Ask HN: How do you read Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

I've been using Google Reader for the last couple of years to read Hacker News. Reader was a good option in the early days, but today the amount of daily submits makes this "mission" intractable, and the signal to noise ratio makes it less enjoyable.<p>With so many options to choose from (https://spreadsheets1.google.com/ccc?key=tCo5BIN61ciUkDjS2aLqjOA&authkey=CIeUndcL&hl=en&authkey=CIeUndcL#gid=0), what do you use? I may be tempted to create yet another application if someone can point to a good feature missing in the existing set of solutions. <comment><USER2> I spend 80% of my time on HN perusing the front page, usually checking comments before the actual articles, and 20% of the time checking the 'new' page.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read it several different ways.

Pressed for time, I use google reader and flip through the backlog rather fast. When not way behind, I check each one, again through google reader, and manage on weekends to often clear the queue.

I also check the postings and comments of several of my favorites to see if they have spotted anything interesting that i have missed. I do this when my time is even more limited.

If I am able to drain the queue, I check "ask" or "comments".

And of course check "threads" to see if there are any replies to my comments.

I seldom visit the home page. It seems that whenever I do, I have already seen at least the title.

It might be a bad sign that I have such a thorough multi-pronged approach.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been using Google Reader since it was first available.

I don't know how or why, but over the past 6 months I've actually converted from Google Reader to a combination of HN+Twitter.

I think the content is just more relevant and curated this way.

<comment><AUTHOR> how do you avoid redundancy, meaning seeing the same news items on both HN and Twitter?

<comment><USER4> I rarely read the same thing since so much (curated) info is provided. If I do, the title usually gives it away. And regardless, if it's breaking news, it is usually on every news source. That's a problem you can't avoid. I always had multiple news sources reporting the same thing in Google Reader, and I still face it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I gave up on on keeping track of the homepage -- there are just too many submissions nowadays.

Usually I randomly load the front page a few times a day, and read a story if I find something interesting. If I have some time I take a look at ask, threads and perhaps new. No doubt I'm missing a lot of the interesting stories due to the increasing traffic. Sad, but whatever. I learnt a lot from stories on HN, but during my most productive periods I did not read HN at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> I go to "threads"* first. I check to see if someone has replied to me since I was last here and if it needs a reply (or at least an upvote). Then I typically hit "comments" next. A good comment is very often what draws me to the discussion page for an article. After that, I check out what's "new". If it's a big yawn, I will check either "ask" or the homepage. Actually, I have been known to scroll down to "lists" and check "most active" before I bother to go to the homepage. I really spend relatively little time on the homepage.

* For some bizarre reason, my bookmark has defaulted to _someone else's_ threads page, so I actually start there. Sometimes I read their comments before going to my own threads page, sometimes I don't.</comment>


JavaScript iteration techniques, good technical interview material - <AUTHOR> http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/blog/paradigms-of-iteration-in-javascript

<comment><USER2> I thought we decided against using brainteaser, gimmicks, and parlor tricks in code interviews.</comment>


Zuckerberg's cheat sheet at senate hearing - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/ywxqeg/zuckerbergs-cheat-sheet-accidentally-made-public-at-senate-hearing-on-privacy <comment><USER2> > Mark Zuckerberg's private cheat sheet for today's Senate hearing wound up > online after the Facebook CEO failed to use the proper settings to protect > his private data from public eyes.

Quality writing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think these kind of "piling on" articles do a real disservice, because they distract from the significant, valid privacy concerns about Facebook. I mean, come on, calling it a "cheat sheet"? If you were giving testimony to the US Senate in a highly anticipated hearing, don't you think you would prepare? Were you hoping he'd just wing it?

<comment><USER4> > I mean, come on, calling it a "cheat sheet"?

Maybe that's me not being a native speaker, but "cheat sheet" to me does not have the negative connotation that you imply. I agree with you that preparing notes for such an occasion is appropriate, but a cursory reading of the article does not show anything that calls Zuckerberg out for bringing notes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > His notes also referred to the fact that only three percent of Facebook > employees are African American and five percent Hispanic.

What was the point of this note? To point out how facebook needs to work harder on their diversity culture?

<comment><USER6> I assume so if someone asked about diversity he would have accurate numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did he have a choice to opt out of that hearing?

<comment><USER8> Yes and he was not under oauth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > [...] at the same time, information he willingly revealed by not actively > covering it.

Everything in that cheat sheet raises a lot of 'valid points' and he probably knew not all of it would be discussed.

I'm leaning towards the fact that he's a smart cookie, and that he really wouldn't be opposed to it being photographed.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks like this post was buried... currently top on [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) but completely missing from the front page ([https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/)).

<comment><USER11> Users flagged it. Perhaps they felt it didn't add enough to the main story, which has been on the front page for hours ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16803775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16803775)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From his notes:

> GDPR (Don't say we already do what GDPR requires)

I was hoping someone would bring up whether they'd be applying those rules globally, not just in the EU. I missed the end of the testimony but for the majority that I listened to, I don't recall such a commitment.

</comment><comment><USER13> Inaccuracy in a Senate Judiciary Committee isn't fun. Cheat sheet seems smart.</comment>


Segment Open Fellowship - <AUTHOR> https://segment.com/blog/segment-open-fellowship-2017/ <comment><USER2> I think it's great that Segment is doing this, but I wonder: Is this the best way to pay people to work on open source software?

I very rarely see high quality open source software produced by people who are unemployed, and I don't know how many people would want to give up a well- paying job for a three-month stint as an open source fellow. Taking a leave of absence from your job to do this? Maybe, but three months seems like the worst possible duration -- long enough that you have to hand everything off to someone else, but short enough that the transition time is burdensome. This might work well for independent consultants, but that's about it as far as I can see.

It seems to me that a better approach might be some sort of part-time arrangement, allowing developers to stay at their existing employers on reduced hours -- almost like an open source software version of the flexible arrangements many companies make for new parents. The open source community would benefit by having a developer who has hours dedicated to the project; the employer would benefit by (a) keeping their employee and (b) probably making use of the software in question; and Segment would benefit by spending less per developer funded.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Colin! That's something we went back & forth on for a while. We're not convinced this model is the _right_ one but seems to be the most effective duration for us to run this experiment.

The primary concern is how expectations are communicated so that all parties (fellow, employer & Segment) are all on the same page about what work is getting done, when. Definitely not saying this isn't solvable problem but for our first fellowship, we wanted to focus on running the program & supporting a handful of fellows. I'd love any suggestions you/others have around different formats for the program we could try, feel free to comment here or send me an email email@example.com!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey there! Fouad here, from Segment. We're really excited to share the fellowship with everyone and hear about people's projects.

If you have any questions/ideas, please feel free to leave a comment here & I'll be around to respond :)

</comment><comment><USER3> We rely heavily on open-source software at Pavlov and contributing back to the community is core to our DNA.

I'm really excited to see similar efforts by companies like Segment, Stripe, and OpenAI that are devloping a strong brand around engineering culture / OSS.

<comment><USER4> Totally - I think we all stand on the shoulders of giants, easy to take for granted all the hard work put into OSS. I love the conscious effort to give back!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Today we're proud to announce the Segment Open Fellowship. The Fellowship is > a three month long program supporting three to five open-source developers > with $8k per month to focus full-time on their project, no other strings > attached.

For $1K more this could be reworded to sound even bigger. Make it $25K (3 x $8K + 1) and eliminate the time period. Depending on the tax ramifications a frugal developer could stretch that out for well beyond 3-months[1].

That aside it's great to see more companies doing this. Kudos Segment!

[1]: _Though the on-site piece should probably have a time limit. Can 't have stragglers hanging around forever..._

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh cool idea koolba -- Yeah, part of the goal of not having an "onsite restriction" is to defer to fellows on how their funds could be best spent (and where). Will keep this in mind for the future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Segment is an awesome company, and it's great to see them being a benevolent actor in the community. I can certainly see them becoming another Stripe in the sense of technical excellent.

In some ways they're somewhat similar. They're all very smart, young founders that have taken an idea that's traditionally owned either by large, non- cooperative organizations or require in-house development and put it behind an API.

I'm looking forward to seeing them grow.</comment>


"Found Haiku" in Linux Documentation - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20051225075008/http://firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER2> Wow, I'd never seen the public domain Haiku:

      This document may
      be freely distributed
      with attribution.</comment>


Scraping Roger Ebert's reviews and finding his favorite movies on Amazon Prime - <AUTHOR> https://www.linisnil.com/articles/scraping-roger-ebert-reviews-and-amazon/ <comment><USER3> If you need a more stateful version of requests:

        import requests
        session = requests.session()
        # now use session like you would requests
        session.get("http://httpbin.org/cookies/set/name/value")
        print(session.get("http://httpbin.org/cookies").content)

<comment><AUTHOR> oh I need to try that - I had this feeling that there was a more stateful version but for ..... some reason ... reaching for a new dependency felt easier at the time haha. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also "Where to Find Roger Ebert's Great Movies Streaming" [0] which has US listings for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney Plus, Criterion Channel, Kanopy, HBO, Starz, and Showtime as of March 2020.

[0] [https://www.rogerebert.com/features/where-to-find-roger- eber...](https://www.rogerebert.com/features/where-to-find-roger-eberts-great- movies-streaming)

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess this list of movies applies to people who live in US. Available movies differ substantially between countries. With Netflix it's easy, it doesn't even show the movie you can't watch, with Amazon you have to click through every movie you are interested in to see the screen that says that this movie is not available in your region. There are even series where only one or two episodes are unavailable.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is the fact that we have a relatively agreed-upon canon of great films (with immense re-watch value over the years) that keeps me torrenting instead of streaming. Sure, you could search from one streaming site to another for a given film, but the film may be either completely unavailable, or it may be offered one moment and the mysteriously removed the next. Meanwhile, some torrent communities are run by ardent cinephiles and they have all of these films, and once you have downloaded it, you can go back to it whenever you want.

