Ola Bini: privacy defender, free software developer still in detention in Ecuado - <AUTHOR> Ola Bini, privacy defender, cryptography expert, free software developer, is currently detained as political prisoner in El Inca prison, Ecuador. He was arrested on Thursday afternoon, 2019-04-11.
This is the result of an irregular detention process[1], dubious claims of evidence[2], and by violating his legal rights. Many, including David Kaye - UN Special Rapporteur[3], have concluded that there is no real basis for Ola's detention.
Ola's detention is a threat not only to Ola himself[4], but to research projects, such as OTRv4[5], PET Symposium contributions[6], DECODE EU-funded project[7], free software projects Coy.IM, and everything Ola has done[8], in the past: programming language 'loke', Seph, JesCov, JRuby, JtestR, etc..

    "The case against me is based on the books I've read and the technology I have."
    -- Ola Bini, statements from his imprisonment. ([9])
 - Sign the solidarity letter (https://freeolabini.org/en/statement/)
  There has been quite some coverage by news sites. Groups and communities have posted their opinion. We want to show that individual people care as well!
- FreeOlaBini.org For updates and how to help.
- #FreeOlaBini Concerning Ola Bini's situation, but also broader, given that related events may be tagged as well.

    "I'm being held under the best circumstances and it's still despicable."
    -- Ola Bini, statements from his imprisonment. ([9])
 [1] https://goatsing.wordpress.com/2019/04/13/press-release-on-the-detention-of-ola-bini-2/ [2] https://twitter.com/koolfy/status/1118834216589045760 [3] https://twitter.com/davidakaye/status/1117489081397547008 [4] https://twitter.com/MikaelSGB/status/1118221145013145600 [5] https://github.com/otrv4/otrv4 [6] https://petsymposium.org/2018/files/hotpets/7-bini.pdf [7] https://twitter.com/decodeproject [8] https://github.com/olabini [9] https://freeolabini.org/en/statement-from-ola/ <comment><USER2> Wow, this seems important.

Maybe post a link to a press article leaving the body of the submission empty so that it doesn't go to /ask and it goes to /news instead.

Remember to not editorialize the title. Submit the actual title of the news site as "title".

I don't remember the exact system for submissions but I'm trying to help you as you said that you're new here (and I'm commenting from my phone.)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is extremely important news. They are detaining him for doing privacy- related software. This should not happen!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a good time to review the information at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record)

<comment><USER5> What's the relevance of that?

I remember Ola from his work on jruby in the early jruby days.

<comment><USER4> It's one method the Five Eyes[0] use to obtain information regarding specific travel plans in the majority of cases. Given the nature and timing of the case I would be surprised if the US didn't use back channels to suggest this arrest by Ecuador, based on knowledge of his upcoming movements.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Updates on his situation (more recent on top):

\- 2019-04-18: Ola Bini's statement, from arbitrary detention, statement discussed in an article. [10]

\- 2019-04-16: Ola's parents are able to visit him in prison, Ola has been getting threats in prison. [11]

\- 2019-04-16: Press conference organized for parent and lawyer to give updates concerning Ola's situation.

\- 2019-04-16: Ola's detention is full of irregularities, as concluded by his lawyers. [12]

\- 2019-04-15: Ola's parents on their way now to Quito, address press in Quito.

\- 2019-04-15: Charges against Ola Bini are known, judge orders preventitive detention, Ola's lawyers file appeal.

\- 2019-04-14: many news sites, communities and research group find out about Ola's detention. Opinions and statements get published in support. (See FreeOlaBini.org)

\- 2019-04-12: Ola has finally been able to speak with lawyers, after being detained for 17 hours.

\- 2019-04-12: Friends, colleagues start discovering about his detainment. The statement issued by his employer. First news reports. [13]

\- 2019-04-11, 15:20h local time: Ola Bini arrested at Quito airport in Ecuador. (Martin Fowler [14])

\- 2019-04-11: First signs of trouble, already identified by Ola himself. [15]

\- 2019-04-10: Ola announcing his flight to Japan, which was already known 2 weeks prior. This trip will later be explained as "Ola fleeing Ecuador" after Ola has been detained.

[10] [https://twitter.com/freeolabini/status/1118911539707248640](https://twitter.com/freeolabini/status/1118911539707248640) [https://apnews.com/fdd20f1e9ea04eb18e11374647b59dd8](https://apnews.com/fdd20f1e9ea04eb18e11374647b59dd8) [11] [https://twitter.com/freeolabini/status/1118211351971811328](https://twitter.com/freeolabini/status/1118211351971811328) [https://twitter.com/aosita/status/1118228547213103107](https://twitter.com/aosita/status/1118228547213103107) [12] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/free-ola- bini](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/free-ola-bini) [13] [https://autonomia.digital/cad/2019/04/12/ola-bini- arrest.htm...](https://autonomia.digital/cad/2019/04/12/ola-bini-arrest.html) [https://gizmodo.com/ecuador-arrests-digital-privacy- activist...](https://gizmodo.com/ecuador-arrests-digital-privacy-activist-and- programmer-1833993784) [14] [https://twitter.com/martinfowler/status/1116520916383621121](https://twitter.com/martinfowler/status/1116520916383621121) [15] [https://twitter.com/olabini/status/1116341908371062794](https://twitter.com/olabini/status/1116341908371062794)

Please take any (unintended) violation of the guidelines as my personal mistake. This is one of my first times posting at HN.</comment>


Hydrogen turned into metal – no resistance conducting of electricity - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/hydrogen-metal-revolution-technology-space-rockets-superconductor-harvard-university-a7548221.html?cmpid=facebook-post <comment><USER2> It's interesting to think that such a thing may potentially be stable at useful temperatures and pressures.

I'm also interested to hear more about the plans to reproduce the sample for other testing, since the 'metallic hydrogen core' idea gets thrown around quite often when talking about gas giant planets. Being able to actually study the material's properties would possibly advance that aspect of our knowledge of planetary formation significantly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note the cardboard sign on the device in the background in the video says 495 GPa; this is over 70 million pounds per square inch of pressure!

</comment><comment><USER4> this is very big news.</comment>


What catches your attention in a job listing? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> Freedom and independence minimum intervention, flexible timings, stock options, % share in profits, clean non-political environment and above all suggestion box type model where one is ready to listen even to the bottom most ranked employee. I know i am askingfor too much ;-)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is one of the better listings I got recently from a recruiter. When I asked her about the company and what they did, all she would tell me is "Our client is a very successful E-Commerce company. It is in the top 10 in the world for the particular type of site that this job is for." Looks like a fairly good 'job', but to work for a non-descript ecommerce company was not in my plans. I think it's great though that they start right off with the work environment. Custom workstation with Dual 30" Apple displays would be amazing.

\</comment><comment>----

Work environment

\- We will custom build a workstation to your specifications using the latest and greatest technology; Mac OS X and Linux-friendly

\- Dual Apple 30" Cinema HD displays

\- Join a team with a winning attitude in a fast moving, highly energetic environment

\- Full benefits

\- Executive desk with your own personal choice of ergonomic chair

\- All of our servers run GNU/Linux (Debian) or OpenBSD

_________________________________

Job Title: Senior PHP5 Developer

Location: Anywhere

Job Type: Permanent

Salary: $75K - <USER2>

_________________________________

The Opportunity

\- Design and manage an object oriented PHP5 codebase

\- Seeing projects through the complete software life-cycle, from design and implementation to testing and production deployment and beyond

\- Lots of room for growth within the company

\- Technically challenging

\- Highly rewarding and enthusiastic team environment

_________________________________

Getting in the door

\- Strong object oriented PHP experience, must have operational examples of prior PHP5 OO work

\- Strong understanding of MySQL 4.1-5.x

\- 8 to 10 years of experience in software development using object oriented and procedural programming

\- Strong background in developing for GNU/Linux or Unix-like platforms for mission-critical production deployments

\- Strong analytical and logical thinking capability

_________________________________

Always a plus

\- Experience with MySQL replication, MySQL Cluster

\- Experience with MySQL performance tuning and optimization (query optimization, index tuning, caching, and buffer tuning)

\- Secure coding practices

\- High-availability and scalable network service development

\- Expertise with interfaces, MVC, HTML, CSS2, JavaScript, AJAX, Templating, caching, sessions, and authentication

\- GNU/Linux optimization, security and network administration

\- Experience with distributed architecture, design, and implementation

\- Experience with running Apache or other Unix-based web servers in a production environment

\- Industry networking experience, including knowledge of fundamental protocols, such as TCP, UDP, IPv4/6 and SSL/TLS

\- B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or other related field

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is it the opportunity to be a cofounder/early employee? Potential fame & fortune? A chance to change the world? Getting paid to build something cool? A specific vertical that you're interested in? The chance to work with great people?

