimizaton.

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems as a database engineer, I am going to have to bulk up my skills in non-RDBMS technologies, even if just to be able to say "yes, I am very familiar with <random non-SQL DBMS> and it's not an appropriate solution to this problem".

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand, I thought relational DBMS were left for the dogs many years ago. . .<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dbms#End_1970s_SQL_DBMS>

</comment><comment><USER11> _In the online transaction processing (OLTP) market, a lightweight main memory DBMS beats a row store by a factor of 50._

I'm confused -- what does main memory vs. row store have to do with relational vs. non-relational?

<comment><USER12> Everything when you're talking about real world implementations and not some abstract theory in your head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The actual article was already on here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680881></comment>


Show HN: yabs.io - yet another bookmarking service? - <AUTHOR> https://yabs.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> No perfect bookmarking service, here is my homebrew:

\- hierarchical tags and faceted tag browsing

\- clip content instead of just saving urls which mean you can save mutli parts of the content with different tags.

\- oembed

\- shuffle clips to recall old memories

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks really interesting! Just wanted to let you know that if you decline the permission request when signing in for the first time, you get the 500 error.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the update, I presumed that no one will choose 'cancel' on authorization through google. But why you decline the request? just because I collect your email address which will be required in traditional sign in process? anyway, I fixed the bug, and remove view email address permission on sign in request.

<comment><USER2> Haha, no, it's just that I had simply forgotten to log out of my work account.</comment></comment></comment>


JSX - a faster, safer, easier alternative to JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://jsx.github.com/ <comment><USER2> > (...) even the optimized JavaScript libraries like Box2D becomes faster when > ported to JSX.

Box2D is a C++ library that has been ported to ActionScript and then, from ActionScript, converted to JavaScript - not by hand, but by a bunch of scripts[1]. The JS version of Box2D still carries around a lot of unnecessary weight from the original C++ and ActionScript versions and has much room for improvement.

A rewrite or "smart" conversion from C++ to JS, that endorses JS instead of trying to emulate C++ or ActionScript, should be able to improve performance a lot.

I don't know how Box2D was ported to JSX. Maybe it was a rewrite by a human? In any case, I'm not saying what they do isn't impressive, but calling Box2D an "optimized JavaScript library" is just plain wrong.

[1] There are several different JS ports of Box2D available, but, to my knowledge, none of which is a sensible rewrite by a human.

<comment><USER3> You're definitely right about that.

Probably the biggest inefficiency with all the ports is that they don't pool vectors. In the C++ version, vectors are often on the stack, which is way more efficient. In JS, it creates large numbers of temporary vectors that must be garbage collected.

For my iPad port of one of my Flash games (written in Haxe, so it was actually being translated back into C++), I spent quite a few days profiling the places that were vectors were being created the most, and modifying them to use a pool.

Then some verification code in debug mode checked that there was never a dead vector being written to or read from.

In pathological places with tons of collisions, that got the speed from 2 fps to 30.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "JSX offers a solid class system much like the Java programming language, freeing the developers from working with the too-primitive prototype-based inheritance system provided by JavaScript."

Pass.

<comment><USER5> That's a weird thing to think. If you can simulate classes with prototypes, but you can't simulate prototypes with classes, what is the natural conclusion you can come to about which is more expressive or primitive?

<comment><USER6> That prototypes are overly complex.

You can't simulate most imperative programs with functional ones because writing in a functional language eliminates a vast majority of bugs due to incomplete reasoning about memory barriers and other really hard to duplicate issues like race conditions.

CHESS is an amazing piece of software precisely because it CAN simulate race conditions and reproduce them, however, if these things didn't exist no one would ever bother trying to reproduce them.

I'm quite fine not being able simulate these issues.

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying you're wrong, but isn't this a bit like saying that files are overly complex because they can be used to simulate sockets?

<comment><USER6> It is, but on the other hand if you write code to work with sockets then you get a performance boost on spinning disks because your IO is sequential. And many other benefits like trivial cache prediction, buffering, etc.

I do think that prototypes have useful properties, but I'm not sure that a prototype isn't a form of an open class. I tend to think that the biggest problem with prototypes in js is the interface.

<comment><USER5> Prototypes in JS are problematic due to false cognates- it tried to look like Java (due to marketing department fuckery), and use the same keywords as java, but it doesn't act at all like Java which leads to some nasty surprises. This has been fixed in ES5- the correct way to inherit from a prototype is no longer via constructor functions and their prototype property, but via Object.create()

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > JSX performs optimization while compiling the source code to JavaScript. The > generated code runs faster than an equivalent code written directly in > JavaScript.

This is just absurd. It is claiming it will run faster than JavaScript ... by compiling to JavaScript. If generated JavaScript code would run faster, it just mean the JavaScript code could have been written better in the first place. They probably have logic optimization behind the scene, but clamming it will run faster that JavaScript is just ridiculous.

<comment><USER9> CoffeeScript makes the exact same claim, right on their front page (emphasis mine):

"The compiled output is readable and pretty-printed, passes through JavaScript Lint without warnings, will work in every JavaScript runtime, _and tends to run as fast or faster than the equivalent handwritten JavaScript._ "

This is not absurd at all, it has been a proposition made by many languages in the past regarding their target. In fact it's kind of the whole point of an _optimizing_ compiler. Whether its C being turned into better ASM than you'd write by hand, or CoffeeScript being turned into better JavaScript than you'd write by hand, the basic idea is the same. Of course you could theoretically just write the better ASM/JavaScript/whatever yourself, but the point is that usually how to do so is not obvious or not worth your time. If the average programmer's output ends up more performant with your compiler, then the claim is fair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Haxe does the same and more: <http://haxe.org/>

<comment><USER11> I can't believe no one has mentioned GWT in this whole thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> the jsx source code of the "hello world" example is only 62.5% of the code needed by dart for the same example. 5 lines vs 8 lines of code.

the compiled JS source of the "hello world" example is only 0.5% of the code needed for the same task by dart. 91 lines vs 17259 lines code.

<comment><USER13> The equivalent in Dart is:

      main() {
        print("hello world!");
      }

and you know the "17259 lines" thing is FUD.

EDIT: The above Dart code currently generates 445 lines of JS with comments and readable formatting. Obviously it's not quite where it needs to be but it's coming along quite well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Static typing is nice, but does this support type inference?

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it weird that I'm happy this site doesn't have a lot of pretty gradients and fancy art? For whatever reason I'm a little tired of too pretty sites related to JavaScript or other client side development. I think the reason for this is because I get the impression that the contributors emphasize trivial features and care more about artificial things, like a really opinionated interface but not a lot of innovation in performance.

It's like the bike shed concept. Anyone can paint a bike shed, but it takes real skill and hard work to build a decent one. It's great to have a nice coat of paint, but the accomplishment wasn't picking the color. That's how I feel about ember.js's website, and the website for all these other client side things with fancy buttons, large web fonts and gratuitous use of space. It's probably a pretty coat of paint, but I doubt I can get efficiently achieve 200,000 datastore operations with speed.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks quite good. Very similar to AS3, although it has the type inference of Scala. Nice. Either way something like this needs to exist to produce more robust code when creating large projects in Javascript. Google did this in using Java, but Java is overly restrictive. Being able to mix static (to a compilers checks + self-documentation) & dynamic (e.g. write parsing code more easily) typing is the future. This either/or approach is antithesis of what's good in CS.

</comment><comment><USER5> here is a recent hacker news thread about a very similar (and in my opinion much more interesting and useful) project called LLJS <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3965713>

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks like ActionScript, which is already based off ECMAScript...why not just use that, or extend what's already there? Getting adoption for a brand new language is tough, plus there's already a ton of software/libraries/tools written in As3

<comment><USER18> ActionScript running directly in the browser could be interesting. It has some cruft (much of it shared with JS due to the ECMAScript heritage), and the ECMAScript lineage leads to some weird features (e.g., typically its class- based inheritance is used, but it does include prototype inheritance), but it's not a bad language.

<comment><USER19> <http://www.jangaroo.net/home/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> function foo(bar : string) : string...

Why, why do we need unnecessary tokens?! Get rid of the stupid :'s.

<comment><USER21> I agree We should also take periods out of sentences They aren't needed as long as you capitalize the first letter of every sentence This makes things much cleaner

<comment><USER22> Odd, I had no problem reading your comment. It also has an unusual clean-ness.

Maybe period-less sentences are the future Throughout history english has already had many typological changes From a DRY stand-point capitalization and periods contain the same information payload Eliminating one of them would thus be good software engineering Right?

<comment><USER23> I didn't notice there were no periods till I finished reading and then had a "hey, wait a second" glance back This is an experiment worth trying out: just write everything in this style for a while

The main problem I see here is figuring out whether a new sentence has been started when a Proper Noun or capitalized pronoun like "I" has been introduced I provide the current sentence as an example of that It's not so hard to figure out from context usually, but I'm sure there are easily constructed cases where the meaning changes based on the period Then again, much of the English language is like that

<comment><USER4> "... been introduced I provide the ..."

I'll admit that I did a triple-take when reading through your example. Let's keep periods. :)

<comment><USER23> This is a cognitive problem. I also read you as doing a "double-take", even though you clearly wrote "triple-take". Another cognition issue. The unthinking mind reacting automatically without consulting our conscious. The solution is obviously to augment our brains with computers. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Faster: a language change is not worth performance < an order of magnitude. Safer: unit tests; user input is only one type. Easier: prototypal inheritance is not a bug.