<comment><USER7> You can also solve the "what streaming service" issue by buying the movie on DVD or Blu Ray allowing you to go back to it whenever you want. Additionally if you're ok with DRM iTunes has most stuff.

Useful tip for finding which streaming service a film is on: google "film name streaming" and google lists the answers in a box at the top of the results.

<comment><USER6> The problem with recommending that people buy the DVD/Blu-Ray is that the agreed-upon canon of great films stretches into the many hundreds of titles (Ebert's list at 364 titles is only an abridged canon.) Therefore, for someone seeking a cultural education, buying the physical releases would run into the thousands and thousands of dollars. It would be a challenge even for North Americans or Western Europeans to amass a suitable collection, let alone people in lower-income countries. Consequently, a person can only realistically learn about great cinema by streaming from multiple subscription sites, or torrenting, and people disappointed by the former ought to remember that the latter exists.

<comment><USER8> You can sub to one streaming service and never run out of great films to watch (in part _because_ titles rotate, not in spite of, but that's beside the point). Justifying piracy because, for example, you're disappointed that Netflix is missing one great film, is disingenuous.

<comment><USER6> You misunderstand my point. It's not that a person might be looking just for "great films to watch", in which case any streaming site might satisfy them. It is that a person might be looking for _the_ great films, that entire canon of films which scholars hold to be important. Netflix is never going to have them all regardless of how much they rotate.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't really affect my point. No streaming service will meet your unreasonable demands (for many reasons, first of all is that there is not an objectively agreed upon list of _the_ great films), and therefore justifying piracy because of it is disingenuous.

<comment><USER6> That a service should have it all is not an unreasonable demand, and it is peculiar that you chide someone for "justifying piracy". After all, the HN crowd is generally very sympathetic to Library Genesis, which is aiming to gradually contain all books on all subjects, and therefore the curious reader can conveniently and at no cost learn about classic 20th-century literature, copyright be damned. Someone who wants the same solid cultural education with regard to films will not be served very well by the commercial offerings compared to torrent communities, but a cultural education is more precious than anyone's claim to copyright.

As for "there is not an objectively agreed upon list of the great films", there may not be one single list, but as a broad consensus one can take the overlapping suggestions of the critics who contribute to the Sight and Sound poll, the winners at Cannes and Venice, those films and directors who have been celebrated year after year in _Cahiers du Cinéma_ , and so forth.

<comment><USER8> _That a service should have it all is not an unreasonable demand_

Yes it is, especially when you said that it is a requirement for a service to have a certain list of movies, and then admit that that no such list exists. Therefore, a service _can never_ meet your stated requirements (and therefore, you've created a self fulfilling framework to justify your piracy of certain movies). If you're playing so fast and loose with what constitutes a list of great films, then you can subscribe to the Criterion Collection and call it a day.

 _it is peculiar that you chide someone for "justifying piracy"_

You said piracy of certain films was ok _because_ of their lack of inclusion in a service didn't meet your requirements, requirements that could never be met. I'm saying it's wrong to knowingly create unrealistic requirements and justifying piracy based on that.

If you're going to change your argument to say that certain films should be free to all, due to certain significance to the public, that's a different stance (and one I'm more sympathetic to).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thank you for doing this. I wish "top critics" was a search option on Prime (but their Roku interface is just abhorrent).

There was a time when I hoped Netflix would do something similar: click here to see your favorite critics film list, but since Netflix has lost the streaming rights to soooo many films compared when they first started streaming ca. 2007, this is not doable. (Even DVD rights in most cases: films that are in my "Movies You Rated" queue from 2003 are no longer in Netflix's library.)

<comment><USER10> They have a really poor UX imo. The categories are seemingly arbitrary, and they have niche and seasonal ones that don't make sense. During the December holidays they didn't have a holiday themed category until near holiday end.

Further, they make "innovation" like auto play when nobody asked for this, and without any way to stop it (unless you go to desktop and disable it deep in your settings).

When searching you will receive similar results for titles they used to have... well why not state "are you searching for x? It's no longer available, here are some recommendations" so the user isn't wasting time wondering if the search feature is just "bad".

In the world of constant, unannounced, and live experimenting on huge user bases a little messaging goes a long way (with the comparison being nothing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised not to see more people adding their favorite movies. Just sticking to things semi-related. I may have to go watch "My Man Godfrey" again but at least for me "The Thin Man" and its 5 sequels stuck with me where as though I watched "My Man Godfrey" years ago but I don't remember any details of it. (same lead actor and he pretty much always plays the same type of person)

"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is a good movie but if you want some other westerns starting James Stewart I can recommend "Destry Rides Again" which is not super serious but I found it throughly entertaining. Also "Broken Arrow" (1950), (not the 90s John Woo movie which is a fun popcorn movie).

Seeing "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" on the list I recently saw "The Outlaw Josey Wales" which I enjoyed (also a Western with Clint Eastwood)

Of the movies on that list I've seen the one I'd recommend the most is "Women in the Dunes". I don't want to over hype it I've seen most of the movies on the list and they are all great stories but "Woman in the Dunes" might give you something new to think about where as the others are mostly just great entertainment.

<comment><USER12> In addition to "Woman in the Dunes", I'd also nominate "The Gospel According to Saint Matthew". And, in fact, "It's a Wonderful Life" for those who haven't seen it (it's a much more grown up and dark film than you may have been led to believe).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There used to be a site call ClerkDogs.com that probably had the best movie recommendation system I've used. You started off naming a few movies you liked, and it would provide a list of movies you'd also probably like, and it was very accurate.

From what I remember, the database was cataloged and maintained by actual humans, and not some algorithm following behavior patterns.

<comment><USER14> Yep, jinni.com did the exact same thing, and I loved it. Unfortunately, it seems like B2C just didn't work financially so they switched to an entirely B2B model to help providers with their recommendation engines and no longer have their data accessible to end-users.

<comment><USER15> It's a shame that the economics of recommendation engines doesn't seem to work very well in the B2C space. Good rec. engines can be very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Instead of using Python, here is a solution that only requires sh, curl, sed, sort, uniq and grep.

This solution uses a generous 87s delay to retrieve the Amazon pages. There are 328 films listed as "great movies" on rogerebert.com. As such, the script, named "1.sh", needs 8h to complete, e.g., the time while you are at work or sleeping. No cookies, no state, no problems.

       Usage: sh -c 1.sh > 1.html

Open 1.html in a browser and it shows whether each "great movie" is available as Prime Video or whether it is only available in some other format, such as Blu-ray, DVD, Multi-format, Hardcover. A link to the item on Amazon is provided.

       #!/bin/sh

       curl -HUser-Agent: -H'Accept: application/json' --compressed 'https://www.rogerebert.com/great-movies/page/[1-16]?utf8=%E2%9C%93&filters%5Btitle%5D=&sort%5Border%5D=newest&filters%5Byears%5D%5B%5D=1914&filters%5Byears%5D%5B%5D=2020&filters%5Bstar_rating%5D%5B%5D=0.0&filters%5Bstar_rating%5D%5B%5D=4.0&filters%5Bno_stars%5D=1'|grep -o "/reviews/great-movie-[^\\]*"|sed 's/.reviews.great-movie-//'|sort|uniq|while read x;do y=$(echo $x|sed 's/-/+/g');echo $x;curl -s --compressed -HUser-Agent: https://www.amazon.com/s/?k=$y 2>/dev/null|grep -m1 -C4 a-link-normal.a-text-bold;sleep 87;done|sed '/^[^< ]/s/.*/@&,/;1s|.*|<base href=https://www.amazon.com />&|;s/ *//;/^$/d;/^[@<]/!s|$||;1s/@//;s/@/
/'

</comment><comment><USER17> Roger Ebert had an unexpected impact on me in my 20s. In my late teens, I started religiously reading his reviews, and this continued until his death. I've never really been a "movie buff," but Ebert's witty prose and pointed technical critique reminded me of Scalia (whom I also loved reading). Thank you for putting this list together!

<comment><USER6> The tragedy of Roger Ebert is that, although he had a vast knowledge of great cinema, he established a niche where he was expected to mainly write about ephemeral popular films. His time was mostly spent on Hollywood blockbusters and popcorn, and he was appearing in media where he could not go into any great depth due to space limitations, or because that would be a turnoff for his mass audience.

So, only in a few Ebert productions like his "Great Movies" books can one get a sense of the films that really mattered to the man and to art. Compare this to a critic like Richard Brody, who in his career has been fortunate to focus entirely on art cinema (though of course Brody's net worth is probably an order of magnitude less than Ebert's was).

<comment><USER18> I've only read a few Ebert reviews, enjoyed them and happened to be looking for a book to read, so I appreciate the recommendation!

edit: The introduction alone makes the book worth reading:

> Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones > make us into better people. Not many of them are very good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

The list (both on my post + the google sheet) should be correct now - <USER2> underestimated how many different releases of the SAME movie title there are ...

Thanks all for catching the mistakes.

<comment><USER19> FYI - the "Review URL" links at the bottom don't seem to be working properly.

e.g. for "Moonstruck", the link leads to:

"www.linisnil.com/articles/scraping-roger-ebert-reviews-and- amazon/www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-moonstruck-1987"

instead of:

"www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-moonstruck-1987"

<comment><AUTHOR> hey thanks for catching that - turns out leaving out the protocol in markdown causes makes it a relative url. fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I miss Roger Ebert.

