Chirimen, a Firefox OS-Powered IoT Single-Board Computer Developed by Mozilla - <AUTHOR> http://mozopenhard.mozillafactory.org/ <comment><USER3> Welp. Two hours in and the comments are shaping up as you'd expect on HN.

Is it really so hard to empathize with people who have different skill sets than yourself? Yes, C would be more efficient. Yes, this wouldn't be very cost effective used in a high volume product. Yes, it's a little funky to write a web page just to plonk your script tag in there.

But, if you spend all day doing front-end dev with jQuery and just want to prototype some blinky lights or a flood sensor in your basement, now you've already got all the skills you need. You're not producing a million units, you're not worried about power so much as it'll be plugged in. An evening with a soldering iron and your text editor and off you go.

Anyways. For prior art on this ecosystem, see janOS:

[http://janos.io/](http://janos.io/)

which is basically stripped down firefoxOS which runs your app only (none of the launcher crud and such) in god-mode. It's actually quite fun to go grab a $30 phone off of ebay, and have a nice programmable screen and sensor suite with wifi, gps, and cell connectivity. Indeed, I find it more compelling than this board they're releasing, because I like taking advantage of the cheapness of mass manufacturing. The only downside is it's difficult to impossible to break out any GPIO on phones.

<comment><USER4> I agree, and I come from an old-school C and embedded background. If you do it in C, you have the opposite problem: interacting with the hardware is easy, speaking to a web API becomes a huge pain.

There's an "impedance mismatch", which has to be overcome somewhere. And computing power is getting cheaper and cheaper. We're at the point where if you have a little board in a case with some I/O connectors, the CPU will be the _least_ expensive part. Casework and connectors will make up a surprisingly large part of the cost, often costing whole dollars!

Edit: also, debugging your C microcontroller program can be quite a pain, even once you have a correctly configured in-circuit debugger.

<comment><USER5> If you know C, you will love Arduino. It's very easy to "to speak to a web API". They are usually low power 8-bit CPUs with 16 MHz, exactly right for small projects like blinking some lights that should run on battery for years.

JavaScript/Python/etc on RaspherryPi or this new Mozilla thingy are interesting too, though will drain your battery faster. You need an OS on a 32bit CPU. If it's connected to the web you should also update the software stack.

<comment><USER6> > If you know C, you will love Arduino.

Isn't it the opposite? If you aren't comfortable with C, Arduino has a simple enough API and good enough tutorials+documentation that you can still make it work.

If you _are_ comfortable with C, just about everything is better than arduino because you'll get debugger support and full control over all the goodies like clocks, charge pumps, DMA controllers, asynchronous ADC operation, pin multiplexers, USB/Ethernet controllers, etc.

<comment><USER7> I live in the middle. For quickie little projects like my NMEA protocol converter, the Arduino tools & IDE are fine, if barely adequate as the project has grown.

However, I have another project where Atmel Studio is a better choice. So I import all the Arduino libraries I need (there's a plugin that can do this automatically, but it's buggy), and then just build it as a regular C++ project but I get "free" use of the libraries without the crappy Arduino IDE.

The nice thing about Arduino is it's so popular that the economies of scale let me buy hardware cheaper than I could build it myself and pretty much all the libraries I need are already written. Although I have had to debug a few of them!! The bad thing is their terrible interface that's really made for tiny programs only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Specs:

SoC: RK3066 Memory: DDR3 1GB NAND Flash: 1GB microHDMI female microUSB x 1 (OTG) USB x 1 microUSB x 1 (UART debug) GPIO > 1 (Configurable) I2C 2 UART 2 SPI 2 Audio analog stereo IN x 1 / OUT x 1 PWM 1 Analog IN x 1

<comment> vertex-four Note that everyone's missed - it has HDMI out. This is looking more at smart devices that display information and which you can interact with directly, rather than devices which you configure occasionally and which are hidden otherwise.

Additionally, this is likely a DIY/hobbyist board and a reference device - <USER2> major company doing their own thing will likely be building their own devices. Mozilla isn't in the B2B business.

<comment><USER9> Which is useful for early prototyping I guess, but does it have any way of interfacing to non-HDMI screens? You wouldn't want to use HDMI for a product, and even for DIY hobbyist stuff it's probably not ideal; small HDMI screens with touch are exotic, expensive, and not all that small.

<comment><USER10> Is there any reason they'll _remain_ exotic, expensive and not that small? (I don't know what interface the typical high-dpi oled touch screens use, like the ones you find on a Galaxy Note 4 etc) -- but it seems that HDMI might make perfect sense for a tiny 4k screen (and it seems reasonable those will become more and more common)?

<comment><USER9> Devices don't use HDMI to talk to their built-in screens due to licensing fees, complexity, etc. Usually it's either LVDS or embedded DisplayPort these days, with newer/4K screens being more likely to use DisplayPort and older ones generally using LVDS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> //We will share openly the firmware code, board design, manufacturing process, API spec, and all necessary sources. //

thats a good thing bcoz firmware code is not open in Raspberry PI

<comment><USER12> It remains to be seen whether this applies to _all_ firmware on the device. Hopefully it does, but I've seen too many similar claims by hardware manufacturers that turn out to mean "only these specific firmware bits".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mozilla does so many things. I am afraid they loose their focus on one thing they could have done best. Make the best open source browser of the world. Look how they abandoned firefox OS phones. They shouldn't hope to become Google by doing almost everything Google does. Google is way bigger and has better Engineers.

<comment><USER14> The thing is, making "the best open source browser of the world" has never been a priority for Mozilla. Their stated goal has always been "to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web".

The first thing they made was a web-browser, because they had all the pieces and all the people right there, they had a good idea how to do it, and because the biggest threat to openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web at the time was the dominance of Internet Explorer.

These days, Mozilla must be less focussed because there's no single dominant threat to focus on. There's things like video patent codecs, DRM, promoting HTTPS, the ever-increasing complexity of the browser stack, the enticing power of native mobile apps, the lack of an awesome funding model for freely- distributed content, the return of walled-garden content platforms...

They could focus on making Firefox awesome and abandon all the rest of those issues, then we'd have a nice browser but we might have a much less interesting and useful Internet to browse with it. I do not envy Mozilla's leadership in the slightest right now, they're making a bunch of very tough decisions and nobody will know if they did the right thing for maybe five or ten years.

<comment><USER13> > These days, Mozilla must be less focussed because there's no single dominant > threat to focus on.

I don't think this is the right way. Having two much on the plate can actually be negative and you might end up doing nothing really well. I don't think that Mozilla should only be working on Firefox, but rather select few more which manage to do properly. We need a focused Mozilla, not a scattered Mozilla which tend to do everything that's a FAD (For eg: IOT)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I never understood why people want to use browser technologies for the internet of things.

<comment><USER16> I think it's just unfamiliarity with anything else, and unawareness of the staggering complexity this introduces. Also, this is Mozilla who have a large concentration of people familiar with browser technologies.

On the other hand, I think IoTs with web interfaces aren't a bad idea.

<comment><USER17> > I think IoTs with web interfaces aren't a bad idea.

I think it is. The internet-of-things does not need to suffer from massive power consumption and hard to implement on the micro-controller scale protocols.

It needs something much more along the lines of encrypted UDP than that it needs to use 'web technologies'. Imagining a stack made on 'web technologies' running off power harvested over a relatively long period of time is painful.