Next language please.</comment>


The Photos We'll Remember: 2000-2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.life.com/timeline/16231/the-photos-well-remember-2000-2010

<comment><USER2> Zultan headbutt has to be my favorite picture of the decade. The last one about the Chilean miners moved me to tears, it was a very moving picture.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really powerful. So many problems in this world, I wish I did something about them.

This isn't meant to be political, but that orphan kid who's entire family got shot at the American checkpoint in Iraq, the woman who was disfigured due to abuse by acid, the Haiti earthquake, Katrina ... I feel like I accomplished nothing in the past decade.

</comment><comment><USER4> A 5-seconds flash ad overlay on every single slide? Seriously?</comment>


Working in a Music product? I have your name, identity and UX right here - <AUTHOR> http://pulxr.com

<comment><USER2> The copy on that is horribly difficult to read and comprehend. I think you're trying to be too cool.

Don't tell me you have an awesome interface, show me something. Show me artists that are using your service. Get me interested in their page.

Though I suspect you actually are just using this to see if there is a market there or not. If that is the question, yes there are lots of people already providing this service to musicians, to many to mention, and nobody really stands out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip in the copy text. I'll review that. Of course I'm trying to be cool but seems I fail at the copy.

Is not a service fos artists. Is more like Amazon Cloud Player or Google Music Service. I was working on this for a couple months. Don't want to waste what I think is a pretty good Ux for such a service.</comment></comment>


TLA+ model checking made symbolic - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/11/29/tla-model-checking-made-symbolic/ <comment><USER2> Is anybody using TLA+ in production outside of academia? What for? I've always wanted to, but I'm not familiar enough with it to always recognize when it'd be the right tool to reach for.

I primarily code in Elixir and Erlang, and have used property testing to perform some level of model checking when working with state machines, and I suspect TLA+ could be helpful for formalizing that a little bit, but it isn't a theory I've ever put into practise.

<comment><USER3> We use TLA+. There's nothing particularly magical about TLA+. There are a variety of modeling languages and model checking toolkits out there. I've yet to encounter someone in industries that have commonly adopted model definition & checking who uses TLA+. It's popularity seems highest among folks in newer SaaS/IT arenas than elsewhere.

More often I run into folks using SCADE's model checker. Tied for a distant 2nd, I'd say I've run into more folks who work with NuSMV, CADP, and mCRL2 than TLA+. This could also be mostly sample bias, and it's worth noting that the folks who use _any_ of these things are in the very extreme minority of architects & developers that I speak to in automotive, med. tech., industrial automation, etc.

Though, like I said, we use TLA+. Not for any particularly good reason than it was a sufficient tool among the variety of comparable tools for what we needed to do, but I expect that if we had to go back and do it all over again we'd have selected something else. The specification language has some annoying warts, the checking performance isn't comparatively very good, and the provided IDE works in almost exactly the opposite way any of us wish it would work. To the point that one of our engineers figured out how to wire it all up through Emacs so we could stop monkeying around with TLA Toolbox for 90% of the work. Of course, everything has problems, so TLA+ isn't notoriously different here. We've just used it in anger more than other things.

For whatever it's worth, I also used to be an Erlang developer and used to play around a bit with McErlang, which I think might be a dead project now. However, there's an active project called Concuerror ([https://concuerror.com/](https://concuerror.com/)) which kind of covers the same domain. I don't know how well it works or what its level of maturity is, but it is very interesting in this one very important regard... it's model checking against your actual program implementation. That's an enormous and fantastic difference. Model conformance of concrete implementation to your design (and checked) model is an enormous problem, and tools which can close or remove that gap can be enormously valuable. What I don't know is the level of sophistication of Concuerror, nor if it is able to check for the kinds of properties you care about in your systems.

<comment><USER4> TLA+'s secret power is refinement; the entire logic is built around the abstraction/refinement relation. One of the best ways to use TLA+ is to specify you system in two or three levels of detail and check that they are, indeed, refinements. If you just use TLA+ for model-checking and don't use refinement mappings that are possible due to the language's elegance, you're giving up on most of its power, and if that's the case, you might as well use weaker specification languages like Promella and NuSMV. But I think it's worthwhile to learn how to use refinements and enjoy the full power of TLA+ rather than just as a language for model-checking. Unlike Promella and NuSMV, TLA+ is not designed as a frontend language for a model-checker. It's a language primarily designed to allow you to think about and understand your system in interesting ways, and it _also_ has a model checker. It's designed to be read and discussed (hence the emphasis on pretty-printing) much more than written and edited. If you're using it anyway, make the full use of it.

<comment><USER5> I'm now _really_ curious as to how many people who use and value TLA+ have actually used refinement. I've used it, you've used it, Lamport and (probs) Merz and Markus have used it, most other people I've talked to haven't. Probably time for a community poll or something.

<comment><USER4> Technically it's impossible to use TLA+ without using refinement, as the entire TLA logic is based on it. Checking Machine ⇒ □P is checking that Machine refines □P. But, of course, the real power -- and what you and I both meant -- comes from writing machine formulas on _both_ sides of the implication sign.

I don't think many of those who use TLA+ use refinement between two machine formulas, but I think that's partly because they still consider TLA+ as a frontend language for TLC, which is unfortunate, because if all you want (or, rather, think you want) is a model-checker, there are probably better ones. In fact, the little use of refinement is just a symptom of this bigger issue. I don't think refinement is always useful, but I do think that everyone who uses TLA+ should use its power for analysis rather than just mundane model- checking. I admit, TLC is so enticing, that once you use it, TLA+ can feel secondary to it. Of course, I'd be happy if people used model-checkers more, whether TLC, Spin, NuSMV, Simulink or others, but I'd be even happier if people used TLA+ for its primary purpose, perhaps after being enticed by TLC: thinking about system design. I guess the problem is exactly what Lamport pointed out: programmers (including myself) don't like to think, especially when we can use automation. To be honest, I don't think I would have come to TLA+ if it weren't for TLC. So, in a sense, TLC both pulls people to TLA+ _and_ obscures its main purpose.

In the TLA+ workshop I imagine one day giving to my colleagues, I _start_ with refinement. I would also start without TLC at all; just showing how TLA+ helps you think -- its main purpose and advantage. When writing specifications, I now always start with refinement, first writing how the system would behave at a very high-level, and only then refining a specific algorithm.

(If anyone reads this without having read the article, and doesn't know what TLC is, it's a model-checker for TLA+ that's included in the TLA+ Toolbox)

<comment><USER3> Why exactly is TLA+ better suited to thinking about system design compared to say mCRL2, SCADE, or Simulink? Especially relative to the latter two since they provide a paved road to going from your system model to your system implementation, which TLA+ makes no attempt to do.

<comment><USER4> I don't know mCRL2 at all, but SCADE and Simulink are niche tools (excellent at what they're for). TLA+ is completely general-purpose because it can describe a system at _arbitrary_ levels of abstraction (and link the levels). You could hypothetically describe the same system at the level of logic gates or at the level of human interaction. Now, it is not true that TLA+ makes no attempt to directly link to the implementation, but it makes no _particular_ attempt to do so. Its ability to do so stems directly from its power to describe a system at truly arbitrary levels. You want to describe your system at your code level so that you can verify your actual code? You can do that. But here's where things get interesting. If you want to _verify_ a specification using any sound tool -- be it a model-checker or deductive proof -- the size of the specification becomes very limited. We can verify about 3000-6000 lines of a specification. It can be this number of lines of a low- level specification, i.e. code, or of a high-level specification. So this means that if we want to verify our actual implementation, our program must be tiny. But TLA+ gives you the option to specify and verify, say, a 2000-line high-level specification of a 2MLOC program to find problems at that level, and that's what people in general-purpose software need most.

If your tool -- any tool -- links directly to the implementation, we know that the verified implementation will be very limited in size. It is TLA+'s ability to choose arbitrary levels of detail that gives it the power to help design large system. Such designs, however, cannot be formally (i.e. mechanically) linked to the implementation. If they could, we'd know how to fully verify large systems, but we don't.

<comment><USER3> Everything you said about TLA+ here also applies to the other tools I mentioned. You'd just work with them differently to get to similar ends, but with the added benefit of you can actually directly use the output of your efforts. I also don't understand how you arrived at SCADE & Simulink being niche tools, but somehow TLA+ is general purpose?

There must be _at least_ 2 orders of magnitude more Simulink users doing model-based design & development than there are people who use TLA+ for pretty much anything. Simulink has limitations, but being comparatively niche relative to something like TLA+ isn't one of them.

As an aside, not only does TLA+ not make an effort to provide a means of mechanically linking one's model to one's program, but when the question was asked of one of its progenitors how a developer might do this they were literally scoffed at for the suggestion.

You're not describing anything to me that I'm not already aware of insofar as TLA+ is concerned. Having also used several other similar or adjacent tools, and being in constant contact with folks who use them for avionics systems, medical devices, large scale industrial automation, etc., I'm still inclined to say that TLA+ is _fine_. It's unnecessarily annoying in a bunch of dimensions. I am skeptical that if TLA+ wasn't descendent from one of the distributed systems godfathers, and wasn't associated with AWS in the software developer zeitgeist, that there'd be as much intrigue & interest around it.

