Introducing Improved Performance Dynos - <AUTHOR> http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2015/8/20/introducing-improved-performance-dynos

<comment><USER2> It seems like the hype around Heroku has died down somewhat. Does anyone care to comment why they went with Heroku vs. AWS or the like?

<comment><USER3> I would argue that Heroku is still the fastest way to get a web app deployed for the first time. One command to push and one click to setup a solid database.

As your systems get more complex, you can still peel off services to AWS or the like, but until then, Heroku combines the following tasks and AWS services into a dead simple process: configuring instances, Scaling Groups, RDS, Cloudwatch (some metrics, consolidated logging) and ELB.</comment></comment>


A first look at my microbiome - <AUTHOR> http://biomehacking.brace.io/articles/firstresults/ <comment><USER2> From the article: "I was able to significantly affect my microbiome with an FMT"

A huge pet peeve of mine is people claiming "significance" when they have no such thing. You have two data points and no controls. Even a simple control like another data point to see natural variation in your microbiome without an FMT is not present. Or sequencing a gut sample from your friend to show your sample moved in line with his (although in this case, since you moved toward the mean of the population, reversion to the mean is just as likely an explanation)

Catching up on the microbiome literature (I actually used to work on microbial communities, doing 16s rRNA sequencing on anaerobic digesters), it confirms my suspicion that your "significant" changes could easily be within the variation you would see naturally without an FMT.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP: Thanks, removed the word "significant". I can't make any claims about the results yet. The donor sample is coming in soon so I will be able to make that comparison.

<comment><USER3> You need to know standard deviations: the standard error of the measuring device (from Biome), the standard deviation within a subject (i.e. between measurements on different places, different times in one person) and between subjects.

Until you know those, you will be unable to conclude anything from these numbers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I pulled all the language that attempted to draw conclusions. I had removed the entire article but I received several emails from people who weren't interested in my results, just wanted to know what I did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is probably an unpopular opinion but it seems to me that "SV culture" has taken to fetishizing "health hacking" with little to no medical training/background or support. See the recent SV craze with "health informatics hacking". They're putting a shiny, appealing veneer over what amounts to homeopathy and random self-experimentation.

Someone is going to say, "but they have all this data, like this guy from µBiome" \-- he's not a doctor, he's not a trained scientist, he's a dude who is shoving fecal extracts from his friend up his bum and hoping the results are positive.

<comment><USER5> >They're putting a shiny, appealing veneer over what amounts to homeopathy

How is self experimentation equivalent to homeopathy? I don't get how _giving a shit about your own health_ is equated so quickly with a specific nonsensical, pseudoscientific sham.

<comment><USER4> This may not be, but things like Soylent which claim to solve all your nutritional and health needs by drinking it, are the equivalent of homeopathy -- like say, drinking g tea made from the horn of rhino will make your virile.

<comment><USER5> Well, I'm there with you on Soylent. And the at home FMT makes nervous as well. What I don't get is the widespread notion that: self experimentation makes you a nutter.

<comment><USER4> Self experimentation doesn't make you nutters, its performing invasive medical procedures that involves the transfer of biologic waste from one person to another with no clinical supervision that makes you nutters

<comment><USER6> A little perspective, here, please. Humans sell lubricant specifically marketed for introducing foreign objects to their lower digestive tract. We also sell home enema kits without a prescription at local drugstores. You don't need clinical supervision. At best, they could provide donor screening to reassure you that you aren't going to give yourself a new disease. If you know the donor, you could probably do at least as well just by observing them for a period of time.

Putting someone else's poop in your colon is not that disturbing when you realize that it already had your poop in it. It wasn't exactly squeaky clean before the procedure.

And believe me, the guy squirting strange feces into himself as a personal experiment has thought about this a lot harder than you. Even the guy doing it for a bar bet has probably invested more doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm going to create a Kickstarter to sell shit.

Pledge $5 or more: ___FMT Hall of Fame_ __Receive a used wipe, suitable for bragging or framing (plus S &H).

Pledge $100 or more: [EARLY BIRD] DIY kit: You'll get everything needed for a basic FMT, PLUS a single type 1 Bristol stool from one of our lead engineers.(plus S&H)

Pledge $500 or more: ___FMT Classroom Educational Package_ __Join us for a PRIVATE squatting ceremony at a local nature reserve. You 'll receive a fresh, hand wrapped type 3 or 4 Bristol stool from one of our members, plus a DIY implantation kit and hands on training.

Pledge $5000 or more: ___FMT Founders Club_ __We 'll fly you out to receive an entire Type 4 Bristol stool (smooth log) in person, along with a basic FMT course and PRIVATE implantation procedure. PLUS, we'll offer you the chance to donate your own stool samples to the FMT Master Catalog, for others to choose from. This is a two day event. (US & CAD only)

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

<comment><USER8> I'm so proud of my university.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I'm a huge proponent of patient autonomy and knowledge, it's _really, really, really_ a bad idea to perform fecal microbiota transplantations at home, without medical equipment or training, and with an unvetted donor. I do hope that FMTs become an accepted part of medical practice -- the clinical results are more than encouraging -- but this kind of experimentation could go bad pretty fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, and I don't intend to encourage people to be casual about the risks involved. But I'm also concerned about the possibility that this incredible tool will become inaccessible.

<comment><USER9> Agreed! Thankfully, the FDA backed off requiring IND applications for FMTs last year, so the clinical burden is much less than was originally anticipated.

The µBiome stuff is really quite cool, but we don't really have the clinical data to properly analyze the results (which is why they include investigational surveys into the mix, so they _are_ advancing the state of knowledge out there). Comparing your microflora to population averages doesn't tell us much, and there may be very good reasons for deviations from the mean. Having a FMT performed from a clean donor probably won't have any significantly deleterious effects (my gut feeling -- be here all week, folks -- is that a full antibiotics course is far more serious in effects, and we usually bounce back fine from these), but right now we're just tweaking dials on a machine we don't properly understand.

Nonetheless, I love the fact that you're keeping this data on yourself! Self- quantification is a huge step in maintaining health, and I'd love to read more about what you're doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The difference is well within the variation you'd expect from multiple samples, extraction, PCR, sequencing, day-to-day.

Also, you're probably better off trying to alter your gut microbiome through ingestion of probiotics.

Source: I am a PhD student research the human gut microbiome in connection with autoimmunity and have processed thousands of these samples using the exact same methodology as uBiome.

<comment><USER11> Do we know specific pro-biotic species that have been found to be significantly more beneficial than the rest? How do we know?

Does "pro-biotic" refer only to beneficial prokaryotic organisms or are there known beneficial "pro-biotic" foreign eukaryotes?

<comment><USER12> There are some eukaryotes, yes, e.g. Saccharomyces boulardii.

<comment><USER11> Ah the yeasts! I recently heard that middle-eastern ancients regularly rubbed old-bread on wounds to speed recovery. Probably more for penicillin mold, but maybe the yeasts were at play as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Methodologies aside, people really do have to take the majority of their personal health into their own hands. Most folks only see a doctor for a few hours in an entire year (much of that just sitting in reception) and rely on OTC self-medication for most minor issues.

There's a lot of criticism around people that self-experiment or self- diagnose, and it is indeed a potentially very dangerous practice, but the expense and fallibility of doctors can sometimes leave little alternative.

One example of this is Nicholas C. Zakas's recent account[1] of his discovery that he is afflicted by Lyme disease, has had it for the last _15 years_ , and was frequently misdiagnosed with everything from depression to having an eating disorder.

The point is, regardless of education, nobody cares as much about your health as you do. Doctors deal with hundreds of patients, you get to focus on just one.

[1] [http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2014/04/02/i-have-lyme- disease...](http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2014/04/02/i-have-lyme-disease/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm no expert, but given the magnitude of the author's deviation from "average", I would have wanted to get several results over time to see typical variance before doing an FMT and trying to reason about the difference.

<comment><USER15> I'm concerned with the average as a concept. Is the average calculated from every user of uBiome? Does that make any sense? Surely there are significant changes between the sexes? What about race, social group, location, etc?

<comment><USER16> Microbiome research is still very new. I'm surprised there's a service already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is pretty fascinating, but I'm not looking forward to the conversation I'm eventually going to have to have with one of my fit friends about putting some of his poop in my butt so I can lose weight.