<comment><USER16> I had in mind more things like routers, home automation management consoles, etc. which have had web interfaces for a very long time, but it doesn't take all that much power to do it[1], unless you want to run a full Linux kernel and JS and all that other bloat which tiny IoTs don't need.

[1] [http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/shri/iPic.html](http://www- ccs.cs.umass.edu/shri/iPic.html) (images also mirrored at [http://cc2.savs.hcc.edu.tw/~chuavv/smallest/iPic/ipic.html](http://cc2.savs.hcc.edu.tw/~chuavv/smallest/iPic/ipic.html) )

<comment><USER18> Indeed. Basic web technologies - client-side HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and I mean writing them directly, not via absurdly wasteful layers of JS frameworks) - are a great tools for adding UIs to connected devices. You don't need _that_ much resources for a HTTP server if you already have TCP/IP connectivity, and you also don't need much resources to output some rudimentary HTML or to process POST requests.

It's also a pretty cool tool for adding UIs to software you code locally. Embedding a HTTP server is simple in most languages, and for some cases, a web interface will be much simpler than building an equivalent from "native" UI components.

\--

Incidentally, one of the best demonstrations I saw of that was in the book Land of Lisp. The book teaches you Common Lisp by guiding you through writing a few games. At some point, you end up embedding in your game a _very_ simple HTTP server - and suddenly, you get to have interactive graphics (via SVG) without the author having to teach you lots of stuff about some random UI library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> <title>CHIRIMEN example - Led</title>

Weird code like this is what you get when you apply web technologies to hardware. But I guess I should wait until their docs come out, maybe the title tag will be used by something.

</comment><comment><USER20> They properly have a better chance here than with FFOS, there are no carries to interface with and the audience is developers who know mozilla in advance.

</comment><comment><USER21> I opened this on my phone, and just seen some links (MozOpenHand Links). I had no idea there was supposed to be more content here. The actual content is hidden for mobile UAs (I have no idea why, but it's very confusing).

I'd have expected more from a Mozilla project.

You can see what I'm talking about by spoofing a mobile UA in your browser.

</comment><comment><USER22> Obviously Mozilla still doesn't know why Firefox OS/phone failed.

<comment><USER23> that's simply wrong. FxOS for phones didn't fail and Mozilla knows whats going on. Maybe some bad communication and PR, that's sad.

<comment><USER22> > _FxOS for phones didn 't fail_

Any new phone shipped with firefox os? Nobody buys it. It totally failed.

<comment><USER23> Depends on what you define as goal. It's mainly dedicated to developers. [http://elioqoshi.me/en/2016/01/schrodingers-firefox- os/](http://elioqoshi.me/en/2016/01/schrodingers-firefox-os/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Programming a single-board computer in JavaScript is reasonable. But why embed the JavaScript in HTML? There's no browser, no screen, and no user.

</comment><comment><USER25> Off topic: TIL that in Japanese, you start a letter by stating YOUR name, rather than greeting your audience.

Accurate?

</comment><comment><USER26> "Make Real Things with Browser Technologies"

How is that better or so different than making real things in C ? What problem would it solve?

I get that js got very popular thanks to browsers, but does that mean we should use js for everything?

Seems like mozilla is just trying to salvage firefoxOS.

<comment><USER27> I've developed a few things on my Espruino Pico[1] board, some Raspberry pi and also so arduino things. Just toys really.

One of the nice this I've found with the Pico is because of the JS vm, when I don't do anything in the code all the power in the chip goes to sleep state, and just wakes up for me as I've got scheduled. Yes Arduino has sleeps but i've also go to go learn that as another thing, yes the Pi can be configured so but that's even more tinkering.

JS seems like a really great "Just get it done" sort of phase to work in. After that you'd no doubt make a better job of the project with a myriad of other technologies.

1: [http://www.espruino.com/Pico](http://www.espruino.com/Pico)

<comment><USER28> C does that too unless you sit in a tight loop polling something all the time.

<comment><USER29> Most embedded applications consist of a tight loop of constant polling. People slow things down by using delays... But if you use the wrong sort of delay (read: the most popular one [https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/Delay](https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/Delay)), you'll end up executing nops instead of powering down the processor

<comment><USER30> What would then be the right way to sleep? I've always wanted to do something like 'sleep until event <X> and do absolutely nothing till them', but end up using the delay every time.

<comment><USER31> From what I searched, it's dependant on your microcontroller, so there is no generic way to do this (since different Arduinos have different microcontrollers).

For a very low power project I had, I basically found a lib that did deep sleep correctly for my microcontroller (an ATTiny), then you sleep for a significative period of time each time (for example, 500ms), and check if the event happened when sleep ends. That results in a consumption under 10uA.

It is obviously very dependant of what you want to do, some applications can't afford to check only every X ms.

And be careful too, you need to put everything possible behind your microcontroller, to be able to disable things during sleep (otherwise, you are just powering the rest of your circuit for nothing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am actually hoping for something like web assembly versioned modules with a p2p module registry to become popular for iot, blockchain, everything. Web assembly is actually a language-agnostic abstract syntax tree which can be JITd/compiled across architectures.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is pretty cool, but imo raspberrypi is making micro-controllers obsolete. Why would you bother with such a limited environment when you can have a full linux environment + GPIO for like $10 more.

<comment><USER34> In many cases, sure, however there are definitely cases where microcontrollers still make sense, i.e. real-time control, low power applications.

I work in embedded systems, and a lot of the reason you would choose a microcontroller is all of the peripherals that are also part of the chip. For example, if you are doing a project where you need to control motors, you can get a micro with a lot of built in high resolution timers , built in hardware for motor commutation, decoding of encoder signals, high speed analog inputs for feedback, etc. You would also typically AVOID having a linux environment, and opt for either a hand coded loop, or an RTOS which gives predictable, deterministic performance.

In my particular industry (robotics), we definitely do like to use a more powerful computer with linux or some other high level OS on it for a lot of the high level intelligence, so a lot of what you end up seeing is almost a 'distributed system on a board', where you have a more powerful processor providing the intelligence, which then issues commands to the less powerful microcontrollers which do things like control motor torque, sample sensors, etc...

This doesn't even get into things like power consumption...simply put you can have microcontroller based systems run for months on a single coin cell battery, which is going to be a hell of a lot harder to pull off on a RasPi / linux based system.

All that said, for a lot of projects where you just want to monitor a few simple sensors, or do a basic home automation type of project, a RasPi can be a great choice! (Even if my inner engineer is screaming 'your over complicating it!') But there is definitely still a huge need and use for micro-controllers as well.

Hope that helps answer your question!

<comment><USER33> Thanks for the details. Yeah that makes a lot of sense. I was looking at it from a home automation perspective. I have both a photon particle and a raspi. The raspi just opens so many more doors for me, but power consumption is not an issue since I always have it plugged in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> good job mozilla. this will also promote firefoxOS

</comment><comment><USER35> Creating an entire HTML page structure just to get to the code because you need a <script> tag? Oh god.

<comment><USER36> You don't need to create the whole page structure like in the example though. html, head and body tags are optional under certains conditions. [1]

I guess you could just write the example code like this :

      <!doctype html>
      <script src="gpio.js"></script>
      <script>
      var v = 0;
      GPIO.getPort(196).then(
        function(port) {
          setInterval(toggleLight, 1000, port);
        }
      );
      function toggleLight(port){
        v = v ? 0 : 1;
        port.write(v);
      }
      </script>

Just having the script tags would also probably works in most browsers but it wouldn't be standard compliant (if you care about it...).