Also, I begrudge having had to come to the defense of SCADE and Simulink. I spend a non-trivial amount of my week essentially arguing against them in some respect, but they deserve their due.

<comment><USER4> > You'd just work with them differently to get to the same ends, but with the > added benefit of you can actually directly use the output of your efforts.

With TLA+ you can also directly use the output of your efforts. But if you're talking about compilation to some executable, that, unfortunately, requires a certain level of detail above which you cannot rise due to computational complexity concerns. So if you want that, you'd have to use TLA+ at the same level as other tools that emit code.

> There must be at least 2 orders of magnitude more Simulink users doing > model-based design & development than there are people who use TLA+ for > pretty much anything. Simulink has limitations, but being comparatively > niche relative to something like TLA+ isn't one of them.

Oh, of course! Those are excellent tools, but still niche (they target mostly embedded and/or real-time). You cannot use them to design and verify a 2MLOC system. I wasn't talking about popularity, but about target domains.

> As an aside, not only does TLA+ not make an effort to provide a means of > mechanically linking one's model to one's program, but when the question was > asked of one of its progenitors how a developer might do this they were > literally scoffed at for the suggestion.

First of all, as I said, it does not make a _particular_ effort, because it's not necessary. People have used TLA+ to verify actual C, Java and Go code (that I know of). The problem is that once you do that you are bound by the scaling limitation of _all_ tools that operate at that level. TLA+ is relatively special in that it can rise beyond that limitation, and _that_ is where most of its users find value. Using TLA+ at the code level is just not using it to its full potential, and so misses the point. Unfortunately, specifying and verifying at that level can only be done by abandoning what we call "end-to-end", i.e. verification all the way to the code.

> Also, I begrudge having had to come to the defense of SCADE and Simulink. I > spend a non-trivial amount of my week essentially arguing against them in > some respects, but they deserve their due.

Of course, and I'm sorry if it sounded as if I was suggesting that TLA+ is better than them at what they do. I, myself, used Esterel decades before first learning of TLA+. TLA+ is better at _other_ things -- things that are more applicable to a much wider application domain. My point is that due to fundamental limitations -- we can only verify a specification of a certain size -- there is an inherent tradeoff between scale and application domain and the ability to generate and executable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://github.com/interchainio/verification/tree/develop/sp...](https://github.com/interchainio/verification/tree/develop/spec)</comment>


The Feel-Good Gene - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/opinion/sunday/the-feel-good-gene.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0 <comment><USER2> There is some evidence that Anadamide reduces working memory(similiar to marajuana). I wonder how the working memory of FAAH mutation possessors compares to the people who lack the mutation.</comment>


Value of Angel Networks? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in search of an angel/seed investor for my startup, and while I am working my networks, I wonder what people's opinions are of the various Angel networks out there? Many allow direct submission of pitches/business plans, charging a screening fee. <p>Has anyone found it to be worthwhile, personally or anecdotally? New York Angels has a lot of really good people on their board and as members (Josh Kopelman, Esther Dyson). Worth my time/$ to submit a pitch?<p>(disclaimer: YC not an option, co-founder has kids and can't move. Also sending to CRV Quickstart. ) <comment><USER2> Most seem to be pretty near useless. Not one YC startup (of 38 prior to this round) has gotten funding from one. In fact, I can't think of any startup I know that has.

I would especially steer clear of any that charge a fee.

<comment><AUTHOR> So is there _any_ good way to connect with angels besides networking?

<comment><USER2> Try clicking on the orange Y in the upper left.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you'd accept pitches from non S/WFP applicants? (see above: we can't move to SF/Boston)

(Incidentally, speaking of networking, I think you might know my dad-- Mitch Wand @ Northeastern?)

<comment><USER3> You say that your co-founder can't move, but if just you can, that might be enough:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32179>

<comment><AUTHOR> My wife would prefer that if I'm going to do a startup, at least I could still be around _physically_...

We did apply (and were not accepted) to SFP this last cycle-- Cambridge is much more manageable from where we are in NYC than SF, and I could have had free housing there, too.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Atari ST, Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1000

<comment><USER2> aw, man. i submitted part one of this awhile back, and have had the author rss-bookmarked since then, waiting to post part two. i missed it by an hour.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry Allen - but if it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure I added his blog to my rss reader after reading your first submission.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Namegine Monitoring – Protect your company name without trademark - <AUTHOR> https://namegine.com/monitoring/ <comment><USER2> In the US there is a big difference between Trademark (TM) and Registered Trademark (R). This tool is to support TM only. TM does not prevent others from using the same mark it they are in distinct markets or distinct geographic areas.

How does this tool differ than just a saved google search?

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea is so obvious and yet so innovative. Good luck!</comment>


The Filter Bubble Isn't Evil Unless You Are - <AUTHOR> http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/the-preference-bubble

<comment><AUTHOR> My problem is that the filter bubble is increasingly used as a retort of fear, uncertainty and doubt when discussing personalization, marketing and privacy. It's become a proxy to end discussions about how our personal data can, will and should be used as technology advances. Because despite the dire warnings about the dangers of the filter bubble, I believe there's potentially more to gain than to lose.</comment>


Follow up to "I'm building a TechCrunch alternative that focuses on startups" - <AUTHOR> Three days ago I submitted an article describing my intentions to launch a news site that is focus on Startups. The original thread can be found here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2153038 .
The response so far has been over whelming. I've had over 100 startups reach out to me from HN and I've responded to every single email I received (before today). I must say, the quality of submissions was phenomenal. There are some really sharp people here.
If you're a startup and still want to tell us your story, please get in touch with me by emailing me at email@example.com.
In other news, MediaTemple has very generously offered to be a sponsor and handle our hosting for us. I've already began writing several articles and we will be soft launching this Thursday. The site is looking fantastic, and the startup coverage will be unparalleled.
If you would like to sign up for our weekly news letter, you can do so via MailChimp http://eepurl.com/csrmr
If you would like to follow us our Twitter handle is @startupfoundry .
Thanks for your warm reception HN, we have some great stuff coming down the pike! I'm really looking forward to unleashing this. <comment><USER2> As several others asked last time, have you considered posting under a name other than "g0atbutt" for a more professional look?

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't have recognized him if he had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree because TC seems to only focus on big business and well known startups.So I'm definitely for this idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> and please no Quora news anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER6> When you say you will focus on startups will this be on the emphasis of startup launches? Or will you report on already launched startups?

<comment><AUTHOR> We will talk about both. If it's relevant to the startup world, it will be on The Startup Foundry.

<comment><USER6> As long as the focus stays true to "actual" startups I am excited for this! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are you looking for only success stories, or also stories from people who are having problems/can't seem to get things off the ground?

</comment><comment><USER5> Good Job Paul. startup foundry all the way!

</comment><comment><USER8> Signed up for the newsletter. I am excited to read about all of the projects that are brewing from HN.

</comment><comment><USER9> Best of luck Paul.</comment>


San Diego: Join us for Hacker News meetup #15 (Fri 3/25) - <AUTHOR> http://anyvite.com/olm0o3fifb

<comment><AUTHOR> Please RSVP! We now typically have 25-35+ people in attendance, so to set aside room for us at the coffee shop, I'd like to have an accurate headcount.

To receive notifications of future events, join our e-mail list: <http://groups.google.com/group/sd-hackernews>

More info on the homepage/wiki: [http://cses.ucsd.edu/wiki/index.php/San_Diego_Hacker_News_Me...](http://cses.ucsd.edu/wiki/index.php/San_Diego_Hacker_News_Meetup)

For other San Diego area tech / startup meetups, see the huge SD Tech Scene calendar: <http://www.sdtechscene.org/>

<comment><USER2> Pardon the n00b question, but: what's the general vibe? any agenda? RSVP'd and excited to check it out Friday. :)

<comment><USER3> It's basically HN but in real-life, and a smaller scale than HN itself (sans the trolls ;) ). People are nice and friendly. Generally unstructured, basically a social mixer. Main topic: techie stuff + entrepreneurship. Nothing else like this community in San Diego.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looking forward to it :)</comment>


Royal Ordnance Factory Bishopton (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://catchingphotons.co.uk/blog/explosives/royal-ordnance-factory-bishopton/ <comment><USER2> I grew up near the factory, without knowing what was made there. The Ordnance Survey maps at the time showed the area as it was before the factory existed, and weren't updated until after it closed. Later I learned that they made cordite (propellant for bullets) there.

Ben Cooper is held in very high regard among urban explorers. His original report is at [https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/military- sites/10983-r...](https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/military- sites/10983-royal-ordnance-factory-bishopton-near- glasgow-2009-a.html?highlight=bishopton)

Although trespass in Great Britain isn't usually a crime (in England and Wales it's a tort, and in Scotland in most cases it's a right under the Scottish Outdoor Access Code), there are certain exceptions, one of which might have applied to the ROF at the time Ben visited it: places used to store explosives. Ben was charged, but the Procurator Fiscal dropped all charges.