<comment><USER14> Yeah they're missing the <em> </em> around "close" in "a close friend acting as the donor".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ok in the interest of harm reduction and informed consent, please please read the following two links if you are thinking about undergoing FMT:

[http://thepowerofpoop.com/epatients/fecal-transplant- faqs/](http://thepowerofpoop.com/epatients/fecal-transplant-faqs/)

[http://thepowerofpoop.com/epatients/is-fecal-transplant- for-...](http://thepowerofpoop.com/epatients/is-fecal-transplant-for-you/)

The biggest medical risk of the procedure involves contracting an illness from your donor, so it is _paramount_ that you properly screen your donor with appropriate tests. (I really, really hope OP did this; otherwise he might have put himself in substantial risk.)

Also note that the effectiveness of FMT for autoimmune disorders has so far been anecdotal and not nearly as robust as for C. difficile infection and, to a lesser extent, IBD/Crohn's disease. Be _very_ aware of the risks and the conjectural/unclear nature of the claimed benefits. As of now clinics in the US only administer the procedure except for C. difficile infection, which is why some patients have resorted to at-home DIY transplantation. Please see the links above for specific guidelines on how to follow the procedure safely, should you decide to proceed.

Also as other posters have repeatedly pointed, the microbiome changes you report are well within variation/assay error and perhaps not as informative as you might expect.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hacker news: where your DIY at home poop transplant only upsets people because of an incorrect claim of statistical significance.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've worked on some metagenomics projects in the past, I admit I don't know too much about uBiome, but what I do know is that it is really hard to figure out what bacteria, archaea and fungi are in a given stomach.

consider that you can only cultivate a very small % of bacteria and archaea which means you can only find the genome of a given species that is living in a natural environment (often a very extreme environment). to figure out the genome, you have to sequence them all at the same time, but you can only read 1k-2k base pairs at one time, which means you need to bin these sequences into what you (educatedly) guess is the right organism and then sequence the genome. overtime, our understanding of these genomes should increase but I wonder what the current provable accuracy is using uBiome.

<comment><USER21> 16S reads should be fine for basic characterization. The bioinformatics tools for sequence classification of short reads from a full sequencing run have also improved dramatically recently. Especially in terms of speed (100-1000X improvements).

(Plug) I just launched a site last week that demos this and links to a few other academic works in the field (check the FAQ): [https://helix.io](https://helix.io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Health hacking" is really more about the act of tracking. Most people I know involved in quantified self see benefits in being observant of their daily routines, food, exercise, etc. Drawing causations from the data is generally not possible, but learning more about yourself with tools like uBiome and WellnessFX can lead to better decision making on a daily basis. It can also help you learn how to ask the right questions from a doctor.

</comment><comment><USER23> Big question for you.... did you do anything prior to FMT to alter your flora?

I work with a major researcher in FMT and actually act as a donor so I know a little about this. Patients receiving FMT typically receive a short course of vancomycin to rid the gut of bacteria (or as much as possible). It's like starting with a clean slate. Your gut is then more readily able to accept the donation. Without the vanco (or other abx) you are basically just throwing shit at more shit and hoping it sticks.

I think your results would really change if you had done this through a doctor and had a bit of abx prior to FMT (or even just an enema).

</comment><comment><USER24> If you must do uncontrolled 'experiments' with your gut microbiome try food before feces

[http://drbganimalpharm.blogspot.co.uk/](http://drbganimalpharm.blogspot.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER25> So basically he took another persons feces and put it in himself. Cause he had read about it in a completely different context. and it had almost no effect.

</comment><comment><USER26> Goodness me. I have seen it all now. I do hope peer-to-peer poo sharing finds its way into an episode of that new HBO Silicon Valley series.

</comment><comment><USER27> So you made a blog about your poop. Good game, internet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP: Sorry all. I had hoped to raise awareness and encourage discussion, but I think there's a bigger danger that the way I presented this "experiment" will do more harm than good for the perception of FMT and at home microbiome exploration. I will consider revisiting once I've got my ducks in a row.

<comment><AUTHOR> After receiving several emails protesting the removal of the article, I reposted it after editing out the parts that attempted to draw conclusions. There's also a disclaimer at the top that warns about the danger of FMT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Did the site go down under load or taken down by creator?

</comment><comment><USER29> Is this satire? Did he really have a friend poop into his butt on whim?

<comment><USER30> FMT is at least a real process, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy). I don't think you quite captured how it's done in practice, though.

<comment><USER29> It's a real practice in hospitals with trained medical doctors. Not "in my apartment with a close friend."</comment></comment></comment>


Readme.io - free to a good open source project - <AUTHOR> http://readme.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> I bought this domain for a pet project a few years ago. That project hasn't gone anywhere so I thought I'd offer it up.

I'd love to see it used by some documentation repository or similar. Ping me if you're interested.

<comment><USER2> Where does one buy .io domains nowadays? Ive looked around but didnt find anything legit looking.

<comment><USER3> Gandi.net is the current favorite for .io domains, as they are only $39 per year: [https://www.gandi.net/domain/price/info](https://www.gandi.net/domain/price/info)

<comment><USER4> "ONLY"?

Am i the only one that thinks for a domain, this isn't a bargain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is my project.

Reddit.com/r/freewareindex

I could always use a domain since I am broke as hell

EDIT: Also am working on a new site but before I was just using blogger.com

</comment><comment><USER6> In a similar vein, does anyone want remixgrid.com or gothamroommates.com for any sort of interesting or altruistic project?</comment>


Sony's robotic dogs are dying a slow and heartbreaking death - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/sonys-robotic-dogs-are-dying-a-slow-and-heartbreaking-d-1712160637

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not really surprising, but many of the comments on the original article* focus on the relationship with the physical device _qua_ inanimate object. But while the devices are running to part supply problems, the loss suffered is not the object itself but the uniquely developed pattern of the robot's adaptation to its owner; I think it is not too much to call this pattern a personality, even if it is a simple one. As we know, quite simple algorithms can give rise to very complex and chaotic behavior.

If the youngest one was made a decade ago one presumes those patterns are stored only in some sort of battery-backed memory. One wonders whether they can be archived in some fashion. It's very odd to me that we haven't seen any similar consumer products, though perhaps the combination of high cost and the recession explain why. Given the progress of mobile technology one could construct much more elaborate and responsive robot companions today than when Aibo was on sale, and I wonder why nobody seems to be exploring that space. For anyone who does, this offers something to think about.

* from the NYT. It was posted here a a few days ago but got ignored, unfortunately.

<comment><USER2> my guess is that it uses an eeprom chip... fair easy to extract the adaptation data, but to interpret the data and emulate the original programming of the aibo you would need to do a lot of reverse engineering...

sony of course could open source aibo, and we could load it on an arduino and build better aibos...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9170238](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9170238).</comment>


What's wrong with Git? A conceptual design analysis - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/10/24/whats-wrong-with-git-a-conceptual-design-analysis/ <comment><USER2> > [git's concept-relationship diagram is] kind of complicated to explain – > which is really the authors' point.

As a somewhat experienced git user, I have no idea what the hell is going on in the diagram. But this means that authors have constructed the diagram incorrectly, not that git is inherently complicated.</comment>


Introducing Ubuntu Web Apps: setting the web free of the browser - <AUTHOR> http://blog.canonical.com/2012/07/19/introducing-ubuntu-web-apps-setting-the-web-free-of-the-browser/ <comment><USER2> Android was leading the way in this (best sharing between online services etc). This looks like the first other OS to "get it" and push hard to integrate with the cloud. I think in some ways this surpasses Android.

Mean while we have iOS that's just congratulating itself for allowing photo uploads to twitter, meanwhile my Android phone has integration with services I've never even heard of.

And MacOS and Windows... nothing. Stupid silent sitting on the internet.

It's nice to see some real innovation in the Linux camp on the user end front.

<comment><USER3> I think you're a bit confused, Android doesn't do a very good job of making web apps 1st class citizens at all. Even though I don't use it, iOS does the best job there. When you create a desktop shortcut for an app, it will get an icon that looks just like all other apps' icons, it will launch into a full- screen chromeless browser that you wouldn't know was a browser at all (with a loading image, even). You can also control web apps that play HTML5 audio with the built in music controls from the multitasking pane.

Android has none of those things. I've had hit or miss experience of it even picking a decent resolution icon, and Chrome uses the favicon with an envelope behind it, so it sticks out as a second class citizen (chrome also doesn't go chromeless).