[1] [http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/](http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/)

<comment><USER37> The equivalent stock Arduino demo is blink:

      void setup() {
        pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
      }

      void loop() {
        digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
        delay(1000);
        digitalWrite(13, LOW);
        delay(1000);
      }

From my experience of teaching many non-programmers how to use this sort of device, I think I'll stick with Arduino for now.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Publish in peer-review journal without affiliation? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a retired physicist. I used to work in the industry. I have now time for theoretical research and have something to publish. Is it possible to publish in peer-review journal without affiliation? <comment><USER2> Oh, come now. If you're a retired physicist surely you should know all about how to publish?

Now, it's an unfortunate fact that 95% of all physics papers submitted by unaffiliated researchers is garden-variety crackpottery. Giving you the benefit of doubt and for now assuming that you're _not_ a crackpot, though, there's no problem with just submitting your paper to the appropriate journal and keeping the "affiliation" field blank.

Oh, and remember that the editors will be alert for any signs that you're a crackpot, so write your abstract and cover letter in a way that emphasises the genuine and original contributions which your paper makes and doesn't exaggerate its importance.

</comment><comment><USER3> This post really sets off my bogometer. Anyone who is really a retired physicist would not need to ask this question, much less ask it from a newly created account on HN. That this post is getting so many upvotes is worrisome.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the answer's yes, but it can sometimes be tricky. You might try submitting to a relevant conference first, before going for a journal. It builds credibility for your ideas, and may get you good feedback on how to discuss your work in a way that authenticates with other researchers in the field (uses the right terminology in the right way, positions itself relative to existing work and appropriately cites that work, etc.). The biggest hurdle is usually finding which sub-community of researchers is interested in the kinds of problems you're studying, and then making sure your paper's written in a way such that they clearly know you're talking to them, in a way that resonates with them. You might also meet relevant collaborators at conferences. The main downside is that it costs some money to register for / travel to them.

When choosing a journal, if you're worried about it, you might want to look for one that explicitly says it uses double-blind review.

Disclaimer: I'm a researcher, but my area isn't physics, so ymmv.

<comment><USER2> I'm not aware of any journals in physics that do double-blind review.

However your comment did remind me: the American Physical Society has its two big meetings every March and April. If you are a member then they _have_ to let you present at it. There's always a few "unaffiliated researchers" giving posters. (And yes, they're usually crackpots.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good question - sorry, I don't have an answer.

A more descriptive title, such as "Ask HN: Publication without affiliation," would help a lot.

<comment><USER6> Agreed.

I came here thinking the title was a _Spies Like Us_ reference.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lge2_H_8IQ>

Doctor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been published (in physics) while outside of academia. It was with a research team I'd previously worked with while in college, which says to me that it probably helps if you can find some co-authors that are still publishing, if for no other reason than to show you the ropes of the process.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://arxiv.org/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Why peer-reviewed specifically?

Every professor I've had who is a theoretical physicist has posted their papers at <http://arxiv.org/>. It's not peer-reviewed but as far as I know pretty much everybody reads it.

<comment><USER2> The impact of a non-peer-reviewed paper which only appears on arxiv is generally pretty low. A bunch of people might read it on the day that it comes out, but it won't show up in all the databases in years to come, and might very easily be forgotten. If you've done real and credible work then it's much better to get it published in a proper journal.

(On the other hand if you've done work that wouldn't pass peer review then please don't clog up the arXiv with it)

<comment><USER10> Here is a notable exception of a non-peer-reviewed paper which did have "some" impact: <http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0211159>

As a place to stake one's claim(sure beats making anagrams as in 17th century) and disseminate knowledge arxiv seems like a good place to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Astronomy Cast did a good bit on this; "Ep. 147: How to Be Taken Seriously By Scientists": [http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-147-how-to-be- take...](http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-147-how-to-be-taken- seriously-by-scientists/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm (temporarily) leaving theoretical physics, too. I'd like to continue on, but without the affiliation. Can I pick your brain about what's it like doing research outside of academia? firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER2> I would think that the main problem would be lack of access to libraries and hence journals.

Still, I would assume you should have friends and colleagues still within academia who could probably sort you out with library access in one way or another.

<comment><USER13> academic libraries usually allow access to general public for <$100/month

<comment><USER4> Some public university libraries can even be free, e.g. the University of California system allows free in-library use of materials and computers to visitors (you just walk in, and if you want to use electronic resources, login as guest).

<comment><USER2> Yes and no. At Berkeley, frinstance, you won't be able to get into the main part of the main library without a university ID card of one form or another. (And the other parts of the main library often have a few homeless people sleeping in armchairs.) Still, you can always get into the Physics library and that'll have all the journals you need.

If you're a genuine citizen scientist (as opposed to a crackpot) there are always ways around it though. Talk to the librarians, they might be able to hook you up with a card in one way or another.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. UC Santa Cruz has no card checking at all, and pretty explicitly allows the general public to visit. You can even use the WiFi without any sort of account. It's a little out of the way, though.

Berkeley's website suggests that CA citizens can buy a card that even allows borrowing privileges for $100/yr though, which is pretty cheap: [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/services/for_users/alumni_visito...](http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/services/for_users/alumni_visitors.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yes, it is. Examples of how people sign their publications after retirement: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20440016> also <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10700398>

or, if you do not want to mention retired or former, nor start your own company, just provide your home address and indicate your preferred/non- preferred reviewers

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder, if you are retired, why do you need journals? I could be completely mistaken, but I thought the main point of journals is to rack up your "publications count" so that you can keep your job.

Somehow I doubt that people will read your work just because it appears in a journal. I'd expect you'd still have to go around and advertise it (ie present on conferences, talk to people directly and so on)?

<comment><USER16> In many ways Journals are the beating heart of scientific research in that they both spawn new ideas and keep people from redoing the same experiment thousands of times.

Journals are used by researchers looking into similar problems. So if you say find you can get a 1mm standing wave in water with sound waves and an odd contraption people looking into that area 10 years from now will probably run across your research and either improve it or look into some other area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yes. USENET is littered with journal and conference announcements and requests for papers.

</comment><comment><USER18> In which area of interest? As for journal access, i suggest using public computers in a university library. Not tremendously practical but they're always subscribed.

</comment><comment><USER19> A bit disappointed. I thought this was a cleverly disguised post related to Doctor Who...</comment>


XKCD 451: Impostor - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/451/

<comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair>

<comment><USER3> I guess the rebuttal to that is <http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Jan:Hendrik:Schon:MC.htm> .

<comment><USER4> There is also the Bogdanov Affair: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair>. Where Sokal was a deliberate hoax, the Bogdanovs seem to be crackpots. However both affairs show serious problems with the peer review systems in their respective fields.

XKCD probably assume that things he don't understand is nonsense - which is a common held belief. Therefore the further he comes from his own area of expertise, the more nonsensical he assumes the jargon is.</comment></comment></comment>


Strategies to Protect Against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk59/technologies_white_paper09186a0080174a5b.shtml

<comment><USER2> That document is terribly dated, and describes nothing resembling modern day DDoS protection.

Nowadays, it's all about routing the target host through a series of high bandwidth/high processing filters to identify and drop the bad traffic. People don't use SMURF (haven't in over 5 years), and most floods are not ICMP anymore, they are mindless HTTP requests from seemingly "valid" looking zombie clients.