What is it about a potential job opportunity that gets your attention? What would you have to see in a job listing to entice you to respond?

</comment><comment><USER5> Positively? the job listing tells me what I want to know in order to determine whether I want to find out more about the position (what am I doing, what tools do they provide, who am I working for, where are they located?)

Negatively? Evasiveness ("one of the leading X"), attempting to impress me with things I don't care about or am likely to consider negative ("a Fortune 500 company," "one of the largest Visual Basic code bases in the industry"), signs of buzzword bingo or technical incompetence ("must have significant experience in PERL, Python, PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Java, ASP, C#, ColdFusion", "must have 10+ years of experience with Windows XP"), signs that the accounting department and glossy magazines are choosing technologies (any mention of ColdFusion or Dreamweaver).

Yeah, the latter list is much longer. It's a lot easier to do things wrong than to do them right.

</comment><comment><USER6> When there's a mispelling or obvious sign that someone in HR wrote the job description.

For Example: "Must be proficient in Sequel."

or

"Must have 10+ years experience in the .NET environment."

When that kind of thing catches my attention, I want nothing to do with a company where people who don't know what they're talking about are allowed to represent the company to the public.

</comment><comment><USER4> If it's evident in the job listing that they have read and practice what's in Peopleware (a classic, be sure to read it if you haven't already).

<http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom- DeMarco/dp/0932633439>

</comment><comment><USER7> Dollar signs?

No, but seriously, everything depends on compensation. Everything else is simply an apology. The more you pay me, the less of my life I have to waste working for other people.

</comment><comment><USER8> Something that shows me what kind of people the company consists of. The ad needs to show that the company is smart and fun.

</comment><comment><USER9> In western Michigan, a job listing.</comment>


Wyze leaks personal data for 2.4M security camera users - <AUTHOR> https://blog.12security.com/wyze/ <comment><AUTHOR> Wyze responded with a forum post discussing the leak: [https://forums.wyzecam.com/t/updated-12-29-19-data- leak-12-2...](https://forums.wyzecam.com/t/updated-12-29-19-data- leak-12-26-2019/79046)</comment>


Fleeing California - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/6Svc7GLUqd4 <comment><USER2> Tens of thousands of Californians move to other states each year. California has 40,000,000+ residents. The video dramatizes reality. Half of people "think" about leaving California, but how many care enough to vote with their feet? Many orders of magnitude less.

California has problems. Talking about people who can afford to leave doesn't provide a meaningful solution.

The tax comparison between CA & TX (9:35) compares corporate, sales, and income tax but conveniently misses property taxes.</comment>


Dallas tornado sirens hacked last night turning on all of them - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JasonWhitely/status/850795455084716033 <comment><USER2> These types of systems are typically radio controlled, and their reference to working with the FCC (regulator of radio transmissions) makes it pretty clear that the vector here was via radio.

The control system is usually very simple - newer systems might use FSK digital signalling or even 900MHz spread spectrum, but a lot of siren systems out in the field right now are controlled by DTMF over business band radio, usually using the same frequency as the mobile radios of whatever department installed the system, just to avoid the overhead of getting a new license.

So it's likely that someone here just worked out what frequency the siren controllers listen on and what protocol they use, both of which could be done pretty easily just by going through frequencies the municipal government has licenses for and trying common manufacturer's commands, using a typical commercial radio (or anything they could get to transmit in those bands - e.g. firmware hacked amateur equipment, SDRs, etc). There are lots of ways to take informed guesses at these parameters too, e.g. manufacturer labels on the control cabinets might reveal what protocol is in use.

Just taking a wild guess from licenses in the area, Dallas's sirens might be controlled off of the city's POCSAG paging system. It looks like it has solid coverage and Federal Signal (major siren manufacturer) makes a POCSAG-capable controllers. POCSAG is an FSK digital protocol, there's open source software to implement it. Since Dallas conducts regular tests it would be a simple thing to monitor their POCSAG frequency during the test and see if you receive any pages to special numbers.

As far as catching the crooks... well, the FCC has an enforcement division, but it is well known to be small and largely powerless these days when it comes to local radio issues. Just because of the physical difficulty of radio direction finding and monitoring a large country, the FCC probably won't be able to do a thing unless the offenders make a habit of it, allowing someone to bring in radio direction finding equipment and catch them in the act.

The complete lack of security in many radio-controlled systems is a real concern. Other areas you find highly exploitable radio control schemes include various kinds of industrial automation and infrastructure systems. A trivial example people might be inclined to casually hack on, besides municipal sirens, would be irrigation. A lot of golf courses have a DTMF-over-handheld- radio control facility for their irrigation to aid groundskeepers in maintenance. Particularly easy to get a hold of since there's only a couple of manufacturers of these systems and most golf courses will only have a license for one business band frequency.

<comment><USER3> Fascinating, thanks for your comment! How would an attack like this look? Would every siren need to receive this broadcast then, and if so wouldn't that put the broadcast power required to pull this off above most consumer gear?

If that's the requirement, isn't that a poor design? I knock out one or two points in the city and the sirens are unusable?

<comment><USER4> There were mentions of the repeater system last night, so my guess is they transmitted weakly somewhere and the repeater happily repeated it out to activate all the sirens.

You can do this pretty trivially with HAM gear, although some may require small modifications to allow transmitting on the necessary frequencies. You can also often buy the equipment on ebay ready to go.

<comment><USER3> I didn't see that got a link?

I sort of felt (in my ignorance of such systems) that this would have been somehow relayed / repeated instead of being a broadcast across an entire city but I didn't want to speculate as I'm clueless on this kind of tech.

I know it's a nuisance, but this is the sort of thing I daydreamed about doing when I was 13 so I can't help but be kind of entertained by it (at least while the only fallout appears to be knocking people out of bed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All my dallas friends (used to live there) were posting about waking up to this. Those things are frikkin loud if you are close to them. Let alone the annoyance I'm sure this was a distraction to first responders , hope nobody got hurt.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would love to hear the technical details on this one... Systems like these tend to be so old and unmaintained, I can't understand why it would need to be hooked up to the network instead of being a big red button in an office somewhere and learning how it was owned might let me work that bit out :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Let's connect everything to the internet, they said. It will be great, they said.

<comment><USER7> Having them connected to the internet would have probably prevented this, actually.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do so many mobile websites/blogs paginate? - <AUTHOR>

Almost every mobile blogpost/article I read online these days is paginated into several pages. Agreed, on a mobile devices the number of bytes being transferred matters and the viewer shouldn't be forced to load the whole page to decide if he wants to read it but if I've already shown my intent to read more than the first page, then why isn't the remainder of the article - regardless of length - loaded into the second page? Having to load multiple pages on multiple articles via edge/3g on my phone's browser is such an annoyance! Does anybody know what the reason is behind the prevalence of this practice? <comment> mike-cardwell Performance. Efficiency. I used to do it on my blog for these reasons, because the page contained the first paragraph of each article. Now I only list my blog post titles without the paragraph so I removed pagination. The page is getting quite large though at 84 posts - <https://grepular.com/blog/>

</comment><comment><USER2> I agree. I don't understand why they don't just use AJAX and load it as you scroll. It's obviously a bit more complex and not baked in to wordpress and the likes, but it should be standard in today's javascript world.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can only assume it has something to do with increasing the number of unique ads displayed. But I usually "reward" such sites by leaving and never coming back, so I suspect it backfires.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense on a desktop page but on my cell phone browser, no ads are displayed on most sites. Yet, they paginate. I don't get why!</comment></comment>


Yes, Virginia, there are more iOS users - <AUTHOR> http://theorangeview.net/2011/04/yes-virginia-there-are-more-ios-users/ <comment><USER2> Not only that, but there might be more iOS users willing to actually buy your app. Which is of course not to say that this situation won't change...</comment>


Odeo up for sale - <AUTHOR> http://blog.obvious.com/2007/02/looking-for-odeos-new-home.html <comment><USER2> At no disrespect to Evan Williams, I think the nail went into the coffin for Odeo when its own creators weren't its best users, i.e. they didn't podcast themselves, so their podcasting tools failed to deliver for the rest of the podcasting community. Coming out of college, I had a few friends ask if I wanted to join their startup. I ended up politely declining on the grounds that I simply wouldn't have been a "good user" of what their team was trying to build. I essentially told them, "How can I understand and champion our users if I'm not a user myself?" This same philosophy applied when I had to turn down Microsoft one summer because I felt I wouldn't be happy and, therefore, couldn't give my best working on a product that I didn't use.

</comment><comment><USER3> When they bought Odeo back from investors they admitted that they werent they're own users and that this had been a mistake. Selling on to someone passionate about podcasting makes a lot more sense. Personally I would love to see the performance and internationalisation of twitter being concentrated on more isntead.</comment>


Implementing Lisp Without Lists - <AUTHOR> http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/315/symbol-lisp.txt

<comment><USER2> Alan Kay tried to design Smalltalk as a sort of friendlier dynamic language like Lisp. So instead of lists of things, you have named slots in objects.