I honestly watch fewer films since his death.

Maybe this list will change that.

Also "Spirited Away" is on the list but doesn't seem to be included with prime.

<comment><USER21> Spirited Away is now on HBO Max if you're looking for it

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to see this for more services. Amazon Prime has IMHO the worst UI/UX I have used in a streaming service.

<comment><USER23> Agreed. What's most annoying is how they deal with geo blocked content. They don't tell you it's blocked until you start watching it. So you browse the catalog for five minutes, finally find a movie to watch, press play, and then get an error message.

<comment><USER24> Or how they sometimes won't allow you to watch the original English version because you're not in an English speaking country. Even if your language is set to English (of which around 1/4 is still not translated). All movie previews are in native language which necessitates a visit to YT or IMDB. Even non-prime content is affected, just recently I paid 2.99 to watch some cheesy 90s movie with my friend who had always wanted to see this "classic". The syncing was abysmal and resolution 480p i.e. 720x480 i.e. DVD.

After we were done, I noticed there were a handful of HD torrents in various languages. Reminded me immediately of Gabe Newell's thoughts on pirating games: "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Self-promotion: A number of years ago I made a little website which links you to a random review written by Roger Ebert. It isn't the cleanest of implementations, but it did what I needed it to do when I built it.

[http://randomebert.com/](http://randomebert.com/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Side note: one excellent film that Roger Ebert didn't review is Life Itself, the documentary about his life that came out right after he died. It's full of joy and heartbreaking at times, but it really solidified his place of most universally relatable movie critic in my mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for this. We will be checking this out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> FWIW the link for "The Bicycle Thief" (1949) links to "The Bicycle" (2015). Great list though. It would be interesting to see the thing done for the AFI and BFI top 100. (Although I suspect that most movies on the AFI are probably already on Ebert's list.)

</comment><comment><USER28> I was just seeing someone else's tutorial on scraping Amazon prices. They also ran into an issue where they needed to scrape twice instead of once. Not sure that it's the same issue you're facing but I thought I might drop my two cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually did notice that issue, even with using a stateful client like mechanize. Sometimes I had to scrape > 5 times in order to get through the "anti robot" page.

Other times, I get no issue at all. It's weird - maybe they're doing some pattern matching on request metadata on their end?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"

IMO, John Ford's best movie, hands down.

Unfortunately, it is not actually available on Prime without "CBS All Access" [Edit: ah, I see that this is not just "Included with prime", but all movies]

<comment><USER30> Prime just recently introduced channels, which dramatically increased the amount of content available, but each is $3.99. I personally love this because I'd rather have the option to subscribe to Smithsonian content or MGMs back catalog using the same streaming service I already use, rather than paying to use 10 different or getting stuck using the small list of (mostly old, TV movie, or B movie) content on just prime or Netflix.

So this is a feature, not a bug. Mostly because I've accepted how backwards the movie industry is going to be with copyright. But still having the option is the less evil.

That said, Maybe the UI can make this more obvious?

<comment><USER31> First time surprised me. I can see it being useful when you have the channel. Or as a separate tab when you want to possible add a channel.

It kinda taints the other content. You ask internal.. Is it really available without subscribing? to channels you have access to. Then you finally click and they have season 1 and 3 and 5 of some show. Terrible UI. Feels like you get so much less than you do.

With netflix it feels like you could just fall into a series immediately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Although it's not listed in this post because it's a rental. I feel like it deserves a mention nonetheless. "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" is a 1960s cult classic. It was directed by Russ Meyer and written by Roger Ebert. There's a link to it on Roger's site as well as available to stream from Amazon for cheap:

[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beyond-the-valley-of- the-...](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beyond-the-valley-of-the- dolls-1980)

</comment><comment><USER33> When you said you were faking a proper agent with `requests`, do you mean you were setting the headers to look like a browser, as in here?: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27652543/how-to-use- pyth...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27652543/how-to-use-python- requests-to-fake-a-browser-visit)

That was going to be my suggestion for how to get around the anti-robot responses.

<comment><USER16> No agent at all is required. I got past the anti-robot response using no user- agent header and a simple delay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Reading Ebert's Great Movies site was hugely formative for me. I also love that he's low-key one of the best writers about addiction and recovery. Side note: A colleague who worked at the Sun-Times when Ebert also did recently told me about how whenever management threatened cuts, he'd come into the newsroom to throw his weight around against it. Even when he was getting to be in ill health. Much respect.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think this is referring to his list of "Movies You Must See Before You Die". On that note, I should mention "Gates of Heaven", which is part of that list. A compelling documentary on animal cemeteries, by Errol Morris.

[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-gates-of- heav...](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-gates-of-heaven-1978)

</comment><comment><USER36> Self-promotion (of sorts), but I (with some friends) have been watching lots of movies and keeping globally ordered rankings on github here: [https://github.com/chillee/movierankings](https://github.com/chillee/movierankings)

I find globally ordered rankings of movies to be an interesting exercise of consistency.

</comment><comment><USER37> Folks interested in this topic might like my new side-project: get an email when your favorite director releases a new movie - [https://directoralerts.website](https://directoralerts.website)

</comment><comment><USER38> Minor instruction to make it work for me:

pip3 install BeautifulSoup pip3 install mechanize mkdir data

Guess you can check data directory but not sure about the pip3, python does not like R I am not sure and can it pip3 install when not exist ....

</comment><comment><USER39> Only three movies in the past fourty years, non past 87, is surprising. Is Prime that full of older content or did Ebert's recommendations just stop coming from major studios?

<comment><USER40> Using [https://www.rogerebert.com/great- movies](https://www.rogerebert.com/great-movies) you can filter by date

<comment><USER39> Thanks, but that doesn't explain why Prime doesn't have any released after 87.

<comment><USER41> I'm having a hard time coming up with the data to confirm this theory but 1986/1987 seems to me to be the peak of both VHS sales and the bottom of VCR prices.

I assume from that many studios had to come up with their first licensing schemes for movies "for home use" (contrary to movie theater and broadcast use), which could potentially still apply to (and restrict) streaming.

Once again, this is my personal hypothesis (and I'd be happy to see some data to support or contradict it).

<comment><USER39> 1988 was the year of the Writers Guild strike, so while your exacts may be mistaken you're probably right that the licensing scheme is involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I cancelled my Amazon prime subscription, because of the ridiculous things they did in France.

And following the dark pattern path to unsubscribe. I'm happy that I did it.

Fyi, I'm from Belgium

<comment><USER43> I didn't hear about this. Can you give a quick summary of what actions Amazon took in France that you are referring to?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Useful information but the results look like garbage in Chrome and IE. The multi-line titles all run together and would greatly benefit from a table outline.

<comment><USER45> Safari too. I just discovered that modern user agents don't include table borders by default in their stylesheets -- at least, choosing Develop -> Disable Styles didn't make the table borders appear.

I'm having flashbacks to the chiseled borders of Netscape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Are these free on Amazon or is this just an advertisement for Amazon Prime (or does everyone have a subscription but me?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not an advertisement for amazon prime :) These are free with prime, not free for non-subscribers

I'm actually going to be cancelling my prime membership, which is another reason I wanted to see what I could watch for "free".

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> If the author reads this, the link in the Google sheet to the Battle of Algiers goes to Algiers, a totally different movie.

<comment><AUTHOR> i'm fixing this list ... just realized a few bugs in the code. _sigh_

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Don't mean to undermine this guy's screen-scraping adventure... but if you want to use something that will tell you all the streaming services that have the list of movies, you can use:

[https://letterboxd.com/dvideostor/list/roger-eberts-great- mo...](https://letterboxd.com/dvideostor/list/roger-eberts-great-movies/)

You can look at each movie to see what streaming service it's on one at a time for free.

If you have a pro paid account, you can even do:

[https://letterboxd.com/dvideostor/list/roger-eberts-great- mo...](https://letterboxd.com/dvideostor/list/roger-eberts-great- movies/on/amazon-prime-us/)

Which shows that there are 39 movies in Amazon Prime US from Ebert's "Great Movies," not 21 like this guy's spreadsheet says.

To be fair, the exercise was to scrape the reference sources... so it might just need some refinement.

Need to double check though if both lists are correct, only confirmed number totals.

 __Full disclosure: That letterboxd list is not mine, I just found it __

<comment><USER49> FWIW, I screen scraped rogerebert.com and copied all of his ratings and an excerpt of every review to letterboxd:

[https://letterboxd.com/re2/](https://letterboxd.com/re2/)

Just the great movies:

[https://letterboxd.com/re2/tag/great- movie/films/by/release-...](https://letterboxd.com/re2/tag/great- movie/films/by/release-earliest/)

You can then filter those by streaming service, but you need a pro account. Looks like 38 movies:

[https://letterboxd.com/re2/tag/great- movie/films/on/amazon-p...](https://letterboxd.com/re2/tag/great- movie/films/on/amazon-prime-us/by/release-earliest/)

[https://ibb.co/KFSj9jg](https://ibb.co/KFSj9jg)

Apparently I missed the Buster Keaton movies:

[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-films- of-...](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-films-of-buster- keaton)

[https://letterboxd.com/director/buster- keaton/](https://letterboxd.com/director/buster-keaton/)

But that means 39 isn't quite right either since Ebert is saying all of Buster Keaton's films are great.

Anyway, the scraping was easy. The harder problem was parsing the html reviews (even with BeautifulSoup, the html is a mess), and then matching the reviews on Ebert's site to the correct movie, which I did via queries to tmdb and a lot of heuristics. There's nearly 8000 reviews and many have wrong years, bad titles, etc on rogerebert.com. It was a fun spare time project for a couple weeks.

