How Uber and Lyft have exploited long waits, slow travel and poor service - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/19/how-uber-and-lyft-have-exploited-long-waits-slow-travel-and-poor-service-to-crack-open-transportation/ <comment><USER2> I can't speak for San Fransisco, but in London there is a clear difference in service between 'Black cab' regular taxi services and Uber taxis. The Uber drivers often have no idea how to get to where you want to go, and don't even have an idea of which direction to head, whereas black cab drivers have a great knowledge of the whole city. This may also be just my bad luck but I've been in Uber cabs where their driving practices have been 'questionable' at best. I feel like a lot of the drivers are new to Uber (fair enough), but perhaps even new to driving.

The huge difference in price leads me to use Uber semi-regularly, whereas before I would use a taxi almost never. That's an obvious benefit to me. However the old adage 'you get what you pay for' holds true in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> London is somewhat of a unique taxi market because of the driver knowledge required. The black cab tests are potentially the hardest in the world. In the US cities I've lived the drivers probably know the general area of where you're going, but probably don't know the final directions.

At this point, why care about directions from the driver. Uber has built in driver GPS to tell them where to go.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't expect an Uber driver to know the final destinations to my home in the suburbs, but at least the general direction. Most of my Uber journeys are stationary for a couple of minutes while the driver works out the best way to go, rather than just heading off in the general direction and turning on the sat nav at a red light.

There is also knowledge that I'd expect a professional driver to have. I recall a journey I took once where the sat nav told the driver to go through a tunnel which I knew was closed. I told him to take the bridge instead to save a big waste of time.

My point is though, you do sacrifice quality for cost. I don't agree with this article that says they are cheaper _and_ better.

<comment><USER4> I've never used Uber, but this seems easily solvable with code.

Why not have you put the destination address into the app while you're waiting, and as soon as you get in the car, the driver can just say "go", and the GPS will start?

I'm kind of surprised it doesn't already work that way.

<comment><USER5> It does work that way, but it's optional. You don't have to enter the address into the app before the driver shows up and it's therefore possible that a significant number of users don't do so. My experience is that it makes the trip extremely smooth to pre-enter the address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My friend lived until recently in Washington DC. She said she loved using Uber in Washington because taxis often didn't stop for her. Uber drivers don't seem to decline to pick her up, due to her skin tone. Or perhaps are not able to tell in advance.

Finally, this adult woman could easily get a ride at night.

<comment><USER7> Back from the days when Uber was not the 362.874kg gorilla, there was a nice write-up about how it made a difference in underserved neighborhoods.

> There's no way to tell which will happen until it happens—and so, I rarely > bother to try hailing a cab. Neither do my neighbors. And the paucity of > potential fares in my part of town—a relatively low-income, low-density > neighborhood—also makes it harder to get cabs back home from other > neighborhoods. Technically, it's illegal for D.C. cabdrivers to refuse a > fare within the District, but then, technically, it's also illegal to drive > above the speed limit, jaywalk..

The cabdrivers have their own litany. They drive long hours for little money: the average cabdriver earns $27,060 a year, before expenses. They are at high risk for traffic accidents and, because they carry a lot of cash, for robbery. When drivers turn down fares to neighborhoods like mine, it's not because they don't want to miss a second of The Diane Rehm Show while they take my cash and make change. Those trips, where they probably won't get a return fare, and must instead burn time and gas while the meter's off, can mean the difference between profit and loss for the day; cabbies can't afford too many of them.

What I'm describing is a classic market failure: people who are willing to do business together can't make it happen. If taxis and passengers only knew how to find each other, and could strike deals that would appeal to both, everyone would be better off. Why can't we fix this?

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/why- you-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/why-you-cant-get- a-taxi/308942/)

<comment><USER8> While aggregated services makes a difference, will it hold for future ? Like, if Uber figures out it is not cost effective to cater to certain areas and stops servicing them.

<comment><USER9> Uber is willing to adjust its pricing and has the infrastructure to do so in realtime. A taxi driver is rarely unwilling to go to these underserved neighbourhoods point blank - just unwilling to go for the standard NYC (or wherever) per-mile fare. Which is set down in law for good reason, but the result is a market failure.

Uber has the capability to just charge 2x the price if you want a ride to a bad neighbourhood, and I'd expect to see them doing that sooner or later. It's clearly worse than what's theoretically legally required (equal service to everyone, cab driver must take you anywhere within the city limits), and it's worse than what you get with the regulated service where I live (in Europe). But it sounds like it might be better than what getting a taxi in the US is like in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In Israel, we don't (yet) have Uber, but we do have GetTaxi, a similar service.

I have become addicted. It's convenient, simple, gives me a GPS indication of where the taxi is, and lets me use a credit card.

The fact that I know where the taxi is, what car to look for, and can easily complain if there is a problem (not that there really has been) makes it irresistible for me. Every time I have used it, I have been quite pleased, even when I was unhappy with the ride -- it allowed me to give the driver a low score.

I don't think that these services are a replacement for public transportation. But they are a very efficient and even addictive replacement for traditional taxi companies, which are going to have to catch up somehow.

The article quoted the researchers saying that many of the trips taken on Uber/Lyft would never have been done at all, had it not been for the service. Or it would have taken much longer via public transportation. Sounds to me like the public transportation routes need to be updated -- or that we're talking about outliers whose travel needs will never be adequately handled by mass transit.

I'm just fine, by the way, with having taxi regulations be enforced for these new sorts of services. I don't want to have companies completely unregulated when it comes to driver backgrounds, safety, licensing, and so forth. But I also think that the regulations will need to change in order to accommodate these new services, so that they'll continue to benefit consumers more than plain ol' taxis do now.

<comment><USER11> Sounds a lot like Hailo, which is basically a godsend in Ireland

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What happens when traditional taxis support their own apps? Is this somehow not possible or not going to happen?

App enabled ride services are good but why can't the taxis replicate it?

<comment><USER13> Taxi services are a classic case of monopoly through regulation. The canonical example is the medallion in NYC (and other places). These medallions are required to legally provide a traditional taxi service. They can cost $1M[0] (or can be leased for $1000s/month). The supply of taxis is limited by the restrictions on medallions - already leading to a movement along the demand curve to a point above market-clearing equilibrium (higher cost, lower quantity of transactions). In addition to the decreased supply, there is also a huge fixed cost in the medallion, which forces fares higher still.

The primary benefit of Uber, in my mind is that it allows for the elimination of this deadweight loss, and allows taxi-service to be provided on the margin (someone who might provide trips only to and from work on UberX/similar) - maximizing the number of mutually beneficial transactions that occur while minimizing transaction costs. Focusing on the fact that it is an app is a red herring.

[0][http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/21/why-taxi- me...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/21/why-taxi-medallions- cost-1-million/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I live in Lexington, Kentucky so there is a chance these findings don't match up with Lexington however from my personal experience I can say that this rings very true. Putting aside ease of use (both for hailing and paying) of Uber/Lyft over traditional taxis just the fact that I know Uber/Lyft will show up and show up fast is huge. I don't think I've ever waited more than 10 minutes for a Uber/Lyft whereas taxis have been all over the place, some have shown up on time but the vast majority take forever. That coupled with being able to track where they are make Uber/Lyft the clear winner in my book. I just request a ride when I'm 5-10 away from being ready and I can watch their progress and walk out as they pull up. No taxi experience has come close.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there another difference on that uber et al know how the rider is, whereas for taxis there is no relationship with the passenger.

I ask this because I've had unpleasant experiences with taxis that lead me to believe that taxi drivers have a very poor opinion of their passengers, particularly late at night.

Are drunken late night Uber riders better behaved?

<comment><USER16> In Uber, both drivers and riders have ratings. Drivers can turn down a hail if the rider's rating is low enough.

<comment><USER17> Just getting and keeping a ride-sharing account is a first-cut filters of passenger. It means you have a verified name and ready electronic money. And you'll lose your accoutn the first time you do something really stupid. Ratings are just frosting.</comment></comment></comment>


Can you spot Java Puzzler in this snippet? (Stack trace will hardly help) - <AUTHOR> http://jawspeak.com/2009/09/30/can-you-spot-java-puzzler-in-this-snippet/?sms_ss=hackernews <comment><USER2> "I am sure that like Java, [C#] will be a 'no pointer' language, where the most common runtime error will be a 'NULL pointer exception'." \-- Jerry Kott, in comp.lang.smalltalk</comment>


Python on Android - <AUTHOR> http://kivy.org/planet/2015/04/python-on%C2%A0android/ <comment><USER3> So, I've actually been working for the past while on a project to allow building more native apps on Android using Python. It is built on the Kivy tools, but I have had to make some changes to python-for-android specifically because it's not as seperated from Kivy as the developers think. I've also had to make a small change to PyJNIus, as it has a dependency on SDL when on Android.

The reason I chose to work on this is while you can already create an application using Kivy, it sort of exists in its own world compared to standard Android apps. Because you don't have separate activities, you can't really do stuff like have one of them be launched to handle a specific file or URL (disclaimer: what I'm building can't either yet). There's also the same issues you get with mobile apps that are web apps in an APK, where someone has attempted to reimplement native UI widgets and there's certain behaviours that are not quite right or missing, or you can't use them yet because they haven't been replicated in your environment yet.