</comment><comment><USER3> great use of dropbox :P</comment>


V0.10 of Gleam, a statically typed language for the Erlang VM, is out - <AUTHOR> https://lpil.uk/blog/gleam-v0.10-released/ <comment><USER2> Nice, I really hope the project continues to develop. If we can combine functional programming patterns with the power of static typing on top of OTP, that would be a paradise to work on.</comment>


We Are Coming for You - <AUTHOR> I love how smart and smug 90% of the HN crowd is, and I'm betting they are all under 30. The only time I run into that kind of snug certainty it's some 20-something that doesn't know jack.
Just know that there are a lot of us old dogs that truly enjoy destroying young folks _just_ _like_ _you_ because it's easy.
Whether it's on the field where your pathetic grip strength is the tip of your weakness ice-berg, or intellectually because you lack the experience and wisdom of years, we laugh at you all the time.
Trust me, some of us are laughing right now, just around the corner, a few seconds after you dropped whatever awesome wisdom you think you possess.
And know this - when we don't die off and leave the world for you to fuck up further, don't be surprised. We are the generation that is going to come for your jobs, we are going to eat you up. So don't move out of your parents basement!
And we'll be the generation to fix everything, it's pretty apparent how f-n clueless most of you are.
You are the clowns that pushed FaceBook to dominance after all, right?
The selfie generation full of snug clueless kids that are going to change the world for the worst, because all you know is your own little tiny selfish world
Keep making more social sites and taking selfies, trust me us old guys are laughing at you every single day and we are coming for you. <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what provoked this, but it doesn't take much reading to see that HN has many, many older users. In fact one of the things I like best about HN is that it's one of the rare places where younger people can get advice and mentorship from older ones. That's sadly lacking in many fields, especially computing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure what set you off today, but there's plenty of younger workers who can easily take you _because it 's easy_. Someone like you who claims to have so much experience and training should know most of all:

Pride comes before the fall.

</comment><comment><USER4> You're allowed to swear on the internet</comment>


What 61,000 hidden structures reveal about Maya civilization - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/what-61000-hidden-structures-reveal-about-maya-civilization/ <comment><USER2> stuff like this continues to justify the "high-counters" theory that the native population of the western hemisphere was much much higher than we though. conversely that means the smallpox/etc plagues were much much deadlier than we thought. somewhere on the order of a quarter of humanity died in just a few decades.

if you're curious, this book does a great job of laying it out: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus)

<comment><USER3> ...conversely that means the smallpox/etc plagues were much much deadlier than we thought. somewhere on the order of a quarter of humanity died in just a few decades..."

Makes me wonder what would happen today? We're more densely populated and mobility (local, national and international travel) is much greater.

I suppose it's not a matter of if, but when.

<comment><USER4> I'm not so pessimistic at all!

The travel of information is so incredibly fast. Just thinking back to the ebola scare (my memory may be fuzzy) but we even knew when someone had broken quarantine out in Texas.

We have exact low number counts of how many people even got infected coming into the US.

<comment><USER5> A hypothetical disease that spreads quickly without apparent symptoms but takes a really long time to incubate would be pretty deadly in the current world.

Remember, drug discovery is still not a very scientific process.

<comment><USER3> Yes. But a long time today (fast and fluid travel) is not the same long time of decades ago. The faster and more frequest we move, the small the long time window gets.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_period)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Maya still exist today. What people often refer to as Maya is their classic period.

In recent times, the Maya were massacred by a US-backed dictatorship:

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

And that's one of the reasons people flee the area.

<comment><USER7> The Mayan highlands in Guatemala are actually a great place to visit — I spent a month or so there a few years ago. The people are super nice and it's just beautiful.

<comment><USER8> There are about 30 languages in Guatemala which is about the size of New Jersey. 10% of the population speak Spanish. Everyone knows the Spanish words for numbers, that is needed to transact business. Cakchiquel verbs can have 4 suffixes whick makes it one of the most difficult languages to learn. Some kids don't learn to conjugate well until they are 14 or 15.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This sounds like a tomb raider's dream come true

<comment><USER10> You could be standing on top of an archeological site and never know it. Many of the features discovered by lidar are very very hard to spot from the ground. The kinds of people who have the expertise to spot them tend not to be tomb raiders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There was a large discussion about this work earlier this year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16291272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16291272)

A related article is [https://phys.org/news/2018-09-unprecedented-massive- scale-lo...](https://phys.org/news/2018-09-unprecedented-massive-scale- lowland-maya.html) (via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097425)).

</comment><comment><USER12> What if every commercial plan was equipped with LiDar and perhaps a downward camera...could we scan most land masses?

<comment><USER13> They could toss a couple up into orbit and scan the whole earth...maybe?

<comment> dan-robertson Reflecting a laser from earth all the way back to space is hard. The recently launched NASA satellite to look at the extent of polar ice fires a laser at earth and looks at the reflection. Ice is reasonably reflective yet even then the satellite gets about 1 photon back for every 1e12 it sends out.

Firing a large laser is expensive in terms of energy and expensive in terms of temperature: once a satellite is hot, it is not very easy to call down. All you can do is try to radiate the heat away but that's not so easy or effective.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's Your Personal Website Stack? - <AUTHOR>

Hello Hackers,
After reading hacker news for awhile, I've seen plenty of nice blogs, often on peoples' personal websites.
I would like to make a personal website for my resume, portfolio, and also to write blog posts.
In googling what tools / platforms to use, you get loads of advertisements and unhelpful articles.
So how have you set up your personal website? How do you host it? Do you use wordpress or other types of content generators? (I'd like to keep a separation of my tech blog posts and my rants, do any tools out there give you a nice blog platform with organization, maybe tags or something?) <comment><USER2> Dedicated server at ServerBeach. Linux. Apache. "Baked" pages (the /w/ ones, at least). Baked with what? Something I wrote called "publog". Written in? C++. It's just a bunch of flat files (both input and output).

No tags, no database. Just static data.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hosted on a $10/month DigitalOcean VPS.

Debian, Nginx W/SPDY patch, Percona, PHP-FPM, APC, WordPress, mysqltuner

WordPress Plugins: Quick Cache, Better WordPress Minify, Lazy Load, WP-HTML- Compression, WP-Optimize, Types, WP-Paginate, Google Analyticator, Formidable, Force Regenerate Thumbnails, WordPress SEO (Yoast)

Front-End Development: CodeKit (Sass, Compass), ImageOptim (raster image compressor), Scour (SVG image compressor)

I think those are the major infrastructural pieces & performance tools. Survived being on the front page of HN with the server 90% idle.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pelican ([http://blog.notmyidea.org/pelican-a-simple-static-blog- gener...](http://blog.notmyidea.org/pelican-a-simple-static-blog-generator-in- python.html)) running on Webfaction.

<comment><USER5> Same here, Pelican + GH pages, simple to set up and hack upon if you're from the python world

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm using a Python script that watches file changes in a directory, and renders changed text files with templates to html files. The output is then uploaded to the server.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not much of a designer myself (although I am working on it, heh) so my personal site is run using Logr, a static site generator written in Python (uses Flask) with Bootstrap on the front-end. I'm hosting it on EC2 and its served by Apache.

I wrote an article about how to set it all up.

[http://tangents.co/b/Get-Your-Flask-Apps-Up-And-Running- Fast...](http://tangents.co/b/Get-Your-Flask-Apps-Up-And-Running-Fast-on-EC2)

</comment><comment><USER8> My personal blog stack is toto + heroku (for free!) with karakuri. I host downloads and code snippets in a github repo... it works wonders.

For my personal portfolio site, I use a custom written static site generator in python (called ptah, it's on github), and I host it on a low-powered plug server. I do some dev work on a raspberry pi with python and sqlite.

</comment><comment><USER9> Jekyll is best option if you want to serve your content fast. Github provide option to host jekyll static page. I also have my blog and personal site on github using jekyll.

Here it is - <http://pyadav.github.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Jekyll. Running on Heroku. Gets the job done and because everything is static, it's blazing fast. I love managing my blog via CLI/git too.

Before that, Wordpress / Tumblr / Posterous (RIP) / etc etc.

Nothing is quite as elegant as Jekyll. It's not for everyone though.

<comment><USER11> Seconded, static is definitely the way you want to go.

Hexo (<http://zespia.tw/hexo/>) is nice too if you're more of a node.js guy and want to hack your way in/out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gave Jekyll-Bootstrap a shot. It's very hard to customize the theme. Last night, I switched to Middleman. If you know Ruby and want to customize your theme, I highly recommend it.