</comment><comment><USER3> All of those defenses assume that the attacker is a bunch of zombies sending ICMP or SYN messages or with spoofed IP addresses. When Anon attacks its with volunteered HTTP traffic so these defenses don't work.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Don't piss Anon off.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought zombies were usually compromized Windows boxes. This article says they're mostly linux. If that's the case, why so many friggin' Windows viruses?

<comment><USER6> Basically that document just isn't very good or relevant.</comment></comment>


IntelliJ IDEA 14 Early Preview is Available - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2014/06/intellij-idea-14-early-preview-is-available/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+jetbrains_intellijidea+%28JetBrains+IntelliJ+IDEA+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> I would love it if they focused on performance improvements and making the editor more lightweight overall. I love WebStorm, but even on my beastly XPS running nothing but it and Chrome, it sometimes hangs doing nothing. I'm starting to investigate other editors such as Atom because of this. I find it hard to believe that a quad core, modern computer can possibly have a hard time running a text editor.

<comment><USER3> Google a bit for adjusting GC settings in idea - stuff like [http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2006/04/configuring- intellij-...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2006/04/configuring-intellij- idea-vm-options/) (old, but check the comments). I'm not using it anymore, so can't find what I ended up with, but adjusting the startup options made a _huge_ difference 2 years ago.

I think I also went for one of the experimental/less stable concurrent collectors - didn't find any issues in practice.

<comment><USER4> +1 I bumped up heap space to min 1g max 2b. Now this beast of a Spring heavy project (day job) doesn't hang IntelliJ ("indexing...").

Seems to me these IDEs could suggest reasonable JVM options after profiling your project.

Or at least put the JVM options in the preferences, so I don't have to dig around the install/distro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope they're going to fix the Scala and Play plugins. Unfortunately they say nothing about it. Sometimes the lag between typing and actually seeing it in Idea is a couple of seconds.. Still better than the last time I tried Scala IDE (eclipse) though.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that's definitely an issue. The Scala auto-complete is not very responsive, which makes the whole IDE experience with Scala pretty undesirable, sadly. I've been using IDEA with Java in the last ~2 months and it was perfectly smooth all the time. I guess Scala is a lot more complex as a language than Java, which makes parsing it on the fly much harder.

<comment><USER7> One thing I noticed about the Kotlin design and design discussions is that "that wouldn't be auto completable fast" comes up quite often. I had never thought about it before but it makes sense that language design choices can impact the speed of an IDE. I am starting to think that it also makes a lot of sense for language designers to have IDE development experience. I wish they'd hurry up and release a stable Kotlin.

<comment><USER8> It would be pretty sad if code completion efficiency became a reason to compromise on other areas of a language.

<comment><USER7> Why? They're just tools. Code completion is probably more important than a lot of the rather minor syntax sugar features in many languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this another minor release disguised as a major release in order make old customers renew the licence?

I say this because I did not notice any major improvements between 12 and 13, but still I had to pay for a new licence.

<comment><USER10> If you didn't feel you got anything useful in the new version, why pay for it?

<comment><USER11> Some of the plugins (which is a big part of choosing IDEA over the sub- products) aren't backwards compatible (I had issues with the golang plugin in 12, but it's fine in the community edition of 13). Right now I've got PyCharm 3.4 (work license), IDEA 12UE (personal license), IDEA 13CE, and Android Studio on my machine to support the various languages I'm using on somewhat regular basis (90+% of my time is spent in python, which is why I don't just use the python plugin for IDEA - the plugins are nice, but the context menus get crazy one you have more than one active at a time)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope they will add C#+Xamarin support when their project N arrives. Sell for 30% of Visual Studio price: win for everyone (except MS).

<comment><USER13> I don't think that's gonna ever happen. That would cannibalize ReSharper for C# sales which are bound to Visual Studio and cause a cool down in the relationship with Microsoft. Sure way to go out of business.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but Roslyn is going to hurt ReSharper somewhat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow this is magnitudes slower that 13 CE. What gives? Can I turn off something(plugins?) to make it faster?

<comment><USER15> If you are experiencing quirks like that, please report them via [http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/](http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/) since that is the whole purpose of an EAP program. I don't think you will receive support for your specific problem via the tracker, but at least they will be aware that such a condition exists.

If you want help, [http://devnet.jetbrains.com/community/idea/ideacommunity](http://devnet.jetbrains.com/community/idea/ideacommunity) will probably be a great place to start. I have found their forums to be responsive and to have a pretty good signal/noise ratio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any discussion about IntelliJ supporting multiple open projects at once? Requiring a separate window for each project breaks down when I've got 21 projects open, as I have now in NetBeans.

<comment><USER17> Not to sound snippy, but how do you define projects in your world, and how do you benefit from having 21 of them open at once? How many do you interact with in a typical day?

That setup is so far removed from my day-to-day experience that I'm genuinely seeking understanding here. At most, I typically have 3 or 4 open "projects" at once, and those would be fairly tightly related (like, a server codebase and a couple of clients for it).

<comment><USER16> I'm not going to go into my specific needs or project setup, but even with 4 open projects, IntelliJ requires 4 open windows! That's asinine when both NetBeans and Eclipse allow me to decide how many projects I want open within a given IDE window. It's the biggest reason I only use IntelliJ when writing IntelliJ plugins.</comment></comment></comment>


Slava Akhmechet – What's coming up for RethinkDB in 2016 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL5_EsF06DM <comment><USER2> I really dig the idea of subscribing to queries. I wish I knew about RethinkDB year ago so I could use it in current project :/

<comment><USER3> Is that a neologism for DB Views? [edit: don't have the clicks to watch the OP]

<comment><USER4> It's kind of like PubSub. Whenever you subscribe to a query, you get updates on its results in soft-realtime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We use rethinkdb in our current project: Python + timeseries data + mining. Pretty happy with it out of the box compared to mysql for speeds.

<comment><USER6> My experience was pretty much the opposite, especially for timeseries data the sequential scan performance of Rethink was pretty bad, especially when you add filters, grouping etc. Postgres gives me about 3-10x the speed.

And that takes into consideration that Rethink uses all cores and Postgres only one. Plus I used jsonb in Postgres to make it totally fair.

And on top I encountered really inconsistent performance. For example when you access a field of an object that doesn't exist, it apparently raises internally an exception and that slows things down a lot. But you don't really see this.

I get it that Rethink is trying to distinguish itself from the other players and find a nice niche for itself but I really wish they improved on the performance and while at it removed the limitation of 32 servers in a cluster.

Oh and the huge blow up of data on disk also needs a lot of work. Rethink used about 5x more disk space in my trials for a table with about 10 million rows. With fewer indexes than PG.

I really like the ops simplicity of Rethink, especially when it comes to clustering. So I have high hopes for it.

<comment><USER7> Just out of interest, why did you only use one core for Postgres.

<comment><USER6> I measured one query that does a sequential scan over millions of rows. In PG 9.4 this only uses one core. Current versions are adding a feature to parallelize this. If I had run several queries in parallel, PG would have used all cores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty impressive. Being able to decouple the user-facing realtime transport layer from the database engine is one of the main things which has been holding big companies back from adopting Firebase (due to Firebase's tight coupling with MongoDB and the associated lock-in factor).

I imagine that eventually you would be able to hook fusion into any database engine or service you like - If you don't want to put your sensitive data on a public cloud, you could just use fusion as-a-service but host the Database part yourself.