So basically what I'm doing is the Python equivalent of Xamarin.Android ([https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/Android/](https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/Android/) ) built on some of the Kivy tools. The idea is that you'd have the bulk of your logic in cross platform Python and a thin UI layer for any platforms you had. And in the future if someone made a similar thing for iOS, you could build a layer overlying the two of them and get actually native behaviour on both.

Overall I've gotten it to the stage where you can create activities, access some standard UI elements and launch third-party apps via Python code, but like I said, it's still at a pretty early stage.

I'd intended to open source it when it got to a more usable state, as it's pretty much in proof of concept state atm. (bugs ahoy, tests and docs are very lacking, feature coverage is low, setup is a PITA, and the API is too close to the Java API to make for nice Python). These are problems I believe are fixable. If you want to see the current state of it though, it's on [https://bitbucket.org/tonyfinn/pydroid](https://bitbucket.org/tonyfinn/pydroid) , but it's a bit off how far I'd like to be before sharing it.

<comment><USER4> Good god, here's a Kickstarter I'd get behind.

<comment><USER5> Yes, grandparent, please consider this :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kivy is really cool, but getting started on it sort of sucks. Lots of compilation errors (especially if you're trying to install on windows) due to its dependencies on pygame (and therefore cython, and therefore a particular version of MSVS for the specific dll... all a hassle). The on-site tutorials are sort of obtuse too, if you're looking to do UIs rather than games - <USER2> other resources[1][2] became available, I sort of just gave up because it didn't seem worth it to jump through the hoops for a new framework.

1 [http://inclem.net/pages/kivy-crash-course/](http://inclem.net/pages/kivy- crash-course/)

2 [http://pythonthusiast.pythonblogs.com/230_pythonthusiast/arc...](http://pythonthusiast.pythonblogs.com/230_pythonthusiast/archive/1347_starting_to_use_kivy__developing_letter_of_heroes_an_android_alphabet_teaching_aid_for_kids_part_2_of_2.html)

<comment><USER7> On Ubuntu it's really easy though. This is why I switched OSes a few years ago. Things are just easier if you use the same platform as other developers.

<comment><USER8> Or just run a VM

<comment><USER9> I recently switched to using vagrant for devving under windows and I have to say that I am really enjoying it at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I also did give a try after I saw a post here on HN about a new release. I wasn't very happy with it. There were many bugs that's a complete mess to get started with.

I tried the example on their documentation and got it running on my Linux box (which was very easy), but kept failing on Android due some missing dependency. These issues are not listed on their website, giving the impression it will just work out of the box. There by wasting a lot of time for anyone wanting to give it a try. After much googling I got to find out that SDL is not supported on Android for Kivy. You have to use PyGame and PIL. PIL isn't maintained anymore, so you can't just do:

        pip2 install PIL

Instead I had to run:

        pip2 install --no-index -f http://dist.plone.org/thirdparty/ -U PIL

Pillow didn't work for me, complained that it was compiled for some other platform. With that I was able to get rid of 'No text provider found' dependency error, but still I can't open the application because of some 'Window provider not found' error. I left it at that.

It's a cool project and I'd like to see it succeed, but there is a long way to go. I'd appreciate if someone could post a link on how to setup an environment that setups Kivy to build for Android.

<comment><USER11> You shouldn't in principle need to worry about the difference between the sdl2 and pygame/sdl backends on Android, since kivy's own API is the same in either case.

You don't need to install pil either (kivy preferentially uses other providers), unless directly using it in your own code, in which case you can include it in the android build by adding it to the python-for-android modules string or buildozer requirements line (just 'pil', this is the name of an internal recipe). If you have a window and text provider problem on android, that indicates that something is wrong with the android build, and we can help to debug if you provide the logs. I'm not sure offhand what problem would allow the android build to complete but give this error, but it would probably be revealed in the log.

<comment><USER10> This is more or less the same issue

[https://github.com/kivy/kivy/issues/3234](https://github.com/kivy/kivy/issues/3234)

I have since removed everything I setup, but I'll try to setup as I did before and give a complete log.

<comment><USER11> Ah, thanks. I suspect this is a bug related to the transition to sdl2, though I'm not sure what makes it present (it doesn't happen to everyone's android build).

If you're interested, one thing to try is (if you're using buildozer) to put 'kivy==master' in the requirements line instead of just 'kivy'. This will download the master branch, which may have a fix for this.

It not that, it's probably an issue somewhere in the python-for- android/buildozer build process, so that log would be the most interesting. If you're able to provide it that would be great, but thanks either way for reporting it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OT:

> the unimaginatively-named python-for-android project.

I love that name. Much better than the "imaginatively" named grunt, travis, react, kivy, vagrant, etc.

<comment><USER13> I teach intro CS to non-majors, and having to explain terminology is cumbersome. For instance, we call things "strings", "floats", and "dictionaries". And then I make them download Anaconda so they can get Spyder to write Python programs. I can't help but wonder what goes through their heads.

<comment> V-2 Isn't "map" the proper CS term rather than a dictionary?

<comment><USER14> They're called dictionaries (dicts) in Python.

<comment> V-2 And in .NET, but that's sort of an alias, while the scientific term is "map", I believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Kivy is a fun little library, not without its quirks, but overall I felt comfortable with it.

In particular, it's nice how they built everything around GLSL shaders, this allows for very interesting styling and visual effects.

Also personally I found that the easiest way of getting into Kivy is by dissecting someone else's toy projects. E.g. there is this book with many small programs written in Python with Kivy: [https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/kivy- bluepr...](https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/kivy-blueprints) \-- it's an OK foundation. (You don't have to get the actual book, the source code is here: [https://github.com/mvasilkov/kb](https://github.com/mvasilkov/kb))

</comment><comment><USER16> I would much rather Google focus on Python than Dart for Android.

<comment><USER17> Too bad google suffers from a NIH syndrome.

<comment> V-2 As evidenced by using Java in the first place, and considering C# for Android at one time ("If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language, or 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way")?

Or choosing Groovy-based Gradle as the main build system for Android?

Or not integrating Dart VM into Chrome?

Unlike Microsoft in their evil era - their policy has changed a lot since - they don't seem to be pushing forward their own standards and inventions at all costs, they seem very pragmatic about it.

<comment><USER18> > Or choosing Groovy-based Gradle as the main build system for Android

If that decision was made by more than just some obscure team buried deep within Google's hierarchy, then why didn't Google start sponsoring the Groovy manager and 2 developers when their funding was axed by Pivotal 2 months ago?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Other ways to use Python on Android (and iOS): [http://www.mobilechameleon.com/toolkits-using- python.html](http://www.mobilechameleon.com/toolkits-using-python.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Slightly related

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/05/01/googles-dart- langu...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/05/01/googles-dart-language-on- android-aims-for-java-free-120-fps-apps/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not a mobile developer, so my interests in Python on Android were fairly brief, but the last time I tried, python-for-android was nearly unusably annoying to work with -- a chrooted normal linux with a real Python was miles better.

The `android` module is also rather poor, IIRC it's just some RPC which would be somewhat better off rewritten (a non-blocking version using twisted was a thing I think I started on but never finished).

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been playing with SL4A (scripting languages for Android), but there doesn't seem to be any active engagement by the project owners.

An actively maintained Python-for-Android with some way to access native Android APIs is great news. I want to poll an Arduino-based web server and send out SMSes if alert thresholds are reached, and a little python script seems just the ticket.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm playing with Kivy and Buildozer. Its important to begin with Kivy pre- built VM otherwise it will be hard to setup things up on your own.

btw, anyone succeeded in adding python-fabric recipe to [https://github.com/kivy/python-for-android](https://github.com/kivy/python- for-android) ?

</comment><comment><USER24> In my view a gaping hole in the Python for Android "stack" is the lack of Tkinter. I know that there are technical hurdles, though I don't understand them.

<comment><USER25> Wonder if some of the work from here [1] could be leveraged to fill that hole faster.

[1] [http://www.androwish.org/index.html/home](http://www.androwish.org/index.html/home)

<comment><USER24> That looks interesting, since one website said that lack of Tk/Tcl was the obstacle.

I'm not desperate, for now. My interest was piqued when I got interested in Python and Android almost simultaneously, was delighted to see that Android 3 would support Python, and bought an Android 3 tablet.

All of this is just in the name of recreational programming. My weird dream is to be able to write and run my code on any computer. But an un-anticipated side issue is that coding on a tiny screen is no fun at all at my advanced age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> V-2 What about IDE support? Like an Android Studio plugin?

</comment><comment><USER26> Is kivy production ready ?

<comment><USER27> kivy is a lot better than it was 6 months ago - i like it

<comment><USER28> I think I tried it maybe 2 years ago (I think) and back then it really bothered me how big the resulting APKs were. Now, I think, most people don't even care anymore.</comment></comment></comment>


FBI Says Laptop Wasn't Hacked; Never Possessed File of Apple Device IDs - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/fbi-says-laptop-wasnt-hacked-never-possessed-file-of-apple-device-ids <comment><USER3> I'm inclined to believe the FBI on this occasion, although the reasoning is getting confusing ("But you've also bested my Spaniard...Surely I cannot chose the wine in front of me")

If the Antisec account is accurate (that they popped this agent's computer), then they most likely possess further evidence that they could release to corroborate their claim (The .csv file may have been the only interesting file, but presumably they copied off lots of uninteresting ones as well).