Still haven't deployed yet but would probably go with Heroku or S3.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've tried a bunch of zero-budget options. The weirdest (and the one where I've put most of my static stuff) is just to drop files into my dropbox/Public. The resulting URL is real weird, but it's free and I have complete control of the files.

</comment><comment><USER14> Shared hosting account with a home-made simple PHP blog system that writes static files to disk. Even though I use shared hosting my site easily survived several hours as #1 on the HN front page, simply because I use static files.

</comment><comment><USER15> Two sites, one a simple CV/Bio thingie written in Python running on Google's App Engine. The other a blog written in Node + Express on a shitty $5/month VPS. On Apache for statics, btw.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nginx in front of Gunicorn + Flask fetching data from Postgres, which is populated by an hourly cronjob. It's on a small ovh dedicated server, along with other things.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd just host it on Google AppEngine for free and forget about it. You won't see enough traffic to go over the free quota.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like something I've used WordPress for in the past, hosted on a VPS that already had a rails app running on it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm using Django on Webfaction, and built a basic blog system in it to learn how to use Django.

</comment><comment><USER20> Octopress to compile a static set of pages served by nginx.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nikola and i just upload the posts to webfaction.

</comment><comment><USER22> Jekyll + S3.

Easy.

</comment><comment><USER23> vps + debian + nginx + node.js + mongodb

</comment><comment><USER24> Node + Express

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd do it in assembler.</comment>


Microsoft launches "HTML5 Labs" - <AUTHOR> http://html5labs.interoperabilitybridges.com/

<comment><USER2> [http://html5labs.cloudapp.net/WebSockets/ChatDemo/wsdemo.htm...](http://html5labs.cloudapp.net/WebSockets/ChatDemo/wsdemo.html) "To view this content, please install Silverlight."

Seems like they quite still didn't get what all this HTML5 fuss is about :)</comment>


Linus Torvalds Switches to AMD Ryzen Threadripper After 15 Years of Using Intel - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Torvalds-Threadripper <comment><USER2> Dup of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23295975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23295975)

</comment><comment><USER3> Torvalds is famously "anti"-loyal. He's a pragmatist of the highest order, and since the threadripper is going to be better at compiling fast I can see the appeal so that's not the news here.

Two things stick out though:

1) He has said repeatedly that noise is the largest inhibitor of having a powerful computer, he doesn't like fan noise and I don't know if you can go fanless with a Threadripper.

2) Hopefully this means the AMD Zen architecture runs even better with Linux, I'm sure that will help the EPYC Rome series, which, in google cloud, are much more powerful than the intel based VMs.

<comment><USER4> Fanless is almost never the right choice if you want a quiet desktop or workstation. A large heatsink with a big slow fan that's _inaudible_ even though it's not actually _silent_ is the way to go. Actually fanless computers tend to only make sense for really compact form factors or industrial PCs in dusty environments.

<comment><USER5> I have been seriously considering building one of these: [https://fabiensanglard.net/the_beautiful_machine/index.html](https://fabiensanglard.net/the_beautiful_machine/index.html)

The appeal of having _zero_ noise on my desk is climbing along with pre-summer heat as my gear starts blowing even more air around...

<comment><USER6> Yah, looks nice, but also infeasible for the TDP of a Threadripper.

Maybe go for something like [https://www.quietpc.com/reserator1-v2](https://www.quietpc.com/reserator1-v2) ?

edit: I know it's discontinued, but that's what came into my mind.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where do you print brochures? - <AUTHOR>

We're going to a conference and need to print brochures. Can anybody recommend a good printer? We've used OvernightPrints.com for our business cards and they're great, but they can't print 11x17 brochures. <comment><AUTHOR> Wow. Not a big brochure-printing crowd. I ended up going with PSPrint.com, mainly because they have an option for overnighting a proof.

<comment><AUTHOR> And they did a great job. The brochures look great and they arrived ahead of schedule.</comment></comment>


YouTube.app - <AUTHOR> http://zachwill.com/youtube/

<comment><USER2> TL;DR: I don't like the idea of having to pay for watching video, and am using the example of a small child to engender sympathy.

The simple fact of the matter is that running YouTube costs money, and there's nothing wrong with making users pay for that in the form of ads. You don't want your sister to have to deal with that? Totally understandable. Maybe there should be some kind of kid-friendly video network that only shows appropriate videos (and appropriate comments)? I imagine a lot of parents would pay a monthly fee for access to that, and bypass advertising entirely.

As I often think when I read posts like this on Hacker News: you've just identified a market _and_ a window of opportunity. Stop complaining and get working.

<comment><USER3> Seriously, Youtube is a business and has to generate revenue somehow. The air of entitlement stinks.

<comment><USER4> It's not a sense of entitlement he's expressing. It's being an advocate of users.

Ads are by definition someone asking the world, "who wants what we can provide?" The value is often for the person asking, rather than the person listening. Most of the time, ads rarely match up the two parties well, and as a result, the company tries its damn hardest to put askers everywhere listeners are listening. The result making for a sub-par user experience.

Often times in a company's search for revenue, it forgets about the end-user, and justify unpleasant user experiences with "Well, we gotta make money somehow." One can say, "well, if you don't like it, then leave." When users have a first chance to do so, they will, and then who will you advertise to?

The exception are ads in search, where the person asking (advertiser) is really well matched with the person listening (searcher). Google used restraint when it came to ads. It could have completely blasted the end user with flashy banner ads which were typical when it first started. However, it looked out for basic user value and user experience first. It is possible to serve ads, and have a good user experience.

The OP never was against paying for a simplified YouTube. It's not against YouTube making money. But it is against losing sight of the basic value of watching videos. It's like if you once wrote control tower software, and added bells and whistles to the point where you're not able to land planes anymore.

Once again, it's advocate for the basic value for the end user. Sometimes, when adding all the new-fangled stuff, we might lose sight of the basic value. That's what he's getting at.

<comment><USER5> wow let's be more self entitled. it's actually the channel owners that decide to put ads on their channels. so people spend hours, days maybe months creating content and ask users to watch a small ad in return. If the end user then subscription and pay to watch should be a successful model but it's been proven that it doesn't work

<comment><USER4> Once again, OP and myself aren't against channel owners putting up ads to make money. We aren't against ad supported video services. However, we are ruining user-experiences and basic value add while searching for an ad-based revenue stream. As google has demonstrated with search, there are cases where you can make money from ads and still have a good user experience. How does advocating this philosophy imply that I want more than I rightfully and fairly should get?

When you don't read to understand the main point, and instead allow yourself to react to a knee-jerk reaction of your own sensibilities, you miss out from really hearing others.

<comment><USER5> it sounds like you have figured out a way to display ads to monetize video that still offers a good user experience better than whats available now. You sir have a billion dollar idea, why aren't you implementing it.

<comment><USER4> Now you're trolling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> YouTube is not a charity dedicated to children's entertainment. They are a division of a publicly traded company with a legal responsibility to make money. If they want to add G+ sharing and ads in order to remain a viable business, that is their prerogative.

Maybe somebody else will make the app you want, with nothing but an endless selection of free content. Maybe everybody will love it. And then, it'll go broke or get acquired and we'll have to see a repeat of all the "don't be a free user" rants that show up on hacker news every time a beloved company wih no business model either dies or tries to start supporting itself.

<comment><USER7> Customers are not responsible for keeping companies in business.

They're also allowed to gripe about businesses who fail to accomodate their needs, especially when companies use the "first one is free" model to gain users and then suckify their product to make money (a process I dub "zyngafication".)

OP seeks a model which already exists. The PBSkids.app is extremely kid friendly, albeit with limited content. My Netflix queue is also loaded up with kid-friendly content with zero ads.

Actually, an ad-free kidzone would be a good move for youtube: parents love trusted brands, and brand loyalty starts young (want proof? What toothpaste was in your bathroom when you were a child? What laundry soap? What brand of cola? I'll bet that one of those three brands are in your house right now.)

<comment><USER6> Sure, customers are allowed to gripe, I'm not trying to tell the OP he isn't allowed to gripe, just that his gripes are not very realistic.

<comment><USER6> Furthermore, your PBS example doesn't count: PBS is not a company, they're a non-profit that survives off donations and government funding. If you like their app, you should really consider making a donation.

<comment><USER7> PBS is a corporation. Just because a corporation is non-profit does not mean it doesn't count. See also: Wikipedia.

Regarding donations: I didn't say content should be free. My second example was Netflix after all. I said that having ad-free on-line children's programming is possible technically and economically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised that people have zeroed in on the tiny mention of ads in the blog post. It's mostly a minor point, and isn't really about not wanting to pay.

Let's make the quote generic:

> And now, presumably, $COMPANY will come out with its own version of a > $SERVICE app for $PLATFORM focused on sharing to $SOCIALPLATFORM, and > advertising, and all the unnecessary crap that my sister doesn't really > want. She's going to have to transition from something easy, and useful, and > fun, to something that's most likely subpar and not as good as an older > version.