<comment><USER9> Slava @ RethinkDB here.

 _> I imagine that eventually you would be able to hook fusion into any database engine or service you like_

That's definitely the plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So will they endorse deploying only the fusion server(no expressjs, koa, etc middleware) with your frontend code in production? (assuming the fusion api is enough for your app)

<comment><USER9> Slava @ RethinkDB here.

The main goal behind Fusion is to let people get started quickly, but eventually any meaningful app will outgrow the Fusion API. When that happens, instead of starting Fusion as a stand-alone server on top of RethinkDB, you'll be able to load it into Node as a library and integrate it with koa/hapi/etc. That will provide the Fusion API to your node app, and an upgrade path for modern complex applications. That's an essential part of Fusion and will ship along with v1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any tl;dw?

<comment><USER12> My main takeaway: They're creating a thing called fusion (will be renamed) which will allow you to spin up a rethinkdb instance with a single command which you then can connect to directly from your browser/JS-frontend, no backend needed (kind of like meteor with insecure/autopublish but with rethinkdb instead of mongo and no backend what so ever). The benefit of this is that you very quickly can create an app I guess, just create a frontend and you're good to go.

I suppose you can also setup rules as to what operations should be allowed from the clients, so you they just loop an insert to destroy the DB, but not much was said about security/auth etc.

I think he said they plan to release a first version in two months.

EDIT: Firebase is actually what he compares it to! But since I've worked a lot in meteor that's my first association :)

<comment><USER9> Slava @ RethinkDB here.

Fusion will ship with a security model -- it will absolutely not be insecure out of the box. This type of project would be pretty useless without security (beyond basic demos), and a security engine is an essential feature in v1.</comment></comment></comment>


Awesome C++ – find the best libraries - <AUTHOR> https://cpp.libhunt.com/ <comment><USER2> The best?

Here's the problem I had with my previous game project. JSON writing and parsing. I type "JSON" into your search box and get 20 libraries without much difference explained. 17 of those match my license requirements. And then I have to try each one to compare.

You might say that I could just pick one at random and see if it works... I did exactly that for my previous project. 11 months into development when I had huge chunks of code depending on it, I discovered a subtle bug that only showed up on big JSON files (over 2MB) and only when the library was compiled with MSVC. The author doesn't want to debug it because he doesn't use Windows. I wanted to use use MSVC because of Steam API. So I had to either rewrite the code to use another library or give up on SteamAPI. I picked the latter.

Dumping a list of 20 libraries to solve a single problem isn't "curating".

I suggest you remove "the best" from the title as this site doesn't solve that problem.

<comment><USER3> I feel you, but one problem is that it is often hard to rank libraries best to worst. 20 may be a bit much, but still -- one library may be the most popular, another fastest, another correctly handles this one specific unusual case, another works well with large objects, another has more convenient interface for your case, etc.

What would be ideal is if there was useful information about such things available right on the aggregator site -- Amazon style reviews wouldn't be too useful here tbh, ideally one would like to see multiple comparisons from people like you who tried or at least looked at a few of them.

<comment><USER2> Yes! This is exactly what I expected from the website.

<comment><USER4> I use github to figure this out by perusing the issues and history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me, libhunt is just scam. Take Github "Awesome lists", add sorting and ads, profit with other peoples' work.

[https://github.com/fffaraz/awesome-cpp](https://github.com/fffaraz/awesome- cpp)

<comment><USER6> But thats what the author wanted :P

[https://github.com/fffaraz/awesome- cpp/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/fffaraz/awesome- cpp/blob/master/LICENSE)

        Copyright (C) 2015 Faraz Fallahi <email@example.com>

        THE LIST IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES.

        TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION:

        1. You just DO WHAT YOU WANT TO.

<comment><USER7> I thought nobody will ever open the license file :))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The classification can be done a little better, maybe a tree-view with available branches where it makes sense to sub-classify. The project seems to be a good (useful) thing otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks good to me. Now I want to find an "Awesome C" list somewhere too, if they exist.

<comment><USER10> This is mostly a C library list. OpenSSL, LibreSSL, etc. are all pure C (not C++).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fantastic work!

</comment><comment><USER12> I find it hard to justify starting a new projet using C++ today when there is languages like Rust, swift and golang to a lesser extent. C++ was the only viable option for a compiled, fast and scalable language. Java has replaced C++ on the server/backend side for years and the same thing is going to happen on the Desktop/mobile in the coming years as the other new language offerings start to gain momentum.

<comment><USER13> > I find it hard to justify starting a new projet using C++ today when there > is languages like Rust, swift and golang to a lesser extent.

A simple reason, for Swift and Rust at least, if you want that your code from today to work without changes in 10 years from now you will use C++.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure C++ is more stable than Rust. It's pretty stable but it does introduce breaking changes and code written 10 years ago will not compile as C++11 without changes. Of course if you need to port C++ code across platforms, which can easily happen if code is to survive a decade, then even if the built-in type sizes don't change, you'll have to deal with things like there being no standard build system for C++, no standard interfaces for most of the functionality found in an OS, etc.

Overall, while C++ indeed is fairly stable, I wouldn't bet on C++ code to be easier to drag into the future than code in those other languages (of course I wouldn't easily bet the other way, either; it's hard to know in advance with these things which will bite you the hardest.)

<comment><USER13> Personally I never seen a C++03 program that doesn't compile in C++11/14.

Obviously, if you are talking about C++ code written before C++ was standardized, like in the 90's, you are probably right.

<comment><USER14> I've seen and ported such programs. I no longer remember what the problems were, but I think some of them had to do with array initializers - C++11 seems to have become stricter wrt implicit casts of values used to initialize arrays (meaning that more casts need to become implicit.)

Perhaps it's a compiler issue, not a language issue; my only point is that the issue exists (and I'm not saying it was that terrible - I recommend everyone to upgrade to C++11 - just that code will not compile unchanged.)

Sister comments say that they have old C++ code that compiles just fine. Of course such code exists, I'm just saying that not all code is like that; I bet you can get there with Rust or some other reasonably stable new language _if you program conservatively enough._ Also a big question is what platform your code runs on; if you've targeted gcc since forever and you don't use -Werror, then your code and your Makefiles will be very stable relatively to having to port to VS - even if you're not really targeting standard C++ but the dialect GNU C++. Different C++ compilers, build environments and platform libraries are very different, and it seems a safe bet that newer languages will do a better job of minimizing differences between implementations (or keeping their number small.)

Porting C++ code compiling fine under g++ to clang, for instance, is a metric ton of work (and this one I gladly wasn't involved in but I've seen others do it; again, if your C++ code ports just fine, more power to you.) And g++ and clang are much closer to each other than the average pair of C++ compilers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pushing the performance limits of Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.jut.io/blog/2015/pushing-node-js-performance-limits <comment><USER3> > one effective way that we get high performance out of node.js is to avoid > doing computation in node.js.

And therein lies the problem with node. Its great for rapid prototyping, but things fall apart pretty quickly with CPU laden tasks. That and the whole single threaded thing with node (technically JS) can be a wrecking ball when one task takes too long.

<comment><USER4> I've done CPU laden tasks many times in Node. The key is how you break up the heavy task into pieces that can be distributed more evenly on the event loop instead of blocking it. For example processing a huge data stream is typically done by breaking it into chunks where each chunk can be processed in a few ms, rather than doing one giant blocking operation on the entire stream.