So if the FBI is lying, they have to assume that Antisec's next move would be to release more corroborating evidence (because who wouldn't be upset over being called a liar), which would then make the FBI look incredibly foolish (as well as now on record as having given false statements).

This leads me to believe that the FBI is telling the truth, and that Antisec obtained the list from somewhere else, and is just having a laugh at the FBI's expense.

Sadly, I don't think either of these groups have built up an immunity to Iocane powder.

<comment><USER4> Well the last time (June 2010) #AntiSec released UUIDs of Apple devices - <USER2> went to jail. [1,2]

The '#FuckFBIFriday' releases have shown the incompetence of the FBI in this realm. So I wouldn't be so quick to side with the FBI...

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

[2] <http://freeweev.info/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't be inclined to trust anything the FBI has to say on this, not because I have my tinfoil hat on, but within the context of the allegation they are an unreliable witness, so to speak.

The question is, are these UDIDs real? If so, then where did AntiSec get them from if not a compromised FBI laptop? If they'd hacked Apple or a carrier, surely they'd be quite as happy to crow about that as anything else.

I can understand the idea of pinning the leak on the FBI, I'm just unsure as to how plausible that is. They and their contractors have shown themselves leaky enough to not need any fabrication of evidence in the pursuit of lulz.

<comment><USER6> We checked our app's push notification token database against the leaked list, and there are intersections (who we then notified). So I'm inclined to believe that the list is genuine.

However, the story as to how they got released and from where is anyone's guess at this point.

<comment><USER7> I made a word cloud of the leaked device names:

<http://i.imgur.com/k6Cfb.jpg>

I had to remove the words: iphone, ipad, ipod and DE as they overwhelmed the display.

<comment><USER8> Reply from Jebus (who has been hellbanned):

        Would you mind sharing the library used to generate that cloud? It looks awesome

<comment><USER9> How does that hellban thing work? I wasn't notified, and that's a pity because I think I have made some valuable comments, and now I realize no one was able to read them? And probably will never try to contribute again since it's a waste of time and is not appreciated.

<comment><USER10> What was your earlier account? I can check if the comments or submissions are viewable.

<comment><USER9> Jebus

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not to say the FBI didn't get hacked, but the filename "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv" is very strange to me.

It's almost exactly what I would pick if I were making up a filename to incriminate the FBI/NCFTA. However, it seem's much too long for a usual filename. Especially the "intel" part: if you work for the FBI, everything about your job is intel. Why would you put it in the filename?

<comment><USER12> Should also have had spaces not underscores. Regular Windows users don't follow *nix naming conventions.

<comment><USER13> Sure they do, if they've been using computers since the DOS days.

<comment><USER14> You clearly don't hang out with a lot of old Windows users. its all 8LETTERS.txt or "Lots of Letters & stuff.doc" but never, ever conforms to a consistent convention. I'm pretty sure an exuberant Anon declared this was "intel".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Source FBI statement: [http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press- releases/statement-on...](http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press- releases/statement-on-alleged-compromise-of-fbi-laptop)

There's just too much wiggle room in that statement for it to inspire any confidence.

<comment><USER16> "The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time, there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data."

<comment><USER17> > At this time, there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was > compromised

Yes, there is. It's on pastebin.

They need to say why the evidence is false.

<comment><USER18> No, there isn't. The pastebin info "says" it was a compromised laptop. You or I have no idea if that is true or not.

<comment><USER19> Evidence is just stuff. It's not some magic object sprinkled with truth and certainty pixie dust.

The connection between a given explanation and any evidence is a probabilistic inference (Bayes Rule actually). You always have to weigh the likelihood of the evidence occurring due to other reasons, be it accident or fraud.

Considering that a number of folks with large UDID lists have stated they've found intersections, it seems the data itself is the real deal.

The only thing that's left is to debate the likelyhood of how they got it.

At the moment the burden is on the FBI. It'll take time to find the truth. Even if the FBI release was written in good faith, they're a large organization, and it takes time to figure out what's going on.

<comment><USER20> Yes, also if someone leaks 1 million people's private data onto the internet I'd think it would be FBI's responsibility to investigate how that happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm certainly more inclined to believe them over the kids who posted the file. AntiSec could be deliberately misleading people (for the lulz, I suppose), or perhaps just simply didn't understand what they were looking at and what it meant.

Though, of course, it wouldn't be the first time in recent memory that the FBI flatly denied a damaging fact.

<comment><USER22> I'm not. I find it far more likely that the FBI doesn't know they've been hacked yet. It takes time for institutions that large to figure stuff out.

<comment><USER23> And yet they flatly deny it instead of say they're investigating or they're not sure.

That takes some hubris. And that's a trait that has gotten more than one organization owned by Anonymous/*sec in the past.

<comment><USER24> _And yet they flatly deny it instead of say they're investigating or they're not sure._

They don't deny it. They say that "At this time there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised". That's different. The evidence is just not here _at this time_.

<comment><USER25> On twitter the FBI stated:

"We never had info in question. Bottom Line: TOTALLY FALSE"

<comment><USER26> It's possible the person with access to the twitter account is not in the loop, or did not consult with higher ups before posting that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _"there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised"_

If their security really is as bad as AntiSec claims, this would make perfect sense.

<comment><USER28> While you can read that claim as being "we are too clueless/dumb to even realize we were hacked" an equally valid explanation is that they know that they either do not have the dataset being distributed, have sufficient canaries in said datasets that they know which ones come from them (for finding leaks, etc), and/or know that no one person has access to a broad non- targetted list with this info.

<comment><USER29> or they may know that there's no agent with the name/job description specified, or they may know the true origin of the information in question. There are a lot of ways the FBI could be sure the information didn't come from them.

<comment><USER30> > There are a lot of ways the FBI could be sure the information didn't come > from them.

And far more ways that they couldn't be sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I find it most interesting that Apple hasn't mentioned a word as to this leak at all. The FBI has denied, NCFTA has refused to comment, but why hasn't anyone asked Apple as to their comments? This much data floating around had to have come from someone with lots of info, and if it isn't apple, then who?

<comment><USER32> Apple has historically kept quiet while news media roils around, I wouldn't expect a direct response from Apple unless this gets even louder.

<comment><USER19> And more charitably, if there's a federal investigation going on in response to this, they may be restricted in what information they can volunteer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Their Twitter statement, "TOTALLY FALSE", contradicts their much more vague official statement "At this time, there is no evidence indicating ..."

</comment><comment><USER34> All we have is a claim, and a disclaim - both being equal likely to be false.

What is left to do is find out the original source. was it apple (can 12 million devices really be all devices from date X?), a carrier (is 12 million apple customers reasonable), or is it from an app?

</comment><comment><USER35> Read the statement carefully:

"The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data."

it doesn't actually deny that the laptop was compromised, or that the FBI asked for and received the data - it just say "at this time there is no evidence" of that.

The twitter statement "Statement soon on reports that one of our laptops with personal info was hacked. We never had info in question. Bottom Line: TOTALLY FALSE" is a lot clearer.

I wonder why they had to move from "TOTALLY FALSE" to "at this time we have no evidence."

There's also a lot of wiggle room there for them to say that the laptop was not an FBI laptop (perhaps it belonged to the NCFTA), or that the NCFTA requested/received the information from Apple, not the FBI.

The FBI may not be lying, but they're awfully good at telling the truth very carefully.

</comment><comment> mamma-mia The kind folks at thenextweb have a set up a CGI script running against queries against the csv file and are encouraging people to submit their device ID's to "see if they're one the list".

Isn't this the same as when in the aftermath of massive password leaks, people set up websites where you can "check and see if your password was leaked"? What am I missing here?

Isn't the whole point is not to share the device ID or password with anyone? Why should someone send their device ID to thenextweb? What will they do with it?

Q: "Here's my password/device ID. Can you tell me if it's leaked?" A: "It is now."

</comment><comment><USER36> It's well known that the FBI's IT infrastructure is an unparalleled disaster and its agents are tragically unskilled when it comes to technology, even the ones tasked with technology related investigations.

Therefore, there's no reason to believe the FBI even knows if they had that data, if they had stored that data on a particular laptop, or if their laptop had been compromised.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been fetching results from the openfeint api for a bunch of the UDID's. I'm not sure, but it may be significant that so many of the UDIDs get a result from the API. Shouldn't openfeint only know about the UDID if the user has played some game in their network? And wouldn't we expect that to be a distinct minority of the total population of all ipad/iphone owners?

</comment><comment><USER38> In their shoes that's exactly what I would say. I would give as little information for as long as I could.

What else are we expecting them to say? That the data belongs to people being investigated for X or Y? The phone of the special agent? The bar where he was drinking when the laptop got compromised? "Oops, we messed up"?

</comment><comment><USER39> "Bureau of Paranormal Activity Research?! Are you kidding? There is no such a thing!", said Director.

</comment><comment><USER40> Nobody really thought the FBI would admit to being hacked, right?

While there is no evidence that they _did_ get hacked, they are incompetent enough that I find it very plausible.

<comment><USER41> At this point I'm not inclined to believe the FBI any more than AntiSec ... Maybe less. (typed on an iPad that's not on the list)

<comment><USER42> > (typed on an iPad that's not on the list)

list is only 1/12th of the original file,

But don't worry, more than 200 million iOS devices are out there. 12 million is only 6% of the key-space so, you're probably not in the original dump that's in the hands of "anonymous".</comment></comment></comment>


What was that iOS styling software that was on HN the other day? - <AUTHOR>

It was v2 of the app, I can't remember the name of it for the life of me. <comment><USER2> Paintcode 2?