<comment><USER4> I don't just want to be able to open webapps on my phone with a shortcut, I want real integration. I'm sometimes not connected to the Internet so I like to have my data offline, but I like to be able to get it online quickly. Android does this very well. Share intents, music player integration, it's just a very slick offline to online seamless system.

<comment><USER3> Rewatch the video, it's more than just a shortcut.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I'm referring more iOS. I think the idea of "webapps as a first class citizen" is a bit of a red herring. Web apps will never be first class citizens (especially not on a phone) because they fail simple performance tests. I think what OSs ought to aim for is what Android does, a smooth integration of offline and online modes.

Ubuntu does this _somewhat_ , iOS not really at all (though it is successful in the way you speak of), but I feel there's a combination of the way Adnroid, iOS and Ubuntu are doing this that could hit a sweet spot.

<comment><USER3> I think you're being short-sighted. There's nothing inheritantly different about mobile that prevents web apps running as well as they do on the desktop. You are aware that on the desktop JavaScript engines like V8 can keep up with any garbage-collected language, right? There are a few reasons why things are progressing slower on mobile, among them:

1) There is very little browser competition on mobile. Users are either unaware of or don't see the benefit to downloading an alternate browser, and as a result the OS vendors have less of an incentive to improve their browser rapidly. On the desktop browsers like Firefox and Chrome release a new version every few weeks, whereas on mobile the OS vendors release once or a twice a year.

2) The JS engines haven't been optimized for ARM as heavily as x86. We'll get there though.

These are very much short-term problems. And despite that, you can write performant mobile web-apps today. If you have an iOS device you should try out the game X-Type: <http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2012/06/x-type-making-of> which is written by a fellow HNer. It is extremely snappy, even when played without the assistance of Nitro.

<comment><USER4> I have a couple of responses:

1\. Who wants to write complex programs in JS? I mean, it's OK and all, but it's messy when you can be writing native apps. I remember the iPhone being all about the webapps when it came out, but native apps ultimatly won.

2\. Internet access is still not widely available. On Sprint, where I am, it sucks. If I'm out in more remote regions (which is part of mine and many others jobs), it's gone. Or if I'm in a tunnel on the train, or an elevator, or in my bathroom at work, etc. Or you're on AT&T, have capped bandwidth, etc.

No, we need apps that have a smooth offline to online transition. Maybe web apps will make it there, but I feel we're far enough away that I still like Android's approach.

<comment><USER5> Re: 1, see [https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of- lang...](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-languages- that-compile-to-JS) and <http://altjs.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What web apps need desperately in order to become true first class citizens is support for keyboard shortcuts across the board.

Doing Alt + <Key> should bring up the appropriate menu in the web app _not_ the web browser.

Doing Ctrl + S should ask the web app to do a save , not ask the browser to save the .html page.

Of course this is all stuff that could be abused by aggressive websites so there needs to be a distinction between apps and pages.

<comment><USER7> Accessing web application features with Alt + <key> is one of the things this Ubuntu feature is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know this is a prototype, but if each app is going to load in a new Firefox window, with the full chrome, no thanks.

If it opens a new window without the chrome (or at least without the tabs), it might be ok.

<comment><USER9> Well, most of those webapps will likely navigate/open external websites.

I would love to have a hacker news window by default, so that external links i open there are nicely managed within the hackers news app.

So, the tab bar is a plus, if you ask me. The address bar and the new tab icon, should be removed though. Better yet, the new tab icon, should open he base url, or some other logical url: for gmail it could be a compose windows, for example.

And "mozilla firefox" should not be part of the window title. Other than that, actually hiding the fact its a browser is not really usefull. The tab bar, the menu .. No reason to remove those by default.

But i suspect, these apps are running in their own profile, and it is firefox, so we could always tweak the chrome ourselves.

<comment><USER10> To be honest if I clicked on a link in a "GMail app" I'd expect it to open a new "full" browser window (or a new tab in an existing browser window). You'd have to be able to distinguish between internal and external links, of course, but the domain name is a workable heuristic.

The ability to open new tabs should probably be configured on an app-by-app basis. Opening tabs of mail is a pretty sensible idea, but a game developer using HTML5 would likely want to prevent that. Ditto the location bar. (I agree that the user should be able to override these settings.)

<comment><USER9> I would want a external link in the gmail app, to open in a tab in the gmail app.

The internet is everywhere.. I dont want those 50 tabs in one big browser window, nor do i want them in separate windows.

I want them organised based on context. Most of those tabs belong to the initiating application. From a hackers news app, with the chosen articles, to a google docs app, with open documents.

As long as i can pick up a tab, and add it to some other window, that would make the most sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My biggest worry is tying the HTML and JS engines too deeply into the desktop and end up with drive-by exploits that can do more than a browser would ordinarily be able to do.

<comment><USER12> I think this is a valid concern, but as JS engines start implementing more and more of the rich web client working drafts like FileAPI (<http://www.w3.org/TR/FileAPI/>), those same concerns will be valid for your browser too. I can only imagine that developers of desktop platforms like this are aware of these drafts too and are planning to utilize as much as they can of the functionality provided.

As with most security, our best hope lies in open implementations which can be audited for such problems, with consideration being drawn in during design and implementation stages from security experts. Hopefully some lessons were learned from the ActiveX desktop days!

<comment><USER11> I like the idea of assigning permissions to applications. Then if browser B runs under user U, its effective permissions would be the intersection of what both B and U are allowed to do. I don't see why Firefox should be able to write anything outside ~/.mozilla/firefox and ~/Downloads

<comment><USER13> These type of restrictions are exactly what Linux's AppArmor (as well as SELinux, etc) do.

I'm not sure what profile Firefox runs under, but what you suggested would be quite reasonable, though maybe not as default -- You probably want to be able to "save as" to an arbitrary directory, and open files for upload from anywhere too. Though since both of those involve a user dialog, that could easily be a secondary application with its own profile that uses IPC/shared memory/something to pass data to the browser. Smaller target attack area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is awesome by ubuntu.

But its incredibly frustrating that it has taken this long for browser vendors and/or operating systems to push the possibility for webapps as first class desktop apps. (not really counting air)

Firefox is starting to introduce this functionality at last, I imagine chrome have similiar functionality coming (this used to work on linux!)

Prism was nice when it existed, and fluid I used to use from time to time but there was just too many hassles with it not being mainstream

</comment><comment><USER15> Currently I can only see these as yet another way to lose a little bit of your privacy. But I'm also a debian kind of guy so... :P

<comment><USER2> Only if you use these services. They are offering integration with them, far from forcing you to use them. And if you were already using them these features are an amazing boon and don't affect your privacy at all.

Using cloud based apps may affect your privacy but that is independent of this.

<comment><USER15> "Using cloud based apps may affect your privacy but that is independent of this." Yes, you're probably right. But will ubuntu be developing code for specific apps like gmail and twitter or will that be codded by the web app developers? If it's the former than you'll probably not have many choices.

<comment><USER16> Regardless of who writes the code, as you can clearly see the browser prompts you to allow integration for each service that has it. If you don't want desktop integration, don't click yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can install a preview version of this Web Apps already the current Ubuntu 12.04 :

[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-install-ubuntus- ne...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-install-ubuntus-new-web-apps- feature)

</comment><comment><USER18> A smooth user experience on Unity is needed in order to ensure the well functioning of the web apps and browsers together.

Encapsulating the browser process, is what usually kills web widget performance, and I end up going back to the browser..

</comment><comment><USER19> Sort of unrelated, but it was my first thought: I sort of wish there was a cross platform store for wrapped web apps that could make them look sort of native-ish, that was widely adopted.

Not because this is actually something I want or think would be better than a browser, but simply because seems to be significantly easier to get users to pay for something that behaves like a native app, ie, turns up on their dock. I have a theory if you wrapped a web view and put it on the mac app store, the average user (ie one who has no idea what web view means) would pay more for it than the same product in a browser.

</comment><comment><USER20> It would be great to be able to easily and privately install the server part of the webapp. My hope by seeing the title is that canonical would have come with a system to do that.

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't this a throwback to the Windows Active Desktop? Windows actually had led the way to integrate webapp/webpage with the OS, but everyone hated it back then.

<comment><USER22> Although they get a bad wrap, MS has likely been too early on many things. Things they got right: Commodity hardware, office, and directx. Active desktop put those things behind the icons of their applications making the desktop area dual purpose and thus confusing or distracting.