</comment><comment><USER3> _> BAE Systems and Redrow Homes now have a plan – they want to clean up this entire massive site, and build a housing estate. This is receiving a lot of local opposition, not least because the preferred method of cleaning up 2000+ buildings full of explosve residue is by burning them._

They seem to have got the go-ahead to build houses, judging from the number of houses that appear on Google Maps satellite images dated 2020 but not on streetview images dated 2012 [1]

[1] [https://www.google.com/maps/place/55%C2%B054'03.6%22N+4%C2%B...](https://email@example.com,-4.5069642,4097m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d55.901!4d-4.50429?hl=en)

<comment><USER4> Yes, Dargavel Village is well underway

[http://renfrewshire.gov.uk/dargavel](http://renfrewshire.gov.uk/dargavel) [http://www.dargavelvillage.co.uk/](http://www.dargavelvillage.co.uk/)

There's various warnings coming out from residents and neighbours already, such as terms of home purchase including being prohibited from growing food for consumption for the next ten years, being prohibited from digging more than a certain depth down, etc

You drive down a typical Scottish new build street, with modern homes on one side, and 2 meter high fences with 'Danger, keep out" on the other side.

But neighbouring Bishopton is an extremely sought after dormitory village, and Dargavel is built with that in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The cellulose pulp tanks were made by Bertrams. They were in Edinburgh and I walked past their boiler making metalworks factory in Sciennes Rd (Marchmont) going to school in the sixties before it closed. It's flats now.</comment>


Morgan Stanley's Mobile Innternet Report (Long Read) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/24129386/The-Mobile-Internet-Report

<comment><USER2> How did Morgan Stanley fare in their previous predictions?</comment>


Becoming a "Spamassasin" - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/311278-stop-spam-on-your-postfix-server-with-spamassassin

<comment><USER2> I integrated and adminsiter a postfix / sa / clamd / courier system for about 10,000 domains (6 identical blades with local storage for the queues and Global File System GFS once they've been accepted).

SA gets about 95% accuracy on our system even at 5.0

I can also recommend enabling SPF and DKIM see <http://www.openspf.org/> Wave bye bye to emails pretending to be sent from yourself to yourself or those annoying "your settings have changed, open this zip file" mails.</comment>


Please. Stop Using Git - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4PFDKIc2fs

<comment><USER2> Git certainly has some positives but suggesting that Git obviates the need for someone to maintain a central server for it, or that it's conservative with disk space is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER3> Disclaimer: it's a joke.</comment>


'I stole £30,000 from my mum to make millions' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47156317 <comment><USER2> Somehow, I don't think this is a good thing to be promoting. How many times do people make risks like this and fail? If I stole a million dollars from a family member and spent it on lottery tickets and won would that make me right? It is also pretty disrespectful to your parent to not even ask them for the money first.

<comment><USER3> I think whoever you stole the money from might have a strong case of owning the ticket and taking the entire lot.

Maybe I am getting old, because I keep seeing articles written glorifying doing bad things. Such as this and sneaking into paid venues -- because "mhy fun" and "stick it to the man" without realizing that people following even the most simple of the rules is what makes any society work.

<comment><USER4> > _people following even the most simple of the rules is what makes any > society work._

And some people breaking those rules is what makes society tolerable.

<comment><USER5> Where is the line?

Breaking into concerts?

Breaking into homes?

Assault?

Murder?

Assassinating politicians?

Overthrowing elected governments?

People breaking rules is what makes society collapse.

<comment><USER4> There's no hard line. All of those things, at different times, can be hugely beneficial and take society forward.

Many revolutions involved assault and murder (from the French Revolution to Cromwell).

May 68 was all about "overthrowing elected governments".

In the punk era "breaking into concerts" was routine -- and a way for poorer kids to afford seeing some bands they liked.

(There's a very nice scene in Cinema Paradiso for how kids/teenagers would also break/sneak/into cinemas to watch the film free -- or watch more adult films, a huge part of the old Italian culture, also common in other European countries).

<comment><USER3> So what I hear is if you are poor, then it is okay?

Could the poor kids not have mowed lawns, or done handy work around where they live to be able to save up money to buy the ticket properly?

But even so, breaking laws and rules simply for enjoyment is not the path to sustained enjoyment. The path to sustained enjoyment is discipline and focus, not instant gratification of breaking the law, which in the long run will probably just make it even harder for said person to experience real enjoyment.

I don't buy your argument that because your life is shitty you can do shitty things.

<comment><USER4> > _Could the poor kids not have mowed lawns, or done handy work around where > they live to be able to save up money to buy the ticket properly?_

The rich kids didn't have to do those things, so why should they?

That was intended as a lesson in civility, but it's actually a lesson is servility and injustice. Those were just as good kids as any other, they just happened to have born into the "wrong" (ie poor) parents.

Hopefully at some point in a future society we would see the less access by those poor kids the same way we see segregation today, and not just ask "why couldn't they mowe lawns" to get the same thing the rich kids got doing nothing.

(Though the real answer is that those poor kids in 40s-50s Italy probably already worked much harder than "mowing lawns", and they still had their priorities, like helping feed their families.

(Not to mention it was deemed OK by the society and seen with understanding, they weren't stuck-up on commercialization like other cultures).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So... he ordered a T1/T3 line? In 1997? That would have had a lead time of weeks? Surely his rich mother (with a 5-figure credit card limit) chose to fund her son's business, rather than disputing a ridiculous charge & kicking the little bastard into next week.

I too co-founded my last business with £30,000, but - funny story - we just asked our family & friends and they lent it to us. OK, not a funny story, but it's the only story.

If everyone who wanted to start a business in the UK could've accessed £30,000 the UK would be a lot better off right now :/

</comment><comment><USER7> That sounds a lot like the wrong kind of model to follow.

Gambling 30K he stole (from his mom!), paying stars to entertain his girlfriend... I wouldn't want to be near that person.

Good on him for being successful he might be rich but he sounds morally bankrupt.

<comment><USER8> We live in a world were gamblers dominate. Maybe it has to do with the intrinsic ponzi-logic of debt-money. Nearly nothing else than stealing or gambling at crazy risk or beeing the monopolist by birth in the first place leads to success, society pays the bill.

<comment><USER9> You forgot directly doing everyone over with externalities and being unethical corporate or political backstabber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If someone told me this story in real life, I'd find it hard to believe. On a major news outlet, it feels like PR fluff based on a huge exaggeration. Yet another founder myth.

<comment><USER11> I used to work for Andrew and, although the story of the £30k wasn't common knowledge as such, we all knew the fact that he (and his friend Alex) started the company while at school and then Andrew made a great success of it.

The parties were real; I went to a few of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It doesn't matter how much money you made. This is not much less stupid than the people that ran a gas station in Northern Ontario that I financed. They stole the till money (100's of thousands) to go gambling in the casino with the intention to put back the original money they stole once they had won.

Of course it did not work out that way. Gas station bankrupt, everybody out of a job. If one of my kids stole 30K from me I'd be more than happy to report them, wondering along the line where I'd failed in bringing them up to think that this would be an ok thing to do. Even if they would make millions.

I wrote about this here:

[https://jacquesmattheij.com/stick-to-what-you-know-a-tale- of...](https://jacquesmattheij.com/stick-to-what-you-know-a-tale-of-an- investment-gone-wrong/)

<comment><USER4> > _It doesn 't matter how much money you made._

Actually it very much does. Life is all about outcomes.

<comment><USER13> Depending on your philosophical outlook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > All of the web-hosting companies in the UK at the time were pitched at much > bigger companies

Not true - I was working at one in 1996 (predating Fasthosts) that was explicitly pitching at individuals and small businesses. IIRC, Claranet was also doing the same at about the same time (late 1996).

<comment><USER15> And what happened? Was it successful?

<comment><USER14> Mildly? It got sold for GBP10M in 1999 but I had been out of it for about a year by that point (and I didn't have any equity anyway.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is it about these business bio's? I can't think of any other format where you could sell, stealing £30k from your Mother as almost a good thing.

I get that they want to get 'inside the mind' of successful entrepreneurs, but really I don't expect journalists to be this overtly, sickeningly fawning. Based on his opening business gambit I wouldn't be surprised if this guy is embroiled in some scandal, and currently the BBC is just bigging him up.

Edit: Spelling

<comment><USER17> Yes, this is just seems like survivorship bias.

Not a good way to start a business.

<comment><USER16> Survivorship bias is kind of missing the point, you could make that point about a lot a business leaders.

My point was more, should we be holding up this person as an example to emulate, as the article seems to be doing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Out of interest, what kind of income/credit history do you need for a(t least a) £30k credit limit?

<comment><USER19> It was much easier to get large credit facilities in those days, or indeed prior to the financial crisis (which was really a credit/debt crisis).

Round about the same time, my father had a credit limit of around £50k, across 3 different cards. He was a contractor earning around £100k/year, and given he was _terrible_ with managing money, likely didn't have a great credit history.

Now in 2019 I earn around £100-150k a year, and my credit limit across 2 cards is £10k, with an immaculate credit history. I'm sure my card providers would increase it if I asked, but certainly not to £50k or even £30k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had hosting with fasthosts.

I forgot my password at some point and going through the forgotten password flow ended with them emailing me my plaintext password...

This was years ago, hopfully they've improved by now!

</comment><comment><USER20> £30,000 in unexpected credit card debt is the sort of story which ends with somebody committing suicide. But sure it's okay in this case because he did well. If the business had failed, which one could argue was the most likely outcome for a couple of teenagers hosting websites from their bedroom, the headline could read very differently.

</comment><comment><USER21> See, you too can make it big as long as your parents can float you 30 grand!

<comment><USER4> 30 grand is not that difficult to come for a middle class person [1]. Someone working a normal job with some sacrifices could save those money in like 5 years. Heck, people spend as much on cars. In fact, if you're so certain you will "make it big", take a 30 grand loan.

