Show HN: A 683 byte tooltip in pure CSS - <AUTHOR> https://mightycrow.github.io/wenk/ <comment><USER2> Sweet! I've got a thing for micro-frameworks/libraries like this. It's surprising how much functionality fits in less than a kilobyte, while most websites these days use megabytes. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER3> You might want to add a more visible link to the repo on the page, the github banner in the corner is easy to miss.

Cool stuff otherwise, looks nice and clean. Although you have to be careful and make sure it always fits on the page (fallback to display on top on small screens for instance).

<comment><AUTHOR> Will look into it. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't know you could fetch HTML attributes values through CSS properties. Neat!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's awesome :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is this supposed to work on mobile?</comment>


The White Working Class Will Come for Silicon Valley Next - <AUTHOR> https://stanfordreview.org/silicon-valley-and-the-white-working-class-3b3252043946 <comment><USER2> > The Stanford Review, Stanford's Independent Newspaper

This article is not really news, it's a speculative opinion piece and should be labeled as such. Unfortunately, we see this kind of "soft news" article every day in leading newspapers such as the NYT, so smaller publications like Stanford Review think it must be considered journalism and do the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like these articles about AI taking away jobs is just a distraction from the real wage depression caused by temporary work visas, illegal immigration, and workers being classified as contractors. Perhaps Silicon Valley elites wish to signal they have other options for labor as a sort of threat to combat increased scrutiny of their labor practices. Perhaps the message is: "Don't take away our cheap labor or we will release the AI overlords."

</comment><comment><USER4> Suicide rates are going to spike even more after self-driving cars become common. Not only because a lot more Americans will be unemployed, but also a lot of people whose deaths are currently ruled as car accidents are going to instead be forced to commit suicide in ways that have less plausible deniability.

<comment><USER5> That's true but you will reach a breaking point, like what happened in 1992 in the la riots, but this time the working class will spontaneously loot and burn the entire country. The LA Riots hit so fast and hard and spontaneously there was no way for the powers to be to prepare. After a couple of weeks the troops came in and started using machine guns on local people, that shut it down. My prediction is that Trump will drop a nuclear weapon on one or more major US cities to put down a rebellion. No one else has his level of mental instability, not even Bush would do that but I would be not at all suprised to see Trump drop a nuclear weapon on a major US city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> this article might have been good without the race-baiting. hard to understand what "white" has to do with having a job.</comment>


Subversion to enable Git-like features - <AUTHOR> http://subversion.wandisco.com/component/content/article/1/44.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes absolutely - Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Subversion is for everyone, of course it's not. However the next release will see considerable improvement for _all_ Subversion users. Who knows, some Git users might even come back ;)

</comment><comment><USER2> This has to be good news, anything that advances commonly used tools improves software development in general. Whether you like subversion or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you're better off just using Git.

<comment><USER4> Git is basically the epitome of why linux will never have significant marketshare on the desktop. Sure, Git is an amazing tool, but its usability is utterly horrific. And Git's most prominent users tend to be extremely sophisticated and intelligent software developers who are able to come to grips with these usability problems quite easily, so their response to those problems tends to be "get over it, git is great, use it anyway, it's not that big a deal, quit whining" which is no better than "let them eat cake".

When people use a computer they want usability, they want a GUI (where relevant), they don't want an ALTAIR front-panel with a bunch of inscrutable toggles and equally inscrutable lights. This is why Mercurial is so popular despite being so similar to Git. Until the Git team accept these problems as real problems and do something about them Git will be relegated to a niche tool and 10 or 20 years down the road when every dev is using DVCS it won't be Git it'll be Mercurial or SVN-DVCS or something new.

<comment><USER5> But Subversion's UI is horrific _and_ its common operations throw away data in many cases. If Git is the Linux of version control systems, Subversion is the Windows of version control, and I don't mean that as a compliment. At least it's _possible_ to get Linux working.

<comment><USER4> You miss the point. The problem is that you think "Subversion is the Windows of version control" is an insult. Windows is the world's most prevalent desktop operating system, by a huge margin. Windows is responsible for around $4 billion dollars of _profit_ per year for Microsoft. Only a fool dismisses a fact like that as irrelevant, obviously Windows is doing something right.

Both Git and Linux are very ideologically pure in their design and construction. This has considerable benefits in some areas (I'm a huge fan of Linux as a server) but leads to a degree of maniacal zealotry in the developer and fan-base which ultimately causes the projects to become self-limiting.

I like Linux. I like Git. I think the technology underpinning both is fantastic. I'd like to see them both succeed. I'm just sad that there are so many zealots peddling the idea that any flaws (and there are many for Linux on the desktop and for Git as a tool for every dev in the world) can be swept under the rug because of the awesomeness of the ideological purity of their construction.

<comment><USER3> The only reason Microsoft is on the top is its marketshare. People don't want to know anything about their computers, they just want to watch funny videos and talk to their friends.

If you sit someone in front of something that doesn't look like Windows, they flip out. My grandma flips out when we try to show her something on our Linux computers, she says, "Where's your icons? Why does this look different? This is crazy."

The sad thing is that a lot of this is Microsoft's fault in the first place. They've used their marketshare totally irresponsibly. Failings in the design and implementation of Windows have made users almost universally afraid of tinkering with their computers because of the possibility of breakages, viruses, and other unpleasant consequences.

Windows is #1 because of its marketshare and that's it. There may have been reasons they got to #1 a long time ago, but those are irrelevant now. What's relevant now is that Windows keeps on trucking because any program or component you pick up at the store will work on Windows, because everyone uses Windows, and you wouldn't make any money selling something that Windows can't work with. Everyone knows how to use Windows; they know to click the Start button, to click on the blue E, they know where things are. It's just like the systems they use at work or school.

For most people, the reason they choose Windows is because Windows is everywhere, and that's it. You won't find many people saying that they want to use Windows because they love the concept of the Start button. They use Windows because they know how it works. A few smaller niches use Windows because a program or a set of programs that are important to them run [well] on it. Very, very few use Windows because of Windows itself.

So, uh, now that we're done with that tangent, I think the Linux community recognizes the need for usability. You should read Planet GNOME or Planet KDE more often; there are frequently posts there about usability studies and improvements on their software. They are making strides. It's just that getting cooperation, funding, etc., is an uphill battle when your installed base is under 2%.

<comment><USER4> Windows is #1 because Windows is #1? There's certainly something to be said for network effect, but this particular line of reasoning seems more suitable to a tautology club meeting - <http://www.xkcd.com/703/>

<comment><USER3> Can you tell me what features of Windows compel the normal user to buy it? Compatibility doesn't count because generally people will make their wares compatible with whatever has enough marketshare to seem profitable.

Compatibility and familiarity are features of Windows's ubiquity, not Windows itself. What other reason does one buy Windows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Useless announcement, it adds nothing to what was said in the video linked last week on HN... They should have at least added a proper features list.

<comment><USER7> Some of us don't like getting information from videos, especially at work where bandwidth and internet usage is monitored....

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114804>

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone here still use SVN? Its been so long I barely remember how to spell it.</comment>


The Agile Jazz Band - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/03/the-agile-jazz.php

<comment><AUTHOR> You guys that are in startups, or who haven't worked in large corporations, probably wonder what the big deal of this article is.

But those of you who have worked in a high-formality, high-checklist environment and _also_ an agile startup will simply nod.</comment>


Marko Rodriguez  YOW: Solving Problems with Graphs [video] - <AUTHOR> http://yow.eventer.com/yow-2012-1012/applying-graphs-to-solve-real-world-problems-by-marko-a-rodriguez-1228?

<comment><USER2> The slides for this presentation are available here: <http://www.slideshare.net/slidarko/yow-australia2012></comment>


Is Twilio SMS Stable? - <AUTHOR> We are seeing significant delays on programmable SMS everywhere, and possibly no delivery at all on Verizon, since ~10am eastern.  Their status page is green, and their logs are claiming messages are being delivered.  Anyone else seeing this? <comment><AUTHOR> They just updated their status, about an hour late:

[https://twitter.com/TwilioStatus/status/1143895922021027840](https://twitter.com/TwilioStatus/status/1143895922021027840)</comment>


Firefox and IE's "View source" can be spoofed to show anything - <AUTHOR> http://www.scriptjunkie.us/2011/09/original-source-forgery/ <comment><USER2> I believe Chrome shows the original source because when you View Source, it requests the page again. This complicates debugging Ajax requests (and also Get and Post requests).