<comment><USER3> Yup yup. I believe he/she was referring to that.

[http://www.paintcodeapp.com/](http://www.paintcodeapp.com/)</comment></comment>


Volkswagen Axes All Non-Electric Racing Programs Worldwide - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/news/31162/volkswagen-axes-all-non-electric-racing-programs-worldwide <comment><USER3> Note this refers to the activities of Volkswagen Motorsport GmbH [1], which races VW brand cars (and sometimes Skoda apparently?). It does not apply to Volkswagen group as a whole, which would have included Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini and many more brands.

[1] [https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press- releases/ready-...](https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press- releases/ready-for-the-electric-futurevolkswagen-is-focusing-its-motorsport- strategy-on-e-mobility-5614)

<comment><USER4> +1

This move barely makes a dent to the automobile or racing industry.

VW doesn't really have extensive racing programs comparing to other marques like BMW, Mercedes, and of course VW group's own Audi and Porsche.

<comment><USER5> Agree. Big meh in the sport. Eco considerations aside it's amusing that they're using this as a platform. Racing is largely not about the powertrain. And emissions are... whoops we made them up.

<comment><USER6> How very far we've come in the last 15 years that "racing is largely not about the powertrain" and that an electric racing car is unremarkable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The VW EV record breaking pikes peak car was amazing. A friend was a marshall on the track and she told me no one was allowed to touch the car for an hour after the run until they had grounded the static successfully. My feeling is this announcement is largely pr since VW aren't a force in motor racing and that EV's are really only good at drag racing up to 140 mph and hill climb. The high stresses of racing exhaust batteries within a few laps. Perhaps some racing R&D will help solve this major EV issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _The high stresses of racing exhaust batteries within a few laps._

Formula E races run for 45 minutes plus 1 lap. They are street circuits though which helps the cars:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUd-C2DJyk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUd-C2DJyk)

> _Perhaps some racing R &D will help solve this major EV issue._

Ultra-capacitors for fast in-race charging is a way forward. Nawa is trying to get their capacitors into Formula E:

[https://newatlas.com/nawa-technologies-carbon-ultra- capacito...](https://newatlas.com/nawa-technologies-carbon-ultra- capacitor/54972/)

<comment><USER8> Does Formula E still have the driver change cars mid race because the batteries are depleted? That's what they did in their first few years.

I don't watch it, not because there would be anything wrong with the cars but the tracks they race on aren't great.

<comment><USER9> They no longer do this. In yesterday's race Felipe Massa finished with 0.5% of charge left, but most of competition was at 3%.

It's a league with a lot of overtaking, small circuits and confusing realisation - its super hard to know who's who on track without prior research because they never display which car number is who during race - <USER2> that's a must have when most of the grid is black and red variation. Also because circuits are small and street tracks, there is a lot of camera hopping which makes it hard to get idea of the pace.

I feel they should do three races 35min+1 lap on proper race track instead, but maybe theres reason against it?

<comment><USER10> They've wanted to concentrate on street circuits in cities. Traditional series (F1, IndyCar, etc.) generally have troubles getting permission to run city street circuits (and yes, I know they exist for both of those, just saying the permits are hard to get, at least initially) in some part due to noise. Since the FE cars are essentially no noise, they have tried to go to cities that may not have other races.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of street circuits, but the FE races tend to be pretty good. I too would prefer to be on "proper" tracks, but that hasn't been the goal of FE, at least for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That makes sense. It refocuses the engineering talent.

We don't really need any more technical breakthroughs for electric cars. Just volume. Batteries are getting cheaper as production volume increases, and faster than expected. Down 80% in the last decade.

What the world needs is a $20,000 electric car comparable to the Toyota Corolla, the best selling car. VW might be able to do it.

<comment><USER12> > We don't really need any more technical breakthroughs for electric cars.

I'm curious if people will miss the deafening sound of the raw engines to the point it hurts the business, at least for live shows. I'm not a racing fan (beyond occasionally going to local Indy races) but I've seen a lot of comments online complaining about the whirring sound of hybrids.

There will probably still be combustion cars just for the fun of it. But agreed re: the larger firms not getting as much R&D value from doing it.

<comment><USER13> Hybrids are fine, there's not a huge amount of complaint about them in F1. The fully electric engines do sound quite horrible though.

<comment><USER14> I think the electrical motor whine has its own charm, to which viewers will get attuned to in some time. Anyway most people watch races through televised video, which doesn't convey the sounds of the racetrack with any much fidelity, the sound of F1 broadcasts are rather dull too.

<comment><USER13> The full electric motors don't sound great on either the track or the tv sadly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Things are changing rapidly now (including the climate). Buckle up.

<comment><USER16> nice to see them putting their money where their mouth is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well that is one way to avoid issues with emissions testing – I guess their new strategy is to run far away from internal combustion engines. They're already in the process of rolling out what is supposed to be the next best thing to Tesla's supercharger network so it makes sense.

<comment><USER18> One silver lining of the diesel emissions scandal. Some people actually going to jail lit a fire under VW's management.

<comment><USER19> Governments should take notice. The "corporate veil" should not be a carte- blanche to crimes (especially the stochastic kind with small but significant reductions of millions of lives or the entirety of human population).

<comment><USER20> Seems like the laws only apply to foreign corporations, though. If you're Koch, feel free to pollute the air and rivers after funding the appropriate (re-)election campaigns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Porsche is part of Volkswagen and they didn't axe Porsche motorsports non- electric, did they?

<comment><AUTHOR> Porsche added Formula E. They finished second in their first Formula E race:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQH0R97XAt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQH0R97XAt4)

<comment><USER22> Bah... spoilers... (was planning on watching this tomorrow)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are they abandoning all forms of endurance racing? Batteries have made incredible advances in the last decade...likely to the tipping point for consumer cars and even some forms of racing. But they don't have the ability to compete on range, and due to physics limitations, likely never will.

Fuel cells are likely going to fill that gap in commercial and industrial markets, but I can't see them taking over in racing. You can either get high power density PEMs running on complex systems to support pure hydrogen fuel requirements, or low power density SOFCs running on simple hydrocarbon fuels. Neither is going to work well for racing.

<comment><USER24> What about hydrogen ICE? Very green on the consumption side and probably can have decent power density. (Though hydrogen obviously requires somewhat larger fuel tanks than hydrocarbon for the same energy).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a bigger move than I thought they'd do. Props to VW.

</comment><comment><USER25> I do wonder if racing cars for a brand has any meaningful PR value. I mean is there anybody out there buying Mercedes because they won the F1 championship?

<comment><USER26> I suppose it's much like a halo product, which also won't make you go out and immediately buy a Mercedes of course, but as with all advertising it may plant a seed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Fun to read about the continued development of the ID.R! When I saw the footage of it absolutely crushing Pikes Peak, my jaw hit the floor.

<comment><USER28> what is ID.R please explain?

<comment><USER27> Sure, the article only briefly mentioned it, but it's in the picture at the top. I went down a rabbit hole with some links I found at the bottom :)

It debuted at last years Pike's Peak race, It's quickly turned into one of the best electric race cars in the world. It broke the overall record at Pikes Peak, and is the only car the ever reach the top in under 8 minutes. It also recenly set the electric record on the Nürburgring.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_I.D._R](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_I.D._R)

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kAJaGAMWjHM#](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kAJaGAMWjHM#) (VIDEO)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> They had a dominant run in WRC for a while there.

</comment><comment><USER30> Do people have any expectations about the quality of their BEVs?

</comment><comment><USER31> Some people have turned "ICE vehicles" into a disparaging remark. I prefer to call them 'koala crematoriums' (please consider donating to any of various koala rescue funds).

<comment><USER32> Should refer to all cars, since they all pollute, electric just pollutes relatively less. Still need all the cement infrastructure and everything else. Ride a bike. Use public transport.</comment></comment>


Sweet-expressions (t-expressions) - <AUTHOR> https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-110/srfi-110.html <comment><USER2> "Recently, using indentation as the sole grouping construct of a language has become popular".

Given that popularity doesn't say a peep about merits, it's worthless as an indicator of where to go. There are plenty of good reasons to not treat indentation as syntax. One of the more enjoyable aspects of Lisp is that that grouping is obvious, especially given an editor that knows how to count parens.</comment>


Barnes & Noble Nook keeping better pace with Kindle eBook sales than iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/barnes-and-noble-nook-competitio/

<comment><USER2> I went with the Nook for a few reasons: In-store support. ePub is an open format, supported on Google Books. Support for other book stores besides B&N (via side-loading and Adobe Digital Editions). SD-Card support. Plus, it's Android and has a small hacking community.

The newer Kindles are sexier, but there is very little exclusive Kindle content. Nevertheless, here's hoping that someone hacks the Android Kindle app to run on a Nook.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not surprised. Anecdotally, I know two people with iPads, and both subsequently purchased nooks as their dedicated e-reading device for the same reason: someone else in their household had a nook and they wanted the same experience.

B&N need to establish a non-US presence for the nook, though, if they really want to compete with Amazon and Apple.</comment>


Welcome to Palestine: 'Even prisoners are allowed visits' - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/201241484657679358.html

<comment><USER2> Yet another leftist provocation. Is HN politicized?