<comment><USER48> Nice! Yeah, I wish letterboxd was free somehow without ads and they made their beta api public.

Yeah, I bet there's not a great standard for normalization/corrections of tiles, making a distinction of like when a movie was made and when a movie was released and translations and imports.

Good work.

<comment><USER49> I ended up using the director and cast that are listed for most reviews on Ebert's site for matching the right movie. Even that required some tricks due to spelling errors or differences in how names were listed. I then flagged any matches that weren't unique or where the title wasn't similar enough for me to manually review. I think I only had to double-check about a hundred or so.

I didn't use the letterboxd api. Instead, I generated csv files for the letterboxd importer. I then did a csv export from their site I could reconcile to look for import errors.

Trivia: Ebert reviewed a few adult films which I couldn't import to letterboxd because the site officially doesn't allow those.

BTW, it's only $19/year for an account. I have my own account I pay for which follows the re2 account. That way I can easily see any of the re2 reviews for movies in my own watchlist.

<comment><USER48> Yep, I caved and got an account last month too

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> A weekend project idea for geeks like me who like films, but have the feeling to have already watched everything. I find that imdb ratings have a high (but not 1.0) correlation with me liking the movie (provided I like the genre). You can still download from imdb flat files that contain all movies, ratings, as well as cast/directors/producers/writers. Stick that in a database, with a basic UI to hide movies you have already watched. And you can make a good personal recommandation engine for movies you didn't suspect exist. The power of this approach is that imdb is pretty much an exhaustive catalog.

<comment><USER51> I tend to like movies/shows on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics like the movie less than the other users, e.g. The Orville [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/orville](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/orville)

P.S.: And audience score should roughly be above 70.

<comment><USER52> I completely agree with this. Whenever critics' and users' assessments of a movie or a TV show diverge, it is almost universally the critics who end up being wrong (in my subjective view).

They sometimes over-rate things people in their position cannot be seen disliking because it's about Societal Importance or some such thing that has little to do with actual quality. And conversely, they sometimes ignore or under-rate things because they cannot be seen to overly praise a work that's criticised for things having little or nothing to do with actual quality.

Thing is, I don't need to be culturally influenced, have my outdated views updated to match what's currently considered mainstream, my privilege checked, etc. I just want to watch a good fucking movie and decide for myself whether it contains a message that changes my mind on a topic.

For example, critics and users disagree on The Shape of Water[0] (users are right, it's very mediocre). They also disagree on Green Book[1] (users are right again, it's a great film even if it doesn't tick all the wokeness and political correctness checkboxes).

[0] [https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-shape-of- water](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-shape-of-water)

[1] [https://www.metacritic.com/movie/green- book](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/green-book)

<comment><USER53> > "For example, critics and users disagree on The Shape of Water[0] (users are > right, it's very mediocre). They also disagree on Green Book[1] (users are > right again, it's a great film even if it doesn't tick all the wokeness and > political correctness checkboxes)."

no, the _green book_ is awful, a particularly bad example of the feel-good movie, never once inviting the viewer to get lost in a believable world, instead inviting the viewer to question every directorial decision made. it was fake and pretentious at the same time, and completely safe around race relations.

the _shape of water_ was not perfect, but better. not the best example of interracial relations (metaphorically), but gentle, revealing, quirky, ambient, and unpretentious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> On a tangent: I dream of a web where whenever there are sets of items (eg eberts-great-movies, and movies-on-amazon) you can easily apply set operations (like intersection) on them (so if 'n' stands for 'intersection', eg eberts- great-movies n movies-on-amazon).

So, in effect if you're on a site that deals with a set of items, like the amazon prime movies, you can tell the browser to intersect this set with a different set at another URL.

I understand that doing this would require the right 'infrastructure' to be in place.

<comment><USER55> I don't know why there's no good way to know what's streaming on a certain service. Seems like the only way is through third party sites that are probably made up of people manually adding to the list.

If everyone is going to make their own streaming service then there needs to be a standard interface to make them collectively easier to use. A "guide", if you will.

<comment><USER56> Unfortunately their profit incentive is the opposite: to train you to watch what they choose to recommend, rather than take a step back and look at what isn't there. See the hollowing of the Netflix catalog.</comment></comment></comment>


The Performance of Open Source Applications - <AUTHOR> http://aosabook.org/en/posa/introduction.html

<comment><USER2> It's also important to note that, while you can get the book for free, most of the profit goes to Amnesty International when you buy it[0].

[0]: [http://aosabook.org/en/buy.html](http://aosabook.org/en/buy.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Index is on [http://aosabook.org/en/](http://aosabook.org/en/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldnt point to it directly, despite that was my first attempt.. it was already taken by another post; but that is the [better] link

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let us know when the epub version is up on the store, would love to have this all in one place. Already got the other 2 books.

</comment><comment><USER5> That site is so performance-oriented it took me 2 minutes to find the link to the book.</comment>


Musk Jumps Off Trump Train in Wake of Paris Pullout Decision - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-01/musk-jumps-off-trump-train-in-wake-of-paris-pullout-decision <comment> D-Coder My admiration of Musk goes up another notch. How is that even possible???

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world."

It doesn't get any clearer than that. Consensus was a step in the right direction. Disrupting the consensus before anything could be accomplished is a step backwards.</comment>


"Future, can you hear me now? Good." Death of the 'phone' company. - <AUTHOR> http://joshrweinstein.com/post/26444725848

<comment><USER2> A friend once complained to me about how all of the "unlimited" plans are secretly capped (at, say, 3GB), which makes it very frustrating for anyone who would regularly go over the cap, as there are often no other options. He told me he would much prefer a pay-per-use model, which is apparently much more common in his home country (despite internet being much more expensive there).

At first, I was against this idea -- my gut told me that uncapped service is what enables us to use the internet to its full potential, and as soon as you start enforcing limits, you limit that potential -- but when I thought about it a bit more, it makes sense. You are paying for what you get, and if you need more, you pay more.

With all of this in mind, there is something to be said for treating everything as data instead of charging for 'minutes' and 'texts' and other abstract services on top of the data. (After all, it's data all the way down.)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a terrible article written without any grasp of the underlying realities of delivering the services the author discusses.

Applauding Verizon for instituting Draconian bandwidth practices may increase value for shareholders, but it is antithetical to the nature of development on the web and in the world. Can you imagine how development of the Internet might've fared if caps had been instituted in the 80's?

Capping wireless isn't the answer, and the author is ignorant to pursue justification through the lens of progression. Capped data plans are not an evolution, they are a regression.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not advocating for 'capping' data plans, I'm applauding the company's focus on charging customers by data plan instead of their call/text usage. As an aside, texting and phone use are not 'capped,' in the way you are defining it.

I also don't think this is Draconian by any means, it is a pay-per-use model...is github's pricing model Draconian in your view?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you adopted standardjs? - <AUTHOR> <comment> here-for-karma Yep. We didn't have a style standard and all had different opinions. One day we just stopped splitting hairs and went with StandardJS.

Over a year later and haven't looked back. Codebase consistency is far more important than whatever particular style you use

</comment><comment><USER2> No. We use semi standard. But I've always found it awfully presumptuous to codify somebody's style opinions as standard.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, Prettier offers a better approach for standard rules. Otherwise I use ESLint.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yep ;)</comment>


Tell HN: 3 Months in... Success (Real-Life Massive Multi-Player Spy Game) - <AUTHOR>

Three months ago, I launched an idea without much of a site to see if people would show interest.  In 48 hours my paypal account was just recovering from a hammering of interest.
Today I am happy to say, that three months in, we are breaking even - without any bootstrapping.
Take a look at the original post here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2138867
Come see how far we've come!  And of course, please ask any questions you have.
http://www.iiaarg.com <comment><USER2> Congrats on the success of all this! Breaking even in 3 months takes some doing.

I noticed some places where I think I could clean up and improve the writing. Do you mind if I take a stab at it?

<comment><USER3> send me an email about your suggestions, we're open to anything that makes the game better!

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <https://iiaarg.com/signup>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.iiaarg.com></comment>


$1.5M Robbery of Bellagio Casino Foiled Thanks to RFID Chips - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2011/02/12/1-5m-robbery-of-bellagio-casino-foiled-thanks-to-rfid-chips/ <comment><USER2> From the comments over there:

"This is nonsense, they didn't catch him by using RFID chips, they caught him with police work. He was an idiot, and told anyone that would listen that he had the chips. People came forward, a sting buy was set up, he was arrested after selling them to undercover LEOs. Read the police report, there is no mention of RFID chips.

Police Report: [https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://media.lasvegassun....](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://media.lasvegassun.com/media/pdfs/blogs/documents/2011/02/03/carleo0203.pdf)

This is just marketing by a company that is trying to sell the technology to other casinos."

<comment><USER3> The writer doesn't have anything mixed up. Most of the chips were large value denominated and hence nearly all of the stolen chips were worthless the moment the thief walked out the door.

Also, the article is not claiming the thief was captured because of the RFID. The article is simply highlighting how the RFIDs in the chips foiled the thief by making the chips worthless almost immediately, and then goes on to highlight how RFIDs within chips are enabling casino operators to track user behavior in new and novel ways. The focus of the story is not that RFID was used to catch the bad guy, rather the focus is on how RFID tech within these chips has changed casino operation, from user tracking, to "turning off" stolen chips on demand.

<comment><USER4> What do you consider "large value denominated" and where did find out what the breakdown was? In my book "large value" in a 1.5 mil heist would be $5,000 and higher. My _guess_ would be that most chips were $100, $500 and $1,000 chips. But AFAIK, Bellagio hasn't released any of that information.