Firefox and IE show the "current" source, which is liable to be replaced as shown by dave1010uk.

Type the following into the Chrome Dev Tools console, then the Firebug console:

      testBool = true;
      document.write('');
      typeof testBool;

Chrome shows boolean, firefox shows undefined.

<comment><USER3> I wondered if there is anything different about the second (view source) request that could be detected and a different response provided - but I don't think so after a quick look with WireShark.

<comment><USER4> Well, you could set up a temporary client blacklist based on cookies or IP addresses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since the site seems to be down, you can read the article (no images unfortunately) in Google's Cache[1].

[1]: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.scriptjunkie.us/2011/09/original- source-forgery/&hl=en&strip=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've recreated a simple proof of concept here: <http://taskthere.com/viewsource/>

It works in Firefox 6, not sure about any other browsers. If you want to see the actual source, disable JavaScript (or use Chrome or curl).

<comment><USER6> To see the actual source in Firefox 6, I just viewed the source without dismissing the alert, there was no need to disable anything. The only thing is that with the alert, I couldn't right click on the page and click on "View Page Source", I had to use the menu item Tools: Web Developer: Page Source (or its keyboard shortcut).

<comment><AUTHOR> I used an alert as a quick example. You could put any HTML or JS on the page (e.g. links for SEO value, iframes with PDF exploits, a bitcoin miner or a video of Rick Astley) and when someone views the source it looks like there's nothing malicious.

Ctrl/Cmd-u can also be used to view source in Firefox.

<comment><USER7> If you want to view the current HTML source in Firefox you can use Ctrl+A and then right-click > "View Selection Source".

I think it's more a question of what do you expect to see when you "View Source". For example, I have messed around with document.write a lot and it's pretty obvious to me that, if I use view source then it's going to give me the source and any changes done to it my document.write/open/close. In this case since document.write is used after HTML parsing has been completed it replaces the whole page and thus makes view source rather pointless.

<comment><AUTHOR> This bug isn't showing the usual generated source but some kind of hybrid between original source and generated source.

\- To see the original source, hit ctrl-u before dismissing the alert.

\- To see the "hybrid" source, hit ctrl-u after dismissing the alert. I always expected this to be idential to what the webserver sent, just syntax highlighted. (Though I haven't messed around with document.close before.)

\- To see the generated source, hit ctrl-a, right click & "View Selection Source". This is different to the original/hybrid source as Firefox inserts html tags to make the page valid. My example had no html, head, title or body tags. This should reflect the current page DOM, as affected by any JavaScript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thankfully, curl can't be tricked in such a manner.

I'd have a more substantial comment, I hope, if the site was loading.

<comment><USER9> _Thankfully, curl can't be tricked in such a manner._

fetch <http://jcs.org/tmp/nothing.html> through curl:

          jcs@air:~> curl -s http://jcs.org/tmp/nothing.html
          there is really nothing here, i can promise you that.

but you just aren't seeing the content.

         jcs@air:~> curl -s http://jcs.org/tmp/nothing.html | vis
         View source in Firefox. \^H\^H\^H\^H\^H\^H\^H\^H\^H\^H\^H[...]

<comment><USER8> Clever and true... I didn't say I'd view it in the terminal, though!

        curl http://jcs.org/tmp/nothing.html | vim -

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Older Internet Explorer and Firefox versions displayed the source that was downloaded, not the one generated/modified by scripts. It makes so much more sense, especially since there was always an option to view the generated source (by using JavaScript for an example) but I don't see how you can access the downloaded source at all if View Source is replaced by View Generated Source. Hm, actually one could use FireBug and watch Net response I suppose, but that's inconvenient.

<comment><AUTHOR> This bug isn't showing the original source _or_ the usual generated source but a hybrid. See my comment here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2977123>

The best way to access downloaded source is probably with JavaScript turned off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, I can't reproduce what he claims by only looking at the cached version without images and source code.

I especially don't understand this part:

      When you use document.write outside of a script tag embedded inline in
      the page [...]

What is "outside of a script tag embedded inline in the page" supposed to mean?

<comment><AUTHOR> What that means (though is not how I would word it) is a document.write that is called asynchronously. The post uses an ajax request to do it but I've recreated it here [1] like this:

        setTimeout(function() {
          document.write('foo');
          document.close();
        }, 1);

[1] <http://taskthere.com/viewsource/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In my opinion, "View source" should be a text log of everything the server sent to the client. Why would you ever want anything different?

</comment><comment><USER13> One of the many reasons why I recommend using NoScript. <http://noscript.net/>

<comment><USER14> Although I don't use NoScript (or NotScripts) anymore the web was far less annoying without arbitrary JavaScript. I never had to leave a site because some irrelevant box popped up over the page I was looking at, or about to be.

It will be effective at blocking the Flash-like HTML ads that are going to pop up soon as well. Unless they get _really_ creative with CSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's with the out of date Flash popup? Running Chrome beta channel here with Flash built in.

<comment><USER16> What's with the site not even loading?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Opera 11.51 won't even try show the source for me. It's definitely interesting.

</comment><comment><USER18> Tried in Firefox 6... spoof works. Tried in Firefox 3.6... could see full source, script and all.

<comment><USER19> IIRC earlier versions of FF re-request the page when you do a view source, rather than displaying a rendering of the current (potentially changed) document state. You could still spoof the source view in this case by somehow recognising the second request (though how you'd distinguish "view source" from "f5" I don't know) and sending different content back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Actually, chrome downloads the source again when you choose "view source". You can see the "modded" source with ctrl/cmd+shift+I.

<comment><USER21> If you mean the Developer Tools/Inspector, it's cmd+opt+I, at least on Chrome 14.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Facebook Group for Solo Founders - <AUTHOR> Startups are tough. It's especially tough for solo founders. Having gone through Startup Chile, I understand the value in having a good community of peers.
So, if the value of having cofounders is really just emotional support, let's be the emotional support for one another. I've created a Facebook group for Solo Founders. Let's connect and share our experiences.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/390441457703323 <comment><USER2> Having a support group definitely helps to get stuff done.

We make private groups for founders and provide tools to help them communicate, most notably weekly/monthly video chats.

Check us out! <http://landing.vocaltap.com/startups>

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not specifically for sole founders, but I'm on nReduce and it's a good way to get feedback from fellow entrepreneurs.</comment>


Alan Lomax and the Search for the Origins of Music - <AUTHOR> https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/288101/alan-lomax-origins-of-music <comment><USER2> Fascinating how the quasi-biography of Alan Lomax doesn't even mention his father: John Lomax, one of the original "folk song collectors" who traveled throughout the US in the 20s and 30s, transcribing and recording music from isolated rural communities.

In my view, John Lomax's project is more interesting: these old American folk songs provide a geneology of American myth, which is something with cultural import today. Ethnomusicology is fascinating from an abstract perspective (and interesting how they were mostly Jews, makes me more sympathetic as I am myself), but seems a little too distant, trying to solve a problem that might be a little too big...

</comment><comment><USER3> Gonna take this opportunity to plug one of my favorite albums of recent years, Jayme Stone's Lomax Project [https://open.spotify.com/album/0nfUQ0fq6JXOv8EyUGRgUY?si=ggw...](https://open.spotify.com/album/0nfUQ0fq6JXOv8EyUGRgUY?si=ggwzIwDWRuuY- RW-cJTyLQ)

It's a collection of professionally arranged renditions of songs from Alan Lomax's archive. Brilliant project and album.