<comment><USER3> Didn't know that Ron Paul supporters (I am not one of them) are leftist.

Not sure if this belongs to HN though.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Mobile app vs Web app ideas - <AUTHOR>

I'm a programmer and every now and then come up with ideas that could be YC-worthy.
I'm curious what percentage of YC alumni build mobile apps. Of those, which ones have decent to great success?
I'm trying to understand how good mobile app ideas are measured. <comment><USER2> 1\. As you probably know by now, the idea matters much less than you/yourteam. Probably to the extent where the difference between a web or mobile app idea is irrelevant.

2\. You can look for yourself at the YC startup index ([http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/03/the-y-combinator- inde...](http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/03/the-y-combinator-index/)). Look at the app MAU.

3\. Keep in mind that many startups will have a mobile app AND a web app, or they'll offer a web API AND a mobile API. Like Dropbox, for example.

</comment><comment><USER3> What matters in the early stage is your team's passion, skills and commitment to do something. Mobile or no mobile, good idea or bad idea, if you dont have above than you are not heading anywhere wrt running your startup.</comment>


Mexico's Sistema Huaulta cave is bigger than previously thought - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/sistema-huautla-cave-mexico-culture/ <comment><USER2> Fun read. As far as I can tell, deep cave systems are the last places on earth that are

1\. truly unknown and uncharted and

2\. explorable by certain people with certain skills and attitudes, without huge funding demands (by comparison, the deep sea is even more poorly understood, but deep sea exploration is not something you can do without massive institutional support).

In fact a look through this caving expedition team [1] suggests that many cavers doing valuable new work are hobbyists with pretty unrelated day jobs.

[1] [http://www.usdct.org/cheve_personnel_2017.php](http://www.usdct.org/cheve_personnel_2017.php)

<comment><USER3> > explorable by certain people with certain skills and attitudes, without huge > funding demands

Absolutely true. I'm friends with several people on that list. Everyone I know has a "normal" job. Caving is quite inexpensive. I've gone on a couple of expedition exploration trips to Peru. You need some caving gear (helmet, lights, vertical gear, cave suit) which could all be had for probably around $1000. The expedition will need a couple hammer drills. One-time use gear isn't bad - some bolts and rope. Other than that, you are looking at a plane ticket, bus ride, food, and a mule skinner. The hardest part is getting the time off of work for a month. :-)

There are plenty of opportunities that don't involve international travel as well. I go up a couple weekends a year to caves in South Dakota and get to "virgin passage".

If you are interested in caving in the US, visit a local grotto (branch of the National Speleological Society). [http://caves.org](http://caves.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to give kudos to people who, trapped unexpectedly underground by flood waters, with limited food, for three days managed not to completely freak out and just kept doing the original exploration they set out to do.

<comment><USER5> That's the calm Caver mentality, without it one could perish during unanticipated events.

Years ago, 8 of my friends had just entered a cave for a multi hour exploration/survey trip when an accidentally kicked boulder fell, blocking all of them inside, leaving myself and two Park Service seasonal employees outside.

I told them to go on with their survey and I'd have the passage dug open within the 5 hours we allotted. They calmly went off to do their survey, I set to work digging them out and just about 5 hours later I had the passage open and they arrived on scheduled quite happy I'd dug them out.

They all told me they knew I'd have them dug out by the time they returned. In July we're meeting in Sequoia National Park for the 30th anny of the discovery of that cave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, this is just like the plot for Sanctum, even down to particular scenes ([https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0881320/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0881320/)) - minus the movie drama, of course: "An underwater cave diving team experiences a life-threatening crisis during an expedition to the unexplored and least accessible cave system in the world."

And I've always loved the tagline: _" The only way out is down"_

<comment><USER7> The Descent ([https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435625/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435625/)) is another film one that comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a potentially great use case for robots. I wonder if any cave exploration teams have used robots to map and survey cave systems.

<comment><USER6> Caving expeditions in pristine environments go to great lengths not to leave any trace of their passage. While robot probes seem a good idea, if anything goes wrong with the device, someone's going to have to recover it...

<comment><USER9> > Caving expeditions in pristine environments go to great lengths not to leave > any trace of their passage.

They're literally drilling holes into the wall in one of the photos. Not exactly 'leave nothing but footprints' is it?

The same as climbers who drill bolts - I'm not sure why they excuse themselves from the most basic of the outdoor codes.

<comment><USER10> The caving ethic is more akin to Victorian alpinism

<comment><USER3> How so? Cavers will bring a change of clothes to avoid getting mud on a sensitive part of a cave with pristine formations. When entering virgin passage in dry caves like Lech, they very carefully plot a way through the room. Some rooms have been left untouched for future generations because they are so fragile, beautiful, and impossible not to disturb.

<comment><USER11> "Cavers" is a surname; these people are "spelunkers". :)

<comment><USER5> You are correct, but only in the sense that average people call Cavers "spelunkers". Those who participate in original hard core exploration call themselves Cavers and they are highly trained individuals. We say "Cavers rescue spelunkers", because we do. I used to be on a call-out list ready to be flown anywhere in North America for a Cave rescue, I do know what I'm talking about here. I know hard core Cavers doing original exploration all around the World, they call themselves Cavers. It's a small elite World, but we exist and we're Cavers. Only the most pedantic of people would call Cavers spelunkers after learning about hard core caver culture/nomenclature.

<comment><USER5> There are several types of people who visit caves.

Tourists, who visit "show caves", caves made reasonably safe for average people to visit.

Spelunkers are average untrained people who on a lark, go into a "wild" cave seeking adventure, often woefully ill equipped.

"Real" Spelunkers, scientists and geologists who are often not very well trained in cave exploration because they are Corporate or Educational professionals and going into caves is a rare part of their job.

Sport or Tourist Cavers, those who have sought out some training in safely visiting a cave, often through a Grotto (Chapter) of the National Speleological Society. This is the most common of trained cave visitor, they tend to visit well know "safe", horizontal caves.

Vertical Cavers, this is where the separation of hard core and sport cavers starts. These are cavers who have vertical rope work training, enabling them to rappel into and climb out of caves that have pit entrances.

Project/Hard Core cavers, these are the Worlds elite cave explorers, a small group of amazing people from all walks of life who share the passion of exploring caves that are technically difficult and extremely dangerous.

There are even more minor distinctions within the caving world, but this is enough to chew on right now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


High-Resolution Mandelbrot in Obfuscated Python - <AUTHOR> http://preshing.com/20110926/high-resolution-mandelbrot-in-obfuscated-python <comment><USER2> Also see the Mandelbrot set in SQL: <http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set>

<comment><USER3> That...is the most perverted implementation of awesomeness ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think "High-Resolution" is a bit misleading when talking about a fractal :)

<comment><USER5> Mathematically, yes, but since he's rendering an actual bitmap, "high- resolution" is appropriate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The fact that this is accomplished in a language where whitespace really matters impressed me the most.

<comment><USER7> Whitespace _can_ matter, but ; counts as a newline and you can have any whitespace inside an expression that you want. Typically you'll write something like:

       some_function( with, lots,
                      of args )

but you can also use that flexibility to make your source code look like a badass fucking fractal too.

<comment><USER8> > badass fucking fractal

Ok, I haven't actually logged in for over 12 months and kept to pure occasional lurking, but you made me do it just to vote up your JoCo reference.

Look what you've done.

<comment><USER7> Thanks! That song is up there among my favorites, but it does make me sad every time I listen to it. "Mandelbrot's in heaven" indeed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ruth was just asking last week 'what happened to fractals'. Might run the poster containing its own source code past the teenagers I'm teaching maths to...

<comment><USER10> a better bet: <http://vimeo.com/27688359> <http://electricsheep.org> <https://picasaweb.google.com/103341545636445568670/Presskit>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> An ASCII version in Perl: <http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=165283></comment>


Let's encrypt automation on Debian - <AUTHOR> http://eblog.damia.net/2015/12/03/lets-encrypt-automation-on-debian/ <comment><USER2> FYI, if you don't want to install all the dependencies of the official letsencrypt client, I made a <200 line python script that automates issuing and renewing certificates. Love the Let's Encrypt project, but really don't want to install all those dependencies on my server just to get a free cert.

[https://github.com/diafygi/acme-tiny](https://github.com/diafygi/acme-tiny)

<comment><USER3> Head of Let's Encrypt here. I don't love the number of dependencies for our client either, we're going to work to reduce them.

<comment><USER2> No worries! Every time I see a Let's Encrypt thread on HN, there's always complaining about having to trust the official client with root access, webserver configs, dependencies, or whatever. So I made my clients (letsencrypt-nosudo, gethttpsforfree.com, acme-tiny) to shut those people up. My clients are not intended to serve the wider Let's Encrypt target audience, who probably don't know what a CSR is. But for those who do, I made clients that don't ask for the access/trust that the official client needs to serve its target audience.

Thanks for making Let's Encrypt and ACME!

<comment><USER4> And thanks for writing acme-tiny!

It was really easy to setup automatic renewals, running as an ordinary user. sudo access for reloading apache is the only privileged operation necessary. Great job!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most people shouldn't need both cert.pem and fullchain.pem, because fullchain.pem is "full" because it also contains a copy of cert.pem (unlike chain.pem, which doesn't). (I chose these names for the structure of Let's Encrypt's certificate storage.)