This is a valid complaint, and it happens to a lot of stuff from a lot of different providers.

But, if we're talking about adverts: I'd consider subscribing and removing ads, but that's not an option that Youtube offers. Because I like the content I watch, and wish to support the creators, I watch the ads. And often they're lousy. There's no option to tell Youtube to stop showing me this ad that I have zero interest in. (I AM NEVER EVER GOING TO BUY ANYTHING FROM FUCKING JACAMO) I might even buy something from an advert if it was relevant to me. I'm one of the most ad-tolerant people I know, and if Youtube is getting it wrong for me then they're failing hard.

Also, Youtube keep showing me ads that probably are non-compliant with advertising codes in the UK. That's a problem.

<comment><USER9> Even if it was mainly about ads I do enjoy the mentality that responds to people saying "these ads are rather annoying" with "too bad, suck it up and check your entitlement"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _focused on sharing to Google+, and advertising, and all the unnecessary crap_

Too much presumptuousness. Android Youtube app with Google+, advertising and unnecessary crap is very well designed. Live video streams etc. are quite useful.

<comment><USER11> Bingo. The YouTube app on iOS is a pale shadow of the one on Android. Often my 3-year-old daughter has to come running for my help because the iOS YouTube has inexplicably decided to not do anything. Often this takes the form of multiple nonsensical pop-up alerts about access to the video being denied or other nonsense.

If you want to know what YouTube by Google will look like on the iPad, you need only pick up a Nexus 7 and look at it.

<comment><USER12> Came here to say just that, also their mobile website is quite amazing too. Best mobile experience I've had so far. Didn't notice any ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Light grey on white? _Really_?!

<comment><USER14> Agreed. I wonder if webmasters can get stats on how often readers use Readability or the like to actually consume their content...

To the author: <http://contrastrebellion.com>

<comment><USER15> You realize Hacker News is one of their examples of websites with poor contrast?

<comment><USER16> So? Hacker News is probably one of the worst designed websites I have ever used both from an usability and aesthetic perspective. It has nothing to do with the fact that this blog post is nearly unreadable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ytube.app (<http://ytubeapp.com/>) is currently in the works. Probably a good time for it's release.

<comment><USER18> Your app looks good, on Twitter you say it will be free, please don't. I prefer paying €3-€4 now and have it stick around than having it for free and abandoned in a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is an interesting prejudice. I don't know what makes the author think Google's app will offer poor experience. YouTube app for Android is great. I'm sure Google will try to create a great experience for iOS as well.

</comment><comment><USER20> Apple is losing points with me due to...

\- Youtube app removal \- New iMaps when you click a map link on a website your built in map app no longer loads showing you the address you seek. Rather, it now takes you to a dead end Google Map in your browser. \- The iPhone 5 if the new designs seen throughout the blogosphere are true then MEH. The S3's design is slick; size of a credit card. \- Wielding their patent power to try & kill the competition, which could possibly back fire on them.

I have owned various iPhone models over the past four years. Though I'm seriously considering a different manufacturer - hopefully one that provides the same level of customer service Apple does.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't let my kids on YouTube, it's too dangerous. I do let them use an app called Zoodles that is "kid safe YouTube." It is just curated videos and they send you a list of what they watch.

</comment><comment><USER22> As you noted duly, there will be a Youtube app for iOS.

You also noted the move might bring ads and other unwanted noise. It will certainly. Someone has to pay for the service.

Now, what will be interested to see is how many people switch to Android because of it. My guess, close to 0.

Of all the videos I watch online from major sources, I have to give it to Google, their ads are the least annoying (possibility to minimize them or quit the video ads after 5 seconds).

<comment><USER23> Although I don't _think_ you could watch any videos with ads through the YouTube app, because YouTube are only able to serve ads through the Flash player, not the plain H.264 feeds.

<comment><USER24> I thought the android app had video ads now.

[http://googlemobileads.blogspot.nl/2012/08/trueview-video- ad...](http://googlemobileads.blogspot.nl/2012/08/trueview-video-ads-now-on- mobile-devices.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My 2 yr old can navigate the app very well. I doubt it will be as easy once it is updated. I'll likely just keep ios 5 around until he gets old enough to use the real site.

</comment><comment><USER26> If your sister can ignore the comments and ratings just fine, I'm optimistic of her ability to ignore ads and social integration as well.

<comment><USER27> My thoughts exactly... comments and ratings are just social feedback anyway. Moreover, YouTube ads are stuff your sister might even like: Katy Perry and iCarly. Hipsters are the ones who are unable to bear those 20 seconds, not little girls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is exactly what I thought when I heard the news about the YouTube app too, with respect to my own daughter.

But then I realized I never upgrade iOS devices and just buy new ones, so she can milk out our existing iPads for at least a few years yet.. unless they'll totally disable access from the old YouTube app(?)

</comment><comment><USER29> Teach her to turn off Javascript. Voila. No more ads. (Or at least a drastically reduced number of them.)

Just as Google is entitled to show ads, the user is entitled to disable Javascript.

It's a fair trade.

And as for inserting the ads into the video, as Zach says, she'll just figure out how to skip them.

</comment><comment><USER30> YouTube.apk has ads, and all the sharing options and comments, etc. Yet it still manages to be mostly about the video, and is superior by far to it's current iOS counterpart; so I wouldn't worry about it.

<comment><USER31> I find it interesting that my 5 year old son prefers the YouTube app on my iPhone to the one on my Galaxy Tab, even though the screen is obviously smaller on the iPhone. I don't really know why. He seems to find it easier to navigate.</comment></comment>


Pretending it isn't there: how we think about the nuclear threat - <AUTHOR> https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/pretending-it-isnt-there <comment><USER2> Like the author, I spend a significant amount of time pondering the utter horror that nuclear war would entail, the death and destruction it would rain upon innocent _hundreds of millions_ of innocent civilians. I find myself pondering whether my own home city of Milan, a relative backwater strategically, would nonetheless be worth a deliberately targeted warhead "just for the sake of thorougness". What that would look like, what it would cause, what would happen to me and everybody I know, what the aftermath would be. It's truly horrifying.

In a certain sense I get annoyed whenever I read or hear endless hand-wringing over the latest terrorist attack (Manchester and, as of last night, London now featuring largely in the European public discourse, as well as the bewilderment that Italy itself has not yet been a theatre for such atrocities). Why does it annoy me? Because in terms of impact what these hate- fuelled young men can do is negligible compared to what a single high-impact, low-probability event involving thermonukes could entail.

Every morning I wake up and read the latest outrage tweeted by Trump, and I find myself quaking in fear at the thought that whilst he rabidly poked at his twitter account in the dead of night an aide was not far away with a nuclear briefcase that can inflict essentially infinite damage upon the world, and that it'll be in his possession for the next 1,326 days and nights.</comment>


Restdb.io lets you crank out business databases, APIs and back-ends in no time - <AUTHOR> http://restdb.io

<comment><USER2> How is this different from Sharepoint or Parse?

<comment><USER3> Faster and simpler than Sharepoint. Api for at client like Parse and a productive backend application for many backoffice needs.</comment></comment>


Building Payments for an Insurance Startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.moderntreasury.com/journal/how-to-build-an-insurance-company <comment><USER2> > Insurance firms sometimes cover extremely "long-tail" risks, such as alien > abduction insurance.

That's not what "long tail" means in insurance. It does not mean unlikely, it means the claim might need to be paid out years after the period coverage was paid for. (Think current lawsuits about asbestos exposure from the 1970s).

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/longtail- liability.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/longtail-liability.asp)

<comment><USER3> The alien abduction insurance was clearly described as a gag gift.

<comment><USER2> That's a secondary issue (the writer (CEO?) tried to give an example of a insurance policy that covers a very remote event). So fine, doubly nonsensical.

I would have also done a separate article separating paying premiums to the carrier from the carrier paying out claims. Those are basically two totally different parts of the insurance company, with different systems (usually) and definitely from different bank accounts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great read from Modern Treasury. One thing highlighted in this article that the industries not always talk about, is the concept of "Payment Ops". This is critical in FinServ organizations from my own experience. Any good and reliable payments infra is a function of technology, people, and process, and you need good tooling to streamline the whole workflow that involves engineering, finance, credit and compliance teams. Integrating with a payments API is only half of the definition of done.

<comment><USER5> One thing they don't get into, but which becomes a significant pain, is what happens if history is wrong — for example, a policy is mis-entered and you need to adjust past financials. I architected precisely one insurance finance system, and trying to recall the data model and logic for overlapping timelines (what was, what should have been, what we thought it was...) still breaks my brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stripe Connect makes all of this stuff veeeeery easy. No need to test up trust/FBO bank accounts/etc. for client money - just allocate money to accounts held in the name of the correct parties.