<comment><USER4> Apple Music link: [https://music.apple.com/us/album/jayme-stones-lomax- project/...](https://music.apple.com/us/album/jayme-stones-lomax- project/970566564)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Weird! I'd never heard of Alan Lomax until yesterday while reading Ani DiFranco's memoir, where she waxes poetical about his influence in bringing great voices forward and incredible dedication to recording a wonderfully diverse and inclusive set of musicians for decades.</comment>


FAA Grounds All Cirrus Vision Jets over Angle of Attack Issues - <AUTHOR> https://www.flyingmag.com/faa-grounds-cirrus-vision-jets <comment><USER2> Here's the directive: [http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/...](http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/448c46c035e93a6e862583e0007291d8/$FILE/2019-08-51_Emergency.pdf)

This isn't really a grounding, at least not the way the 737 MAX is grounded. Cirrus jets can't be flown until the AD is complied with, but complying with the AD is a (relatively) simple matter of replacing the angle of attack sensors. Once that's done, the aircraft is airworthy again.

The issue is a "quality escape," i.e. the existing sensors weren't built to spec. There are two screws that attach the vane to the potentiometer; the factory didn't torque the screws properly and didn't apply thread locker to them.

So this is a manufacturing error, not a fundamental problem with the design. I say that just to provide contrast with the MAX issues since the problems are superficially similar, but quite different once you get into the details.

<comment><USER3> Another data point to remind everyone how AoA is one of the most important metrics wrt flying an airplane (airspeed is right up there, too).

Obligatory citation; imho, one of the webs's great resources—

[https://www.av8n.com/how/htm/aoa.html#sec-aoa- intro](https://www.av8n.com/how/htm/aoa.html#sec-aoa-intro)

<comment><USER4> > everyone how AoA is one of the most important metrics wrt flying an airplane

Pretty difficult argument to make when most planes do not have AoA sensors!

<comment><USER5> Almost all new airplanes have them. The Skyhawk got one as standard equipment in 2016.

Here's a thesis on the topic: [https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/68634/1/AbramsHonor...](https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/68634/1/AbramsHonorsThesis.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Sure, but almost no-one flies brand new airplanes. What percentage of GA flights do you guess contain an AoA display? And the argument's supposed to be that they're a most important indicator for airplanes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who are annoyed by flyingmag's un-close-able lightbox hovering the article if you have adblockers installed, here is the content: [https://outline.com/3zUyc6](https://outline.com/3zUyc6)

</comment><comment><USER7> They did not ground them. They issued an emergency AD (airworthiness directive). As soon as you comply (replace a sensor) or if you already don't have a faulty sensor (a specific model number was bad) you may fly

<comment><USER8> in light of this information -- i think the headline should be changed within HN to 'FAA Issues Airworthiness Directive for Cirrus Vision Jets' or something to that affect.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just quoted what the article title was. I didn't write the article.

<comment><USER9> It's not a dig at you or anything like that. HN likes to try to remove any kind of editorializing of the article titles regardless of who did it. Though they usually side on caution with the actual title of the article like you used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sorry but I read a string of negative messages about the FAA in this. Firstly, that they know they need to be seen to act more strongly, and secondly they lack courage: they did it to GA not commercial because they're scared of the airline lobby.

Why didn't they act like this to commercial aviation?

</comment><comment><USER11> I was watching a youtube video last weekend of the landing procedures in one of these jets. The cockpit and avionics are very modern. They automate a ton of tasks for the pilot and the displays are more "English" than three letter acronyms.

<comment><USER12> Good news is, you can spend some money and upgrade any airplane, even a 1950's Cessna to glass cockpits for a similar experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Given how absolutely critical sensor data is becoming to aircraft software, it seems like airplanes should probably have a dozen redundant AoA sensors and pitot tubes. And the sensors should be of different design and manufacture, so they're unlikely to all fail under the same conditions.

It seems like the Air France 447 and 737 MAX crashes could have been avoided just by having highly redundant sensors.

This is probably what will have to happen for fully self-flying aircraft, so why not do it now with partially self-flying aircraft?

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this exceptional news?

I am curious how often this happens generally

I've been told to consider how issues evolve after they stop being reported, and so I am skeptical whether this is exceptional at all because aircraft groundings are only in the public interest because of the recent worldwide coordinated grounding

<comment><USER15> Not very.

This is pretty much the same as a standard car recall, just with more enforcement teeth. FAA says you can't fly until you replace a part that had a manufacturing defect. Replace it and you're good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That is a strange looking jet with the engine on top angled down...

<comment><USER17> It is absolutely puzzling to me why anybody would prefer this 'jet' to a nice (used maybe) turboprop like a KingAir or an Aerocommander (heck, even an MU2). They are (almost) just as fast (or slow), carry more load and do not require a type rating to fly. Oh, and they cost less and eat about the same amount of fuel too, ... and are less costly to maintain.

<comment><USER18> I think they are designed to appeal to SR20/22 owners looking for an upgrade, as the only real advantage they offer on the competition is CAPS (although I'd take the second engine on a kingair over a parachute)

Full glass cockpit is also looks pretty sweet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To whom is this of interest? How many HN readers are flying around in a $2m jet, fewer than 100 of which exist.

<comment><USER20> HN readers who have a general interest in all things aviation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to define classes at runtime in any language? - <AUTHOR>

I was just thinking about chatbots, and the ability to make logical deductions. Like Men are Mortals, Socrates is a man, so Socrates is mortal. So Mortals could be the superclass, men could be the subclass, and Socrates could be an instance of the subclass men, and would be a member of superclass Mortals. But it would be nice to have a way of defining these classes at runtime, so in a chatbot if the user posed such a scenario to the chatbot, the chatbot could use some pattern matching, construct the classes on the fly, and figure out the relations, thereby sounding "intelligent". Can this be done? Classes made at runtime instead of compile time? <comment><USER2> In Python you can create a class at "runtime" using "type(name, bases, dict)" as per <http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#type>

You can also use "new.classobj(name, bases, dict)" -- not quite sure what the difference is.

</comment><comment><USER3> You would probably want to implement your own concept of classes to do this, in which case you wouldn't have to restrict yourself to languages where classes could be declared at runtime.

But if you really wanted to use the language's classes, there are languages that support it. Javascript is one. I think Ruby lets you do this too. Python lets you declare classes at runtime, but I don't think it gives you as much flexibility as the former two. Still, any of the three should be powerful enough to do what you want. Scheme will let you do it too.

</comment><comment><USER4> Certainly you can define classes at runtime. But I think this is the wrong way to go about logical reasoning. What happens when you want to express that Socrates is a dead Greek philosopher? Do you have DeadMortal (subclass of Mortal with isDead() returning true), GreekMortal, PhilosopherMortal (subclass of UnemployedMortal)?

I think you may get further if you look at a language like Prolog -- work along the lines of predicates, rules, and attributes.

</comment><comment><USER5> See this (old) presentation for thinking along these lines:

[http://www.jroller.com/obie/entry/deep_integration_of_ruby_a...](http://www.jroller.com/obie/entry/deep_integration_of_ruby_and)

</comment><comment><USER6> There are several languages that allow dynamic creation of classes. Any of the dynamically typed scripting languages can do that javascript, python, perl, ruby, etc.</comment>


Perspectives on Encrypted Media Extension Reaching First Public Working Draft - <AUTHOR> https://www.w3.org/QA/2013/05/perspectives_on_encrypted_medi.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=statusnet&foo=1 <comment><USER2> The mistake being made here is that large content industries need the web more than the web needs them. The following assertion simply doesn't hold, as seen by other industries that have had magnificent success despite piracy or despite DRM:

> Without content protection, owners of premium video content - driven by both > their economic goals and their responsibilities to others - will simply > deprive the Open Web of key content.

From whence does this assertion come? Of course, the content industries that lobbied for this. But if there is no HTML support for DRM, does anyone think content industries will give up on distributing content online?

<comment><USER3> Isn't this already the case? Netflix forces users to use Silverlight; YouTube won't serve HTML5 videos if ads are enabled. The "Open Web" is already lacking their content because they rely on DRM already.

Content industries won't give up on publishing, they'll just pursue the current status quo of terrible plugins for the imaginary protection DRM gives them.

In an ideal world the executives concerned about piracy would realise their errors, but from my perspective, DRM'd HTML5 videos natively decoded are a world better than those reluctantly vomited out using Flash.

<comment><USER4> How is a third-party black-box module decoding it to a specific point on the viewport a "world better" than Flash, a third-party black-box module, decoding it to a specific point on the viewpoint?