Given the state of HTML, the newbies inability to write proper HTML, and early browsing technology and you have a recipe for instability and system crashes.

They were too early technology wise, and also because they couldn't see entire application experiences being delivered that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is something that might highlight the serious deficiencies of the current HTTP model and drive discussion of HTTP/2.0 with real examples.

</comment><comment><USER24> So... aside from the HUD integration, which is cool, what's the difference between what they've made and having multiple browser windows open?

<comment><USER11> It seems they managed to integrate the desktop controls with the web apps - you get unread message counts from Gmail on the messages menu and can control Last.fm from the sound indicator (and, presumably, from its kebyboard bindings). I imagine Google Calendar reminders are included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I hate to nitpick, but that choice of background music strikes me as rather.. poor.

</comment><comment><USER26> This can already be installed in Ubuntu 12.04 or 12.10: [http://www.webupd8.org/2012/07/install-new-ubuntu-webapps- te...](http://www.webupd8.org/2012/07/install-new-ubuntu-webapps- technology.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't care, I only use web based applications in the few cases I am forced to do so.

For me, the control over my data, operating system integration, taking advantage of my hardware will win every day over dumb web applications.

<comment><USER28> You're probably in the minority. My usage of desktop software has been dropping dramatically over the years. I'm basically left with 5 or 6 apps, including a browser, a file picker, a code editor, and a command prompt. The more powerful the web/internet apps become the more the desktop gets sidelined, and any reason to Ubuntu over any other desktop becomes a pretty moot point.

<comment><USER27> I'm used to it, Linux was also a minority for many years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's not a new idea, but I think it is finally the idea's time. There was Prism, and there's FluidApp for OS X. There was also MS's active desktop as others have pointed out.

</comment><comment><USER30> How is it different than Prism and the likes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Examples they provide are

"Launch online music site Last.FM directly from the Dash and control the music from Ubuntu's sound menu

Access and launch your social media accounts (Google+, Twitter, Facebook) from the Launcher, and get native desktop notifications

Quickly and seamlessly upload photos to Facebook from Shotwell

Pause and play the video you are watching on Youtube

See how many unread messages you have in your GMail account, in Ubuntu's messaging indicator"

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The OS needs to provide machine power to trusted installed web apps.

i.e. raw UDP, TCP, POSIX, device APIs.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is great! Does all of this stuff work with Chrome?

<comment><USER11> I think the whole point of this is not to use the browser.

<comment><USER33> But it seems to be mostly just links to web sites, that open in a browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If ubuntu 12.04 is any indication, I personally wouldn't go near it again ever.

</comment><comment><USER35> Uh, desktop web shortcuts? Didn't I have this in Windows 98 and IE 5?

<comment><USER36> Watch more than the first 15 seconds of the video.

<comment><USER33> Honestly, I'm not really impressed. The demo of Shotwell was the only thing that seemed to be more than a link to a web app, and even then, it just looked like a normal app.

<comment><USER37> I was thinking glorified bookmarks at the beginning too, but then I saw how it integrated the last.fm controls into the media widget in the panel. I am also currently using the Online Accounts functionality in Gnome, and it is pretty cool how it will automatically use the credentials from each account I specify in applications which support it.

My main use case is my multiple Google accounts (work, uni, personal) and their respective calendars. I just fire up evolution, it automatically connects to Google and the calendar widget in the panel populates with my events. Its just a shame that only evolution does this, and Thunderbird does not seem to integrate with it.

This is pretty similar to Android, how you specify your online accounts, and it is up to individual applications to make use of those credentials if they please. There just seems to be much more usage of this in Android than in Gnome.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell your dentist to suck it: there's little evidence flossing works - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/2/12353872/flossing-ineffective-medical-benefits-dentist <comment><USER2> "Anon, I suggest you start flossing more regularly to clean debris in-between your teeth"

"No thanks Mr. Dentist, an article I read on the internet said that is dumb :-)"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0)

</comment><comment><USER3> I floss a few times a week and the smell can be just awful, like rotting meat was stuck in there. So I will continue flossing, brushing my teeth, and rinsing with mouthwash, despite the evidence. After 10 years of this and finally going to the dentist... although there was some plaque buildup and some gum inflammation, as the dentist claimed that these were harder things to remove over time and required dental tools, she did let me know that I had no cavities.

</comment><comment><USER4> While exciting news, with an interesting, counter-intuitive finding, that is a horrible (though accurate) title and worse article.

Here is the original story: [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f7e66079d9ba4b4985d7af350619a...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f7e66079d9ba4b4985d7af350619a9e3/medical- benefits-dental-floss-unproven)

and HN posting: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12210772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12210772)

<comment><USER5> Even earlier HN posting of the same article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12208402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12208402)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Be that as it may, I can smell somebody who doesn't floss from 10 feet away. You should floss if not for yourself, then at least for the rest of us.

<comment><USER7> Bullshit. Some people have halitosis, some people just don't brush regularly. There is one of my coworkers who occasionally has really bad breath, but it's not clear that he just missed a flossing.

Source: I have a hygiene pact with a coworker. (If either of us ever smells or has a bad appearance, we're pact-bound to tell the other.) I floss twice a year: 48 hours before my dentist appointments, the times I've had bad breath have not been flossing related.

<comment><USER8> > I have a hygiene pact with a coworker.

Huh, that's a cool idea :) Is that common (under another moniker maybe)? I can't find anything on Google. Just proposing such a pact can probably be tricky, but I've been thinking about something similar recently.

<comment><USER7> We were fast friends and one of us was bold to make fun of the spilled food on the other's shirt, and it led to "oh man I'm glad you told me before I walked into that meeting" which led to "oh yeah let's always do this."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This Was Sony Music's Contract with Spotify - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotify-contract

<comment><USER2> It's depressing how little has changed. I'm not Love's biggest fan, but she absolutely nailed the labels' shifty greed back in 2000: [http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/](http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see why Spotify is starting to branch out into other forms of media now.</comment></comment>


React Studio 1.4: Tackling Large Projects with Map Sections, Etc. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@reactstudio/react-studio-1-4-tackling-large-projects-with-map-sections-logins-crud-data-and-more-ca2d50dfed49 <comment><USER2> It looks quite nice, I enjoy to follow efforts that improve the UI/UX of visual tooling for web development closer to what is possible with native designer tools.

Pity it is macOS only.</comment>


Candidate to Lead the W.H.O. Accused of Covering Up Epidemics (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-director-general-ethiopia-cholera-outbreaks.html <comment><USER2> Yet WHO still did better than all countries.

The open data on the internet in January was explicit. I'm not sure any country acted on the real obvious stuff to do in January.

I also think few countries are acting on the real obvious stuff today.

Some things are complicated that will take years to know if they worked (For instance travel bans) but there are still things that should be done today that simply are not.

Like random testing of the population in different test sites around the world to understand how it spreads.

Like a global effort to sort the data coming out in a open way, not just dumping large amounts of research papers on a site.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a pattern here.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do we get links from hacker news to paywalls? Oh, right....

<comment><USER5> because it's explicitly allowed and most can be circumvented with a little effort?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not just him at the WHO.

[https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/09/why-the-who-is-a- danger...](https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/09/why-the-who-is-a-danger-to- public-health/)

<comment><USER7> It's pretty hilarious for The Federalist to be accusing others of being a threat to public health.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21190928/twitter-locks- ac...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21190928/twitter-locks-account- encouraging-coronavirus-chickenpox-parties)

> On Wednesday, Twitter briefly locked conservative site The Federalist's > account for suggesting people deliberately expose themselves to the novel > coronavirus. The Federalist promoted the medically unsound idea of "medical > 'chickenpox parties'" to infect young, healthy people with the virus under > controlled quarantine.

Their staff were downplaying this for quite some time, including long after the "the WHO [took] until March 11 to even declare a pandemic":

"Why Your Parents Aren't Idiots For Not Freaking Out About Coronavirus Like You Are": [https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/23/why-your-parents- arent-...](https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/23/why-your-parents-arent-idiots- for-not-freaking-out-about-coronavirus-like-you-are/)

"Inaccurate Virus Models Are Panicking Officials Into Ill-Advised Lockdowns": [https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/inaccurate-virus- models...](https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/inaccurate-virus-models-are- panicking-officials-into-ill-advised-lockdowns/)

<comment><USER8> Put the source aside. What specifically is worse about this proposal than the current approach? A safe and effective vaccine is likely several years away. The economy can't be locked down for that long. The virus is too easily transmissible for containment and contract tracing to be effective. So most of us will be infected eventually. If they're going to get it anyway then doing so in a controlled environment might be a good option for some volunteers.