<comment><USER5> The fifth sentence of the first paragraph of the linked article is "Thanks to RFID tags embedded inside them, the chips with denominations of $100 to $25,000 could be immediately deactivated rendering them unredeemable for cash value."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He was caught because he did stuff like sending photos like the following to members of the poker forum he frequented:

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DaIlH1TvGHA/TUsgWhzTV0I/AAAAAAAAAG...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DaIlH1TvGHA/TUsgWhzTV0I/AAAAAAAAAGY/Xz4jZw2iDuM/s320/DSC03741.JPG)

<comment><USER7> If I got away with something like this, I'd want to brag via message boards too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe the writer has his information mixed up. Bellagio doesn't have RFIDs in the lower denominational chips. It's rumored to be in the $5,000 chips and above. Newer properties like the Wynn hotel put RFIDs in all their chips because they're the ones who have the play tracking tables he wrote about.

He wasn't caught because of the RFIDs in the chips, he was caught because he was trying to sell the $25,000 chips. In fact, he was gambling with the smaller chips and lost over $100,000. If those had the RFIDs in them, they would have caught him sooner. Instead he should have kept all the smaller chips and thrown the larger ones into a river and forgotten about them. It would have still been a nice haul.

<comment><USER8> > If you're using high-rolling chips you can almost guarantee that a casino > knows what you're up to. Turns out Big Brother is alive and well, playing > craps in Las Vegas.

After I originally read the article, I was about to take my chips that I have from a recent casino trip to a belt sander. But then I read your comment. I think the writer knew what he was talking about (the high-roller chips disclaimer) but couldn't resist breathlessly hyping up the Big Brother aspect.

But then I read this comment in the original thread:

5 points by vegasbrianc 54 days ago | link

"As engineer for the Casino Industry 99% of the casino RFID solutions on the market track all chips all denominations. The Casino RFID system is used in multiple ways \- Tracking players bets - Ensure the dealer is paying out or taking in the correct chips - Accurate accounting - Fraud Prevention So next time you go to the casino remember they are tracking you even when you cannot see it."

<comment><USER4> Even if they're are RFID's in the chips themselves, the table still has to have scanning equipment to read the payouts and that's expensive. Not all casinos use that to track play and payouts. I believe Bellagio uses old school tracking with pit bosses going around writing down your play from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm having trouble understanding the technical possibility of chips being deactivated in this scenario. I see from the police report it wasn't, but just wondered anyway.

If someone grabs X chips, where X is quite a high number, and walks out the door - are the numbers registered as they go, and can be deactivated thereafter?

Can a high value of X be scanned and stored by RFID technology? How are legit walk-outs and stolen separated?

Also, I see mention of the technology "Spotting a dealer accidentally shorting a player" - is this technology that granular that a transaction like that can be logged accurately?

Just curious if anyone can indulge me.

<comment><USER10> IANAM. Hypothetically, I gather that they have a database of 'activated' chips. If it goes through door, it's logged (similar how there's beepers at a shop if you accidentally didn't pay for something). When a large amount of chips leave within 30 seconds, the casion owners went to the database and marked the chips as 'stolen'. If the person claims it wasn't stolen, the casino has cameras to follow up.

If a chip was later used in the casino, the teller would swipe it to read from database. Ideally, it would raise a flag and be refused to be exchanged for money (stolen goods).

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the reply. I looked this up: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulk_reading>

"Bulk reading is a means for orienting in conduct of logistics processes, but caused by a higher quote of reading failures, not suitable for inventory management."

So I am still unsure how they could, as the PR is stating, 'turn off' a selection of chips reliably.

I guess it's a mute point as the Bellagio swapped out all chips, and therefore the RFID inside any/all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm more amazed at currency being accepted at all, the North Korean "Super $100" I hear is nearly perfect but slot machine bill validators still rejected it.

It's one thing to have custom made chips with RFID, notches, decals and who knows what else but to accept paper as a valuable item seems to risky yet most counterfeit bills are rejected all the time.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it's more accurate to say that it was foiled because of good old police work. An undercover investigation and a sting (plus a large amount of his own stupidity) is what brought the guy in. The embedded RFID stopped the high value chips ($25,000) from being cashed in, but there were still plenty of lower denominations that could have been used.

Interestingly enough, after the heist the Bellagio replaced ALL the chips on the floor with a complete new set. It would have been pretty suspicious when somebody strolled in with $25,000 chips...even without the RFID at that point.

</comment><comment><USER13> I guess we won't be seeing Ocean's Fourteen

</comment><comment><USER14> there was previously some discussion and speculation about these chips on hn, when the story was originally reported

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2023413>

</comment><comment><USER15> Why was he not caught when himself or one of his associates attempted to pass off the chips at the casino, he obviously found out some way they were worthless. I am really surprised the Bellagio cage allowed someone with a chip that couldn't be cashed to walk away AFTER a robbery had recently taken place... The whole chain of events is suspect.

</comment><comment><USER16> In other hand, I would like to have a close look at the high value chips using RFID technology especially that the cashier has usually more confident in those ones. But that's another side of the story...</comment>


Using Lego as an Urban Planning Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/tech/2015/10/legos-as-a-legitimate-urban-planning-tool/410608/ <comment><USER2> Lego* ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Lego is the plural! Gotcha

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Surprised this isn't more of a norm... logical.</comment>


Advantages of Tcl over Lisp (2005) - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.tcl.tk/13410 <comment><USER2> > For example in order to use a number as argument of a string manipulation > function, there is to convert from one type to the other.

ah yes, the coercion of everything into everything that depends on order of application. best feature ever.

another "gem":

> many thinks like HTML, XML, Networking Protocols, are about strings more > than they are about lists

all these things are about a very structured often deeply nested pieces of data. pretty much a direct opposite of the string type.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" Tcl is a programmable programming language like Lisp, in both you can write new control structures, and more generally it's possible to specialize both the languages. But while in Lisp is usually needed to write macros, in Tcl you have to write normal procedures."_

You can write normal procedures in Lisp too -- for new control structures even. In fact, macro use in Lisp is usually discouraged unless you really need them, and in most cases you really don't. When you really do, they're nice to have, though. It's too bad that when you really need them in other languages, they're not there.

 _" Lisp has types, more or less like Python and Ruby. For example in order to use a number as argument of a string manipulation function, there is to convert from one type to the other."_

I'm not sure I see the point. You have to convert strings to numbers and numbers to strings in Lisp too. Lisp has types. You can even get static types in Lisp, if you want them - like with Typed Racket.[1]

 _" In Tcl serialization just happens for many types because almost everything has a string representation. You can write a Tcl list in a file just with: puts $fd $list. This is not possible in Lisp, where you need to perform serialization."_

You can write a TCL list to a file? You mean a TCL string to a file? Lisp can just write strings to files too.

 _" Lisp central data type is the list, while Tcl central data type is the string. Tcl also makes a lot of use of lists that are just special strings. In today's world, to have strings as base type is usually more useful, because many thinks like HTML, XML, Networking Protocols, are about strings more than they are about lists. To deal with strings in Lisp is not as natural as with Tcl."_

The thing is, you don't necessarily _want_ to deal with strings in Lisp (and arguably even in TCL). You want to deal with higher level abstractions such as tags, elements, and so on. The underlying representation as string or list is less important, and can sometimes even get in the way (such as in some languages which allow buffer overflows when dealing with strings).

[1] - [http://docs.racket-lang.org/ts-guide/index.html](http://docs.racket- lang.org/ts-guide/index.html)

<comment><USER4> The need to write macros rather than procedures in Lisps for meta-programming is a conscious one. Once upon a time, in ancient Lisp, it was done in the TCL way. A programmer-defined function called a "fexpr" would be called by the interpreter to handle an unknown form. Having access to its syntax, it could give it any meaning.

Macros work under compilation, and handle interpretation situations too. (Though not all of them; certain _trompe d 'oeil_ tricks are possible with fexprs, since they can have access to the contents of the run-time lexical environment, _and_ the syntax, simultaneously, making it possible to interpret the syntax in a way that depends on the run-time value of a variable.)

You're not going to make anything better than Lisp in a programming language by resurrecting hacks that were consciously discarded as a bad design decades ago.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your specific point, but it's important to remain open to exceptions to the general point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was surprised when I started working at aol a few years ago how much of the legacy infrastructure runs on tcl. They had a configuration management and process load balancing system that was written in the 90s that as far as I know is still being used to push out updates to stuff like AIM to this day.

It might be interesting to hear one of the old school aol guys talk about it now that they're decomming a lot of that finally. There was a lot of interesting stuff there that should have been open sourced decades ago and never was.

<comment><USER7> [https://github.com/aolserver](https://github.com/aolserver)

<comment><USER8> Some more information...

AOLServer was actually bought by AOL; originally it was NaviServer. It was open sourced in 1999 by AOL.

It's a fantastic server, imo, and some of the technology developed for it were eventually brought into the Tcl core (not exactly, but the general approaches) when multi-threading was added. At least, that's my understanding.

<comment><USER9> AOLServer was great! I used it for a ton of stuff, the most complex being a marketplace for data. It was almost trivially easy to do fast, maintainable, programmable business logic as part of a complex web site. Having to switch over to the likes of Flask on Apache (not that Flask isn't a decent framework) was a major step back for development, testing and maintenance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As I recall, a fairly generic critique of lisp is that as a language of incredible power and open structure, you wind-up with many implementation of many functionalities in many libraries but few of them are finished and the API for these tend to not be very well defined.

See;

[http://www.shenlanguage.org/lambdassociates/htdocs/blog/bipo...](http://www.shenlanguage.org/lambdassociates/htdocs/blog/bipolar.htm)

<comment><USER11> You are describing any open source library written in someone's spare time.

And this essay is such baloney I don't even know where to start.