<comment><USER3> The former doesn't include redundant duplication of functionality and other bells and whistles. Since the only objective is decrypting content it'll presumably be more practical to port (and reverse engineer) and ship with fewer security vulnerabilities.

It's by no means perfect, but the less that can be delegated to a plugin the better in my view. I don't see this as an ideal choice, just a pragmatic choice for a better option given the circumstances.

My quantification for "a world better" relies on the subjective judgement that Flash is worlds worse than some mystery crypto blob. I believe that to be the case.

<comment><USER2> Since the topic is DRM, and DRM only works if you don't know how it works...

> Since the only objective is decrypting content it'll presumably be more > practical to port (and reverse engineer)

I cannot comprehend the confusion of ideas that could provoke such a suggestion. Do you really believe open source platforms will get an open source module? Do you think it'll be anything _but_ a black box whose nature, by definition, precludes anyone knowing what it does? Where will you get your guarantees about security vulnerabilities, when the very nature of the code will be, _must_ be such that it is as difficult to discern its purpose and mechanism of operation as possible.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps I could have been more clear; when I say "porting" I mean from the perspective of a vendor. The current status quo is that content is available only where Adobe can be bothered to provide Flash. Given that constructing a "secure" black is a smaller task than providing a standardised runtime environment, it's feasible that vendors might target more than just Windows and OSX. This has nothing to do with source availability.

w.r.t easier reverse engineering, given the behaviour is constrained to the target blob and the interface is standardised, liberating content should be simplified. As far as security vulnerabilities go the choice still remains, run the blob or don't view the content.

<comment><USER5> OTOH, it will be impossible to port CDMs to browsers that don't allow CDM plugins. Do we think Safari or Metro IE are going to allow them?

<comment><USER3> The same can be said of Flash, however. The other side of that coin is that content will never be available DRM free, so I'm not sure if it's an important point; mobile content delivery is normally achieved via apps, or in the BBC iPlayer's case, in the browser, "protected" by a client certificate.

<comment><USER5> Flash is specifically grandfathered by browsers but EME isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Remember when Flash was becoming ubiquitous?

Here's a primary concern of mine: Many people think this means Netflix will continue to be DRM-ed, YouTube will gain DRM-ed for-pay channels, etc. AKA premium video. (Oh, and audio -- nearly forgot that.)

Once the tool is available, baked in, I fear a wholesale run to DRM-ed content. This will certainly be at least _tried_ as _the solution_ to _the revenue problem_.

I'll add that, aside from the implications for an "open Net", I also worry about the security implications: We'll be forced to take without inspection whatever an encrypted provider sees fit to deliver or falls prey to. No, thanks.

<comment><USER7> The alternative is that people will continue to use Flash, an even more obscure (and not to mention closed) format, which we are forced to take with even _less_ inspection.

At least with <video> the only thing encrypted will be the actual video file.

<comment><USER8> Note that EME is an interface for arbitrary DRM plug-ins (CDMs) that could be implemented on system/kernel/hardware level.

Flash and Silverlight at least live in userland and have public API (NPAPI). AFAIK using them in your own browser is not a DMCA violation.

OTOH EME deliberately does not define any API between browser and CDMs, so DRM vendors have opportunity to license CDMs to selected browser vendors and make playback with "unapproved" browsers (e.g. your own open-source build) a DMCA violation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >By putting hooks for DRM into your standards you are not protecting the open web, you are destroying it.

>Please stop before you betray your founding principles any further.

Reposted from the comments of the draft. I couldn't agree more. Don't turn your back on your principles.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Without content protection, owners of premium video content - driven by both > their economic goals and their responsibilities to others - will simply > deprive the Open Web of key content.

False. That's what they say, but that's not what they do. When digital broadcast TV was getting standardized, content owners insisted that there be a "broadcast flag" that would prevent receivers from copying broadcast data. There was a bunch of push-back against that proposal, and it died.

And what happened? They go ahead and broadcast everything anyway. It turns out that the broadcast flag wasn't actually necessary. Without the flag, content owner business models work just as well as they did before.

Flash is going away. Silverlight is going away. The presence or absence of DRM in HTML isn't going to change that. Some people remember the frustrations of flash and silverlight and think that the W3C EME proposal will solve those problems. But those problems were solving themselves just fine! Now we get to look forward to a bunch more pain with proprietary, non-interoperable CDMs.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why not just fork the W3C's specifications, and pressure FireFox and the makers of other browsers & rendering engines to never incorporate DRM?

My personal issue here is that it seems that W3C is going against it's own founding principles, running a committee that's biased towards the content- industry.

<comment><USER12> The Pro-DRM side has netflix and a bunch of other DRMed media sites which will work if people switch to Google's Chrome browser or MSIE.

Whats your leverage?

<comment><USER13> If you are willing to install various random black-box binaries from random pages on the internet.

We saw how well that played out with ActiveX. This is pretty much the same, just even less open-source friendly, since the intent is the deprive the machine running the code of access to the content. Let's not make a rerun of that.

The second this goers mainstream expect a bunch of free "porn sites" saying you need to install their "DRM plugin" to view the content. And voila you have browser-assisted trojan installations.

Firefox and other browsers supporting the open-web, without DRM, will have leverage that it doesn't ship with a gaping open door for spyware, malware and viruses to enter.

It will be the only browser with the user's interest in mind. We've already seen how Google is abandoning that in Chrome. This will only make it more apparent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the current spec[1], CDM might either return the decrypted frame to the browser or forward it to the system.

In practice it would be way too easy to patch say Firefox if they implemented the spec to intercept the decoded frames. It means that either the CDM wouldn't work with any open-source browser, or that they will only directly render to the OS. But in that latter case I don't see how it would play well with the rendering of the page, it would be the same problem we had with old version of flash where you couldn't overlap elements.

Does anyone know if Chromium implements that feature (since Chromebooks already do) ?

[1]: [https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- med...](https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- media/encrypted-media-fpwd.html)

<comment><USER14> If you want to have a look, here's Chromium's implementation of the spec: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#search/&q=...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#search/&q=MediaKey&sq=package:chromium&type=cs)

Update: here is an interface that decrypts a frame and returns the clear version: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/w...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/webkit/media/crypto/ppapi/cdm/content_decryption_module.h&sq=package:chromium&dr=C&l=344)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It took a decade to have some html draft, and this one goes through with a breeze, makes you think...

<comment><USER16> Former required a lot of thought and consideration, synchronizing various actors of W3C, while the latter didn't. Also latter group has more money.

I'm sad really. This makes any open source Web Browser a second class citizen of the WWW.(@W3C) Great job, guys, great job. Seems like a big step on the road to fragmentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What this proposal is saying, just not straight out, is that from now on the internet should no longer be fully accessible from Linux.

Only "first class" proprietary OSes (Windows, OSX, possibly ChromeOS) with proper DRM-hooks from boot-loader to video-driver to OS-APIs will have "sanctioned browsers" for which the content-industry will bother implementing compatible CDMs, and only they will be able to access so called "premium content".

The W3C is saying they are _fine_ with standardizing a fragmented, closed down web.

They have clearly lost their mind and should lose their mandate.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Be sure to read the comments, a lot of valuable points and discussions.

<comment><USER17> Kudos to Jeff Jaffe for staying calm and professional while replying to all the arguments.

<comment><USER18> "Calm and professional" while dodging basically all and every argument presented to him.

<comment><USER17> That comment section certainly is not the place to discuss these issues. Just like Hacker News is not the right place. He repeatedly pointed to the working group.

"If anyone strongly disagrees with the content of the decision and would like to raise a Formal Objection[5], they may do so at this time. Formal Objections are reviewed by the Director in consultation with the Team. Ordinarily, Formal Objections are only reviewed as part of a transition request[6]."