</comment><comment><USER6> For anyone that wants to do this w/ nginx, you can add this location configuration to any "server" block for the challenge portion:

            location /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
    		alias		/var/www/acme-webroot/.well-known/acme-challenge/;
    	}

Then use this this tool from mozilla to get a configuration for installing the cert: [https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config- generat...](https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config- generator/?server=nginx-1.9.5)

</comment><comment><USER7> I really hope letsencrypt doesn't delay the real solution - DANE.

<comment><USER8> It's not a good solution.

[https://www.imperialviolet.org/2015/01/17/notdane.html](https://www.imperialviolet.org/2015/01/17/notdane.html)

<comment><USER7> The TL;DR of that is:

1\. DNSSEC uses a lot of 1024-bit RSA signatures (those are relatively weak) 2\. You can't monitor the certificates that CA's issue because anyone issue their own certificates.

The first issue seems valid, but fixable. The second is a weird thing to complain about because it is the entire point of DANE!

<comment><USER9> Fixable but very unlikely to be fixed anytime sone. Plus the tons of technical issues that make it even more of a problem to use and maintain. To make it viable it would probably have to start over.

I'm not holding my breath.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't Let's Encrypt supposed to launch the open beta today? Let's hope it actually happens...

<comment><USER11> You can sign up for the private beta and get access pretty quickly: [https://docs.google.com/a/allaboutapps.at/forms/d/15Ucm4A20y...](https://docs.google.com/a/allaboutapps.at/forms/d/15Ucm4A20y2rf9gySCTXD6yoLG6Tba7AwYgglV7CKHmM/viewform?edit_requested=true)

<comment><USER10> I signed up for a few domains early on and they were enabled, I signed up for two more two days ago but haven't heard back yet.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps because the private beta was closed two days ago: [https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/beta-program- announcemen...](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/beta-program- announcements/1631/8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This might be a dumb question, after I auto-generate all those ssl certs, how am I going to certify it at some CA? so that all browser will not pop up a warning page when the ssl-site is accessed? What's the key difference between letsencrypt and self-signed ssl certificate?

<comment><USER2> The certificates that Let's Encrypt issues are cross-signed by IdenTrust (a real CA) so browsers should trust the certificate you get from Let's Encrypt. NOTE: just like with other TLS certs, you will need to include the Let's Encrypt intermediate certificate in your webserver config so that it can be chained back to IdenTrust.

EDIT: IdenTrust, not Entrust, sorry!

<comment><USER3> Let's Encrypt is cross-signed by IdenTrust, not Entrust.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon rainforest 'close to irreversible tipping point' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/23/amazon-rainforest-close-to-irreversible-tipping-point <comment><USER2> >Forecast suggests rainforest could stop producing enough rain to sustain itself by 2021

> The report sparked controversy among climate scientists. Some believe the > tipping point is still 15 to 20 years away, while others say the warning > accurately reflects the danger that Bolsonaro and global heating pose to the > Amazon's survival.

Would this count as an example of a future positive feedback loop?

<comment><USER3> In what way positive?

<comment><USER4> Just means that it is additive to itself / accelerates.</comment></comment></comment>


Next-gen AI: AGI research areas - Axo-Sal https://medium.com/softrobot/next-gen-ai-agi-research-areas-597a87f76d3b <comment> Axo-Sal The article also features various works and initiatives in the field of AI that try to drive the research forward. Including interesting videos that talk about the future of AI development</comment>


Top Performance Problems taken from Zappos, Monster, Thomson and Co - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dynatrace.com/2010/06/15/top-10-performance-problems-taken-from-zappos-monster-and-co/

<comment><USER2> Even though it's an awesome list and looks like a tasty menu for a performance/optimization nut, it can also pretty much serve as a list of things not to worry about until you have some traction/users: reader beware! :-)

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't necessarily say "not to worry about it" -- though I agree with your point. For example problem #1 -- "too many database calls" (and the related #4 "wrong use of O/R mappers") are good warnings to those either just starting out in a new project, or in web development at all. Sure -- don't go crazy optimizing your app just yet, but for goodness sakes -- turn on SQL query time reporting and have a glance at what your app is doing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised that the Monster section was about their AJAX performance. Theirs is a notoriously slow .NET implementation. The far more interesting performance problem is scaling their contextual search engine (acquired with Trovix.com).

</comment><comment><USER5> Nothing in there about planning and management? In big projects that usually seems to be the major downfall. A technology problem is not always specifically a technology problem.</comment>


All these companies were a lot smarter than us. What we had was luck (1984) - <AUTHOR> https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/homebrew_and_how_the_apple.php <comment><USER2> I adore that apparently Steve Jobs and Wozniak wrote Breakout while they were at Atari.

I absolutely adored that game as a child.

As an aside, this article was _wonderful_ and if you haven't already done so, you should read it right now. (I especially liked the why you should get a computer argument at the end).

<comment><USER3> Well, Woz wired it. There was no software, right?

<comment><USER4> Right, it was TTL logic - no microprocessor (too expensive at the time), no software. Also, Woz's design wasn't the one that was ultimately used:

> _Atari was unable to use Wozniak 's design. By designing the board with as > few chips as possible, he made the design difficult to manufacture; it was > too compact and complicated to be feasible with Atari's manufacturing > methods. However, Wozniak claims Atari could not understand the design, and > speculates "maybe some engineer there was trying to make some kind of > modification to it." Atari ended up designing their own version for > production, which contained about 100 TTL chips. Wozniak found the gameplay > to be the same as his original creation, and could not find any > differences._

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)#History_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_\(video_game\)#History_and_development)

<comment><USER5> Whatever happened to that computer club, does it still exist, the Homebrew Computer Club?

<comment><USER6> Now it's called Hacker News.

Well - kind of. At least a little.

<comment><USER7> HN, half Homebrew Computer Club, half "get rich quick" schemes, half California housing law discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Luck (as a factor to make someone / something successful) is too underrated.

<comment><USER9> Stated like this this assertion is unprovable and unfalsifiable. Another person could state that luck is too overrated, who is right, who is wrong, and how do you decide?

In a controlled setup though, like backgammon or poker, luck is definitely overrated. Just try to play a single game of backgammon with a professional player, and see if you stand a chance. You can play 100 games, and without fail you would lose all of them.

So, how can a professional player of a game of chance consistently win? By maximizing the win when they get a lucky roll, and minimizing the loss when they get an unlucky one. In the long run the number of lucky rolls is roughly equal with the number of unlucky rolls, but they will manage to get a positive expected value.

Maybe real life is similar to a game of chance. Maybe not? I don't know for sure. But my hunch is this: both Mark Zuckerberg and I were faced with a long string of random events in our life. Many, many, many. After each such event, we both had a number of ways to respond. Somehow Zuckerberg got richer pretty much every day of his adult life, and he now sits at #3 at the top of the world. I, on the other hand, made whatever choices I made and sit currently at #1e9 or #2e9 (not sure). I can think that Zuckerberg has been dealt a luckier hand in life, or I can think he was much better at playing what he was dealt than me. Nobody will ever know for sure. But my personal belief is that he was a more skillful player than me.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, you don't hear (as much) about all the Mark Zuckerbergs who weren't quite so successful. If you're going to look at some of the richest people on the planet, then of course you'll see a string of successes, because without a long string of successes they wouldn't have been the richest people on the planet. I also think that as the string of successes becomes longer (or you become richer), you have more of a chance at further successes as well.

Looking at the most successful people in any situation is not a good way to get a sense of the underlying probabilities involved. If you let 1000 people flip coins 1000 times and count the number of heads, you'll see an extraordinarily high number of heads among the most successful people.

The mere fact that there are really few people as rich as Zuckerberg indicates a big luck / network effect factor in my opinion. Zuckerberg is probably more skilled than the average person, but there are many more people like him in terms of skills (I believe), and the vast majority of them didn't get anywhere near as rich. Zuckerberg also didn't accumulate his wealth by lots of small repeated increments: he won big by Facebook becoming successful (and there was no guarantee of that, despite Zuckerberg's skills). Without that big win, I doubt that Zuckerberg would have ended up anywhere near #3.

<comment><USER9> > If you let 1000 people flip coins 1000 times and count the number of heads, > you'll see an extraordinarily high number of heads among the most successful > people.

Not really. If you do this experiment you are virtually assured that all the people will get between 400 and 600 heads. Not a single one will get 601 heads. Not a single one will get only 399 heads.

Zuckerberg is not one or two or ten standard deviations away from me. He's thousands of standard deviations away from me. Luck alone cannot explain his success.

Edit: For fun, here's a code snippet that shows the range of the number of heads that 1000 people get when flipping a coin 1000 times. I ran the experiment 10 times.

      import numpy as np

      for seed in range(10):
          flips = np.random.RandomState(seed).binomial([1000]*1000,p=0.5)
          print(min(flips),max(flips))

This is what you get:

      442 556
      455 546
      453 550
      452 551
      446 557
      444 552
      435 549
      446 564
      454 562
      452 548

You need to run this experiment many millions of times before you see a minimum less than 400 or a maximum higher than 600. As you can see most often the range is much tighter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few months ago I heard about the concept "return on luck". It seems to me that Apple had the highest return on the luck they had of any of their contemporaries, with the possible exception of Microsoft.

<comment><USER12> Microsoft's luck was that IBM gave them the license to make the OS, because they thought the money is in the hardware.

That's one of the biggest business mistakes ever.So that's a huge amount of luck.