<comment><USER12> I find it helps starting with the most egregious issue/concern first. Otherwise your argument is merely an appeal to self-declared authority.

<comment><USER11> That's what the essay is doing. But in my more than 10 years (not 20) of using Lisp I have seen nothing to support the hypothesis, let alone to diagnose a psychiatric condition to a group of people.

Then there is this gem "If you read many posts discussing Lisp (including one in comp.lang.lisp called Common Lisp Sucks)" ... " The problems are soluble (Qi is a proof of that for God's sake), but when you're down everything seems insoluble. Lisp is doomed and we're all going to hell."

Lisp is doomed because nobody likes his pet project or appreciates his insults. This essay is just one big insult, I'd prefer people stop disseminating it.

<comment><USER13> 1++

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I also love Lisp and I understand your point of view about the way Lips is not so nice with strings, which are the main data of the web. What do you think of such an approach based on strings and regular expressions: [http://lambdaway.free.fr/](http://lambdaway.free.fr/) ?

</comment><comment><USER15> This is so misleading that i don't know where to start. Don't get me wrong, i wish more people would take a look at Tcl, because it has clever tricks. But this page is puzzling:

> _But while in Lisp is usually needed to write macros, in Tcl you have to > write normal procedures_

Well, in Lisp, macros are written... basically in the same way as normal procedures/functions. The difference is minimal: Use the quasiquote and comma operators (for something that can be described as "code templating"), and make sure to use "gensym" whenever you need to generate a symbol (and don't want it to collide with other existing symbols.) That's it.

The rest is just as if writing a normal function.

> _Lisp has types, more or less like Python and Ruby. For example in order to > use a number as argument of a string manipulation function, there is to > convert from one type to the other._

This is because Lisp is strongly typed, which is universally regarded today as a _Good_ Thing.

> _strings as base type is usually more useful, because many thinks like HTML, > XML, Networking Protocols, are about strings more than they are about > lists._

There are many things wrong here. In Lisp, if you need to deal with HTML or XML, instead of having to be losing time doing string operations, you just write HTML or XML directly in your code as s-expressions (take a look at most of the libraries for outputting HTML in Lisp).

Thus, you do it the high-level way.

> _The Tcl world is less fragmented. There aren 't a big number of > implementations of Tcl_

I wonder if this is truly an advantage for Tcl. Common Lisp has a dozen implementations and your code will run unchanged in all of them, as long as you don't use implementation-dependent features (And for them, there are already many portable libraries, so those features are not implementation- dependent anymore.)

<comment><USER4> > _I wonder if this is truly an advantage for Tcl._

I wonder whether it's even _true_ of Tcl. Tcl has had moving target semantics over its lifetime so in fact there are multiple implementations of Tcl. How well does the current Tcl emulate previous versions, so that code can run unmodified, and how far back does that go?

Here is a Tcl page that lists some semantic changes from 7 to 8:

ftp://ftp.tcl.tk/pub/tcl/doc/compiler.html

Even though many of the changes are for the better, yikes!

<comment><USER16> Personally I found Lisp and scheme (I'm lumping them together for their similarities) confounding to get into. There are many, many different implementations, and it seemed to me you are adopting a culture and specific ecosystem more than anything. To my mind, it was difficult. Tcl seemed _much_ less fragmented to me. There is one canonical implementation of Tcl, managed by the Tcl Core Team (TCT). There is (at least) one popular re-implementation (Jim Tcl), interestingly enough originally implemented by the author of the original article we're discussing here.

Re: backward compatibility... I'd say Tcl is _remarkably_ stable. A core tenet is "everything is a string" (EIAS), and logically, this has been honoured. Originally (before Tcl 8, or 8.4(?)) internal components of Tcl were _literally_ strings. As in C "char _" strings. It is (and has been) byte-coded for a long time now, and uses Tcl_Obj _ internals, with a string representation, and a high-performance "native" representation as well. It does still _logically_ behave as if EIAS, though.

That cited doc you mention doesn't actually seem to have a bearing in reality for some of its assertions, to my eyes. It would perhaps have "gotchas" for authors/users of scripts, but doesn't invalidate the EIAS core tenet. Additionally, that document was last edited 20 years ago. It's ancient, as is Tcl < 8.0.

<comment><USER15> > _found Lisp and scheme (I 'm lumping them together for their similarities) > (...) there are many, many different implementations_

You are lumping them together, as you mention, but they are very different precisely on this regard: Scheme has a lot of very different implementations but code portability is an issue, while Lisp (Common Lisp) has a dozen implementations but code written in CL will generally compile and run straight away in any of them, due to language standarization.

Another lisp-like language to consider is Clojure, in its JVM implementation.

<comment><USER16> Thanks. I was actually more attracted to scheme, then did become a bit confused, but maybe I should just head over to lisp and check harder to see what's what.

<comment><USER15> Scheme is good, easy to learn and flexible; don't get me wrong: i just wanted to remark that it isn't very portable.

It isn't difficult to jump from Scheme to Lisp and viceversa; they are similar in many aspects.

If you want a quick comparison between Common Lisp and Scheme it would go like this: Common Lisp is a standarized, extremely powerful and flexible programming language; while Scheme is a do-it-yourself kit for creating your own extremely powerful and flexible programming language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> TiVo chose Tcl and in fact started as a Tcl house when I was there, cutting tons of Tcl and still do to this day.

</comment><comment><USER18> iirc, the very first version of redis was written in tcl, wasn't it?

<comment><USER19> Yes, and the author of the linked article is the author of Redis.</comment></comment>


Quantum paradox puts objectivity on shaky footing - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6506/889 <comment><AUTHOR> >A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner's friend paradox

Does quantum theory apply at all scales, including that of observers? New light on this fundamental question has recently been shed through a resurgence of interest in the long-standing Wigner's friend paradox. This is a thought experiment addressing the quantum measurement problem—the difficulty of reconciling the (unitary, deterministic) evolution of isolated systems and the (non-unitary, probabilistic) state update after a measurement. Here, by building on a scenario with two separated but entangled friends introduced by Brukner, we prove that if quantum evolution is controllable on the scale of an observer, then one of 'No-Superdeterminism', 'Locality' or 'Absoluteness of Observed Events'—that every observed event exists absolutely, not relatively—must be false. We show that although the violation of Bell-type inequalities in such scenarios is not in general sufficient to demonstrate the contradiction between those three assumptions, new inequalities can be derived, in a theory-independent manner, that are violated by quantum correlations. This is demonstrated in a proof-of-principle experiment where a photon's path is deemed an observer. We discuss how this new theorem places strictly stronger constraints on physical reality than Bell's theorem.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0990-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0990-x)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >Whereas some researchers believed resolving the paradox requires quantum mechanics to break down for large systems such as human observers, some of the new study's authors believe something just as fundamental is on thin ice: objectivity. The puzzle could mean there is no such thing as an absolute fact, one that is as true for me as it is for you.</comment>


Ask HN: What email client do you personally use on dekstop? - <AUTHOR> The gmail UI is sluggish at best and I was recently introduced to the concept of third-part email clients.<p>A friend recommended Thunderbird, on my work computer - Windows Mail app. I'm willing to explore more, where do I get started? <comment><USER2> If the problem is just gmail then there is the option to 'Load Basic HTML'. Either click the link in the bottom right when the page is loading or go to [https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=html](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=html)

If you have more than one gmail account you should change the 0 to the number for the relevant account (so the 2nd one is 1, the third 2...)

[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049)

Otherwise Thunderbird is a good suggestion. It does the job.

If you're okay with terminal-based programs then you might want to try Mutt

[http://www.mutt.org/download.html](http://www.mutt.org/download.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I typically use Thunderbird, though I'll occasionally fire up mutt[0] when I crave writing emails in vim and using some of the text-checking scripts I've written.

[0] [http://www.mutt.org/](http://www.mutt.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Personal machine - Apple Mail - it's simple and it looks good, I don't need anything else.

At work - Outlook - also used by everyone else at the company for email + sharing calendars and scheduling meetings.

I never use the web UIs.

</comment><comment><USER5> KMail → [https://kontact.kde.org/components/kmail.html](https://kontact.kde.org/components/kmail.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> em client</comment>


European Antritrust Deal With Microsoft Barely Affects Browser Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/technology/11eubrowser.html?src=twr <comment><USER2> It's not the 90s anymore, people know about other browsers, still use w/e they want.

\- Safari was "accidentally" installed on every iTunes users' PC plus of course there'd be genuinely sparked interest in it I'm sure from all the iPhones/iPads/etc

\- Firefox users spent years trolling forums everywhere as soon as a user muttered the magic summoning words "I use [not firefox]" for any reason

\- Opera's had years of success on mobile/etc devices

\- Chrome's advertised on YouTube and other Google properties... probably the only other site with better chances of reaching the masses is Facebook.

Meanwhile browsers have all become better, faster, and the specific one you use matters less and less - ultimately they're all just a 100px of stuff above the actual internet.</comment>


JavaScript in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://performancejs.com/post/hde6a33/JavaScript-in-2017:-Year-in-Review,-Predictions-for-2018 <comment><USER2> Making a web application back in 2016 is like going into a forest with nothing but a compass. We know that we are heading in the right direction, it's just that we do not know the terrain in front of us. The more often we pass through the forest, the better for us to find the best way to reach the destination.

There were tools and frameworks published every month to ease the web app development or maybe just to improve application performance. Its hard for new developer to choose the best one. For newcomers, they prefer on the save side by relying on big vendors framework because they have troops to make sure the framework they create is the best.