[0] [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html- admin/2013Ma...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html- admin/2013May/0030.html) [5] [http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/policies.html#WGA...](http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/policies.html#WGAppeals) [6] <http://www.w3.org/2005/08/01-transitions.html></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The ultra-rich are illegally buying cheetahs as pets leading to their extinction - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/28/africa/somaliland-cheetahs-gulf-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> I was disappointed in this article. Based on the Hacker News title, I assumed that illegal cheetahs were causing the extinction of the ultra-rich. This is not the case, in fact, the reality is the opposite.</comment>


Show HN: Yes or No – Unpopular Opinion App - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I managed to put together a little side project in 3 months and it's sitting at #34 in Trivia in the U.S. app store so I'm a bit chuffed with myself today.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yes-or-no-choice-based-game/...
Yes or No is an app where you can post a question/statement/opinion and people either vote Yes or No. Once you vote you see what percentage of the world agreed with you.
It originally was intended to be simple questions like "Putting the milk in before the cereal - yes or no?" but the best content that was posted are actually unpopular opinions "Americans should have to pass an intelligence test to vote - Yes or No?". The intention is not to offend but simply to be entertained/surprised by the results.
There's other apps like this already but the content is pretty awful and I found their UX to be terrible with some pretty unethical advertisement walls, so I wanted the opportunity to build something better.
In terms of technology I built the app with React Native and the back end is Firebase / Firestore (which I can't recommend enough for bootstrapping).
In terms on monetisation, I have only really stuck in banner ads every 10 posts. It won't make me rich in it's current form but I just want to focus on retention, building an awesome user base and using that for cross-promotion for future apps. <comment><USER2> Do you know what makes the app weight almost 30 Mbs ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't even check the page weight. There's an icon in there I think I accidentally copied in, it weights 18Mb.

Let's never speak of this again, lol. I'll push an update to fix, that's embarrassing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes

<comment><USER3> Why is this marked? I was approving of his app the way his app works.</comment></comment>


From Docker Straight to AWS ECS - <AUTHOR> https://www.docker.com/blog/aws-ecs-docker-compose/ <comment><USER2> Happy to answer questions on this.</comment>


What's your favorite documentation/spec/project management application? - <AUTHOR>

What do you use?  Basecamp, Unfuddle, Javadoc, etc?  Planning a switch off our messy and unwieldy wiki for the new year. <comment><USER2> Redmine.org</comment>


Popular Chrome Extension Embedded a CPU-Draining Cryptocurrency Miner - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chrome-extension-embeds-in-browser-monero-miner-that-drains-your-cpu/ <comment><USER2> I'm a bit sorry for the CoinHive creators. It worked so well on the original platform (German image board), where it was well communicated and transparently implemented.

Of course it would have been very naive to believe things like this wouldn't happen. But I'd like to image the people behind CoinHive didn't bank on it.

Edit, some stats:

> A few sites were actually using our service and collectively mined at 100K > hashes/s. We have since peaked at 13.5M hashes/s – a quite respectable 5% of > the global hash rate of the Monero blockchain.

> In just one week we scaled from one lonely server to 28 WebSocket proxies, 6 > web servers, two database servers and two VPS doing maintenance work. We had > countless performance issues to fix and a few sleepless nights, but we are > now handling 2.2 million concurrent WebSocket connections quite comfortably.</comment>


Places to promote your software company - <AUTHOR> https://www.mypresences.com/services/software-company/united-states/ <comment><AUTHOR> We have updated our list of online services where you can list and promote your software company and now list over 300 services where you can promote your software company or startup.

We also now include over 70 software marketplaces and app stores .. great places to find a new audience for your software.

Let me know if you have any questions and if you know of any great services to add to this list.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hi mypresences,

It is great that you posted this tool, but I am also curious, what is your paid service actually does? Provides report about your presence and how many places I missed?

Homepage doesn't provide much details about this, which is very confusing for your potential customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi .. we are working on updating the homepage with more information on the service.

We do things like: * let you know where you can list * help you monitor your existing listings * let you know ways to improve your listings and fix problems * monitor your reviews and ratings everywhere * See what photos and videos are posted across the internet on your listings * monitor and report on the people interacting with your business online * compare your online presence and reputation to competitors

Hope that helps and we are working on improving the homepage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Website practically non responsive on mobile for me. Way to much JavaScript ...

<comment><AUTHOR> apologies .. will look to focus on improving the mobile experience.

<comment><USER4> You should be focused on that first. Majority of your traffic is going to be mobile at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep .. traffic has been 67.7% desktop .. but agree that mobile should be a first class experience nowawdays.

<comment><USER4> That's because it's HN at the office. Mobile is generally going to be your bread and butter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You promoting your software company that promotes software companies yo

</comment><comment><USER6> Scrolling is really, really laggy on iOS 10 running on an iPhone 6S+.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry about that .. it looks like we are using jquery animation rather than css .. going to fix this asap or turn it off for mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did the site get overloaded? I just get `ERR_CONNECTION_RESET` when attempting to go to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It may have done at one point .. but appears to be ok now. Have had quite a few visitors!

I did notice a quota error around that time that I need to investigate further.</comment></comment>


Preformance impact of Intel Spectre-class builtin mitigations on CPU preformance - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-9400f-mitigations&num=1 <comment><USER2> Read the comments on phoronix, it looks like there are different 9400 steppings and the one tested didn't have the h/w mitigations.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was expecting that hardware mitigation would give better performance but Intel did a disappointing job.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I request that mods do not change this title, Intel Core i5 8400 vs. i5 9400F means very little to anyone without good knowledge of difference between Intel CPU generations.

The new 9xxx series CPUs have mitigations baked into the CPU hardware out of the box, vs the 8xxx series which do not.</comment>


How to make fewer errors at the stage of code writing. Part N2. - <AUTHOR> http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0072/

<comment><AUTHOR> Abstract. This is the second article on avoiding certain errors at the early stage of C++ code writing. In the previous, we have already advised you to avoid a large number of calculations in one expression. However, we should investigate this question in detail. Let's see what's dangerous about complex expressions and how we can avoid many logical errors.

Examples of bugs: Newton Game Dynamics, Chromium, IPP Samples, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, DOSBox.</comment>


Common signs that a person is toxic (AskReddit) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7y70f6/what_are_some_common_signs_that_a_person_is_toxic/ <comment><USER2> This is more or less a list of psychopathic/sociopathic traits.</comment>


Ask HN: How would tech ecosystem of your dream look like? - <AUTHOR> In the context of this post,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20754592/ (A dream of an ultimate OS),
I wanted to ask what you're missing in our current tech, which hangovers you would get rid of first.
As if everything was being designed from scratch, taking into account all the mistakes we've learnt. <comment><USER2> The one we'd have if we implemented a comprehensive "digital consumer rights" law. First Sale Doctrine applying universally to all purchases and licenses, so that all platforms such as the Apple app store, Play store, and Steam would be required to allow users to sell or give purchases to one another. Unlockable bootloaders and rootability for all mobile devices. Granular control of software updates.

Hardware and software such as games that depend on third-party online servers to carry a "guaranteed supported until" date, with failure to adhere to that guarantee resulting in refunds. The immunity from prosecution of anyone who creates their own support/multiplayer servers for any platform or game that goes unsupported by its owners for a cumulative period exceeding 90 days.</comment>


Interview with Ajay Mehta, co-founder of FamilyLeaf (YC W12) - <AUTHOR> http://howtowriteabusinessplan.com/2012/09/familyleaf/

<comment><USER2> Another great YC startup!</comment>


The Dark Side of Negotiating - <AUTHOR> http://www.djlcorplaw.com/2010/04/06/the-dark-side-of-negotiating/

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was interesting because I've seen a few cases where the business people were gung-ho, but you could see how the relationship would turn out from the negotiation. No doubt a commission incentive doesn't help, but this can apply to employment negotiations too.</comment>


YouTube serves up a million page views every 90 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/10/y000000000utube.html

<comment><AUTHOR> NYT article on the same - "YouTube: We're Bigger Than You Thought"

Link: [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/youtube-were- bigger...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/youtube-were-bigger-than- you-thought/)</comment>


Google's top designer quits, blames engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/03/20/googles-top-designer-quits-blames-engineers

<comment><USER2> "ahhh those fu __*n management guys never understand meh" :)

anyway debating over 3, 4 or 5 pixels and 41 shades of blue sounds SICK</comment>


Show HN: Roarsoft Mage Quest – My friend handcrafted this game alone - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.roarsoft.magequest

<comment><USER2> lovely effects !