So I'm not sure Microsoft is so unique with regards to "return on luck".

<comment><USER13> That wasn't luck. That was Bill Gates being his genius self.

<comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates)

"In 1980, she discussed her son's company with John Opel, a fellow committee member, and the chairman of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Opel, by some accounts, mentioned Mrs. Gates to other IBM executives. A few weeks later, IBM took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer."

<comment><USER15> That helps explain Gates talking to IBM. It doesn't explain IBM's taking the contract, or their massive blunder in allowing Gates' non-exclusivity clause on the OS.

Lots of companies contracted with IBM without IBM signing off their whole business to them.

Bill Gates clearly was very fortunate in his life, but it's a mistake to chalk the IBM blunder up to 100% luck.

<comment><USER16> The commoditization of the PC is not wholly due to Microsoft's luck: IBM used common parts that could be copied legally. It helped a great deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > We were finally going to get control of our own computers. It wasn't a > million-dollar thing that belonged to the company you worked for.

Too bad it's gone full circle. The cloud is the new mainframe.

</comment><comment><USER18> When did Wozniak write this? Don't see a date.

<comment><USER19> Next to the post it says 1894, which is decidedly, uh, odd, if Wozniak wrote it.

<comment><USER20> I'm disappointed it wasn't about Gilded Age business, written by a robber baron or something.

<comment><USER21> I was expecting something about Morse code. I too was disappointed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think the future holds for TextMate? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it's newly open sourced but there have been two build releases in the last two days and it seems that it's being pretty actively developed.

Given the maven nature of its users (including myself), I can see TextMate being developed actively and productively into the foreseeable future

</comment><comment><USER2> There are different types of open sourcing.

This is the dead-man-walking open sourcing. Give it to the community like Google Wave or whatever because it is dead and you might as well donate to science.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand. That's a shame though.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about this startup idea? - <AUTHOR>

We are looking to launch a website for families/singles with kids so for example 2 families could go both in a vacation, kids will have fun together and they will share responsabilities, at the same time, they could just go out in the city , will be a bit like couchsurfing but will be limited to families/single with kids .<p>If you are interested in helping us , will be great if you can complete this survey : https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14jgxdW-7UtGFnoIzKNI8HPVBXZ-SsJzuaRAxmysRrMQ/ <comment><USER2> It sounds like an interesting idea. Its outcome really depends on the implementation. I imagine the most difficult challenge will be to get families to trust the service enough to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment, we are thinking to associate us with some trusted brands and add also : credit card verification ( small donation ) + postal address verification , if you want to be trusted .</comment></comment>


Frenzy Around Shopping Site Jet.com Harks Back to Dot-Com Boom - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/frenzy-around-shopping-site-jet-com-harks-back-to-dot-com-boom-1437359430

<comment><USER2> > For example, The Wall Street Journal recently bought 22 items from Jet. > Twelve were shipped to the Journal by retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores > Inc., J.C. Penney Co. and Nordstrom Inc., according to sales receipts.

> Jet's prices for the same 12 items added up to $275.55, an average discount > of about 11% from the prices Jet paid for those items on other retailers' > websites. Jet's total cost, which also includes estimated shipping and > taxes, was $518.46.

> As a result, Jet had an overall loss of $242.91 on the 12 items. Mr. Lore > says the loss is unusually large, partly because the items' cost was low > relative to shipping charges.

Wow. They must be playing a long game.

Can anyone explain how they expect to get that money back?

<comment><USER3> I remember my employer once tried to get a contract to build a new online store for a electronics retailer in the late 90's. They boasted they sold stuff at less than they paid for it and would someday make it up later. We lost the bid but they went out of business and never paid the winner, IBM.

If you charge less than you pay for you should go out of business, not raise more money. Giving money to a negative retailer is gambling not investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Non-paywalled mirror: [https://archive.is/QritD](https://archive.is/QritD)

<comment><USER5> Thanks...how does one do that with paywalled articles. I've tried to get archive.is to do this in the past but it just captures the paywalled article summary/

<comment><USER6> For most of them, you just have to google the article's title and click the link from there.

<comment><USER5> I did try that, even in incognito mode, but still hit the paywall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a losing proposition. I am very familiar with the space (I used to manage one of the largest categories at Amazon), and there is a lot of blind faith in Jet. While I do think another player can co-exist in the domestic e-commerce space, winning on price is going to be a very tough battle for a variety of reasons (Amazon can strong arm vendors giving preferential pricing elsewhere), especially if it requires a $50 membership fee. IMO, ways to beat Amazon would need to focus on the searching/browsability of items, focusing on certain categories where Amazon has less direct relationships, etc., and I'm not yet convinced that Jet is focused enough to do that.

</comment><comment><USER8> Competing with Amazon on price is, um, ambitious, but even aside from that, you also need to compete with them on logistics infrastructure. Amazon has taught me that a) I shouldn't have to pay any shipping costs, and b) once I order something it should be at my door within 1-2 days. If you can't do that, I become annoyed. And I don't see that happening if they're just re-ordering things from other merchants, none of which can compete with Amazon in the logistics department either.

So, good luck I guess. Competition is good, but they've got a pretty steep hill ahead of them.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the difference between the dot-com boom and today is that back in the '90s, companies that were essentially speculative ideas with no proven market were receiving high valuations, whereas today companies that are targeting a proven market are receiving high valuations because they need to raise (and spend) a lot of money in order to successfully penetrate the market and grow quickly enough to achieve the economies of scale they need to compete effectively.

Marc Lore's a good bet for this particular market. He's already built a successful e-commerce company from scratch and sold it to Amazon. It appears that his plan for Jet.com is to tailor prices for each individual shopper in real-time, effectively targeting a profit margin of 0%. People in the US are familiar with the Costco/Sam's Club retail model (i.e. where you pay a membership fee to access discounted prices), and real-time, personalised pricing is incredibly powerful. You get to price off an individually-defined demand curve for each customer, and if people get familiar/comfortable with discounts that are applied to a shopping basket, rather than individual items, you reduce the competitive impact of a low price advertised by your competitor.

Also, it looks like Jet.com plans to operate as a marketplace as well as a traditional e-commerce company: [https://developer.jet.com/getting- started](https://developer.jet.com/getting-started)

<comment><USER10> > effectively targeting a profit margin of 0%

Why would anybody want to invest in that? What am I missing here?

<comment><USER11> IIRC, you have to pay a subscription to shop on Jet in the first place. Every new shopper brings in recurring revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So Jet is a very risky bet. And partly backed by Norwest Venture Partners. Which is in turn owned by Wells Fargo. Who is apparently violating the spirit of the Volcker Rule, if not the letter. [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/21/us-wellsfargo- priv...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/21/us-wellsfargo- privateequity-idUSBRE91K06420130221)

Remember this at the next bailout. [http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/stock- news/3-reasons-the-...](http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/stock- news/3-reasons-the-dodd-frank-act-doesnt-solve-too-big-to- fail.html/?a=viewall)

</comment><comment><USER13> Given the level of investment here, I have to hope that there is much more to this company's model than is discussed in the article - otherwise this is a 100% guaranteed loss for investors. When that loss happens, it will be bad for any other tech startups that try to raise money after it.

The money actually being used to fund this black hole is coming from large institutions that trust the judgment of the VCs and usually have no say in the funds' investment decisions. Tech valuations are only high at the moment because there is currently an imbalance of investment capital chasing private tech deals. One sure way to correct that imbalance is for VCs to betray the confidence that institutions are placing in their judgment by blowing hundreds of millions of dollars in massive, obvious blunders like this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Had a beta access code and the site is a mess. They boast about having the lowest prices on the web but if you actually check their prices they don't. On many items they were quite a bit more expensive than other well known sites (but we're still quoting "savings" in the checkout cart.) Some items were cheaper but not by much. If their model is to beat everyone on price then that's a giant race to the bottom. If you claim to be a better deal but are actually more expensive, well then you're just dillusional.

<comment><USER15> Have you been on there recently? I must admit that early on it was messy... but you know its a startup in beta...

However, I disagree on the price bit. Their selection isnt as large as amazon yet but I have found them to be 5%-15% cheaper on all items that they do have.

<comment><USER16> I agree - their prices are definitely lower.

It concerns me a little bit that they're losing money on each order - that's fine if they plan to have the same discounts at scale, and are just testing, but if they are just using low prices to get people to join, it seems troubling.

<comment><USER14> The business model sounds deeply flawed. The fact that they've been burning cash like crazy (like building a fancy HQ before even getting any revenue) isn't a great sign. I wish them luck but things are going to get real ugly real quick if they don't figure this thing out fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a great time to shop on jet.com. They are absorbing all of the costs!! If you really want to buy something cheaply you should do it now, before it goes under.

This is a great example of trying to get too big too fast without even testing the business model.</comment>


C-based Virtual Machine for Notch's DCPU-16 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/swetland/dcpu16/blob/master/dcpu.c <comment><AUTHOR> There's also a VM written in Go by kballard: <https://github.com/kballard/dcpu16.go/>

And a disassembler in JavaScript by evilpie: <https://gist.github.com/2300590>

Edit:

CoffeeScript, too (via steverb): <https://github.com/Janiczek/cfs-dcpu16>

@sp332: I feexed it

<comment><USER2> I started one in JavaScript (As an exercise to learn JS beyond DOM manipulation): <https://github.com/tscho/dcpu16-js>

<comment><USER3> Awesome man! You solved quite a few problems I had working on mine. (Not sure I understand everything though)

I checked your code, fixed a few things. It now works for: 7c01 0030 7de1 1000 0020 7803 1000 <https://github.com/fbulens/dcpu16-js>

I'll continue tomorrow (Europe here).