Done properly this also leads to a low memory process that will grab data from an incoming socket stream, transform it, then push that data back out through an outgoing socket stream, only ever keeping a few MB of the stream in working memory at a time. Slap a cluster of these streaming processes together running on a single box to utilize all CPU cores and you can easily push many Mbps of IO through your server quickly and efficiently.

Additionally even if you do have a heavy blocking system IO operation that you can't break up very well you can increase `UV_THREADPOOL_SIZE` when needed to reduce the impact of the blocking.

<comment><USER5> But now you've just implemented thread context switching by pulling it's implementation details into your algorithm... Just use a language that supports threading if you have real work to do...

<comment><USER4> Sometimes it is more efficient to implement the context switching yourself. For extremely high performance server use cases such as realtime analytics, streaming video processing, high frequency trading, etc it isn't uncommon to have server code written in C/C++.

It really depends on what your most important metric is. If the most important metric is speed then having more control over context switching is often better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had never read about that 1.5GB heap limit. I've come across that same error message - FATAL ERROR: JS Allocation failed - process out of memory - <USER2> times in my application but googling never gave me a good answer why this was happening, especially since I had a lot of spare memory on the server. Very good thing to know...

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems to me like there's very little new here to anyone paying attention to the space. They didn't raise any limits - they just fixed their own badly written code.

The 1.5 gig limit is not widely known (it's a limit of V8 and I believe, correct me if I'm wrong here, that it's improved in later versions due to some changes to GC) but if you're hitting it you're doing something _massively_ wrong: like they were here.

Splitting data up into chunks for the event loop to process is priority one in any Node app that deals with data processing. It has been for a long time. This is true _anywhere_ you run JavaScript. It's where libraries like [Highland]([http://highlandjs.org/](http://highlandjs.org/)) excel and why Node has the concept of Buffers.

Chunking data should be a no brainer and it's frankly a little strange that Jut weren't doing this in the first place. Raises questions about what else is not being done correctly under the hood.

There's no meat here (aside from learning that NPM uses them).

</comment><comment><USER8> > In fact, as of this writing, the JPC depends on 103 NPM packages

It's really scary that you need so many packages to build a web app using Node.js.

<comment><USER9> When I read 20 seconds to compile the list of the 10 most downloaded packages during the past 14 days, my first reaction was that this seems ridicules slow. How many downloads could that query have to accumulate?

A search then revealed that they have surpassed a billion downloads per month. Who on earth installs a billion packages and that every month?

<comment><USER4> Most companies using Node probably also have some form of CI. For example the company I work at probably generates tens of thousands of package downloads a day because we have CI running docker container builds for automated testing on every commit, and each container build downloads packages from scratch for an entirely fresh build.

Once a container is built and passes tests it is reused as many times as needed for deploying out on edge hosts so there are no more additional package downloads after that, but still the continual CI builds throughout the day as people commit code generate a lot of downloads.

<comment><USER9> Why would you download dependencies on each build instead of once you integrate a new dependency into the project and then just keep it under source control?

<comment><USER4> If you have a thorough test suite then it is possible to use a package version pattern such as ~1.1.0, or even ^1.1.0 to allow the package to upgrade automatically when the maintainer releases a new version.

Obviously being able to do this is highly dependent on having really thorough test coverage to make sure that automatic package upgrades don't break stuff, but this would be one primary reason for downloading dependencies fresh for each build.

But even if you had locked down the package versions it still wouldn't be a good idea to commit the package into your source control. Part of the benefit of hitting NPM to download the package is that package maintainers will often explicitly deprecate a package version that should now be considered outdated, or perhaps which had a security vulnerability. This will show up as a very visible warning message when running npm install.

This has alerted me multiple times to issues with child modules I had added to my project, or even grandchild modules that were included by other child modules.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How big should an AWS Lambda be? - <AUTHOR> By big, I'm not referring to the size in bytes of the deployed archive. I'm asking how much functionality should it encompass. How long, on average, should it run? How man external systems should it communicate with? Is it a good idea for a Lambda to spawn multiple threads to communicate with external systems? Should a single Lambda encompass enough scope to essentially serve as web service API in FaaS environment? <comment><USER2> My take.

Since you can expose them through the API Gateway, it is natural to write "web services" as Lambda functions. It is also good for the occasional "web form" such as to subscribe or unsubscribe to a mailing list -- the kind of thing that people used cgi-bin for back in the day.

Memory is the limited commodity in a system like lambda, because lambda can only give you low latency if your function is already in RAM or if it can get it into RAM quickly.

Lambda functions are not good for a database server or an inference server that works against a 20 GB model.

In the case of the "email newsletter" system above, I send the mail with Amazon's SES, I maintain the mailing list in DynamoDB, Lambda provides the user interface and also answers callbacks to remove bouncing email addresses. The toolset is almost ideal for this case because it is cheap to run for anywhere from hundreds of subscriptions an hour to one a week and I never have to worry that it went down.

I also have built Lambda functions that take callbacks from Samsung SmartThings that then filter the events and queue them in Amazon SQS where another server picks off events when it is ready.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion and experiences lambda's should be the smallest reasonable functionality you can assemble that does only 1 thing well.

Lambda's can interact with databases and most external systems, but you want to keep them short and sweet. They take time to spin up on first run (100ms or so), and can run a maximum of 15 minutes.

Yes you can use threads/processes in Lambda's but usually to me it is a sign you are trying to do too much in a single piece of code, but there are exceptions of course. You can use step functions to coordinate multiple lambda's which is usually the better answer but not always.

And I'd say no, lambda's should not try to serve as a web service API, they can be components of the API but the API should be hosted elsewhere, like AWS API Gateway or your own EC2 instance etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think of it as a trigger, like in a database.

By now we are having unconditional triggers; but I think lambdas plus some kind of status/context/finite_state_machine could make some interesting piece of software not just for web services.

Also transaction isolation would be great. I mean, enter a lambda make some calls to whatever service and if everything is OK, commit all those changes.

If something goes wrong, do an automatic rollback.

That would have a huge impact on lambda usage since you are not leaving half- done stuff.</comment>


Summary of MIT's Linear Algebra. Lecture 3: Matrix Multiplication and Inverses - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/mit-linear-algebra-part-three/

<comment><USER2> That is an approach to linear algebra that I dislike.

"Here is a magic formula for multiplying matrices. Here is what you can do with it. Here are some examples." _Without any clue WHY you would want to!_

The approach I like is to discuss what a linear function is, show how you can represent linear functions by matrices (given two finite dimensional vector spaces and bases for those vector spaces, there is a 1 to 1 correspondence between linear functions and matrices), then show how function composition turns into matrix multiplication. The common argument against this approach is that it demands too much from the students. However I disagree. To me it motivates the subject, results in fewer magic formulas, and it makes it easier later for people to see how to apply it in practice.

For instance take the associative law of matrix multiplication. It is straightforward that:

      F o (G o H) (x) = F((G o H)(x)) = F(G(H(x)))
      (F o G) o H (x) = (F o G) (H(x)) = F(G(H(x)))

So function composition is associative. Since matrix multiplication is a representation of function composition, it must be associative as well.

Now try to write out a direct proof that matrix multiplication is associative. It will be much longer, much harder, and at the end you'll have no clue how someone could have ever thought up this definition or noticed that THIS definition satisfied the associative law.