</comment><comment><USER3> addictive

</comment><comment><USER4> wow nice game

</comment><comment><USER5> nice!</comment>


IBM Invests to Help Apache Spark - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/ibm-invests-to-help-open-source-big-data-software-and-itself/

<comment><USER2> For everyone that wants to start working with Spark and Big Data, I recommend them to enrole into this MOOC published by UC Berkeley at EDX: [https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-big-data-apache- spar...](https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-big-data-apache-spark-uc- berkeleyx-cs100-1x)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that link. I've been looking for something like this to get a better working understanding of Spark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read about an interesting technique, an "all-or-nothing tracker" in a blog post from an Apache Spark engineer.

You dispatch n jobs, where n is quite large, and you want to know; have all n jobs have completed, or has less than n jobs have completed. How to do so with a small fixed number of bytes with very high probability?

Give each job a random 128-bit ID number. XOR each ID number together as you start each job, and XOR into the same value as each job completes. If all the jobs have completed, the result is 0. The chance of zero turning up randomly if all jobs are not complete is negligible.

The technique is mentioned here under 'Lineage Tracking': [https://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/in-stream- bi...](https://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/in-stream-big-data- processing/) but there's a better blog post I remembered reading but can't find at the moment...

<comment><USER5> This is kinda a Bloom filter: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter)

<comment><USER6> Both concepts make use of the mathematics behind xor logic gates.

<comment><USER7> I've used bloomfilters for a bit, but I'm not sure how bloom filters use xors, can you explain that for me? thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Spark is a great technology, for sure. I was hesitant to get into Spark because I have lots of experience writing Hadoop map reduce apps. Then I decided a while back to base all of the machine learning examples in my current book project on Spark and MLlib and I am happy with that decision.

As the article mentioned, IBM certainly did validate the Linux "market." When people would ask me what was great about Linux I used to just say that IBM was investing billions in Linux, and that was an acceptable answer for people.

<comment><USER9> Curious about what your concerns with Spark were? I work for a company that supports Spark development, but I don't work closely with that project, so my opinion is not sufficiently well-informed, and obviously biased.

As far as I know, virtually any MapReduce job can be rather trivially translated to Spark's .map() and .reduce() operations. And the downsides are: it's model hasn't yet been proven at the largest scale's MapReduce has been used, and possibly the use of Scala (although Java / Python bindings are obviously available). Were there any other major factors in your hesitance?

<comment><USER8> I didn't have concerns about Spark, rather I already felt comfortable with Hadoop.

Another issue is that I am sort of retired now. I still accept small consulting jobs and do a lot of writing but my technology choices have shifted to fun things like Pharo Smalltalk, Haskell, etc.

<comment><USER10> If you're interested in this domain and Haskell and have some free time, you might find hailstorm interesting [1]

From what I understand of it - it's an implementation of apache storm in Haskell.

[1] [http://hailstorm-hs.github.io/hailstorm/demo/#1](http://hailstorm- hs.github.io/hailstorm/demo/#1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat! Thanks for sharing this, it's a great overview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "IBM said it will put more than 3,500 of its developers and researchers to work on Spark-related projects."

That is impressive. I wonder how that will be split among core contributors, consultants, etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A link to the IBM press release: [http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/47107.wss](http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/47107.wss)

"At the core of this commitment, IBM plans to embed Spark into its industry- leading Analytics and Commerce platforms, and to offer Spark as a service on IBM Cloud. IBM will also put more than 3,500 IBM researchers and developers to work on Spark-related projects at more than a dozen labs worldwide; donate its breakthrough IBM SystemML machine learning technology to the Spark open source ecosystem; and educate more than one million data scientists and data engineers on Spark."

</comment><comment><USER12> It will be interesting to see if IBM now bet big on their ipython kernel for Spark - [https://github.com/ibm-et/spark-kernel](https://github.com/ibm- et/spark-kernel). I've looked at it, and it's way behind Zeppelin and even Spark-Notebook. An Eclipse for Spark as a Notebook-style IDE will be a game- changer.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's even more interesting to observe the dynamics in this increasingly open source world of software.

By deciding to sponsor Spark, I think IBM is becoming practically it's owner, without having to do anything prior to this move. Does it mean it is possible today to "acquire" technology a project by naming your own price?

<comment><USER14> Doesn't Databricks actually employ most of the core committers for Spark?

<comment><USER15> [https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SPARK/Committers](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SPARK/Committers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> SystemML (which is one of the technologies they are donating) looks very interesting:

 _Declarative large-scale machine learning (ML) in SystemML aims at flexible specification of ML algorithms and automatic generation of hybrid runtime plans ranging from single node, in-memory computations to distributed computations on MapReduce or Spark. ML algorithms are expressed in an R-like syntax, that includes linear algebra primitives, statistical functions, and ML-specific constructs._

[http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_group.php?i...](http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_group.php?id=3174)

</comment><comment><USER16> The register's title [1] is a bit more brutal - I wonder how this investment will spread among committers, tooling etc.... From an open source platform perspective, it raises interesting questions in terms of finding the right balance for management, as well as sustainability of the project.

[1] [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/15/ibm_backs_apache_spa...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/15/ibm_backs_apache_spark/)

<comment><USER15> There's also competition for databricks itself.

[http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/14/ibm- spark/](http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/14/ibm-spark/)

The spark ecosystem itself has a lot of players now.

Horton/Cloudera/MapR in their hadoop distros Typesafe: [https://www.typesafe.com/community/other-projects/apache- spa...](https://www.typesafe.com/community/other-projects/apache-spark)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone tried the new R implantation? I read about Spark and I find it very interesting but I have no need for it with my datasets currently.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's another course on Spark Fundamentals: [http://bigdatauniversity.com/bdu-wp/bdu-course/spark- fundame...](http://bigdatauniversity.com/bdu-wp/bdu-course/spark- fundamentals/)

There's a second, more advanced course too: [http://bigdatauniversity.com/bdu- wp/bdu-course/spark-fundame...](http://bigdatauniversity.com/bdu-wp/bdu- course/spark-fundamentals-ii/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I strongly recommend the Spark course at [http://bigdatauniversity.com/bdu- wp/bdu-course/spark-fundame...](http://bigdatauniversity.com/bdu-wp/bdu- course/spark-fundamentals-ii/), very good course along with Docker-based practice hand-on lab !

</comment><comment><USER19> Strongly recommend the Spark course at [http://bigdatauniversity.com/bdu- wp/bdu-course/spark-fundame...](http://bigdatauniversity.com/bdu-wp/bdu- course/spark-fundamentals-ii/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some interesting perspective from The Register: "Up until last year, Spark had just 465 contributors."</comment>


Canon's New Mirrorless Camera Leaked - <AUTHOR> http://www.43rumors.com/and-here-it-is-the-real-first-canon-mirrorless-next-tuff-competition-for-the-m43-system/

<comment><AUTHOR> More info can be found here: [http://www.canonwatch.com/rumor-first-images-of- canons-mirro...](http://www.canonwatch.com/rumor-first-images-of-canons- mirrorless-camera-and-ef-m-22mm-f2-lens/)

It seems to have a APS-C size sensor which obviously is larger than the G1X sensor. That said, Sony seem to have surpassed canon in sensor technology in the past year and I hope canon's new sensor in this camera is something new and special.</comment>


Show HN: CodeAvengers, the future of K12 CompSci education is here - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeavengers.com/web

<comment><USER2> Conceptually: I like the idea of giving some personality to the "type here and see something happen" code-learning toolkit, at least for the HTML/CSS course. Not sure how well this specific concept will go down with the entire range of K-12--I see this working well for grades 4-8 boys. (I teach programming to grades 8-11.)

Some specific issues:

\- I'm a little worried about how the site throws a lot of (presumably unlicensed, at the moment) brands at the user. The Avengers logo, Samsung- branded phone in the HTML/CSS course, the DC Flash icon...

\- Some essential lesson navigation elements ("results" in the JS course, "next" in both courses) are quite far down the page, which isn't great for users with small screens. A browser maximised for a 900px-height screen seems to work ok, but any smaller and the learner will have trouble finding the "next lesson" button, which can't be much fun.

\- HTML/CSS course: Getting the learner to hit "check" immediately sometimes hides the result that would have shown up in the "browser". This could be confusing.