Still, few if any of them create a 50 million dollar business (or even an 1 million dollar one).

So there's that.

You think the only thing between you and "making it big" is 30 grand?

(1) (well, what americans call middle class, not what the British bizarrely call middle class, which means upper class very rich just no royalty)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just comment with "Motherfucker Jones" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuUR0LksFaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuUR0LksFaE)

</comment><comment><USER23> Maybe the guy can be chided for being stupid or for gambling. But for being morally bankrupt? I'm not sure about that one.

Here's a hypothetical: suppose you wake up tomorrow as a teenager in 1997, and have the ability to invest $30,000 in Google. Of course, you don't have the money for it, and your parents refuse to believe you. Would you steal it from your parents anyway, knowing that once you've made your money back, they will be taken care of? I would do it in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER19> Thing is, as a teenager you're way more likely to take risks than when you're older, probably because you don't perceive the probability and consequences in the same way.

So whether you can describe this as "morally bankrupt" really needs to be taken in the context of his age at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Insert Chav/Good Guy meme pic here, you can replace the whole article with it.

</comment><comment><USER24> While on the outset it seems to promote an anti-pattern, it could be taken positively and as good advice to just double down and eat some risk once a good opportunity is spotted. As for the particular web hosting business, I think a lot of companies like this that were bought out in the early phases of the dotcom boom may not have been worth the price. If I had to guess, the acquirer was probably driven by a lack of long term understanding and hype.

<comment><USER16> "it could be taken positively and as good advice to just double down and eat some risk once a good opportunity is spotted"

How? His mum ate the risk, not him.

I'd happily double down with your credit card, doesn't make me a visionary though.</comment></comment>


On Apple's A7 Processor - <AUTHOR> http://stevecheney.com/on-apples-a7-processor/

<comment><USER2> "whether the chip is dual or multicore, 32-bit or 64, you can bet Apple has it all tightly woven together"

I don't get it. Any device maker has multiple options in those four configurations. All mobile chip makers seek to optimize "performance per Watt".

What parameters are Apple going to tweak to make it "exactly fit" rather than suffer the heartbreak of a "generic design compromise"?

<comment><USER3> Unlike Android, Apple needs 900000+ third-party apps binary compatibility so they can't tightly weave anything, except perhaps extract a little more power savings from the kernel/CPU interface.

<comment><USER4> Only if you ignore the gigantic set of APIs that Apple also controls through which those binary apps get the vast majority of their work done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kind of hope they stay dual-core and keep improving the work done per clock. Right now, too little software will use four cores. They could add distinct low-power cores (e.g., so Siri can listen while the phone is sleeping) or other specialized stuff, but four identical cores just doesn't strike me as the best use of die area in a mobile device.

</comment><comment><USER6> The question will be "can they beat Intel" once Intel gets its shit together and becomes serious about mobile. And the answer would be an unequivocal "no".

<comment><AUTHOR> The burden of proof certainly is on Intel right now, not Apple.

But even if Intel was to make great mobile chips, Apple sells because of the whole package, not just the chip. What does Intel have on the mobile side, except the possibility of being one more supplier for semi-anonymous Android and Windows phones?

<comment><USER7> Intel is pivoting the entirety of their chip design/production infrastructure, it's a big ship to turn. I wouldn't expect anything serious from Intel until Q4 2014.

<comment><USER8> > it's a big ship to turn

Indeed. And they're taking their time turning it too. Atom was first announced in 2007 (according to Wikipedia), just 3 months after the _first_ iphone was released. Look at Apple now, while Intel are still busy turning that ship...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:stevech...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:stevecheney.com/on- apples-a7-processor/)

</comment><comment><USER10> That being said, isn't the Facebook iOS app known for being a huge CPU hog? Every time I boot it off the multitasking tray, my iPhone (original 4) feels like a new phone...

<comment><USER11> The design they describe is how you do anything on iOS that's going to go out and talk to some web services, otherwise talk on the network, or the like. You do your UI stuff on the UI thread and you use additional background threads for the network stuff.

In any case, if you're not in the Facebook app, then iOS has frozen it and it's not getting any CPU time at all. Removing it from the multitasking tray does not stop it from consuming any CPU resources, because if Facebook isn't on the screen then it's not running.</comment></comment>


Learn to Spritz - <AUTHOR> http://learn2spritz.com

<comment><USER2> These things remind me vaguely of the 'Ludovico treatment' in _A Clockwork Orange_. I don't think it's good for your eyes to remain staring at a fixed spot for extended periods; treating the fact that 90% of time reading is spent on saccades (eyeball movement) as a problem is like saying that time spent walking around your home or office is also wasted, and that we'd be better off using Segways.

Literacy deficits are a big problem, which won't be helped by displaying the words faster. So is shallow, uncritical reading. Like the chording keyboard, sequential word displays strike me as a solution in search of a problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> This may be a fast way to pump words into my brain but it really feels like just that -- pumping words into my brain. Reading has a flow and part of the joy of reading is the way in which you do it. This feels really mechanical, maybe it'd be useful for reading technical manuals or news articles, but for more substantial information, I feel like the good old fashioned method is best.</comment>


Americans Don't Miss Manufacturing – They Miss Unions - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-dont-miss-manufacturing-they-miss-unions/ <comment><USER2> Bad conclusion (and title). It says right in the article what American workers actually miss - "a source of stable, well-paying jobs, especially for people without a college degree". At the same time, Americans overwhelmingly want cheap goods, which usually means goods not produced with American manufacturing labor. The failure of the economy isn't that unions are disappearing, it's that legitimately good jobs simply aren't taking the place of lost jobs for a large portion of American workers.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what I don't get, people who say lower priced goods are more important than paying workers more.

We have a bunch of new jobs coming in warehouse work, retail, information & technology and what group ensures they get good pay and benefits? To a certain extent we can rely on competition, but with companies growing after larger and more powerful, and willing to collude[0], those jobs will likely get worse with time or start out crappy.

This is pretty evident with the economic problems starting in the 70's then the rise of neoliberalism in the 80's and stripping unions of powers.[1] What's even more perplexing now is in the last decade we have a growing economy but it's limited to the upper class. I think there is definitely space for us to have unions and fight for more of that growth to benefit the working class.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/25/upshot/shrinki...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/25/upshot/shrinking- middle-class.html)

<comment><USER3> I always see comments like this, that states some data about unions and decreasing wages and rights, etc.

While I agree, I almost never see anyone going one step further and saying what can be done about it. "Call your representatives!" says many, but this is a mainly passive action that depends too much on faith in the incorruptibility of our representatives. We can continue to do this, but we need a more powerful and active direction.

With the tech bubble collapsing and people losing their jobs (especially with what's currently happening in Silicon Valley), I think maybe it is time for a dedicated union for both engineers (us) and other employees. That is, some kind of active effort designed to spearhead these principles. How can this happen? HN readers are smart; we can organize ourselves, can't we?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since half the states have a "right to work" law that says no employee has to support a union financially[1] it's much harder to start a union, especially for a multistate endeavor. With social media one would think it'd be easier to form up, but that same media can be used to slander unions and quash them before they even form. There's a lot of well financed and experienced Anti Union advisers that can inform as to how best stop a union from forming and somehow an anti union mindset has seeped into popular opinion like seen above.

Honestly seems like it'd take another great recession with the focus put on employee rights for major changes to happen. Luckily with Obama leaving he is finally lending some helping hand to Unions by making companies disclose when the get advice from anti-union advisers [2]

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/right-to-work- laws_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/right-to-work- laws_n_6737130.html)

[2] [http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/business- back...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/business-backlash- against-obama-administrations-new-union-friendly-rule)

<comment><USER3> What's to stop Trump or Hilary from revoking these "union-friendly" when they come into office? They'll have 4 or 8 years to dismantle it again. I guess at that point maybe people will be really angry, but right now we have thousands of engineers and other startup employees that just got screwed over big time. What can be done to help them at this moment?

If targeting "right to work" is the first step, then perhaps we can organize something around abolishing that. If abolishing is too difficult, then perhaps modifying it so that "right to work" only applies to companies that have less than $1 million but have safeguards in place to ensure fair layoff packages, but companies with more than $1 million must allow unions. That way, small companies don't have to worry about unions and when they're big enough, they'll have the money and the lawyers to deal with it.

Waiting is a loser's game. With another recession, the government will do just enough to keep people content, but not go that extra length to solidify those protections. With changing seats of power over time (re-elections), there's no guarantee that the next set of people in power won't dismantle protections... causing the cycle to repeat... causing us to wait for another recession... and so forth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >U.S. manufacturing jobs, I argued a few weeks ago, are never coming back.

Horse and buggy jobs aren't coming back either. That's not a bad thing. U.S. manufacturing is outputting almost 50% more than it did 20 years ago(1). US manufacturing is more productive and provides a higher standard of living generally. Having said all of that, there are still manufacturing jobs, despite all of the rhetoric to the contrary.

1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/upshot/the-economy-is- rigg...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/upshot/the-economy-is-rigged-and- other-presidential-campaign-myths.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0)

As for the title, I don't miss unions.</comment>


Panasonic Toughbook Tablet - <AUTHOR> http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughpad/us/4k-tablet.asp <comment><USER2> Wow a lot of the people in this thread don't get it.