If you are seasoned web app developer, I would like to ask you this question : "Does infernojs better than facebook react, or vue better than google angular ?". Save the answer for yourself but I am sure you understand what I mean.</comment>


Why don't password input screens include the site's password criteria? - <AUTHOR> If you type your password in incorrectly, or type the wrong password in, the website will almost never tell you their criteria for passwords.<p>I understand it could make it slightly easier for a person, who isn't you, to access your account; but it will also make it harder for a large amount of people. I would think it would be harder for more people, than it would be for the lazy hackers, that are too lazy to start creating an account to find out the criteria. Many people use the same set of passwords and just modify them depending on what website or program they are on. Why not tell people your criteria for passwords, so they have a much better chance of remembering their passwords, to use that website or program <comment><USER2> Make it easier for would be attackers.

If someone knows the minimum requirements are 8 characters, alphanumeric, with one capital chances are the majority of users are using that minimum.

Add to this most people use easy to remember and common passwords one wouldn't need to brute force every possible combination just the most likely combinations. If someone is brute forcing and they can't get it by just going through a list of the most common they will probably just stop and move on to the next user. Attackers are not often after one user they are just trying to get the easiest ones.

<comment><USER3> I think the OP addresses this in his second paragraph.

In the case where registering is open for the public, it is trivial for a would be attacker to find the password requirements. They only need to go through registration to find the password complexity. This means that you are incurring a usability cost with out a security gain.

One limitation of showing the requirements at log in I could think of is that it would require all users to have the same password requirements. This is just a thought, but if the password requirements were random throughout the userbase, it would make it more difficult for your users to use the same password across different sites. For example, if you require 25% of your users to have two capital letters, 25% have 2 symbols .. etc, it is less likely they would have gotten the same requirement from a different site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Usually form validation occurs on the server-side, written such that if a form's post body is invalid, a human-readable set of errors will be returned to the client to display. In this context, the password is just another field mapped to a specific conditional check -- which, if evaluated as false, simply means adding a canned message to the said set of errors to return.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Many people use the same set of passwords

We don't want to encourage that. It makes your account more likely to be compromised.

This prompts another question: why don't password fields have the logos of password managers to hint people in this direction? If it is the signup page, then that would decrease conversion rates. But on the login page, that would be fine, no?

</comment><comment><USER6> Recently I've just been using zxcvbn[0] to score passwords client-side, skipping the extra server-side criteria. It seems to be working nicely. Educate, don't infuriate. :)

[0]: [https://github.com/dropbox/zxcvbn](https://github.com/dropbox/zxcvbn)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've seen a site do it, I don't remember which one.

The issue here is that password UX is simply not taken seriously. If it was, password criteria wouldn't be so "stupid" in the first place.

[http://passwordistoostrong.tumblr.com/](http://passwordistoostrong.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> There is no good reason. Ever tried updating password on Authorize.net? Good God! It's the dumbest shit ever. It doesn't tell you the whole criteria in a single sentence but goes through the list and displays them one by one. And resets everything you typed in the process. Kill me now

<comment><USER9> What I do on Authorize.Net, and other sites that have password age limits and lack a clear explanation of the rules on the password change page of the rules is tweak the old password.

For example, if the old password was '4phOhc}ve6BErc' I might do one of the following to come up with the new password:

• Increment a digit: 5phOhc}ve6BErc

• Increment a letter: 4qhOhc}ve6BErc

• Change the case of a letter: 4PhOhc}ve6BErc

• Transpose a pair of adjacent characters: 4phOh}cve6BErc

Those transformations almost always result in a password that still obeys the rules.</comment></comment>


European power companies propose building artificial wind power hub in North Sea - <AUTHOR> http://www.energinet.dk/EN/ANLAEG-OG-PROJEKTER/Nyheder/Sider/Cooperation-European-Transmission-System-Operators-to-develop-North-Sea-Wind-Power-Hub.aspx <comment><USER2> This is very interesting. The North Sea is shallow and has pretty good wind conditions. Also, Norway has mountains that it can use to provide pumped storage.</comment>


Ask HN: What blogging platform do you use for your startup? - <AUTHOR>

I am deciding between using Wordpress, Octopress or something else. Would love to have HN readers' thoughts on this. <comment><USER2> Hosted Wordpress.

Wordpress on a self-hosted server is a world of pain unless you're prepared to spend significant resources on optimising it and keeping it up to date. And entertainingly, if you fail to keep it up to date the result is usually a rooted server, sooner or later.

However, outsourcing the hosting to people who do WP and nothing else removes most of those headaches and makes it a very time-effective platform.

Personally I use WP Engine for my hosting (I wrote about why over here: [http://www.mmomeltingpot.com/2012/03/wpengine-review- after-1...](http://www.mmomeltingpot.com/2012/03/wpengine-review- after-1-month-and-250k-visitors-is-this-the-best-wordpress-hosting-money-can- buy/)) but there's a lot of options out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> I will share my experience working with both Platforms.

TL:DR; Non programmers should use Wordpress

When you are working in a small team of developers, and each one can "hack the code" Octopress is a natural environment. You can host it on AWS S3 or Github pages and the setup is simple.

But when your marketing fellows start using it, Octopress is usually too complicated for them. Wordpress is more non-programmer friendly. And it has much more plugins and extensions.

Too summarize it: IMHO, Wordpress would be a better solution, unless you don't plan to hire marketers.

<comment><AUTHOR> So far its just me marketing. But for a team of people involved with the blog, probably Wordpress is a safer bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've almost always used Wordpress for everything. It is simple to use, easy to customize and has a lot of plugins etc that may be very useful depending on your needs.

Why reinvent the wheel so to say. Wordpress is widely used and seems to do the job well in most situations. Especially if the users responsible for the blog are non-technical, don't make it harder than it has to be to write those posts.

<comment><USER5> I was using Wordpress for my blog until I installed New Relic and got to see how bloated and slow it is. Yes, I installed various caching and performance plugins but it always felt a bit slow.

I'm still looking for something extremely light weight that I can plug into an existing website (rather than take over the entire code base) but until then I'm just using a simple 'blog' that I wrote myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've used a number of static site generators and have stuck with [http://ruhoh.com/](http://ruhoh.com/). It's easy to use and customize for those who want/need an easy solution.

Meanwhile, it's still young enough that I can hack away at it to meet my specific needs. Love it.

"Ruhoh's goal is to offer a universal, platform-agnostic static blog API. I like how it uses mustache templating and incorporates tag-based blogging without plugins."

</comment><comment><USER7> Stay away from self hosted blogging platforms. What if your server goes down and you want to update your users with what's happening? There are many other options available : Tumblr ( Many startups use it ), Blogger, and more.</comment>


Cyber Dust – Mark Cuban's new "secure" messaging app - <AUTHOR> https://www.cyberdust.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Another app claiming secure messaging without anything on their site to convince me that it is in any way secure.

[https://www.cyberdust.com/faqs.html#my-messages- encrypted](https://www.cyberdust.com/faqs.html#my-messages-encrypted)</comment>


Where Amazon's next headquarters should go - <AUTHOR> https://www.economy.com/dismal/analysis/commentary/298321/Where-Amazons-Next-Headquarters-Should-Go/ <comment><USER2> Just bought house in Portland. Come here and help skyrocket real estate prices ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Austin is full. Go away.

;)</comment>


Did something stupid and am scared - <AUTHOR> Posting from a throwaway account for obvious reasons.
I've been trying freelancing and building my own software for the past year and it hasn't gone well. I've hardly earned any money and am going through cash and credit cards quickly.
So here's what I did that was stupid. I received a credit card application in the mail today and decided it couldn't hurt to put last years income in for my total income, even though this year I will be making half of it, mostly my wife's meager income. I put the LLC I freelance under as my employer. It didn't ask if I was self-employe or not. I submitted the application online and now I'm panicking and having second thoughts. I am terrified that I just committed fraud. I called to cancel and the application department was closed. Now I can't sleep and don't know what to do. <comment><USER2> Go to sleep. Practically speaking, you're at zero legal risk for exaggerating your income on a credit card application. Cancel it during business hours tomorrow. You don't need any reason more specific than "I decided to not go forward with the application. Please cancel it for me."

You can worry about improving the business, because a successfully executed freelancing business should more than pay the bills. We're in the best market since forever. But worry about that tomorrow.

<comment><USER3> Can you expand on "We're in the best market since forever."? Just interested

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not a lawyer and I can't promise you I'm right, but I'd be extremely surprised if anything happens to you worse than that your application gets rejected. You may have technically committed fraud, but if you don't actually benefit from it, no one is likely to care.

This won't be true anymore if you actually receive the card and use it.

But don't be scared; just cancel the application tomorrow morning.

The much larger stupid thing you're doing is racking up a lot of credit card debt. This will not be nearly as simple a problem to solve. You need to stop doing that now. I don't know much about your situation, but is there any chance you could get a day job to support you while you build your freelancing business?

</comment><comment><USER5> The worst thing that might happen is that they give you the credit card.

</comment><comment><USER6> The credit card company has no reason to believe that anything you told them was untrue. The worst they'll do is reject your application because they can't verify the information you gave them. They have no incentive to get you in legal trouble because (1) you don't have any of their money yet and (2) you're a potential customer. Calling them up in a panic would just be drawing attention to yourself. (I'm not saying that what you did was right or smart; I'm just saying that it's not likely you'll suffer any dire consequences.)

What you _should_ really be terrified of is "going through cash and credit cards quickly". If you're financing your living expenses by borrowing against your credit cards (at a very hefty interest rate), you'll go bankrupt soon. If you can't make ends meet by freelancing, try looking for a full-time job. If you have the skills to build your own software you can probably get a job with a decent salary. You can continue working on your own projects in your spare time. Do you really want to risk you and your wife ending up broke and homeless?