I'm not endorsing this approach, but we ought to at least analyze it rather than rejecting it out of hand.

<comment><USER7> > What specifically is worse about this proposal than the current approach?

False dichotomy. There are far better things we could try.

One proposal I've seen batted around is widespread, rapid testing. Checkpoints on the interstates and elsewhere where you get one of the 15 minute rapid tests and get a day pass to continue on your way.

We know we can get R0 down with distancing; NYC's falling new hospitalizations numbers are a clear sign of that. Testing allows us to relax restrictions without it flaring up so fast, and lets us find the flare.

Add in universal, required mask wearing. None of the wishy-washy "we recommend..." bullshit.

<comment><USER8> It seems unlikely that the current Supreme Court would countenance such a blatant violation of the 1st and 4th Amendments regardless of the potential public health benefits. If you're going to propose an alternative then it needs to be something that could actually be implemented in the real world.

More widespread voluntary testing is certainly needed but it's going to take a while to scale up capacity.

<comment><USER7> The Supreme Court has a long history of upholding things like quarantines and curfews during public health emergencies.

<comment><USER8> Read the precedents. There's no question that infectious disease carriers can be forcibly quarantined. But forcing apparently healthy people to undergo an invasive medical procedure (a search) in order to exercise their right to assemble would be another thing altogether. And long-term curfews for adults have never been upheld.

<comment><USER7> We've already banned or severely restricted the right to assemble in like 40+ states, and there's not much reason to believe that won't survive court challenges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apart from the WHO's terrible performance on COVID-19, they're also currently once again embroiled in a scandal about testing vaccines without patient consent: [https://gizmodo.com/who-accused-of-conducting-vaccine- trial-...](https://gizmodo.com/who-accused-of-conducting-vaccine-trial- without-partici-1841939166)

<comment><USER10> The article cites an opinion piece by Peter Doshi. I'm seeing some claims opposing his credibility on other pieces: [https://www.snopes.com/fact- check/flu-vaccine-dangers/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/flu-vaccine- dangers/) Who is this guy?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to license a database? - <AUTHOR>

Hi. I run a website that has user generated content. Suddenly someone wants to license this database -- and I don't know how to...
I know copyright laws protect me, but I don't just want to "give" them the whole database. Is there a way I can protect someone from stealing the content and just let them use it?
How do I license a database? <comment><USER2> A) Give them access to the database via a simple HTTP-based API. Let them run searches, or whatever they need against it. Restrict their queries per second and per day and limit how many results can be returned. Make sure you can track their usage and cut them off if they're doing anything shady. Have them sign a service contract. Charge them a setup fee and a monthly fee that's based on the number of queries they need to do.

B) Another option is to give them the entire database, and provide them with regular updates. They pay $100k for the database, and $5k every month for the latest version. This doesn't protect you that well, but if they need the updates it can be a good way to keep them honest.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it contains addresses and they are going to be marketing (mailing) to those addresses then salt the database with a few fake addresses under your control. If you see mail going to those addresses which wasn't part of your agreement with them you have grounds to sue. This is common practice in direct mail databases where you will rent a list for a limited number of mailings.

</comment><comment><USER4> If they wanted to rip you off they could just screen-scrape you anyway. So I'd just get a lawyer to draft an agreement and assume they're not going to rip you off.

Or alternatively you could offer them an api for it depending on how they want to use it.</comment>


Ask HN: "So... What happened to the last guy?" - <AUTHOR>

Today I interviewed for an IT Director position at a non-profit development organization.  My initial feeling is that there's a better-than-average chance that they'll be offering me a position in the next few days.
I've thought a lot about switching to this sector (that's a whole other post...), and I'm certainly prepared for the salary hit that this will likely involve.  I'm also bracing myself for the IT budget, fully expecting that it will be a good source of interesting challenges.
That being said, when I asked "What happened to the last guy?" I received the answer "There was a difference in opinion relating to how much we should spend on IT-related issues."  Further prying didn't yield much, and I'd really like to get an idea as to which party had unrealistic expectations.
So my question is: I have an opportunity to make contact with the former IT Director... should I?  Would you?
One part of me thinks that information-gathering is always beneficial, but at the same time I may not want this person's personal feelings to bias my own with regards to this new partnership.  What would you do? <comment><USER2> Talk to him, recognizing that you may be getting a very jaded opinion. Also, I think it's a perfectly relevant question for you to ask for a ballpark dollar amount of your budget and what they expect you to accomplish. I've intentionally stayed away from positions where it looked like I was going to be a "team" of one doing work that really needs 5 or 6 people to be done right. I think this is a similar situation.

<comment><USER3> Just to chime on on the opposite: don't talk to him, because you are nothing like the last guy. Approach everyone without second thoughts, form your own opinions, and convince them of a budget the last guy never dreamed of :) That said, make sure your expectations regarding budgets/output match your employers' expectations, but that has nothing to do with the last guy.

<comment><USER4> In addition to SwellJoe's point, which I endorse, I'd also add that this is a _non-profit_. You think _profit-making_ companies treat IT as a cost center? Just wait until you've seen a nonprofit. Consider a non-profit meant to help the homeless; it is a trivial exercise to compute how many meals for the homeless the IT budget is costing you. How do you expect to compete against that? Convincing them that spending a bit more could reduce net costs is going to be an even larger uphill battle, no matter how rationally right you are. (Assuming you are at all right anyhow.)

<comment><USER5> And even if the management (all the way up to the Executive Director) can see through the fog of their daily firefighting to see the potential of expanded an IT budget to make the overall mission more effective & efficient they often can't shake money loose to do so because their donors insist that their dollars go toward costs directly associated with serving the bottom-line mission of the organization (e.g., to pay for meals served at a soup kitchen); not for organizational "overhead."

Grants exist for tech-oriented projects, but it's very difficult to be adaptive & iterative because the grant life-cycle is measured in years. Not very "agile." Apply for a grant to make an improvement X using technology Y this year. Next year, receive the grant but realize that improving X is no longer relevant or technology Y is no longer optimal and you risk your grant funding by changing course or stay your course and achieve a non-optimal (or irrelevant) goal. Extremely frustrating.

Incentives in the non-profit world (especially for charities & social services) are really skewed because the people paying for the services are not the same people receiving the services, and the demand for services is essentially unlimited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd honestly ask yourself whether you're willing to walk away from an offer if what the guy says is bad. If you are than talk with the guy. If not than I wouldn't.

Because he's going to be bitter. So you're going to learn a lot of bad stuff about the place you're starting at. That's a disadvantage in itself (because you might develop his prejudices and run his old enemies the wrong way).

So if you aren't prepared to walk away than you're just torturing yourself with the information and making yourself less effective at a time when you need to be at your best (a.k.a. the beginning of your new job)

<comment><USER7> To a certain extent, you already inherit his old enemies when you take over his role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd absolutely try to contact my predecessor. Just in case you step in to a catfight or a nasty can of worms, it can only be to your advantage.

Take what you hear with a grain of salt. Trust but verify I think was the motto.

<comment><USER9> Good advice!

I also think you managed to include every cliche and metaphor known to man in that reply:)

<comment><USER8> That was sort of the point :)

Practicing my language skills.

<comment><USER10> "When all's said and done, / at the end of the day / you've got to take the bull by the horns."

(My father actually heard someone say exactly that in a meeting once.)

<comment><USER8> Funny! In dutch it is possible to talk for 20 minutes in proverbs/sayings, make perfect sense and not repeat a single one.

They're also all untranslatable.

For instance:

He must have been hit by a windmill.

Or:

He has been pulled out of the clay.

In English they make no sense at all.

<comment><USER11> [http://enlavalla.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/brueghel_prover...](http://enlavalla.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/brueghel_proverbs.jpg)

<comment><USER12> Ah so that's what the Fleet Foxes album cover is - [http://www.mtv.co.uk/files//library/images/album_covers_2008...](http://www.mtv.co.uk/files//library/images/album_covers_2008/fleet_foxes_album_500_500.jpg)

Sorry, off topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To me, not getting a forthright answer (even after 'further prying') is a big red flag on its own.