This isn't for you. This is for doctors, and architects (which is pretty obviously indicated in their marketing material).

<comment><USER3> A lot of people are very uncomfortable with the notion that not every product is targeted at them. It's an ego thing. If I was Freud I'm sure I could explain it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 6k for a 4K 20" tablet with a 2 hour battery that weighs over 5 lbs with only an i5 and 2GB vram? This isn't going to be the ultimate Civ 5 machine that I've been hoping for.

<comment><USER5> I keep wondering why tablet manufacturers are all focused on the smaller form factor when they could be producing all in one screens upwards of 32" to replace clunky desktop units. Such screen sizes wouldn't necessarily need the generosity of a long lasting battery because of their sizes but could pack enough punch for compete with desktop units.

Hopefully manufacturers delve into that market more and drive the price down.

<comment><USER6> How exactly would one hold a 32" tablet, or situate it at a desk? Arms grow very tired operating horizontal touch screens, and if the screen is on a table, angled, it's awkward to sit and look at.

<comment><USER7> Only one way and that's comically:

[http://mashable.com/2013/10/07/fox-news- deck/](http://mashable.com/2013/10/07/fox-news-deck/)

<comment><USER8> Ha ha. Ridiculous. The reason why smartphones and some tablets are popular has less to do with touch than with size. It's pleasant to hold a small screen a foot from your face for reading and watching videos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let me quietly wish that we will see a model with a DisplayPort input so it could be used as an external monitor for a laptop. I would love me a 4K 20" 5.5lbs transportable monitor. Given then weight is pretty much the same as the AOC e2351F I have anyways, the only question would be -- four times as many pixels, fourty times the price. Is pixel density and hardiness worth a magnitude of price difference?

</comment><comment><USER10> Product so new, they didn't even have time to fix the title tag.

"<title>Best 10 Inch Rugged Android Tablet - Panasonic Toughbook Tablet (Toughpad FZ-A1)</title>"

Jokes aside, the biggest problem is that it falls far short of durability of its sibling Toughpads.

"2.5-foot drop rating (bottom side), 1-foot drop rating (26 drops), Magnesium alloy chassis and GFRP rear case"

Compared that to other Toughpads.

"MIL-STD-810G, 4-foot drop and all-weather IP65 dust and water resistant design"

</comment><comment><USER11> A little off-topic, but I like how marketers trying to sell Win8 have to use fake application screenshots. Where are the actual apps that let you share blueprints? Oh, right. They're not sexy at all, and wouldn't benefit from a 4K display.

Too bad.

<comment><USER8> [http://weknowmemes.com/generator/uploads/generated/g13840685...](http://weknowmemes.com/generator/uploads/generated/g1384068507571012525.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Don't let the $6K tag price confuse you.

ToughPad, as its older brother ToughBook has its own market of army, police and alike which require rugged equipment.

<comment><USER13> And they _still_ manage to damage those things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dimensions/Weight: 18.7"(L) x 13.1"(W) x 0.5"(D), 5.3 lbs.

Weighs more than a MacBook Pro 13 (4.5 lbs). This should be marketed as a body-building tool. In fact, I'm not sure the models in the "Solutions" page are actual users, because they don't have gigantic forearm muscles required to hold a 20" 5.3lbs screen from one corner:

[http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughpad/us/windows-4k-tab...](http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughpad/us/windows-4k-tablet- solutions.asp)

<comment><USER15> Also lighter than most desktops with 20" screens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks sweet. Per Panasonic's press release, this will be available in January and cost $5,999 (!)

[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131107007032/en/Pana...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131107007032/en/Panasonic- Toughpad-4K-UT-MB5-Tablet-U.S.-Premiere)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If they can make a 20" 4K display and put it in a tablet, then why can't they just mount it in a desktop display and I'd be interested in buying it (though whether I have the money is a completely different question). I'm sure it would be easier to manufacture if they didn't care about weight/power consumption and there might be a bigger market.

</comment><comment><USER17> It looks good, apart from one thing: a 2 hour battery life (see [http://tpgweb2.net/panasonic/psci-0897/PSC6102-10_FY13_SS_To...](http://tpgweb2.net/panasonic/psci-0897/PSC6102-10_FY13_SS_Toughpad_4K_HR.pdf))

<comment><USER15> I think it's meant to be used more like a desktop. Except it's going to lay flat on your drafting table, offer a touchscreen and high resolution 4K screen.

Having a battery means you can move it around without having to shut it down. You can also take it to meetings and present stuff.

<comment><USER18> i think the best part of it is that you can take it outside, or take it to a client. 2 hours isn't a lot, but it is enough for a meeting with someone at a starbucks or at their home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just imagine playing mine craft with so many pixels! I don't care about the price or battery life, we are finally in the age of overpowered 'gaming tablets'

</comment><comment><USER20> Panasonic is dying... I've been following this company for my whole life. Their concepts are bad and their focus is wrong. Typical Japanese company with board full of elder chairmans, who are afraid of big change. I don't see light in this tunnel....

<comment><USER8> I beg to differ. They have an awesome rice cooker, and their Panasonic Platinum line of big portable radios was cool in the 80s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have to think this has been designed, built, and priced to sell to the sorts of law enforcement organizations that already have the latest armored personnel carriers, and have just a bit more budget to dump.

</comment><comment><USER22> This might even make sense for me, if:

\- the display is as bright as the good old toughbooks, means it must be readable in bright sunshine

\- the system is able to boot Linux

\- it runs on 12V

</comment><comment><USER23> Really wanna know what GPU is equipped to cover 4K graphics.

<comment><USER24> NVIDIA GeForce GT 745M

AFAIK better than the GPU in the Retina MBP

<comment><USER25> The low end mbp has iris hd video, so I imagine any decent GPU could handle a 4k display (the bottleneck is connectors).

The high end mbp has a 750M.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "If you see a stylus, they blew it. If you see a task manager... they blew it." -Steve Jobs

<comment><USER27>
      "While one could increase the resolution to make up some of
       the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also
       includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their
       fingers to around one-quarter of their present size."
                               -- Steve Jobs (on 7 inch tablets)

<comment><USER25> The ipad mini is an 8" tablet. Its touch targets are the same as an iphone's. And Steve Jobs was never averse to changing his mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It looks very interesting...if only it were Android.

</comment><comment><USER29> This isn't for anyone. _Anyone_. Beyond the 300-350 pixels per inch, the 'sharpness' and the 'detail' is not perceivable by human eyes. It's a wastage of power, memory and CPU/GPU resources. This is what happens when Marketing dictates Engineering.

<comment><USER30> Is that really true in general? I'd say the difference _in print_ start to disappear around 600dpi (dpi/clarity isn't really discernibly different between a 600 dpi print and a 1200dpi print. But up to 600 dpi, I'd say there definitively is a difference)?

Granted, with current technology we have single-coloured pixels, so 300 ppi is really 3-900 dpi (or pixel-parts) -- that might have something to do with it?

<comment><USER31> The dots in your basic 300dpi monochrome laser printer's output are black or white, but on a 300ppi screen you could antialias with grey pixels (or even subpixels as you note), which can boost perceived smoothness/quality a lot. Figure here conveys a difference between PPI and DPI pretty well: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_per_inch#DPI_or_PPI_in_dig...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_per_inch#DPI_or_PPI_in_digital_image_files)

<comment><USER31> Oh, just saw a post about this on another site and noticed it's 231PPI because of the large size. That's a good bit less than the 300PPI on the Nexus 10 that they compare it to in the image on the product page, interestingly. Also south of 1080p and 720p phones, the new Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire, or any of Apple's iPhone/iPad Retina displays.

It's maybe most comparable to the 15" Retina MBP--roughly similar density (220 vs 231), and both are bigger panels you use at a distance.

Just interesting that from a pure spec-wars perspective, raw density isn't one of the dimensions on which the Toughpad is pushing the envelope. Density in its size class, maybe, but not density full-stop.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Knuth on Robert W Floyd - <AUTHOR> http://sigact.acm.org/floyd/

<comment><USER2> This is a marvelous article, informative and touching at the same time, a joy to read. Thanks for reminding me why I still comb through HN looking for things like this. I don't even mind that it delayed my work this afternoon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Knuth mentions Floyd teaching an intro CS class at Stanford (CS106).

At least one of those times, Floyd taught using SAIL macros and didn't much mention functions/procedures. (SAIL macros are syntactic and look a lot like procedures/functions, but the order of evaluation can be surprising.) This caused a bit of trouble when those students went on.