Source: built a fairly large insurance company with zero client money accounts by using Stripe Connect

Disclosure - we are locked into processing card payments with Stripe only, but have no incentive to say nice things about them

<comment><USER7> just to clarify the last part: but have no incentive to say nice things about them.

with this you mean you don't get money from them to promote them. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER6> It means no incentive of any kind - monetary or otherwise

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm honestly surprised that Know Your Customer (KYC) and OFAC regulation aren't mentioned with respect to Claims. Besides solving for PCI complexity on the front end of payments, Stripe has a solution for both of these things issues on outward payments. Stripe is used by both Hippo, Lemonade and a few other more established insurance companies.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why do you use integers to represent monetary values? It seems like $600 is represented as 60000. Or is that a typo?

<comment><USER10> Fixed-point vs floating-point arithmetic! In scientific applications, you want to preserve precision regardless of the system of units (i.e. scale). For example, 1.23 meters is 1.23e2 cm or 1.23e-3 km. The side effect of this is the roundoff error of arithmetic operations. Floating point operations are not commutative or associative.

In financial transactions on the other hand, we always need only 2 decimal places. So there is no benefit in using floating point.

<comment><USER11> Also in Fintech. In some cases it is actually necessary to have more than 2 decimal places.

For example, interest accrued daily, but only 'compounded' monthly. In those cases, it is necessary to maintain far more than the 2 decimal places for the daily accruals.

The best type to use here would be BigDecimal or equivalent. These ultimately serialise to infinite length strings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree on the interest use case, that's exactly where precision beyond 2 decimal places is needed. For payments specifically it makes sense to keep it at 2 because all the payment systems in the US have that precision. When we do build support for ledgers we've considered a few approaches for how that might be serialized. For example we sometimes deal with MasterCard data that tags every amount with an exponent field so something like 1.2345 might be serialized as

      { "amount": 12345, "exponent": 4 }

We could do that or something like:

      { "amount": "1.2345" }

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For the record, lemonade and hippo both use stripe.</comment>


Predictions made by Ray Kurzweil - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil#Future_predictions <comment><USER2> He doesn't seem to have done well on a lot of these predictions. These are slated to happen in the early 2000s:

> Translating telephones allow people to speak to each other in different > languages.

This is sort of possible, but not fluently really.

> Machines designed to transcribe speech into computer text allow deaf people > to understand spoken words.

This one basically exists.

> Exoskeletal, robotic leg prostheses allow the paraplegic to walk.

I think there are some prototypes of this type of stuff but nothing in widespread use.

> Telephone calls are routinely screened by intelligent answering machines > that ask questions to determine the call's nature and priority.

Not really, we have IVRs but they are in no sense "smart"

> "Cybernetic chauffeurs" can drive cars for humans and can be retrofitted > into existing cars. They work by communicating with other vehicles and with > sensors embedded along the roads.

Not even close

Seems like Ray Kurzweil might not be the best predictor of what is actually going to happen in the future. Seems like a bit of a snake oil salesman to me.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you currently reading? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Essentially the same as "Ask HN: What Are You Reading?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21457827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21457827) from 3 weeks ago.</comment>


Why big business can count on courts to keep its deadly secrets - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-courts-secrecy-lobbyist/ <comment><USER2> It should be noted that Thomson Reuters would stand to gain from having more of this information published, because it would increase the value of their own products.

<comment><USER3> As it would for Bloomberg, LexisNexis, and similar companies. It would also increase the value of innumerable public and academic libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ROI for bribery/lobbying is up to 22,000%.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forg...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forget- stocks-or-bonds-invest-in-a-lobbyist)

</comment><comment><USER5> super hard to read on mobile. who thought those annoying half-screen overlays were a grand idea? the nav bar also doesnt autohide well and causes scrolling issues.

<comment><USER6> I usually try to open it in reader mode in the firefox mobile app, that tends to cut to the meat in articles like this. As a bonus it also creates an instant dark mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given Wikileaks and such, the protection from the courts can only last so long. Eventually, someone is going to cough up a memory card, or photos on their mobile device.

I think the law should allow harmful secret keeping. But I trust honest people and technology can resolve that; probably doing more damage than the legal route.

<comment><USER8> > I trust honest people

How can we know any given person is honest? We can only see their public reputations, not the things they do behind closed doors. The more power they have, the harder it becomes to remain honest. Any system that depends on the honesty of the humans involved is doomed to corruption from day one.

<comment><USER9> Especially when that person's salary / bonus is tied to the suppression of negative information.

<comment><USER7> Well, not being troll-y, that would, by definition compromise their honesty. That is, if they are that biased by that influence then they should not be considered honest.

Actions speak louder than words, and all that stuff.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Book for new Computer Science graduates - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1139490631 <comment><AUTHOR> This is also my first product.</comment>


UK Police Raid Barbecue Because it was Listed as 'All-Night Event' on Facebook - onreact-com http://www.fr33agents.com/299/uk-police-raid-barbecue-because-it-was-listed-as-all-night-event-on-facebook/

<comment> onreact-com Don't use Facebook in case you're a birthday party barbecue terrorist.</comment>


Top Secret Stealth Helicopter Program Revealed in Osama Bin Laden Raid: Experts - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-secret-stealth-helicopter-program-revealed-osama-bin/story?id=13530693

<comment><USER2> Previous extensive HN thread based on Wired News story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2515811>

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't help but trust this article more due to the word "Experts" in the heading.

Sarcasm aside, referencing "experts" is usually a red flag for me in articles like this. What incentive is there for the actual experts to offer their opinions on the matter to ABC news?

</comment><comment><USER4> Hardly a first, or even anything that revolutionary. Meet the original quiet one:

[http://www.airspacemag.com/military- aviation/the_quiet_one.h...](http://www.airspacemag.com/military- aviation/the_quiet_one.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I like how the video autoplays and replaces the interesting image and caption you're trying to read.

<comment><USER6> Kill-Flash addon for Chrome makes these pages browsing so much more pleasant.</comment></comment>


Peter Thiel on the Future of Innovation - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/peter-thiel-on-the-future-of-innovation-77628a43c0dd <comment><USER2> This is an incredibly smart observation, and not made often enough:

"Often the smarter people are more prone to trendy, fashionable thinking because they can pick up on things, they can pick up on cues more easily, and so they're even more trapped by it than people of average ability"

</comment><comment><USER3> Thiel seems to hope and expect technological progress to improve people's lives, and this seems to be the main drive for his interest in technology. But isn't it possible to be interested in technology for the sake of it, for the "wow" factor only?

I mean, for instance he's very much into medicine, including anti-ageing medicine. And it seems that the slow pace of progress in this area, when compared to progress in IT, frustrates him. Me, I don't care much about medicine. Maybe it's because I'm relatively healthy, but I believe it's also because most people are healthy, so if suddenly everybody was, it would only be a quantitative change, not a qualitative one. A healthy human body is not something new. So, staying young and healthy until you reach say 100? Meh.

If the goal is to improve life, there are other ways to do that rather than waiting for technological miracles. Money, for one. I mean, the life of a wealthy person nowadays is, I suppose, absolutely awesome, and it does not require very advanced tech to be so.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't get it - why do people still listen to him (honest question)? Is it the money? Didn't he just luck out with Paypal? He clearly is all about the $$$, even advocates that you should actively pursue building a monopoly, since "competition is for losers" (his words). What gives? Because for me, he's part of the Valley problem.

<comment><USER5> Monopolies are great. Almost everything awesome in computing came from companies insulated in some way from market forces, either because of outright monopolies, network effects, first mover advantages, etc. Bell Labs and the ATT monopoly. Xerox PARC, which gave us the GUI, OOP, email, LAN, was bankrolled by the Xerox copier patent monopoly. Google continues to use its network effect advantage and above-perfect competition profits to bankroll stuff like self-driving cars. Perfect competition is the current PC industry. Lenovo and Acer and HP. Nobody innovates because they can't take any risks with their frighteningly narrow profit margins.

<comment><USER6> His point about monopolies is widely misquoted and causing a lot of confusion. I think he should have been clearer about distinguishing creative monopolies and what we commonly consider monopolies, in the negative sense. There are nefarious monopolies like Comcast that are insulated from competition because of an unfair advantage. A more nuanced position should entail something like the following:

\- We want competition because it allows nefarious monopolies (and other companies) to be overtaken by better companies.

\- We don't want to discourage companies from attempting to obtain monopolies in their markets, since this gives them to opportunity to capture monopoly profits. Monopoly profits are not inherently bad. If a company becomes a monopoly, we want them to be a creative monopoly.

\- A competitive market in the sense of having low profit margins is very different from a competitive market in the sense of whether or not new entrants can come in and compete.