<comment><USER2> Glad you found it helpful! I merged in your changes and added an html interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An enum with the opcodes would have been a lot nicer. I guess theres no time to lose in a competition with the rest of the world to come up with stuff on a one page of paper CPU.

<comment><USER5> And I'm pretty sure the O register isn't supposed to be set in all cases. And what was lit[] supposed to be for?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, think you're right. I'm out of spec there. That's what you get for trying to be cute. Fixed now.

<comment><USER5> I think your lit table also implies you can write to literals. So I can 'SET 2, 0x1f; SET A, 2' and now A is 0x1f.

<comment><USER6> There's a check in the writeback phase that prevents that.

<comment><USER5> Ah-ha, yes there is. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Suggestion: Sorry, I don't have the time right now, but someone should start and curate a github project containing specs, test cases, expected results, etc.

A nice addition, until Notch's actual design is known, would be to specify a simple community-created "hardware" spec: say memory areas for 40x25 text, 80x25 text, 320x200 monochrome, etc. and a low page (say the first 0xff bytes) for switching between those modes. That way, code could be easily shared and tested.

<comment><USER8> I'd think just a simple standard for 80x25 text would be a great start...

<comment><USER5> I think Notch is thinking the same thing: <https://twitter.com/#!/notch/statuses/184933588754628609>

I'm guessing it's 80x25, 2000 words starting at 0x8000, high byte is the attribute and low byte is the character. Just like a CGA/EGA/VGA display (except that started at 0xA0000). But it's sort of silly to speculate at such an early stage; for instance, is this emulated on the server? client? both, kept in sync somehow? If on the server, do you have to constantly send framebuffer updates?

<comment><USER9> Since it's text I would have started it at 0xB000 I think it was. That's where I believe the text mode on old XT/AT systems used to pull it from. It's been way too long since I've dealt with that for me to remember properly

<comment><USER5> Oh yeah. 0xB8000. (You'd use a segmented address of 0xB800:0000, but the "segment" part that would be in 16-byte "paragraphs", so the logical "flat" address was equivalent to 0xB8000).

<comment><USER9> That was it! Boy does that bring back memories. Some bad ones, some good ones.

I can only imagine how fast putting text on the screen can be if you did it with some of the vector instructions in a modern processor....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related to all of the people who've already sunk a bunch of work in to this; the official lore/backstory says that the whole premise was instigated by a Big/Little Endian mixup, and that the DCPU is supposed to be Little Endian...

But from Notch's spec document:

"Instructions are 1-3 words long and are fully defined by the first word. In a basic instruction, the lower four bits of the first word of the instruction are the opcode, and the remaining twelve bits are split into two six bit values, called a and b. a is always handled by the processor before b, and is the lower six bits. In bits (with the least significant being last), a basic instruction has the format: bbbbbbaaaaaaoooo"

In other words, the current DCPU spec is Big Endian. So I wonder if Notch will be rewriting the spec, even though from all accounts it seems that he's already implemented the emulator.

<comment><USER11> The spec example

       For example, to do a 32 bit add of 0x12345678 and 0xaabbccdd, do this:
          SET [0x1000], 0x5678    ; low word
          SET [0x1001], 0x1234    ; high word

suggests he's thinking in little-endian.

I don't think it's relevant to this spec though: there's no way for a DCPU program to detect the CPU's endianness. Imagine it's C with 16-bit "char"s and no larger int sizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure right now someone somewhere is working on an FPGA implementation of the DCPU-16.

<comment><USER13> already done. I was asked todo it for my ungrad thesis.

<comment><USER12> tell us more, do you have a link?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a feeling this game will be the driving force in making me learn up on this area of CS.

</comment><comment><USER15> From my read of this, we do not yet have code that accurately emulates the number of cycles per instruction, which will probably turn out to be critical in the final game.

<comment><USER16> Most instructions take one cycle. The ones that don't, disconcertingly, have the results available immediately and _then_ deduct cycles. I don't know if this will be fixed later or not. <https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/187449161216573441>

<comment><USER17> Why do you care when the result is available if the next instruction will run after the wait is complete?

I guess it matters if another CPU can read your memory and depends on the cycle count to synchronize...

<comment><USER15> It also matters if writing to the memory causes an actuator to... act.

Picture if memory location 7 is mapped to how much energy to pump into the laser cannon.

<comment><USER17> In which case interaction happening when you send the command and not at a command-specific during the execution should simplify things?

<comment><USER15> If it's supposed to take 3 clock cycles to execute an instruction, then it's "unfair/unrealistic" to really activate the laser cannon instantly, and then make the processor wait 3 clock cycles before it begins to execute the next instruction.

It'd be "more fair/realistic" if it took 3 clock cycles, and THEN the memory was overwritten.

Note: this is debating the timing of a 100 kHz simulated processor, within a game... so, the discussion is kind of inherently pedantic. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Note that this VM can depend on behaviour that is explicitly left undefined by the C11 standard. For example, this DCPU-16 program can cause a shift by an amount greater than the width of uint16_t:

SET A, 0x1 SHL A, 0x100

<comment><USER19> This will, of course, set both A and O to 0.

<comment><USER18> Depends how left shift is implemented: on some processors (including x86), only the lowest order bits of the number of positions to shift by are used. In Java:

char A = 1; A = ((char) ((A << 32) & 0xFFFF)); System.out.println(Integer.toHexString(A));

actually outputs 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a terrible feeling I'm missing something here

<comment><USER15> notch, creator of Minecraft, has announced a new space-themed MMO, with people being able to write code against a 16-bit machine architecture, which will be executed to fly your ship around, even while you're not connected to the game.

This is a c implementation of that machine architecture.

I don't think we have any info on sensors or actuators for the ships though, yet...

<comment><USER21> Someone should make something analogous to the GertBoard for the Raspberrypi[0], except virtually, to solve that problem [0]<http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/411>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The first thing I'm doing with this is making it play minecraft.

<comment><USER23> The first world you should test it on is one in which someone's built a control panel/interface for the CPU.

<comment><USER24> and it was turtles all the way down...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I made one in C++. <https://github.com/isamgray/DCPU-16-CPP> I'm new to writing emulators and such, so I used the already made C one, as a sort of "guide". No copy/paste of code though. I plan on adding in a disassembler soon.(already have most of the code written)

I hope someone finds it useful!

</comment><comment><USER26> It would seem like some kind of compiler is going to be written before the first beta is even released. Its like a space race!

</comment><comment><USER16> I know the architecture was built to be very easy to emulate, so I'd like to see how it compares to a PyPy JIT version :)

</comment><comment><USER27> It would probably be worth it to temporarily define one of the reserved opcodes as putchar.

<comment><USER19> Video RAM starts at 0x8000.

<comment><USER28> True, but there's no information on the display modes or the framebuffer format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Instead of using dcpu.skip, why not just (d->pc += !res)? This way you don't have to call dcpu_step() again before getting to the next instruction and more accurately follow the way the hardware would likely work.

<comment><USER6> Instructions can be 1-3 words depending on opcode and operand types. I was using the skip register to avoid having to decode instructions just to skip 'em. Turns out that my operand decoder is side-effecty (adjusts SP for PUSH/POP operands), so I had to go this route anyway. Code updated.

<comment><USER29> Ah, thanks. I forgot about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Someone should implement C in the DCPU-16 before launch, so the assembly language isn't necessary. Mid- to high-level languages FTW!

</comment><comment><USER30> Can anyone help me understand how this will work with the game? I don't see anything about flying virtual ships around...

<comment><USER31> As far as I can understand the virtual ships have programmable hardware

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Coffescript based interpreter:

<https://github.com/Janiczek/cfs-dcpu16>

<comment><USER33> I made one too :) <https://gist.github.com/2308725>

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How long till someone installs a linux distro to the new game's simulated CPU?

<comment><USER35> Hopefully/probably, very long since the CPU in question is quite small. 64 KB of total memory (code and data) is rather cramped to run Linux. Also, it has no I/O and no interrupts. It'd have to be a pretty radically small OS kernel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there an assembler?

<comment><USER36> <http://onlinehut.org/2012/04/assembler-for-dcpu16/> Yup, on the front page now</comment></comment>


Ask HN: best place to look for front end jobs (Philly/NYC)? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I would look for remote positions for which websites like whoishiring.io weworkremotely.com and wfh.io I know of. Also the monthly HN who's hiring thread (look for it on the first of the month)

</comment><comment><USER3> The big places like Uber, Facebook & Google are always hiring in NYC. Also, lots of ad-tech (ranging from small to huge) and some interesting full stack companies like Oscar hire fairly consistently.

Depends on what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out - [http://www.weworkinphilly.com/](http://www.weworkinphilly.com/)</comment>


Updated MacBook Pro, $899 laptop model shows up in Apple inventory systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/13/mr-blurrycam-reveals-the-updated-macbook-pro-899-laptop-model/ <comment><USER2> Can people seriously not wait an entire day for the announcement?

</comment><comment><USER3> you should tweak the title to say that pics are included</comment>