Floyd was a serious Dig Dug player. (DD is an early arcade video game.)</comment>


Just a casual screenshot of me taking down a scumbag scammer last night - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/HIVYW9H <comment><USER2> Jesus, why does imgur not load the image on full resolution on mobile view (literally the only thing I expect them doing right)</comment>


A Cryptocurrency Miner Hidden in a Favicon.ico - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/xbs/status/963796410100604929 <comment><USER2> Preferably there would be some explanation and example code that demonstrates this. A handful of words and two screenshots don't tell much. If favicon.ico files can be interpreted as HTML files, that means that they can probably be anything random, and as they are often cached and even saved somewhere to be shown besides bookmarks, that seems to be a dangerous thing (not that I know much about security but still, why not just whitelist a couple widely-used formats?).</comment>


Ask HN: SaaS apps and email lists - double opt-in? opt-in? required? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious how folks running SaaS apps are handling email.  I'd like to set up an autoresponder for my trial members and maybe even my paying customers.  But how to get them on the list?
Do you force them to opt-in to receiving emails as a term and condition of the site? Do you ask them to opt-in using a checkbox when they're registering/activating their account? Do you ask them to double opt-in by using a checkbox on the site, mailing them and having them confirm by clicking the link.
For my trial users, I'm thinking simple things: * thanks for signing up, here's a guide to help you get started * 1/2 way through – how's the trial going, anything I can do to help * -5 days – your trial is almost up, don't forget to fill out your CC details to keep using the service.
For existing users * blog posts * new features * new whatever (questions in the FAQ, videos in help, etc, etc) * limited to 1-2 times a month, max.
Appreciate any feedback/links/personal experiences running or using SaaS in relation to email marketing. <comment><USER2> I found that moving to opt-in from double opt-in increased subscriptions by about 70%. I also find double opt-in an annoyance as a subscriber.

<comment><AUTHOR> I went ahead and made it a single opt-in and put it in the terms of the site.

I'll add a double opt-in list later, if ever, should we decide to start mailing out tips or other things on a frequent basis.</comment></comment>


Tech tips for people who are going to die someday (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/message/deathhacks-b767903b7c15 <comment><USER2> This is the legendary Tom West from Tracy Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine"

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know what I learned from this, but it was as touching a eulogy as I would ever hope to receive.

<comment><USER4> I learned to cherish manual controls and to think about the will and documenting the basics (I'm 14 years younger than Tom West was when he died).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I am not planning to die, there is a few sheets of paper stapled together in the bottom of my safe, saying how I want to be buried and what should be done with my assets (should prevent any undertaker taking advantage of grief), but I haven't included any passwords for anything. That is intentional -- not only does my e-mail hold some pretty personal things (not all of them mine) but I don't see a point in having anybody else go through my personal stuff.

Anybody feeling like that?

<comment><USER6> I am not a/your lawyer, but what you are describing is known as a ["Holographic Will"]([https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/holographic- will.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/holographic-will.asp)). Such a document may not be sufficient depending on your state/circumstances, and may not be respected by the probate court if the document is lost, destroyed, or otherwise called into question.

What you want is a [Testamentary Will ]([https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/testamentary- will.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/testamentary-will.asp)) that has been notarized and/or signed in the presence of witnesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My father died several years ago, and in spite of how organized he was, we really struggled through the digital aspects of his passing. I would add...make sure the digital mementos are backed up and easy to access. Make sure family knows where it is.

It's unpopular to say these days, but Facebook was the service most prepared for his passing. We memorialized his profile and my sister was able to manage communication on his behalf to his friends. We were very grateful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sadly, 1000memories.com seems to have disappeared.

<comment><USER9> Rather shameful for a company backed by YC to not follow through with their promise. They were acquired by ancestry.com which still exists so I imagine they could have made sure that in the case of any acquisition the new owner would commit to follow through on that at least.

<comment><USER10> I had a very long and angryish set of dealings with them about this. I finally got an engineer to let me download the archive but man... promises promises...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Beautiful. A wonderful tribute. And a sobering reminder that final goodbyes can come quicker than we expect.

[https://seeyourfolks.com](https://seeyourfolks.com)

</comment><comment><USER12> I will never die.

<comment><USER13> Even if you invent some science fiction means of attaining immortality, even if the universe is not doomed as all current physics predicts, the most infinitesimal probabilities inevitably occur on an infinite timeline.

You will die someday.

<comment><USER14> I guess you missed the point.

in most societies, specially western, death is never a concern unless you are terminally ill. which is insane.

I read the comment you are replying to as a joke of the article title. As in, how can something be for "for those who will die someday" instead of "everyone" plain and simple.

<comment><USER13> I read the title as the joke: it's really for everyone, with a built-in reminder that you are mortal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bash aliases for Harry Potter enthusiasts - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/graceavery/01ec404e555571a4a668c271c8f62e8b <comment><USER2> One of my favourites is "ffs=sudo" so that when I forget to sudo a command I can type "ffs !!"

<comment><USER3> I actually have a "ffs" alias for when I work on a project with multiple people (or from multiple computers), except it does a "git stash && git pull --rebase && git stash pop" (because "ffs" is my reaction when I try to "git push" and can't)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of GNU Screen's "nethack" command, which translates a bunch of the error messages to Nethack-themed ones [1]. It looks like it's been removed and won't be in the next release, though.

[1] [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/screen.git/tree/src/nethack...](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/screen.git/tree/src/nethack.c?id=v.4.3.1)

<comment><USER5> Nooo!~~ so sad! this is a piece of hacker history being removed from a GNU tool!

"A blast of disintegration whizzes by you!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm, these are actually not bad!

This is a bit much though: "alias wingardiumLeviosa=mv"

<comment><USER7> That's because it's LeviOsa, not Leviosa.

<comment><USER8> Actually its leviooosAAUUUGHH. [https://youtu.be/FWtO0cfgewY?t=19](https://youtu.be/FWtO0cfgewY?t=19)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm distressed to realize that I actually get the references, the result of a christmas with young family members. I think I've got about a year until that dreaded stage show comes to town. Hopefully they will have aged-out of the craze by then.

<comment><USER10> People with taste don't "age out of the craze". I've been rereading the books on my commute over the last few weeks, and they're every bit as good as I remembered them being some 15 years ago.

If you end up with tickets for _Cursed Child_ that you don't want, I'll gladly buy them from you.

<comment><USER9> > I've been rereading the books on my commute

That's what they are for. Short 10-15minute chapters that demand little to nothing of the reader. Each scene is encapsulated, with magical objects or principals appearing and disappearing to both create and answer problems. Re- read Tolkien and see the difference.

I got bored of the entire elitist theme. The wizarding world is a metaphore for the english class system, something that imho shouldn't be promoted in a kids book. Hogwarts is a grammar school. Magic is latin. Wizards are the ruling class and mugals the illiterate peasants. Even the four houses map onto established classes and royal struggles (see the war of the roses). It's all been done to death.

<comment><USER11> The wizarding world is portrayed as backward, stagnant and racist, in contrast to the muggles, who make continuous progress.

<comment><USER9> Except that that progress is impotent. There are several instances in the books were mugal tech is belittled as irrelevant to a world where such problems can be waved away (dentistry, flying cars etc). And wizard conflicts go on without input from mugals even where they do much of the dieing. The message is that there is a world of elites fighting battles that we illiterate peasants cannot understand. We should just trust that those who attended Eton have is all in hand.

And there is a parallel justice system akin to the ecclesiastical courts of the past whereby initiates avoid the laws governing the lay peasantry.

I would disagree with the world being racist. There is a faction that promoted blood lines, but not necessarily blood lines tied to race. It's elitism rather than racism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hm. I was sure avadaKedavra will be pkill and not rm.

</comment><comment><USER13>
        alias reducio='zip -r'  # $reducio zippedName thingToZip
        alias engorgio=unzip  # $engorgio zippedName

zip, and not good old tar.gz? Kids these days! ;)</comment>


Show HN: Trident for GitLab – iOS App - <AUTHOR> http://somerobots.com <comment><AUTHOR> Matt here (creator of Trident), very happy to answer any questions you may have about the App!

<comment><AUTHOR> GitLab.com connections aren't working in this release, unfortunately I bundled the App with a SSL certificate that was due to expire! :'(

There will be an update very soon to fix this.

Self Hosted GitLab connections should be fine.

<comment><USER2> The page doesn't talk about the CI component. Is it available in the app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey ptlab, it's something I'm very seriously thinking of adding to Trident, GitLab has recently introduced a built-in CI with a nice REST API I can use. It's not mentioned on the website yet because it's not a released feature.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rakudo Star Perl 6 Release 2016.07 - <AUTHOR> http://rakudo.org/2016/07/22/announce-rakudo-star-release-2016-07/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you want an intro to the language check out [http://perl6intro.com/](http://perl6intro.com/)

<comment><USER2> Perl 6 is too beautiful for this world. I hope that, even if it never picks up an enormous user base, it influences future language designers to as heavily as I would say Perl 5 has. Not much in ithe is wholly original, but it steals many of the best ideas and shows how they can be combined.

For anyone reading this I'll work on a Perl 6 project for discounted rate.

Also if anyone with a Perl 6 open source library is looking for some issues addressed my email is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Plenty of action on IRC if you want ideas for contributing code [https://perl6.org/community/irc](https://perl6.org/community/irc) Also plenty of libraries to choose from to help out with [http://modules.perl6.org/](http://modules.perl6.org/)</comment></comment></comment>


Professors Who Blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlinecollege.org/2009/10/12/100-best-professors-who-blog/

<comment><USER2> New feature inspired by this post: the per-item nofollow tag. Or should we just kill it? It's one step short of content generated by Markov chaining.

<comment><USER3> Maybe instead of killing spammy stuff like this you could have a "convert to Ask HN" button. This post could be converted to Ask HN: Professors Who Blog? It would be more fun, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They don't even have Terrance Tao in the Math & Science blog list?

<comment><USER5> No Russ Altman either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/>

The pace of progress in quantum computing is slooow, so Scott may not have much to say for a while.

<http://motls.blogspot.com/>

Good physics (sometimes very technical, sometimes not), if you don't let Lubos' politics bother you.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://jeffreymiron.blogspot.com/>

What about Jeffrey Miron, the champion of reasonable government and reasonable policies?