\- It is a bad thing if a company has monopoly power through something other than being a superior company, is capable of preventing new entrants, and is uncreative. We want to preserve the ability of new entrants to come into the market with superior products and overtake monopolies.

(edit: formatting)

<comment><USER5> He's not misquoted. Read the WSJ op-Ed: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter- thiel-competition-is-for-l...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel- competition-is-for-losers-1410535536). He's not talking about companies that enjoy monopoly profits because they offer superior products. He's talking about companies that enjoy monopoly profits because they have no competitors. He does posit the "creative monopoly" companies that have no competitors because they're first to a new market. But that only lasts so long as there are barriers to entry in your market.[1] And now we're back to regular old Econ 101 monopolies. The "nefarious monopolies" I mentioned all came into existence through first mover advantage. But they endured because they were protected from competition. And much of their innovative legacy came well into their "static monopoly" phase.

[1] To use Thiel's terminology, it matters how quickly the market moves back into equillibrium, and that is dictated by the same forces that give rise to static monopolies.

<comment><USER6> He is talking about companies that enjoy monopoly profits because of superior products: "I'm not interested in illegal bullies or government favorites: By "monopoly," I mean the kind of company that is so good at what it does that no other firm can offer a close substitute."

Distinguishing between "good" and "bad" monopolies is sufficiently complex to deserve more in-depth exploration. Thiel is smart enough to realize that which is why I consider his point to be misquoted. Unfortunately, his view is oversimplified so as to be readily consumed and debated.

He lists characteristics of a monopoly in his book: proprietary tech, network effects, economies of scale, and branding. First mover advantage is mentioned as a "tactic, not a goal" \- a chapter is even called "Last Mover Advantage." Google, for one, was clearly not a first mover in the search space.

<comment><USER5> It's a contrived distinction. If network effects, like Facebook enjoys in social media, keep out competition, you're a classic economic monopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The comment about Nuclear Engineering is odd - I have a friend who is earning ~$1400 a day as a consultant disposing nuclear waste, he has work for his lifetime more or less guaranteed and tells me that the industry has a huge need for more qualified folk to help clear things up.

<comment><USER8> "earning ~$1400 a day as a consultant disposing nuclear waste"

"work for his _lifetime_ more or less guaranteed"

I don't want to sound sarcastic, but what kind of life span expectancy is implied in this kind of job?

<comment><USER7> Well he's the fella sitting in the office, so I don't think he's too concerned!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thiel views the area of self-driving cars as less regulated (next to biotech), but for some reason I think that to make it come true the challenge will be more than technical. The current state of affairs in the legal system is that there always has to be someone that may take the blame when something goes wrong. Verdicts ending in "accidents" are not accepted lightly, especially when human-made things are involved. The entire thing regarding the self- driving cars has something like a ticking bomb under it waiting to explode in terms of regulations!

</comment><comment><USER9> I heard the podcast a few days ago, but I struggled with understanding the point on globalisation "pulling back" and CA and TX being "inward-looking" vs. DC and NYC being centres of globalisation.

What do Cowen and Thiel mean by this distinction? What does it mean to be "inward-looking" in this context, and how will it manifest itself in an edge over outward-looking/"leveraged to globalisation" places?

<comment><USER10> The shortest criticism is that globalisation doesn't spur scientific innovation, as it'd be just copying what works. Inward tech development would take 0->1 while outward would be taking 1 and spread across the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just don't forget that Peter Thiel is a co-founder of Palantir which is equivalent to a private-NSA that is currently funded at $1B.

<comment><USER12> For the record Palantir doesn't do any data collection or analysis on other people's data - which is what the NSA does (collection and analysis).

Palantir simply makes overpriced software for groups to do complex network mapping and connection extraction from raw data - other companies then do analysis with on their own data sets with the software.

<comment><USER11> These groups being essentially the military and the alphabet soup agencies.

<comment><USER12> True, however Palantir started with finance/wall street.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As far as I can tell from his Wikipedia bio, Thiel hasn't done anything significantly innovative since PayPal. It looks like he supplied money for some other things, but that's about it.

<comment><USER14> [https://www.palantir.com/](https://www.palantir.com/) | [http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollar- club/?co=Palantir](http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollar-club/?co=Palantir)

<comment><USER15> He also runs a hedge fund: [https://www.clarium.com/](https://www.clarium.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm reading Thiel's book right now, and have some mixed opinions on portions of it, but it's certainly an interesting read, and makes you think.

<comment><USER16> In the book he says "We Live Under A Power Law" I absolutely agree, people have hard time grokking exponential growth.

In the last chapter, he says that AI is overrated and it's 22nd century threat. He underestimates Power Law.

<comment><USER17> He does that a lot. Universities are irrelevant, unless you went to Stanford (his school), in which case you are awesome.

It's clear that he wants to think critically but he's somehow not able to bring himself to his own conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised by the amount of hate towards Peter Thiel. I consider him one of the bests. I think his class on How To Start a Startup was the best one, with really thoughtful insights. It's obvious he's going to be focused on the money, he's an investor.

<comment><USER19> Surprised? The guy once said

"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron,"

The guy implies the world would be better off if women couldn't vote, and you're surprised people hate him?

<comment><USER20> Well, _I_ for one read his statement as plain evidence that what we need to jettison is not democracy, but instead, of course, capitalism.

I realize this is nowhere near his intended reading of his own statement, but if the shoe fits, wear it!

<comment><USER21> Being opposed to capitalism is like being opposed to evolution, hell even the Communists are not crazy enough forgo capital markets.

<comment><USER22> Economists like to portrait their ideologies to be similar to laws of physics or in your case biology. The truth is they don't even come remotely close to an accurate model of reality nor is anything they study inevitable, but purely a product of social conventions. That they come up with various a priori reasons why things have to be this way (right to private property etc.) is not the same as discovering the natural order of things, as is done in the natural sciences. As someone with a natural science background I find it fairly offensive to compare that culture of intellectual dishonesty and boastfulness to some of the greatest intellectual achievements in natural science.

<comment><USER21> >I find it fairly offensive to compare that culture of intellectual dishonesty and boastfulness

Someone will always be offended no matter what you do but the proof is in the pudding. Capital needing to flow to where it is most useful should not make you take personal offense.

<comment><USER22> Well utility is a drastically oversimplified substitute for the extraordinarily complex processes by which capital is actually distributed, in the sense that it has the role of energy in physics but cannot be defined in a similar precise manner. Moreover capital itself has no agency (it doesn't need to do anything, compared to say electrons) and any model that describes the flow of capital doesn't have the same standing as say Maxwells equations, they aren't even phenomenological. I guess Finance is the closest thing in economics where you can come up with more or less accurate models for the prices etc. But again those are human constructs and don't have anything in common with laws of nature.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Go and Versioning: Minimal Version Selection - <AUTHOR> https://research.swtch.com/vgo-mvs <comment><USER2> One of my biggest fights is getting people to use latest versions of high- quality software. More often than not, it avoids problems that are already resolved at tip. Helps discover newly introduced issues quickly and before it's a lot of trouble to fix them. Overall, I think it amortizes the cost of software development and reduces it on average, even if there are more smaller bursts where fixing work needs to be done, it's often trivial to do so.

To that end, I even created Go Package Store [0] to make updating packages in one's GOPATH easier and more transparent. I use it at least once every few days to update my dependencies and deal with anything that comes up (rarely; most often I just need to leave a review comment on the fresh CL/PR). It's a great experience for me.

Despite that, I have a feeling I might like MVS better than the traditional manifest+lock systems that try to pick the latest versions at project start time, but then keep them frozen there until people explicitly update. It makes people less likely to update on their own because they know a new project would start off with latest versions of dependencies anyway.

With this system, you couldn't rely on that, and instead you have to update yourself explicitly from the start. I hope this knowledge gets people to take on that responsibility more often and makes it a good habit. Don't update when you need build stability, but when you have a quiet period and are able to update for some API changes, do so and reduce your tech debt for the future.

> More than anything else, I wanted to find a version selection algorithm that > was understandable. Predictable. Boring. Where other systems instead seem to > optimize for displays of raw flexibility and power, minimal version > selection aims to be invisible. I hope it succeeds.

I'm keeping an open mind and looking forward to seeing how it works out. I have a feeling I might like it despite it seemingly optimizing for the opposite of what I fight for. I'm hopeful.

[0] [https://github.com/shurcooL/Go-Package- Store#readme](https://github.com/shurcooL/Go-Package-Store#readme)

<comment><USER3> It's OK as long as you are in charge of when the updates happen. Your system is good in that it is a manually triggered process.

It becomes a problem when a full rebuild includes deleting external dependencies, downloading latest sources, and rebuilding everything. When that happens your build environment is a constant moving target. The problem grows exponentially with the number of dependencies you have. When you have a project with a 1000+ dependencies, all pulled latest, nothing will ever compile, let alone your own code.