At this point, I would wait until you received the offer, and then say something like "Look, unless there's a legal reason why you can't give me a full explanation of what happened, I'm going to need to know the whole story here. We're going to all be working very closely together and I need to understand how the company makes key decisions like budgeting before I make a decision to join you." If you still don't get a clear explanation, I'd think very carefully about taking the job - there's landmines under the surface you know nothing about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I was rather surprised with how forthright they were about it. They could have easily said "he left to peruse other opportunities" and not leave me thinking about any budget problems/disagreements, beyond the standard "non- profits don't have a lot of money".

Where I was unclear, and where I didn't get a lot of follow up information, was on what the disagreements were about. Did he think they needed an expensive XYZ hardware solution when he could have done with a cheaper and/or open-source one? Or was the organization requiring him to do the impossible without giving him any resources? It sounded like whatever it was, it was pervasive through their relationship.

My interviewers were non-technical, and so after some prying I decided to save it for our next meeting.

<comment><USER14> Your interviewers were non-technical but your authority chain (hiring manager?) knows enough about the situation that he/she sent the previous person on his way. They may not know why the guy was asking for so much money but they should be able to tell you how much it was and what he represented as business value for said money.

If you can't get frank, direct honesty from that person I would consider not taking the position. If you can, and your perception is that the previous director was not creative commensurate with the requirements of this type of position, or worse, was an empire builder, then it's probably no problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a client that's a non-profit. They've got the best IT infrastructure I've ever seen. Non-profit does not always imply limited budgets. That said, is the organization in question a charity? If it's a charity, then keep in mind that most try to only spend a maximum of 25 cents of every donated dollar on "administrative overhead" ([http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/content.view/c...](http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/content.view/cpid/48.htm)). You can do some back-of-the-napkin calculations. If the budget's $1M, they're spending $250K on administrative overhead. If there are 4 salaries, that leaves you with $50K (based on $50K salary for each employee) for non-salary expenses. You'll get a fraction of that for your IT budget.

I'd do this speculative estimate in addition to contacting the former guy. It might provide some context.

<comment><USER16> Also worth noting about working in non-profits, if you play your cards right, you can get an awful lot of stuff for free or at a steep discount. Google has been known to give away search appliances (even the big ones) to non-profits, for example. My company gives away free licenses to non-profits (and it's not like we're made of money, it's just how we roll). Most companies have a formal discount process for non-profits.

I'm not familiar with a lot of non-profit IT departments, but the one I am familiar with is very well-equipped, though moderately under-staffed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Assuming that your predecessor acted in a professional manner, then I would probably contact the individual after I'd had a chance to take a look at how everything had been laid out.

Non-profits may not have a lot of money for technology, and the recent economic disruptions have really hit them hard due to the drop in funds they get from corporate/other giving.

I would expect to run into a lot of older equipment all duct-taped together in a non-logical fashion. This isn't something that you should blame the predecessor for, sometimes we have to make non-optimal choices given the constraints we work under.

As an aside about working in the non-profit sector, I've been employed as the only IT person for a smaller nonprofit (~30 users or so) for almost 4 years. You may have heard the phrase "the smaller the stakes the more fierce the fight" from academia, it also holds true in the non-profit world. (and I suspect in any human organization, but my experience has been mostly in the academic/non-profit sector thus far.) Expect to run into budget issues, and nasty personalities.

Fortunately, on the budget front organizations exist for IT software/hardware giving that can really help out.

One that I've used: TechSoup.org

Many major software vendors offer discounts for non-profits if you look around.

Plus you can always use linux/freebsd/openbsd/etc on commodity hardware to help keep costs down. At the cost of time depending on your skill set.

I expect you may have already heard a lot or all of the above, so feel free to ignore it!

Oh, and if you get the job, Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER18> Well, I'm going to be the dissenting voice.

I agree that they should give you better guidance as to your budget before you accept the position.

As for contacting your predecessor, I wouldn't bother. You're not going to get an honest answer out of anybody; everything said about the other will be heavily influenced by the "breakup".

I'll summarize what happened: your predecessor picked a fight, and lost. Leave it at that. The specifics may not be the least bit relevant, won't change what you're going to have to do, and will likely taint your views of your coworkers.

Go in with a clean slate, and make the job your own. Maybe you'll need to pick the same fight. Maybe not. Why worry about it, when you're sure to have plenty of immediate problems.

And again, I would expect better budget guidance before accepting, regardless.

</comment><comment><USER19> Always try to get in touch with the other person. You are already listening to a biased voice (the emplyoer), listening to the other one is the least you can do for your career.

</comment><comment><USER20> Of course you should contact him, and/or anyone else you can reach that has relevant information for you.

I wouldn't ask him for inside dirt on the HR admin's tryst in the conference room, but questions about the job, the organization, and the people are charge are certainly fair game. Unless they are trying to hide something or lie to you, and in that case, it is still the right thing to do for you to investigate.

People seem to have this belief that potential employer or employee should only contact a small subset of officially sanctioned information channels. A prospective employer shouldn't do something like call your current boss with reference questions without your opinion, and similarly you shouldn't seek information from sources that might put the employer at risk.

Take whatever knowledge you gain from contacting him and weigh that against what they have told you. Go back to them and be upfront, tell them the former employee told you X,Y,Z and that you'd like to get their response. A good organization will respect your thoroughness. A bad org will panic and be defensive, and that should be considered as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is not directly related to your question, but as someone who stepped from the corporate world to the non-profit world (medical research center affiliated with university hospital), I can say the pay is lower but the freedom is greater.

I'm more in charge of projects, trusted to make technical decisions and set direction, and seem to get more respect as a practitioner here. Since I was a tech lead on a project in the big corp world, I can contrast the two similar experiences. I'm just more autonomous here.

Downsides include a lack of user trust (previous software devs here tended to be a little tougher for people to deal with and were more prone to saying 'no' to requests). University researcher mindset is historically aimed at having software dev done directly by a research team member rather than trusting a centralized IT team.

Good communication is more critical here. Learning how to express ideas in multiple ways is much more important - I have to be able to both talk over an idea and present a visual display as well. It is also assumed that you will understand a researcher's problem domain rather quickly, which is stressful, but fun. You have to plan for a huge range of IT skills, from the person who can kind of use a browser to the self-taught SQL expert who I probably should just add to my team directly.

</comment><comment><USER22> Regarding whether you should contact the former IT director: to put it in two words:

Of course.

You will spend eight hours every day at that place, you want to gather as much information as you can. Naturally you have to filter/sort/disregard, but that is the next step.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd definitely ask him, as well as ask to have a look around the facilities/code/whatever. It's not like a non-profit has a bunch of really high-value IP, I would think.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes, you should absolutely contact the predecessor. It is good corporate diligence and failing to do so would be a bad decision on your part.

Have a script put together of what you are going to ask; \- Start with an overview. \- Allow them to back away if they feel uncomfortable about a question. \- Get a feel for what really went on. \- I agree with Jacquesm - take it with a grain of salt.

15 minutes on the phone with the individual will put you six months ahead if you take the position, or provide insight as to why you should pass.

</comment><comment><USER25> You should definitely contact him, unless you would be willing to quit almost right away if they start jerking you around somehow; which I don't think would be a good idea.

Several commenters have said you should take what he says with a grain of salt; You should take anything anybody says with a grain of salt, even if you think they are being completely aboveboard, you could be wrong, and you don't know what kinds of incentives and conflicts may be influencing them. And you should be alert for honest misunderstandings as well.

</comment><comment><USER26> By all means possible talk to the "last guy". Then take what he says with a grain of salt. Both the employer and employee will have very different perspectives about the split. You are the sole judge as to whether it's a warning sign.

Personally, I think that the danger sign are the words "Non-Profit" which in turn means "No Money" which is what you pretty much learnt in the interview. In my experience, unless you can routinely "Turn water into wine" you are going to struggle getting funding for anything and don't expect to get paid on time either. Cashflow or rather its absence makes for "challenges".

Putting aside all the technical and financial considerations, do you passionately believe in the goals and mission statement of this organization? Only if your passion is total would I recommend taking the job, anything less and you'll be looking for an exit strategy within the year if not sooner.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't see the need to talk to him.

For one thing, it sounds like your satisfaction there will boil down to your personal agenda. If you are trying to build a world-class IT shop, you'll struggle. If you are trying to help the non-profit do their work, which will clearly entail sacrifices in IT, you'll be fine.