<comment><USER3> There are two introductionary books on linear algebra I would recommend. "Linear Algebra Done Right" by Axler gives you a _very_ nice and rigorous way to the foundations (this text requires a small bit of mathematical maturity, so be aware).

After reading Axler's book you should go and grab a copy of Strang's "Introduction to Linear Algebra" to view the applied side of linear algebra (this is the book mentioned in the article).

Strang's book is a terrible choice for first textbook of linear algebra (for the reasons btilly laid out), but it presents very imortant view on linear algebra, provided that you have mastered the foundations enough to compensate for the lack of rigour.

<comment><USER4> Really why by a book when you can just grab a PDF. I used Linear Algebra Done Wrong for my class this semester, and found it a pretty good book for being free. check it out: www.math.brown.edu/~treil/papers/LADW/LADW.pdf

<comment><USER5> Skimming the preface, this book appears to be something like the approach btilly describes. Thanks for the link. Intend to download to my iPod Touch to compete for my rare moments of free time with Elements of Statistical Learning, and the other free Math and CS books I'm sure will be on there soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand what's so interesting about MIT's linear algebra course... It seems pretty standard. Penn State and Pitt's cover the exact same course material.

And theirs is pretty equivalent to CMU's Matrix Algebra (which covers a bit more than MIT)

<comment><USER7> > I don't understand what's so interesting about MIT's linear algebra course

The lectures are free to download (which is awesome to 3rd world folks like me :) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> gets fun once you start going into vector spaces..</comment>


Friendherd.com: An Open Source, Secure, Revenue Free 'facebook' - <AUTHOR> http://www.blue74.com/2010/08/misc/friendherd-com-open-source-secure-revenue-free/

<comment><USER2> If your idea is just Facebook without the privacy issues --- then it's not different enough for me. Diaspora got attention (and lots of funding) because their approach is radically different than Facebook's. While I agree that I don't see anyone's grandma configuring and hosting their own Diaspora "seed", I can very easily see paid seed hosts which will obfuscate this for the layperson. In fact, the paid seed could be how Diaspora makes money to keep development ongoing.</comment>


Ancient Beers - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=9000-year-old-brew-hitting-the-shel-2009-06-05

<comment><USER2> Dogfish Head (the brewery) is right here in little 'ol Delaware. Even if it weren't my hometown microbrewery of choice and there was no bias, I think I'd still be a fan after trying their line of IPAs.

<comment><USER3> Dogfish Head is well known for their crazy beers. One of my favourites is the Midas Touch, not mentioned in the article, but one of the first attempts at recreating ancient beers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this even technically a beer? I know that there are beers made with rice (like Budweiser), but they are still barley-based. In Germany, this would definitely not be considered a beer...

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

Still... I'm a pretty big fan of Dogfish as well, so I give them credit for trying something new.

<comment><USER5> > In Germany, this would definitely not be considered a beer.

Germany may be a more diverse place than you're aware. The Reignheitsgebot originated in Bavaria and was a condition of the German unification in 1871. However, many areas of Germany have long traditions of non-Reignheitsgebot beers, for example, wheat beers and spiced beers in northern Germany.</comment></comment>


Singapore Airlines is using aeroponics to upgrade in-flight meals - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1805109/aerofarms-supplies-singapore-airliness-salad-greens/ <comment><USER2> So 300% more efficient than farms in yield but there is criticism in costs related to electricity to run it all. how about no need for traditional pesticides plus lack of exposure to pollution or animal feces. the reduction in water usage alone should be pay back.

The 300% number is not substantiated in the linked articles and comes with typical qualifying comments. So reading about about the potential pitfalls avoided by just farming indoors has always looked amazing but now with better computers and LED lighting reducing electricity use you could play the game of having your indoor farm solar powered without direct contact of sun and plant, just cover your roof in panels.

Anyone with knowledge that besides fruits what else does not lend itself to this type of farming.

<comment><USER3> "the reduction in water usage alone should be pay back."

How?

Farmland irrigation water is cheap. Really cheap, compared to what you can get in the city.

Prices I see are something like $5,000 per acre-foot in the city vs. $40 per acre-foot for the Central Valley. (see [https://news.berkeley.edu/berkeley_blog/the-cost-of- irrigati...](https://news.berkeley.edu/berkeley_blog/the-cost-of-irrigation- water-and-urban-farming/) )

<comment><USER4> Depends on where you live. Cape Town, for example, has been experiencing frequent and prolonged droughts recently. Parts of India like Chennai are also having serious problems. And so on.

California also isn't a great example, because it is regularly criticized for selling water rights far too cheaply at times when the state has been suffering from drought; I think "Nestle" and "almond farms" are the usual culprits.

<comment><USER5> I'm not convinced about almond farms. Yes, I've seen the claim that it takes 1.1 gallons of water to grow one almond.

But 1.1 gallons of water has about 3500 times the mass of 1 almond, so almost none of that 1.1 gallons is actually in the almond when it is exported from California.

So how much water is _actually_ consumed to produce that one almond, and how much remains available to go on to be used to produce more almonds or other crops?

<comment><USER6> Almonds come from a tree, the tree requires the water to grow the almonds. The tree draws water from the ground, then there is transpiration where the water moves through the tree and out, like through the leaves. None remains, all the water goes into the air.

<comment><USER5> Are drip or micro-irrigation systems so precise that most of what they put into the ground ends up in the plant?

Also, what happens to that water that ends up in the air? California winds are mostly from the west or northwest. I'd expect a lot of what goes into the air to come out as rain or snow on the windward side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, which is the same side the almond growing regions are on.

<comment><USER6> With the water, there is transpiration, which is the water that flows through the plant, evaporation, which is water that goes from the ground to the air directly, and then when the water goes into the water table.

With drip irrigation, you get less loss to the water table and to evaporation, but it doesn't impact transpiration.

For water that winds up the air, no idea there. I'd guess that irrigation would have no impact to down wind precipitation in a given area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano I know almost nothing about indoor farming, aeroponics, urban farming, etc - but I get the feeling that people think its better because it appears clean. Farming and dirt is dirty, and indoor/urban farms/aeroponics are shiny and clean.

Of course being dirty has nothing to do with global warming or the environment, but that type of analysis is much more complicated than "looks clean!"

<comment><USER7> This is an oversimplification of why aeroponics or any form of hydroponics is great. A few of the most notable benefits:

1) Growing density - you use a lot less square footage by growing up!

2) Can grow anywhere - you control a ton of the variables due to setup indoors away from weather conditions, indoor lights, control of water and nutrients, etc.

3) The ability to very carefully fine tune the end product due to a large number of controllable inputs into the growing process (rather than spreading nutrients and water over large acres of land)

<comment><USER8> > 1) Growing density - you use a lot less square footage by growing up!

Yes, but all of that square footage is inside the building, which cost money to construct and operate, in addition to capital costs of constructing the multi-tiered farm and wiring it with LEDs

> 2) Can grow anywhere

Yes...anywhere... _inside a heated building_. Even if the LEDs used provide some degree of heating, some sort of HVAC to regulate temperatures must still be employed. I'd imagine you wouldn't use an unheated warehouse in Canada during winter.

> 3) The ability to very carefully fine tune the end product due to a large > number of controllable inputs into the growing process

Probably the only real advantage. It also makes ramping up to demand somewhat easier, since the growth time is shorter.

However, make no mistake - so far these are low calorie greens at a luxury price.