All the best!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the great feedback!

As far as screen size goes, it adjusts in lesson 2 or 3 to a different layout that is better for small screens. But I should probably just do that right from the beginning if the screen is less than 800px high.

As for CHECK, maybe I should force them to VIEW their page 1st... Also, I am thinking about showing the USERS page by default. They will have to click the EXAMPLE page to see what the page should look like. I will have to test this approach out on a few users first.

That course is targeted at 12-18 year olds. The programming course is aimed at 15yo+. But we have had people use the course in yrs 6-12. I plan on creating stuff for younger kids in the future.

As far as boys vs girls, the lessons do have a bit to try and entice girls as you go a long. And we have a bunch of stuff my younger sister is helping me out with that will hopefully make it more enjoyable for females.

Regarding copyright, I am in communication with Marvel lawyers, they didn't like our original logo, but seem OK with the current logo... at the moment. But havn't got the 100% green light on the new logo yet.

Also, in negotiations for sponsorship from Samsung. If that falls through, will be looking at other phone companies.

As far as the Flash goes, I have a friend drawing original images and he was promising them last week, but has been held up, so hopefully we will have those up by next week.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have created interactive online courses that aim to teach web development to High School students in the most fun and effective way possible. My site also offers great support for teachers by providing live feedback of student progress.

Many people say... looks like a CodeCademy copy. Here is what makes my site different: * Designed from the ground up for someone who has never done any programming. Teachers have commented that the level of difficulty in my courses is perfect for beginners. * Examples that are more interesting for School students * Teachers support - I have had dozens of high schools try my courses in the UK and they love the lessons, and the live feedback!

Last of all... It was created by ONE person in NZ as a side project. No funding, no backing, just 1 guy, staying up all night writing code... then testing the lessons on his siblings and wife.</comment>


You literally cannot pay me to speak without a Code of Conduct - <AUTHOR> http://rachelnabors.com/2015/09/01/code-of-conduct/ <comment><USER2> Codes of conduct are cop outs, we have laws already! Victims of sexual harassment need to call the police, like people should also do in any other case of injustice... This is a scare tactic that generalizes, therefore insults men who have done nothing wrong. What are we, dogs that need to be put on a leash? Sure, it's not in the wording but the intent is pretty clear. Another important reason why you go to the police for these matters is that the accused gets a fair chance to defend himself (ideally, because the law favors women..). Isn't that beautiful?

<comment><AUTHOR> Your point of view, although no doubt sincere, appears not to work out so well in practice.

Wikimedia is going through CoC discussions at present. So far it breaks down as:

* literally all the women think a proper and _enforceable_ CoC is a good idea

* about half the men concur

* the other half of the men don't see what's in it for them and consider it very important to say so, repeatedly, lots and lots, just in case anyone didn't hear them the first several times.

Very few take it as far as you do here; I'll go so far as to say I'm glad about that.

<comment><USER2> I think that there are a significant number of men that are opposed to the idea, even among the men that concur. Plenty of men are afraid to voice their true opinion because they fear being shamed as being sexists or worse, cowards, not men. Seriously... consider this.

Do you think that the irrational behavior of the third group of your list is a good sign, or something that should be easily dismissed? Yet another demand is made from men to change the system to accommodate women. When is it ever enough? Never.

Why is it that we cannot expect more from women, instead of always expecting more from men? Why can we not demand that women, if they so badly want to be a part of a male dominated system, become more assertive, aggressive, learn how to deal? Why, in a society that believes in democracy, must the majority adapt to the minority? Because women are different, special beings that are in need of ubiquitous protection?

<comment><AUTHOR> You appear to know nothing of the history of computing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Study suggests sugar alternative contributing to C. diff epidemic - <AUTHOR> https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2018/01/09/has-a-sucrose-alternative-contributed-to-the-c-diff-epidemic/ <comment><USER2> >..it might surprise you to learn that, over the past 15 years or so, some makers of ice cream and many other processed foods—from pasta to ground beef products—have changed their recipes to swap out some of the table sugar (sucrose) with a sweetening/texturizing ingredient called trehalose that depresses the freezing point of food.

How the hell is the food industry not regulated more strictly.

FDA spending on regulation of food. 2017 - _1.195 Billion_ ([https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in- brief/fda/...](https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in- brief/fda/index.html))

Total size of food industry based of revenue 2016 - _2.0215 Trillion_ ([https://www.plunkettresearch.com/statistics/Industry- Statist...](https://www.plunkettresearch.com/statistics/Industry-Statistics- US-Food-Industry-Statistics-and-Market-Size-Overview/))

1.195 Billion/2.0215 Trillion = 0.05911% spent on regulation. Is that too much or too little? You decide.

I would argue that this has to do with large companies lobbying to make sure that the consumers stay uninformed.( Do not have data on it)

I know it seems crazy implausible for people to have a digital record of what they eat. Imagine if doctors could have access to that.I am not familiar with EU laws, but sure they are better over there. (Researchers in the U.S never will get access to bulk data because of HIPA: need a personal signature from each person to obtain access.)

<comment><USER3> It's in the ingredients list...it is regulated. You just aren't looking.

<comment><USER4> I have a few serious food issues and have regularly read labels for decades. I'm surprised that I've never heard of trehalose. Perhaps they list it as disaccharides? Or is it just rolled up into 'sugar' on the label?

<comment><USER5> It can be listed as "natural flavor" [http://nagaseamerica.com/news_release/treha-trehalose- availa...](http://nagaseamerica.com/news_release/treha-trehalose-available-as- a-natural-flavor-through-improved-production-process/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some day, I'm confident our current practices related to food and nutrition will be looked back upon with horror and dismay. The lack of decent regulation, the lack of understanding of basic nutrition, the desire to somehow improve upon the foods that nature intended, all will be seen as the disasters they likely are.

Our chemically created foods are likely killing us in a variety of ways we are only just now beginning to understand.

<comment><USER7> Sure, there are lots of foods that are legal but unhealthy but you don't have to eat them. It doesn't take much to get informed about the basics of nutrition.

The broad goal of FDA regulations is not really to prevent you from eating unhealthily but rather to prevent eggs, milk, meat and produce from making you sick. In that respect the food industry and FDA regulations have been spectacularly successful. Any nostalgia for a bygone era of healthy and plentiful food is misguided.

You could make a case for forcing people to eat healthier but that will be an uphill battle, both economic interest and poor consumer habits are aligned against that. There have been some success stories (e.g. outlawing transfats) but they are few and far between.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, the FDA isn't that rigorous about what can be hidden behind words like "natural flavours". Many are innocuous (e.g. coconut extract). Trehalose is one of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Trehalose is a natural sugar with two glucose, similar to maltose but with different linkage. Some people who have fructose metabolism issues like it for that reason. It doesn't seem to be too widely available on its own, but Swanson Vitamins sells it in small containers and it tastes great IMO. Rice syrup is mostly maltose.

All c. difficle can metabolize trehalose, but the two strains in question have different adaptations that allow them to metabolize it when present in lower quantities.

If this is confirmed, I'm guessing that the implication is less about avoiding trehalose normally but avoiding larger quantities when taking antibiotics. Maybe people on anbitiotics will also be given trehalase enzymes to take with meals. In general, taking a wide varity of digestive enzymes and avoiding prebiotics and excess sugar when on antibiotics might be a good idea to limit the energy available to resistant bacteria in the colon (or maybe not, it looks like there is some evidence that taking some forms of sugar with antibiotics improves the effectiveness of the antibiotics in some cases).

It is a seperate consideration if this is contributing to the overall increase of c. difficle or if it is just determining which strains are more common.

Expect to see a lot more "food X causes undesirable microbiome effect Y" research in the future as more of this kind of research takes place.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are other interactions like that: for instance, magnesium is known to massively increase the replication of rhinoviruses (common cold).

Magnesium is also a common food supplement...

<comment><USER11> I've been taking magnesium supplements for the past few months. Coincidentally, I've been blowing my nose continually for the past week. Wasn't aware there could be a potential link.

Edit: Although, I've been taking a Zinc supplement (as well as a D3 supplement) and according to my lay-understanding of this blog-post[a], the Zinc should cancel out magnesium's effect?