Also, if further prying did not give more info, then they expect you to make decisions based on what they told you. If you need more info, you may have differences in communication styles that will lead to problems down the road.

</comment><comment><USER28> Absolutely. At the very least this guy will help you read between the lines and act as a good gut-check to your interview experience.

I would reiterate what Tom_B said about greater responsibility but I think it should be noted the kind of non-profit he worked at. Depending on organization, its mission, and people non-profits can be no better than the corporate machine.

Talking to the former director would lend some valuable insight into the culture and what its "really" like on the day-to-day.

</comment><comment><USER29> What if you told them, "If I get this position, I'll be expecting a budget between _x_ and _y_. Does this seem about right?"

<comment><USER30> Or how about, "If I get this position, what sort of budget can I expect to be working with and what will I be expected to produce with that budget?"

<comment><USER29> Yeah, that's better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You'll need to find out what your budget is sooner or later. And you might find that "an interesting challenge" means building everything from used desktop computers. As long as that's inline with your expectations, you should be fine.

</comment><comment><USER32> My two cents: companies check references on their prospective employees. The ethical ones ask you for a list and claim to contact only them; the unethical ones will contact anybody they please.

Your contacting the ex-employee is you checking up on the _employer's_ references. To keep it completely above board, you should ask the org. for a list of references to check up the job. And if they don't list the previous guy, ideally, you shouldn't contact him. But be prepared for no offer irrespective of what they answer. :)

W/o more info, I can pretty much assume that the previous director was the one who had unrealistic expectations (i.e., wanted to spend too much). :)</comment>


A Look at Celerity's Second-Gen 496-Core RISC-V Mesh NoC - <AUTHOR> https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/3217/a-look-at-celeritys-second-gen-496-core-risc-v-mesh-noc/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. There have been a few of these super-manycore processors before; their main characteristic is being quite hard to program effectively due to the need to partition the work and think very hard about memory bottlenecks.

> The Vanilla-5 cores are a 5-stage in-order pipeline RV32IM cores so they > support the integer and multiply extensions

So, roughly comparable to a high-speed Cortex M.

> instead of using caches, the entire memory address space is mapped across > all the nodes in the network using a 32-bit address scheme. This approach, > which also means no virtualization or translation, simplifies the design a > great deal.

The diagram shows each core has icache and dcache; what they've ditched is cache coherency. That certainly makes it simpler to implement but now the cores have to be responsible for their own coherency. Also, none of your protected mode operating system nonsense - this is designed to run a single program and get everything out of the way. Every core can potentially overwrite any other core's memory, and if it does so you won't know until you have a cache miss. Good luck figuring that one out in the debugger.

This is very clearly intended for the sort of AI or image processing workload where you can clearly partition it two-dimensionally across the array to identical nodes, and then have those nodes collaborate locally by passing messages across the edges.

<comment><USER3> > The diagram shows each core has icache and dcache; what they've ditched is > cache coherency.

This is not quite true: the local data memories are _not_ caches, i.e., they do not implicitly move memory in from a more distant tier in the memory hierarchy. They are just plain explicitly managed local memories (sometimes called "scratchpads" to distinguish them from caches).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like that only permitting writes to other cores' memory simplifies the design. If you want to read, you have to write a request to that core by storing the request in a place it will look, and tell it where to put the answer. And, all the cores heve to check for such requests.

It is kind of surprising that that is acceptable. I suppose the usual case is that each core already knows what its neigbors will want to see, and sends those values before each neighbor needs them.

<comment><USER5> This technique is known as remote store programming (RSP) which allows for a very convenient producer-consumer communication. It lends itself well to AI workloads since reading for a foreign core is rather rare compared to writing to one (eg next stage).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another project that goes for a manycore designed, is by Princton and ETH Zürich. Their design targets a few less cores I think.

See: [https://github.com/PrincetonUniversity/openpiton#support- for...](https://github.com/PrincetonUniversity/openpiton#support-for-the- ariane-rv64imac-core)

</comment><comment><USER7> Ok, if two processors read/write the same address what happens? Could I assume the reads are coherent but writes are not?

If this is the case then I assume I'd just need to design-wise restrict one processor from writing to another's area, yes?

I've worked on worse. Quite promising set of ideas from my limited reading.

<comment><AUTHOR> One processor can't read from the other's memory. It requests what it wants and tells the other where it should be put.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's interesting to compare this to a dual 64 core AMD system (so 128 cores) or similar in terms of the programming model or performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> This completely different from EPYC (and the Xeon Phi). The x86's present a single coherent memory image and lots of identical CPU cores whereas this one doesn't. In some aspects it resembles a Cell processor, with the difference that the "SPUs" (the tiny in-order cores) have some direct access to the main memory and are mostly binary compatible with the "PPUs" (the five large RISC-V cores).

<comment><USER8> I know that its a different architecture.

The question is whether it's worthwhile to adapt that new programming model and architecture? What can be achieved that is not possible or is price compatible with something boring and old-fashioned like 128 x64 cores etc.

I am all for new architectures. But the trick is getting people to make the effort to make use of them.

I think that when I write a good comment it gets buried and the only time comments are really popular is when I write something trite or silly that a lot of people are already thinking.

<comment><USER9> >I think that when I write a good comment it gets buried and the only time comments are really popular is when I write something trite or silly that a lot of people are already thinking.

probably more to do with the gamification of user generated content. you see the same thing on imgur and reddit: the well thoughtout comments don't get up voted nearly as much as the memes and injokes.

>I am all for new architectures. But the trick is getting people to make the effort to make use of them.

IIRC at the time there were a lot of complaints against the Cell processor that it was "too hard" to program for. >[https://www.cnet.com/news/sony- ps3-is-hard-to-develop-for-on...](https://www.cnet.com/news/sony-ps3-is-hard- to-develop-for-on-purpose/)

>[https://www.gtplanet.net/playstation-3-cell-more-powerful- mo...](https://www.gtplanet.net/playstation-3-cell-more-powerful-modern- chips/)

>[https://www.gtplanet.net/the-ps3-era-was-a-nightmare-for- pol...](https://www.gtplanet.net/the-ps3-era-was-a-nightmare-for-polyphony- digital-says-kazunori/)

>What can be achieved that is not possible or is price compatible with something boring and old-fashioned like 128 x64 cores etc

That's probably the main issue today, x86/64 are cheap and nearly all the problems can be fixed in software. Changing architectures and instruction set is too big of an upfront cost for most people/companies to deal with, and I think that is why we're only seeing Google and Amazon starting to look for other solutions. >[https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/) >[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2017/04/building-...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2017/04/building- ai-chip-saved-google-building-dozen-new-data-centers/amp)

<comment><AUTHOR> > IIRC at the time there were a lot of complaints against the Cell processor > that it was "too hard" to program for.

Indeed. Interestingly GPUs were initially very hard to program (and still are kind of a pain). What made them viable was the introduction of practical development tools that Cell never had. This machine shares (some of the) instruction set between the fat and the puny cores, which makes it a much easier target to program.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why not port Linux kernel to Common Lisp? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1848029/why-not-port-linux-kernel-to-common-lisp

<comment><USER2> The suggested gains (transparency, mostly) would not really be achieved, I think, because even if you get an 8:1 reduction in line count, it will still not look very transparent. It is still a very complicated problem.

And even if the performance of lisp approaches hand-crafted C, there will still be

More interesting is to design a different OS based on lisp using today's hardware. But what would you want it to do differently than Linux?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a refreshing change from the "The Linux kernel should use C++ more" that crops up every so often.

Despite it's refreshingness, it's still tiring to see these kinds of questions/goals. The Linux kernel is written what it is written in, by the people who wrote it. If you think it's a worthwhile thing to have it written in something else, patches will be entertained, and baring that, forks are acceptable.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you ever get HN dejavu? - <AUTHOR> Like you've seen a thread with those exact comments before ? It has happened several times for me. The latest example is with this thread: 	Introducing the Nextcloud Box https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12911192 <comment><USER2> Some post are "resubmitted" by the mods using some kind of manual curation. They appear a few hours later. I sometimes notice this with a comment in an obscure submission with 2 or 3 points that falls from the newest page, but a few hours later the submission gets to the front page and then the comment can get a few upvotes.