</comment><comment><USER8> No angry professor of "A Gentleman's C"? Makes me laugh occasionally.

<http://gentlemansc.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Can't recommend Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution enough!

</comment><comment><USER10> another one for the list <http://infoproc.blogspot.com>

</comment><comment><USER11> no leiter report?</comment>


Infinitecanvas - <AUTHOR> http://infinitecanvas.appjet.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> _Infinite Canvas (after the term coined by Scott McCloud) allows you to create and/or view comics unconstrained by page boundaries (either physical or virtual).

To view, hit the Next button in the lower right. You can also go to specific panels by clicking on them, or explore freely by dragging with your mouse and zooming with your mouse's scroll wheel._

Scott McCloud mentions the infinite canvas in his TED talk.

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.h...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> A Microsoft project running on AppJet. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty neat - according to the blog post (<http://dragonosticism.wordpress.com/>) it isn't a Seadragon app though

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the coolest "features" of appjet, visible source.

<http://appjet.com/app/588101939/source>

<comment><USER5> That would actually be a serious obstacle for commercial usage of AppJet.

<comment><USER4> Shy guys can always host themselves and hide their source as much as they want.

<http://appjet.com/download>

has all the software you need to have your own appjet server.</comment></comment></comment>


Do part time programmers who are willing to come into the office exist? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a part time programmer to work in our office in Burlingame, CA.  It seems that everyone who applies is out of the country or a company in another part of the US.  Has anyone had any luck finding programmers to work in their office?  Maybe the job posting isn't good enough? http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/web/1870600939.html<p>Any ideas would be helpful.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> A few thoughts. First having to fill out the form to apply may be turning people off. Is part time meaning 2-3 days a week or is it 5 days a week only a few hours each day? The latter would not make the commute worth it.

The ad itself does not do a great job selling the position, but then again I'm not a .net developer. You might be setting your sights a little high for what you want. You may have better luck finding a college student, perhaps post it at your local university. My first software job was as part time developer, that I was recommended by one of my professors. Turned out he got a finder's fee for everyone that was hired.

I have not had great luck with job listings on Craigslist. A lot of people responding that don't appear to read what the position is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that multiple part time positions of the right sort allow someone to be an independent contractor (1099 vs. W2).

In addition to the notes by exline, how many people out there know both ASP.net and the iPhone?

For that matter, the inconsistent treatment of both (ASP/.net vs. .net/ASP and failing to properly capitalize the P the second time you use it) is be a _major_ turn-off to me. The general lack of attention to detail in your advertisement says a lot of things about your firm, all bad.</comment>


Nexus Security Bulletin–April 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-04-02.html <comment><USER2> Wow! And people still bash Windows security! With the recent Android and OS X fiascos, I feel safer with Windows!</comment>


Apple Has 100 People Working On The iWatch - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iwatch-project-staff-2013-2

<comment><AUTHOR> essentially ...

"A smartwatch would be Apple's entry into the field of wearable computing—devices evocative of the old "Dick Tracy" comic strip, where phone calls and notifications arrive on a lightweight device, handling most mobile functions that don't require a large screen while staying connected to a phone or tablet that can stay in a pocket or purse."</comment>


Citrix Acquires Cloud.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/07/12/citrix-systems-acquires-cloud-com/

<comment><USER2> read headlines like "Citrix buying Cloud.com for 200 million" - thought some crazy domain seller had struck paydirt. But it's a whole company..ahhh</comment>


An Introduction to Browser Rendering [video] - jarek-foksa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1cKlKM3jYI

<comment><AUTHOR> Really awesome! For those interested in further reading/watching, Ryan Seddon ([https://twitter.com/ryanseddon](https://twitter.com/ryanseddon)) of Zendesk just gave an amazing talk called "Performance Beyond the Pageload" at CSSConf 2015: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAj1yjL7btA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAj1yjL7btA). Towards the end he diagnoses (and fixes) issues in the page for Paul Ford's "What Is Code?" essay.

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow this is truly amazing.</comment>


An Infinitely Large Napkin - <AUTHOR> http://web.evanchen.cc/napkin.html <comment><AUTHOR> Adding this here as it may be of related interest for those who enjoyed the massive math cheat sheet on the front page recently.

Evan Chen, a math student at MIT, wrote up what would be considered field notes for higher mathematics. The full PDF is here[1], complete with a dependency graph showing what you need to know before reading any particular section.

____________

1\. [https://usamo.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/napkin-v15-2019022...](https://usamo.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/napkin-v15-20190220.pdf)</comment>


Design for 15 Bucks is open again - <AUTHOR> http://www.designfor15bucks.com/

<comment><USER2> Alright I'm going ask him to design a site called <http://designfor30bucks.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone who participated in this program earlier care to leave a review?

</comment><comment><USER4> I am surprised to see that the designs really are "kick ass".

I think you should experiment with charging $5 EXTRA to have the design featured rather than charging $5 less. Free advertising you know.

</comment><comment><USER5> From personal experience, wordpress will not live long on a small slice with Apache.

You should get nginx + php + fastcgi, and install the super cache plugin.

iwillfixyourslicefor14bucks.com

PM me if you need help

</comment><comment><USER6> Judging from the examples, I think you should start charging at least 2 or 3 times as much, immediately.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like it's down...

[http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://www.designfor15buc...](http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://www.designfor15bucks.com/)

<comment><USER8> "We're experiencing technical issues and should be back shortly."

<comment><USER9> Looks like its time for "I'll fix your website for $15"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Last time I opened this site, I received thirteen design requests within the > first 20 minutes or so. I had to close the submission form, or I wouldn't be > able to keep up with the number of requests coming in as this went viral.

Seems like a perfect opportunity to raise the price until demand levels off enough that he could keep up with it. I imagine he could find a sweet spot between being affordable, and having enough requests to keep him busy.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would love to see some examples.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I'm working hard trying to get the site back online. It's not taking the load, probably because of wordpress. I'll keep you updated.

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't even bother fixing the website for a bit, just run it out of the HN comments here. Throw up an email and you'll have me as a customer.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cached version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache:www.designfor15bucks.com)

</comment><comment><USER14> I want one please, I would order but the site is now down and I'm going to sleep now.

</comment><comment><USER15> Could you do a logo for $15? I'd really love to get a new one for my site.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh, nice. The design for my SpeedBox app landingpage is on top of the references. (latest update released by Apple just today, btw. See bottom of this comment for some free promo codes ;)

Ok, I'm really very happy with the design. It keeps to the 960px grid (16 columns), is NOT just a PSD template with my content slapped into and the PSD is nicely formatted with all the right layers, etc. The header graphic is handmade in photoshop, not some stock picture. This might have taken a while to do! There are also some details I really like. For example Marco took the time to add the reflection layer to the screenshot in the iPhone, etc (of course with layer effects, so I can easily change the screenshot itself)

For me the design is a great starting point to make a nice looking website. I made some minor changes (added an iPad graphic next to the iPhone on top), will add a nice video and image viewer and create an iPhone sized version of the site, but I don't think I would have ended up with such a nice design if I tried myself.

Ok, here's the promo codes (now worldwide, yay) for my SpeedBox iPhone/iPad app. Sorry for kind of hijacking this thread, it's really a coincidence that the update was released today and I just feel like giving away a couple of codes ;)

E3MRYLRYLPKF K4FYRJM7KMJF 9XWRT7W994WP 66TJLLYRY9W3 LRKMYJXKKTKF

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the promo codes. Just a heads up, 66TJLLYRY9W3 and LRKMYJXKKTKF have already been redeemed. I haven't checked the first three.</comment></comment>


Continuous Delivery for DC/OS with Spinnaker - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.cerner.com/blog/continuous-delivery-for-dcos-with-spinnaker/ <comment><USER2> Spinnaker is a really interesting piece of kit, though when I last tried it 3-4 months ago the docs were in a state of flux and it took quite a lot of fiddling about to get things going.

The one thing I cannot find any details on, and it's not specific to Spinnaker, is; how do you perform your database changes as part of your deployment system? I figured it would be sensible to have one-off tasks you could run inside your containers as part of the pipelines, but I've not found any guidance on doing that with any CD tool at the moment.

<comment><USER3> _> how do you perform your database changes as part of your deployment system?_

Usually you run a database migration tool. However, the application has to be coded in a resilient way, so it can work with current and the immediate previous version.

In dev/test environments and if you have initial data that needs to be loaded, you just bring a new database up with the latest schema (hopefully in version control). You can have test cases that load old data, perform a migration and use the latest app version.

For production, it needs to be done more carefully if you're doing huge database changes. Ideally, you shouldn't exactly because CI/CD is letting you make smaller changes constantly... but sometimes your data is just too big and not trivial to migrate (e.g. a table with 1bn records now needs a new column base on data from another two columns)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is also a tutorial on the Spinnaker website. [https://www.spinnaker.io/guides/tutorials/codelabs/dcos- sour...](https://www.spinnaker.io/guides/tutorials/codelabs/dcos-source-to- prod/)</comment>


Swift Sort vs. C Sort – Apples to Apples, Part III - <AUTHOR> http://www.jessesquires.com/apples-to-apples-part-three/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if in the plans for Swift they have some sort of "surpass C performance in all benchmarks" goal. That would be pretty impressive.</comment>