</comment><comment><USER7> [ IANAL ]

Assuming that you have in fact committed fraud, a fact which requires legal adjudication:

What have you defrauded the credit card company of ?

Currently, at worst, a small piece of plastic of slight value, and again assuming that there is a legal finding of fraud.

[ Per my 1040's since 1995, I am a philosopher ]

Your concerns seem more along the lines of having done something that the sort of person you strive to be would not do. That's not a legal issue, it's an ethical/moral dilemma.

Business is inherently amoral [ by which I do not mean immoral ]. Actions are either legal or illegal. The general assumption is that anything not explicitly prohibited is permitted. Money changes many things, including people's judgements: its fungiblity lets it serve as a proxy for the basic necessities of an individual's survival.

Credit card companies have very sophisticated means of assessing risk. These go well beyond self reported income, e.g. patterns of payment/non-payment are probably reliable actuarily.

In the end, the big issue ethically/morally is not if what you did was ok with the credit card company. The big issue is if what you did is ok with you.

Ethics/morals are about not doing what is legally permitted.

</comment><comment><USER8> You basically did what the majority of Americans do. There is a difference between fraud and FRAUD.

Your story is the equivalent of wondering if you'll be prosecuted for grand theft for taking 2 samples at the grocery store instead of 1.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't sweat it. The credit card company will likely figure that out and just decline your application. Or, to your surprise it might be approved anyway.

More importantly though, get some stable income coming in, at least for a couple to a few months. It will give you some clarity to not have to think about things like this for a while. I certainly know how you feel. I imagine most freelancers/building a product on the side know how you feel.

<comment><USER10>
        Or, to your surprise it might be approved anyway.

This is the likely outcome from your description. In which case you can cancel or not activate the card and you're at no legal risk.

Applications for things with false information are only a legal matter when it's government-related or you're using it.

You haven't done either.

<comment><USER11> pretty sure it's still considered bank fraud which is worse than fraud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think if this is causing you this much anxiety there are more significant issues than this credit card application.

Seriously; do you know how many people lie or exaggerate on financial documents when they're trying to get money?

</comment><comment><USER13> I wouldn't worry too much. All they really want is for you to violate the introductory terms so they can charge you 30% interest.

If you're worried, just cancel it when you receive it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Unless they specified a date, then putting your previous years full income seems a reasonable answer to the question.

In this case, I would do nothing and just see if they issue the card or not.

It's not like they have any means of knowing your income other than your reporting it... so they can't check it.

If would only seem to be fraud if you're doing this deliberately to mislead them and have no intention of repaying the loan.

</comment><comment><USER15> Calm down. IANAL but AFAIK, you aren't liable until you activate your card (if your application goes through, that is).

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh, you are soooo fucked dude. I can't believe you committed such a terrible crime, and then you come online and tell people about it. You're probably looking at 10 to 15 years minimum.

<comment><USER17> Do you have a valid reason to fuel his fearful state of mind without providing any insight in your comment?

<comment><USER16> c'mon, I can't believe people are taking his fear seriously. This is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read, thus I'm being sarcastic.</comment></comment></comment>


Christmas Tree in 1k of JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://js1k.com/2010-xmas/demo/856

<comment><USER2> How he did it:

[http://www.romancortes.com/blog/how-i-did-the-1kb- christmas-...](http://www.romancortes.com/blog/how-i-did-the-1kb-christmas- tree/)</comment>


Why did this take so long? Events-based mobile ads ARE a HUGE success - <AUTHOR> http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/11/why-did-this-take-so-long-events-based-mobile-ads-are-a-huge-success.html

<comment><USER2> I think it only worked this well now because it wasn't done before.

Had it been done in an earlier manner where mobile phones haven't entered the SmartPhone/Social Media craze - everyone would have tuned out faster.

Dodging the Adblock crowd and piggybacking on the Post-Iphone hipster crowd is the hallmark of great timing if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER3> > This is a smart blog.

somehow the first comment for this article makes me laugh :) cheap handbags.</comment>


The perilous plight of the (non)-replicator (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://funderstorms.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/the-perilous-plight-of-the-non-replicator/ <comment><USER2> Publishing non-replications really should be part of research culture.</comment>


What does this JS do? - <AUTHOR> http://gist.github.com/398782 <comment><USER2> <http://pastebin.com/ceWGKZjJ> , now you just need to firebug a Facebook page so you can figure out what those element IDs do...

At a quick glance, I'd say ErrantX is correct.

<comment><USER3> How'd you do that?

<comment><USER2> I pasted your script into Eclipse (new JS source file), Source -> Format to make it readable. Then I took the big array that's assigned to _0x82af , pasted it into Firebug, bam, normalized strings. After that it was just plain find/replace. The first few lines came from the part before eval(.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If it works like the others do: it sends a request to your friends to add the group/page etc. (this could be different, I haven't had a close look, but it is what others did)

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://jsbeautifier.org/>, which usually can solve problems like this, wasn't able to help.</comment>


Jenkins and Kubernetes: The Perfect Pair - <AUTHOR> https://www.rookout.com/blog/jenkins-and-kubernetes-the-perfect-pair <comment><USER2> > The easiest way to get Jenkins deployed on Kubernetes Cluster (we are using > a dedicated cluster for Jenkins, but that's not necessary) is to build your > own Helm chart

 _barf_ So much of this post I disagree with. I guess I should look at the kubernetes plugin again, but I abandoned using it last year. At the time, it seemed like you had to declare you base images in the plugin configuration itself, and if people launch things that need to spin up their own containers for tests, you have to expose the base docker socket.

They post talks about using Docker-in-Docker, but that still has to run in privileged mode, and isn't recommended. At least you don't get dangling containers, but you don't really block developer access to the host.

> Mount a persistent volume to /var/lib/docker to make sure your layers are > cached persistently for awesome build performance.

Do you want data corruption? Because that's pretty much how you get data corruption. It's not clear if they have a single Docker-in-docker instance per volume, but I assume you'd have to.

Also, and maybe I need to revisit this, when I attempted this, it seemed like the Jenkinsfile had to be heavily modified to run on k8s agents. It wasn't a simple transition at all.

And you pretty much do want a dedicated cluster for this. That was another issue, where at the time we only had one dev and one prod cluster. We now have a cluster just for platform stuff, so it might be worth looking at again, but I'm still hesitant.

<comment><USER3> Now it is easier to define your pipelines to use k8s agents.

        podTemplate() {
            node(POD_LABEL) {
                stages {
                    ...

For the permissions, you need to do that with ClusterRoles directly in k8s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I respectfully disagree that Jenkins is a perfect pair with _anything_. Time to move on from Jenkins, folks; there are far better options nowadays.

<comment><USER5> @nathanaldensr please bring up the options.</comment></comment>


Scikit-learn user guide (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://scikit-learn.org/stable/_downloads/scikit-learn-docs.pdf <comment><USER2> If you want to learn machine learning, there're much better material to start with. For example, this: [http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/](http://www- bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/)

<comment><USER3> I agree that this text is great for machine learning theory, but often times non-students learn better through learning tools while solving real problems, rather than focusing on theory. Scikit-learn is an amazing tool for facilitating problem based machine learning. I don't feel the same way about R unless the student has a statistics degree already...

<comment><USER4> The course actually teaches statistics. R is only used to illustrate the concepts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> so much value in one free python library. inspiring.

also ironic that it is for free, but adjustments to real world business problems are as expensive as you want (consultants, coders)

</comment><comment><USER6> What is it exactly?

<comment><USER7> sklearn (scikit-learn) is a machine learning library for Python. In practice, it's useful for integrating a whole zoo of machine learning models for a range of tasks (supervised, unsupervised) and varying strategies within these domains (e.g., decision-tree based models, regression, neural networks) into a simple API, where the following three lines of Python code do 80% of the ML work for you.

>>> model = [insert sklearn class here]

>>> model.fit(trainX, trainY)

>>> model.predict(testX)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We've updated the title from the submitted "One book to rule Machine Learning: glorious sklearn doc over 2000 pages" which is... not the original (like the guidelines ask).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> I have to admit that the sales pitch of the document is on point, however they could leave the revision history out as I see not much value added there.

<comment><USER10> You can bring it up as an issue on github. They can probably move it down to the bottom.

The change log has A LOT of value if you are trying to figure out what version you should upgrade to. If you are stuck on an older version, then you need to understand what value you gain by potentially introducing new bugs into your product.

They also credit everybody who has worked on the project, which is super important.

<comment><USER9> You have a good point, thanks. Maybe my reflexion was more about the scope of the pdf, no point in bundling things not relevant to learning the library and that maybe need easier discoverability than a pdf anyway.

<comment><USER10> It is quite navigable. You can click anywhere on the table of content and it will get you right there. There is also a sidebar with bookmarks that work. You can basically skip 70 pages. Considering it is already 2000 pages, you have to use the table of contents already.

The scope of the PDF is to be the full documentation. If you were used to doing something a certain way, you need to know that things changed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chapter 6 of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book - <AUTHOR> http://www.railstutorial.org/chapters/modeling-and-viewing-users-two#top

<comment><USER2> Loving this tutorial... really easy to follow and talk about "getting real?" this tutorial does just that. rSpec, git... it's all in there and in the right order!

<comment><USER3> and once you've done all that you then deploy your app to Heroku...

<comment><USER4> this is a bad thing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The news announcement (with Rails 3 info) is here:

[http://news.railstutorial.org/chapter-6-of-the-ruby-on- rails...](http://news.railstutorial.org/chapter-6-of-the-ruby-on-rails- tutorial-book)

The short version: The _Ruby on Rails Tutorial_ book will use Rails 3 ASAHP. :-)</comment>