I think the most clear description of this by dang is in: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10705926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10705926)</comment>


Immaterialism - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03wwln-consumed-t.html#

<comment><USER2> We've been over this ad nauseam in the case of digital music. People have been paying to hear music or see flickering images on a screen for a long, long time. As long as the transaction was centered on a physical object, like a CD or a DVD, we psychologically attached the value to the object. When the object became an inconvenience, we realized we were paying for something intangible.

So we got cleared that little cognitive hurdle, no problem. Now it's normal to buy music on iTunes. This New York Times article does its best to confuse the issue by concentrating on buying intangible items that are _virtual representations of real objects_. That drives home the contrast between real and virtual in a way that music doesn't, since it's easy to accept that music is intangible, but we're used to thinking of otters and swords as tangible items. Yet in the final analysis, it's no different from music; it's just a clever way for a journalist to take something commonplace and make it seem weird.

<comment><USER3> Not that I want to defend journalists but I can see why they thought this was of special interest.

If I give you you a .wav of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, I am gifting you something meaningful - an experience, a feeling of awe, or relaxation or whatever your reaction to listening it will be. I consider that to be of value. If someone asks you "And what did she give you for your birthday" you can say "Stabat Mater! The Kirkby/Bowman recording!" and nobody would ask "Was that a CD or on iTunes"? They would understand both the nature and the intent of the gift. It's yours the same way the CD was yours - you have the ability to listen to it whenever you want at no cost to you. Therefore you, the recipient, continue to derive value.

I think the reason the journalist is boggling with the otter thing, is that it appears to be of no value to them, and doubts that it is of any value to the donor either (unlike Aunt Edna's horrid sweater, which while it may not be of any value to Cousin Johnny, it is at least of value to her, and she thinks, albeit mistakenly, that it might be of value to him, and also has a material cost).

So I think they are surprised that someone can pay real money to transact something that has no intrinsic value nor any usage value to either the gifter or the recipient. Which does put it in a different category than digital music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I figure most people already internalized the idea to some extent, (given that this is a site geared towards online ventures), but my gut feeling is that, unconsciously, we might be putting a tad too much focus on the "virtual", and at some point we'll need to swing back to "real" side of the world when considering going into entrepreneurship.</comment>


'I Forgot My PIN': An Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 in Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-of-losing-dollar30000-in-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> Wealth that you can't hold, see or touch is imaginary. Wealth that relies on electricity doesn't really exist in the real world.

The population of Puerto Rico is discovering that only physical cash is usable, because the lack of electricity means that the so-called wealth accessible by plastic card is no more available than the surface of the moon.

<comment> x09as-d09asd213 Wealth that you can't use, eat or produce is imaginary. Wealth that relies on paper doesn't really exist in the real world.

The population of the post apocalypse is discovering that only old fashioned trading is usable, because the lack of resources means that the so-called wealth accessible by paper scraps is no more available than the surface of the moon.

<comment><USER3> Wealth doesn't usually _rely_ on paper, paper is just used as a transaction medium. A wealth storage instrument would be a piece of a real estate, land, shares of a publicly traded company. It's usually converted to paper currency for convenience, but it doesn't have to if we had an easy way to transfer assets themselves to one another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is just dumb. Would you stick your social security card or birth certificate under daughters pillow? No. you would put it in a safe place. If you want to make sure family members know about something in case something happens to you then you put it in a safe place and leave instructions.</comment>


How We Bootstrapped Our Mailing List to Ramen Profitability of $2k/mo - <AUTHOR> http://www.tachyonsoftware.io/2018-02-21/ramen-profitable <comment><USER3> I've become more and more interested in mailing lists as entrepreneurial tools - what are some of the most popular mailing list platforms for premium list projects?

<comment><USER4> Substack is an up and coming one if a newsletter-focus is suitable. I've spoken to the founders, seem like nice guys. SitePoint just switched a newsletter to them. [http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/with-an-increased-focus- on-...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/with-an-increased-focus-on-paid- newsletters-substack-is-opening-up-its-tools-to-more-creators/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I signed up about 10 days ago and got some interesting questions from Google, FB, Uber and Stripe. The explanations are well written.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey, this is pretty cool, I like how the questions are free, that's a good idea. I'm going to sign up!

</comment><comment><USER7> Got the ole' Hacker News hug of death

Site unreachable

<comment><USER8> I'm disappointed we don't still call this "slashdotted" as a generic term - <USER2> understand why the digg userbase had an incentive to break the association, but it's still a little sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is no way to contact you if we had any questions . for instance what language are the solution in ?

<comment><USER10> According to their FAQ, python.

<comment><USER9> Where is the FAQ - [https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/](https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/)

<comment><USER11> It is on the main page under the "Frequently Asked Questions" section.

> What language are your solutions in?

> Our solutions are in Python. We think it's the best language to use for > interviews, as it's well-known and very similar to pseudocode. However, > we're looking to expand to other popular languages like Javascript, Java, > C++, and Ruby!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The best place on the web to learn anything, free - <AUTHOR> http://noexcuselist.com/

<comment><USER2> I like it. Bookmarked!</comment>


Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies at 89 - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7540038.stm

<comment><USER4> Some of my favorite quotes from the great man:

 _"It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - <USER2> selfish ones."_

 _"Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words."_

 _"When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness."_

 _"The one and only substitute for experience which we have not ourselves had is art, literature"_

 _"I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances -- from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history."_

And finally, an excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago"... on how to resist fascism & tyranny. The lesson that's just as important today as it was half a century ago.

 _"During an arrest, you think since you aren't guilty, how can they arrest you? Why should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you'll only make your situation worse; you'll make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake. And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! We didn't love freedom enough. Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself."_

<comment><USER5> > And finally, an excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago"... on how to resist > fascism & tyranny. The lesson that's just as important today as it was half > a century ago.

Although fascism and Communism are pretty darn close (both seek total control of the economy and the culture), let's not forget that he was specifically writing against a Communist system, not a fascist system.

It's shocking that the BBC link doesn't even use the word "Communism" in it once. Can you imagine an article on someone who stood up to Hitler without using the word Nazi once?

Perhaps Solzhenitsyn can shed some light on that?:

"For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion."

<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Solzhenitsyn>

"Instead of blaming Russian conditions, he blamed the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing Marxism itself is violent. His conclusion is Communism will always be totalitarian and violent, wherever it is practiced. There was nothing special in the Russian conditions which affected the outcome."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn>

I suggest we honour Solzhenitsyn's life by actually not avoiding focusing his criticism directly at Communism and more generally at Totalitarianism.

<comment><USER6> "Instead of blaming Russian conditions, he blamed the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing Marxism itself is violent. His conclusion is Communism will always be totalitarian and violent, wherever it is practiced. There was nothing special in the Russian conditions which affected the outcome."

This is an interesting quote. If you replace Marx and Engels with Mohammed, Communism with Islam, and Russian with say Iranian you end up with "something you can't say".

People can criticize communism in Russia _today_ , or outside Russia in the past, but it takes real guts to do what Solshenitzyn did - <USER3> communism when he _knew_ it could result in incarceration or worse. It would be like someone in Iran criticizing Khomeini.

<comment><USER7> > This is an interesting quote. If you replace Marx and Engels with Mohammed, > Communism with Islam, and Russian with say Iranian you end up with > "something you can't say".

Which is again interesting, because it isn't true. You'll have to be pretty blinded not to see the main difference between Marxism and Islam - namely that the latter is a religion which can exists independently of a government, while Marxism in it's very core is a layout for a state.

It doesn't make sense to live as a practising Marxist in a capitalism society, but you can very well live as a practising Muslim in a Christian or secular society.

Way too many governments are using Islam to subdue their people in a totalitarian state, and they are helped by islamophobes in the west, who lend them legitimacy by claiming that it's just the way Islam is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't help but post a joke here:

A new convict arrives at a Gulag labor camp. Everyone gathers around the new man.

\- What's your sentence?

\- Twenty years.

\- What for?

\- Nothing, I am innocent!

\- Bullsh-t. Innocent people get five.

</comment><comment><USER9> An inspirational man. Another quote:

"If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?"

</comment><comment><USER10> GetReligion.org has a take on the press coverage of Solzhenitsyn and the rocky relationship he had with Western elites because of his faith and general distrust of Modernity:

<http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3779>

</comment><comment><USER11> Wikipedia (updated moments after the news broke):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn>

</comment><comment><USER12> I've actually read the entire "Gulag". Anyone else here...?

<comment><USER13> Of course. But then again, I'm Russian, and one of my great-grandfathers was a victim.</comment></comment>