<comment><USER4> I semi-disagree.

The default should be to update constantly. Expecting developers to remember to manually trigger updates just results in perpetually-stale dependencies. If a specific issue is found with a newer version, then having the ability to _explicitly_ pin to an old version is reasonable.

> When you have a project with a 1000+ dependencies, all pulled latest, > nothing will ever compile, let alone your own code.

The problem is having a project with 1,000+ dependencies that are apparently such low quality that their authors issue build-breaking changes daily.

<comment><USER5> > The default should be to update constantly. Expecting developers to remember > to manually trigger updates just results in perpetually-stale dependencies. > If a specific issue is found with a newer version, then having the ability > to explicitly pin to an old version is reasonable.

I'd argue dependencies should be _manually_ updated constantly.

While version pinning does allow you to accrue technical debt if your team has discipline it does allow you to manage the upgrade process and understand the impacts of a dependency upgrade.

Even without obvious API changes it's possible that the implementation details of a library's method can cause your code to function differently, which can be caused by the introduction of a bug, the fixing of a bug your code didn't realize was a bug, or any minor quirks that may change between versions. When you manually upgrade you know exactly what to test and what to look for because (presumably) the person doing the dependency upgrade is someone who knows how the dependency is used. If you do not do manual upgrades but automatically update everything all the time bugs can sneak in and it won't always be easy to track down what caused it.

<comment><USER6> in my experience traceability of the versions of the dependencies used is as important as tracing that you use them... having that all in source control and being to replicate an immutable build from that tag at any time in the future is useful especially for large and complicated projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still remain unconvinced at the lack of lockfiles. I'm in complete agreement with rsc the minimum version algorithm produces more reliable builds, ie version selection is deterministic. However, lockfiles do more than select versions deterministically, they also hash the packages so that you can be guaranteed that version 1.1 today is the same as 1.1 tomorrow.

I also have philosophical concerns about selecting the minimum version: people release patch versions for a reason. I hope vgo only uses the minimum for minor versions not patches (even then I still prefer the newest minor — most of the fixes I release are not back ported as patches). However, I don't think this algorithm is a bad choice and it seems to fit the go philosophy nicely as it's simple and to make it "better" gets into many thornier issues that may even involve language changes ala project jigsaw for Java.

<comment><USER8> I don't see why hashing is incompatible with the minimum version algorithm. As far as I can tell, the algorithm will _always_ pick versions that are specified in one module file unless a version that doesn't exist was added by hand. If the algorithm always selects a version specified in modules, then that's a perfectly good place to put hash values.

This should probably be addressed explicitly, but it's only been what, 1 day, since vgo was announced?

<comment><USER7> It's not. But it's not in the current tool. And as this article devoted a long section to why they're not required for reproducibility I suspect the go team isn't planning on added one. It's especially important to give this feedback early in the process so this critical functionality of the tool is not omitted.

<comment><USER9> See Part 5: [https://research.swtch.com/vgo- repro](https://research.swtch.com/vgo-repro)

<comment><USER7> That fixes all of my problems. Great work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The table-of-contents for these posts are here: [https://research.swtch.com/vgo](https://research.swtch.com/vgo)

Though part-4 hasn't been added to it just yet.

This is the next post in the series discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16421966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16421966)

</comment><comment><USER11> > Note that F 1.1 requires G 1.1, but G 1.1 also requires F 1.1. Declaring > this kind of cycle can be important when singleton functionality moves from > one module to another. Our algorithms must not assume the module requirement > graph is acyclic.

I thought we cannot have cycles in Go packages. The Go spec says "The importing of packages, by construction, guarantees that there can be no cyclic initialization dependencies." What am I missing?

<comment><USER12> A module can contain multiple packages. You can have a dependency graph like F/a -> G/a -> F/b.

<comment><USER11> It makes sense now, Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The minimal version selection addresses a problem that other package managers do not seem to : For transitive dependencies, it allows projects to use the version that direct dependency was actually tested with. This sounds like a good thing to have.

What would be nice would be a command to upgrade to latest of the direct dependencies - and then transitively pull in the latest version of packages they have been tested with.

<comment><USER14> As I understand it right now,

vgo get -u

(As a reminiscence to go get -u) should do what you want.

I might missinterpret your need though.

[https://research.swtch.com/vgo-tour](https://research.swtch.com/vgo-tour)

<comment><USER13> I believe this will get the latest of all the dependencies, not just the direct ones. If my module A depends on B and C, which both in turn depend on D, i want the latest of B and C only, and then transitively pull in the minimal version D compatible with B and C.

edit : I can of course do it one by one explicitly for B and C. But it would be nice to qualify e.g. : vgo get -u -directonly

<comment><USER15> I think that is a fair request. Fill an issue?

<comment><USER13> Done. [https://github.com/golang/go/issues/24042](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/24042)

Not sure if i did it right, since the default template seems to be for a bug and not a new feature request.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think we're witnessing a revolution in dependency management similar to gofmt.

<comment><USER17> Definitely not. Nothing here is particularly novel, `vgo` just stakes out a different position on all of the relevant spectrums than most (all) other package managers.

<comment><USER18> Nah, it's totally novel -- it's a viable packaging system that isn't NP-hard. Is there any precedent for that?

It's also likely, in practical terms, to feel very different to work with than any existing packaging system.

My money is on it becoming quite popular.

It just feels like it's been sprinkled w/ the Go magic -- deceptively simple ideas that end up working really well.

<comment><USER19> _> it's a viable packaging system that isn't NP-hard. Is there any precedent for that?_

Yes, Rust's Cargo: see [https://github.com/rust- lang/cargo/blob/0.25.0/src/cargo/cor...](https://github.com/rust- lang/cargo/blob/0.25.0/src/cargo/core/resolver/mod.rs#L9-L36) For demonstration, on my low-end VPS Cargo takes less than a quarter second to select the versions of the 289 transitive dependencies used by Servo (could be much less, but I don't have a precise measurement; `time cargo update` takes 1.22 seconds but this is dominated by the network calls checking for a new version of the crates.io index and checking for new versions of Servo's custom deps on Github).

The fact that the algorithm in the OP isn't NP-hard isn't anything worth getting excited about. The only advantage I can see is that it gives a measure of reproducibility without the need for lockfiles--though builds will still be less reproducible than they'd be with lockfiles.

<comment><USER18> Sorry, nope. For your link:

> Actually solving a constraint graph is an NP-hard problem. This algorithm is > basically a nice heuristic to make sure we get roughly the best answer most > of the time.

That's miles away from the simple, linear time algorithm proposed here.

Maybe it doesn't matter (though I suspect we'll discover it does), but that's not what you were arguing.

<comment><USER20> Why do you suspect it does? Cargo has gotten tons of use and the speed of the dependency resolution process has, to my knowledge, never been a problem.

Besides, I suspect that if you restrict your Cargo graphs to use only the features that this Go proposal supports (minimal version pinning, in particular), then the algorithm is no longer NP-hard. There's no "Go magic" here: it's that just Go chooses not to implement features that could _theoretically_ be slow (but aren't slow in practice).

<comment><USER18> No good reason, really :-) -- just a gut feeling/bias that when problems move from "tricky" to "easy", people end up creating new/unexpected tooling as a result, just because it's easier.

Might well be totally irrelevant here.

Sadly I don't know Rust (yet!), but Cargo certainly seems widely loved and admired.

Perusing the resolver code was pleasant, and impressive. We've come a long way from when you'd pull back the covers on a C++ std library or (god help you) boost, and run away screaming in terror.

The future is bright!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One thing I don't like is that sometimes when I reference a go library, sometimes it's vendored dependencies are exposed. This forces me to constantly keep my vendor file in sync with theirs.

Is there something we can do about forcing a check to ensure things aren't out of sync? Maybe a module can define dependencies as internet/external? If a dependency is marked as external, the referencing library must reference that same exact dependency/library version?

<comment><USER7> Vendoring is not supported by vgo so it's not an issue

<comment><USER21> If library authors can expose types of their dependencies, it still is an issue. Consumers must use the same exact version.

<comment><USER7> That's untrue. You will only be able import the library once and that version will be common across your all of your dependencies. Only major version breaks change this equation, but as explained in the third article those imports will have different names and are effectively different libraries.

<comment><USER21> Hmm, can I reference multiple versions of the same library?

Not that I'd want to, just wondering how it works.

<comment><USER22> Major versions of the same library are available, referenced by different paths.

It works if they don't reference any global resources outside of their own package. If they do reference any global resources (such as the using the standard flag package, paths on the filesystem, mutexes etc.), then things can fail badly. Yes, this means if one of your dependencies pulls in a different major version of a package than used by other dependencies, then they can end up duelling over resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has no one ever come up Minimal Version Selection before ?</comment>