[a] [http://www.virology.ws/2009/12/16/rhinovirus-and-zinc- part-5...](http://www.virology.ws/2009/12/16/rhinovirus-and-zinc- part-5-magnesium-is-not-the-culprit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Trehalose is not that common an additive in the US. It is also a naturally occurring disaccharide found often in mushrooms. CD apparently has evolved the ability to metabolize it which is why it is now an issue.

<comment><USER5> Yet, Cargill suggests it can be added to many foods: [https://www.cargill.com/food- bev/emea/sweeteners/treha](https://www.cargill.com/food- bev/emea/sweeteners/treha)

Bakery: \- Baked goods \- Flavor enhancement \- Sweetness optimization texture \- Crystallization inhibition

Beverages: \- Mouthfeel \- Flavor enhancement \- Mild sweetness

Confectionery: \- Flavor enhancement \- Shelf life \- Crystallization inhibition

Frozen Foods: \- Stability \- Cryoprotectant \- Taste enhancement

Dairy: \- Ice-cream \- Texture \- Spoonability

Dairy desserts: \- Flavor enhancement \- Moisture stabilization \- Texture

Fruit: \- Sweetness optimization \- Stability \- Shelf life \- Color preservation

Tablets: \- Compression agent \- Excipient \- Non-hygroscopicity \- Stabilization

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if people's weird reactions of sugar is really due to these sugar alternatives being in everything.

We really need more research of the microbiome.

</comment><comment> xkcd-sucks A few general principles of biology examplified:

\- When there's food, someone will show up to eat it.

\- Almost everything is food for someone

</comment><comment><USER14> Ice cream probably isn't the best option anyway if you have diarrhea. Generally it's best to eat a lot of the types of food that feed the good bacteria, such as vegetables, whole grains, etc.

<comment><USER15> In several hospital patients I have known, they give Ice cream due to the calorie density. So, it has it's uses. Note that this is already linked to sick and elderly patients, so it's ease of eating is also important.

<comment><USER14> I've had ice cream in hospital myself, but my point is that it isn't recommended for patients recovering from diarrhea due to the lactose and fat, both of which can cause problems.

[https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/cdiff- diet#...](https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/cdiff-diet#foods- to-avoid)</comment></comment></comment>


Those who leave home, and those who stay - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/15/15757708/hometown-stay-leave <comment><USER2> That would be a lot more readable without the _giant_ cartoons every couple paragraphs...

As far as the actual content goes, I wonder what impact the rise of remote work will have on this data in the coming decade or two. Personally, I'm an outlier, according to this data. I'm white, a democrat, have a well paying (remote) job, and live (literally) across the street from my childhood home in upstate New York (actually 'upstate', not 'Westchester'... there are cows within walking distance of my house).

It's the best of both worlds, from my perspective. Remote work gives me the benefits of a "big city" career path, but with the added benefit of having my kids grandparents just across the street.

<comment><USER3> >actually 'upstate', not 'Westcheste

Glad you clarified because I was about to call you on that one.

<comment><USER2> Heh. Yeah, I'm ~15 miles outside Syracuse (near farm country southeast of the city).

<comment><USER4> I'm from Camillus and go to school in Rochester. Last summer I was living back at home whilst working remotely (as part of graduation requirements).

To me, the Syracuse area is prime for living and if you are able to make good money remotely it's truly the best of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TL;DR People who stay in their hometowns are more likely to be Trump supporters than those than move away. Digging into the data shows these Trump supporters are more likely to be economically disadvantaged. People who return home after moving away often come back for good-paying, niche jobs and this helps the local community. Recently migration trends have slowed this "move- back".

I recently attended a high-school reunion and I probably could have written the same article from my experience. I grew up outside a small city in a fly- over state. Those that left either came from the upper-middle class and/or performed extremely well in high-school (with a few exceptions).

I met up with many of my old friends that are very smart men and women that seem to be "stuck" working mediocre, unfulfilling, and low-paid jobs. I also know many very, very average people that came from some means and somehow have a very nice, well-paying career (which is awesome for them!).

It is no surprise to me that smart people feeling trapped in their lives without economic opportunity nor hope for opportunity in the future, will be attracted to an authoritarian that preys on fear.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR you reap what you sow.</comment>


Tech Columnist Walt Mossberg to Leave WSJ - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323308504579085663273991706.html <comment><USER2> I've never been a fan of Mossberg or Swisher. I think their interviews of tech icons, lack insight into the fundamentals of technology, which is evident in their questions and followups. I actually think there is still a pretty big hole for quality tech journalism. Ars Technica used to be a lot better than it is now, but has fallen prey to the press release and tech media buzz news cycle, much like Engadget and others. Though, I do appreciate their continued coverage of tech privacy, policy, and law issues - which is lacking nearly everywhere else.

Technology and how it affects our lives is a huge nebulous topic, which grows larger each year. I hope some sort of real journalism takes root to provide meaningful insight, investigation, and commentary/opinion.

<comment><USER3> I used to not like Mossberg because he doesn't understand technology, and because he gave low ratings to the products I worked on, which were challengers rather than market leaders.

Over time I've come to realize that he did a pretty good job of understanding and speaking to his audience of non-techie businesspeople, whose priority is to find something that "just works," regardless of hardware specs or technical elegance.

Mossberg readers don't tend to be HN readers, but they do represent a much larger market.

<comment><USER2> I can't argue with your conclusion... But that misses the point that their (Mossberg and Swisher) brand is called "All Things Digital". It's trying to be tech press, when it's really just journalism for non-techies about tech.

I probably dislike the pair for the same reason my wife who is a physician dislikes the "medical corespondents" on the major news networks.

In any case, I see their coverage as cheesy and irrelevant to actual technophiles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Felix Salmon last month with an appreciation of Kara/AllThingsD and some insight into the neogtiations:

[http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/08/27/can- rupert-...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/08/27/can-rupert- murdoch-hold-on-to-kara-swisher/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Essentially Mossberg and Kara Swisher needed the WSJ affiliation more than WSJ now needs them. Should be interesting to see how much power they wield going forward.

<comment><USER6> To whatever degree the Journal made the decision, I expect it was either over cost or over their desire to have more control over their own technology coverage.

ATD has a pretty huge following, and I can't imagine that they will have any trouble driving plenty of traffic and/or signing up a new partner without the Journal.

<comment><USER7> ATD are a pretty big brand at least in startups now, they've been visibly out- scooping TechCrunch et al all year - all the Yahoo stuff including Tumblr broke through them, Google's massive investment in Uber, Rakuten's $200m acquisition of Viki etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323308504579085663273991706.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for the non-paywalled link—you can see why Mossberg & team might look forward to parting ways with the WSJ.

If a tree falls in a paywalled garden, does it make a sound?

<comment><USER9> You can take advantage of google's first click free to read the article in its entirety. Just search for the headline in google and voila, the tree will smack you in the face.

<comment><USER4> My error prone memory says this always worked in the past but I've had it fail a few times recently so ymmv.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Making room for a new face?

[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/04/manjoo-joins-wall- str...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/04/manjoo-joins-wall-street- journal-as-technology-columnist/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. Seems from the link they don't own AllthingsD even though it's very much their thing. I presume they'll be negotiating with another company to start up something new but similar. Not unlike Nate Silver leaving the Times, except he owned his brand and site so could take it all with him.

</comment><comment><USER12> "This is Walt Mossberg. Shut up!"

I miss Walt Mosspuppet. The videos were very funny. I wish the guy would do more.

</comment><comment><USER13> But who will report for the apple fan-boy.

<comment><USER14> Gruber?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apropos of nothing, I just wanted to drop by and reiterate that Kara Swisher is in the running for the most obnoxious person on the planet (don't forget to cast your votes!).

I hope she dwindles into obscurity (finally).

<comment><USER16> I've only read a few of her pieces, and they seemed like straight up journalism. What's obnoxious about her?

<comment><USER17> Hunch: her temerity in possessing both opinions and a vagina at the same time.

<comment><USER15> Easy there, sexism police. Take a look at my reply to chad_oliver for the _actual_ reason.

<comment><USER17> Oh yes, it more than explains the over-the-top vitriol.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>