<comment><USER9> If you built a house just for growing plants then yes. If I grow a few veggies in a green curtain at home in the kitchen window where I am not even there 90% of the daylight time, then no. Also, I am growing radish and salad in the attic right now where there is no extra heating or light so point 2 is also not necessarily true. The only thing I would agree on is that you will not cover more than 5% of your diet that way but it enough for covering the winter with some fresh stuff.

<comment><USER8> > If I grow a few veggies in a green curtain at home in the kitchen window > where I am not even there 90% of the daylight time, then no.

Smaller scales make the math worse, not better.

> Also, I am growing radish and salad in the attic right now where there is no > extra heating or light so point 2 is also not necessarily true.

I'm assuming the attic is attached to a heated building of some sort? Not sure why you're trying so hard to come up with arguments for this hydroponic stuff.

People are well aware of the advantages and it's mostly going to be used to grow high-value cash crops like spices (saffron?) and cannabis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Singapore Airlines is known for their cabin experience, so I'm guessing the vegetables taste pretty good?

I've heard the opposite of greenhouse produce from the Netherlands (Europeans complain that the tomatoes from greenhouses don't taste very tomatoey).

Now the Dutch are extremely advanced at the greenhouse game (probably best in the world), so I wonder why the difference? Is it merely a perception issue?

(would love to hear thoughts from Europeans)

<comment><USER11> Dutch tomatoes are said to be a fourth aggregate state of water.

This however applies to any vegetable that can be purchased in Germany. Almost independent of price.

<comment><USER12> > Dutch tomatoes are said to be a fourth aggregate state of water.

Actually... 'Dutch tomatoes' are the perfect example of an industrialized variety: looks and handles well, dirt cheap. There are delicious tomatoes produced in the Netherlands, but your friendly local grocer (Aldi, Lidl sounds like) doesn't actually want to sell them because they are not what the market wants, nor worth the extra handling costs.

See a local farm for tasty produce, not your local Aldi or Lidl.

The Netherlands in particular exports all it's best in class agricultural products in certain markets abroad that care and pay for quality, but most of roughly northern Europe does not. As a Dutchman this frustrates me to no end, because I can't get the good stuff produced next-door unless I go there and find a friendly farmer who is interested in selling small quantities to individuals (and due to the level of industrialization they often don't!)

<comment><USER11> Sourcing high quality vegetables is very difficult in Germany. Even with local farmers it is very hard to come by. It is quite easy to find sources for organic food but most of it tastes equally bad compared to non-organic, sometimes even worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder what precautions they take to avoid pests?

With no use of pesticides, I imagine an outbreak of pests could be very costly. In the images we can see gloves and what looks like a blue uniform/coat they're wearing.

</comment><comment><USER14> I gotta give it to Signapore Airlines PR machine - they sure manage to get them some good press. Too bad the actual experience flying them is not that exceptional. And don't get me started about their food... Out of 20+ airlines I've flown in the past 5 years, SA's food was by far the worst. I really regretted paying extra to fly with them instead of Qatar (who have excellent food).

<comment><USER15> I take it you don't fly coach? There are lots of big airlines whose coach food options are pretty bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was expecting the article to be about having aeroponics on the airplanes themselves. Would make the term 'aeroponics' even more apt.

<comment><USER17> lol, there's a long list of reasons why that doesn't make sense, but I admit I had the same first thought

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unlike bill g (who thinks it's energy production and storage) I think food growing and delivery would be the next big thing. Imagine if we can make kitchens redundant. Nobody has a gym in their house. Kitchens should be equally rare.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, doesn't make sense. Removing kitchens is just an odd idea. Food preparation is so varied who would want to pass the duty off to others. For many it is as much artistic expression as need.

If anything what technology like this offers is growing food closer to the areas where it is currently transported which in turn would remove those costs from the process plus lots of related effects on traffic and pollution.

<comment><USER19> Removing kitchens is already happening:

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/24/homes- withou...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/24/homes-without- kitchens-ubs-report)

Plenty of people in major cities no longer cook.

> Food preparation is so varied who would want to pass the duty off to others.

Are you joking? You don't see why people would want to spend the time they use to prepare food to do other things just because it's varied?

There are over 700 restaurants on doordash delivering to my location right now, by dinner I've seen that number go as high as 1,500.

How many lifetimes would it take to be able to recreate even 10% of those menus?

-

I can cook, but to me it's like changing my oil or cleaning my apartment. Some people love to make a face and go "you don't cook?!?!?!"

Yeah... not everyone considers cooking "artistic expression", imagine not understanding that.

<comment><USER20> This is very much a cultural thing. I only know one person who doesn't cook, and that's an American. All of my European friends/family/acquaintances can't imagine not cooking. Even I had ask a few times if what my American friend was saying, was for real.

<comment><USER21> For what it's worth, plenty of Americans (myself and wife both included) really enjoy cooking.

<comment><USER22> There's two other benefits - get out of tipping culture and being able source ingredients for moral/ethical/health reasons (lots prepackaged food have many questionable ingredients/packaging and prepackaged/restaurant food has more sugar/salt/grease)

<comment><USER23> >There's two other benefits - get out of tipping culture

This is only a real problem in America.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


When does automation become coding? (My response to Atwood) - <AUTHOR> http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/When_does_automation_become_coding

<comment><USER2> The whole point of the "Turing Machine" is that code is data is code, so... In effect, "automation" is code, just bad code, brainless code in a way, as the other poster says way too easy.

The guy in blitzlang (something) does programs as XML that only convert to text as a "view", so you can see the same "code" as a variety of syntaxes just as you can, say, change icon size in a file manager.

The very word is tricky: Code. Like in cypher? Like in codex (book)? Like in instruction code?

Once you take algorithm out of the hardware realm, then how can we really say which code is script and which is real? Every single thing that ends up in github has been algorithmically transformed. Isn't a config file a Domain Specific Language? Why not? And could we not say an endless stream of mouse- pointer coordinates together with clicks is just as code: Non-executable data that has somehow to be "compiled"?

Just random musings...

</comment><comment> throwaway63-90 The thing is, people consider scripting to be "coding".

Many people who write scripts in Perl, Python, Ruby, etc. call themselves coders.

But if they were tasked with writing in assembly or C they could not do it.

And how do we know Atwood himself can even do it.

Show us Atwood's C programming and let's have a look.

It's probably full of security holes.

<comment><USER3> The thing is, people consider coding to be "programming".

Many people who write code in C, Ada, Pascal, etc. call themselves programmers.

But if they were tasked with writing machine instructions or even assembly they could not do it.

And how do we know throwaway63-90 himself can even do it.

Show us throwaway63-90's machine code and let's have a look.

It's probably full of security holes.</comment></comment>


Shen language ported to its 9th platform, Python - <AUTHOR>

Shen has recently been ported to its 9th platform, Python,
independently by Ramil Farkhshatov and Matthieu Lagacherie.  The other
platforms include CLisp and SBCL (Mark Tarver), Javascript, (Ramil
Farkhshatov), JVM (Hakan Raberg), Clojure (Hakan Raberg), Scheme
(Bruno Deferrari), Ruby (Greg Spurrier) and Java (Joel Shellman).<p>http://www.shenlanguage.org/<p>(via Mark Tarver on comp.lang.lisp) <comment><USER2> Ramil Farkhshatov's implementation can be found here: <https://github.com/gravicappa/shen-py>

<http://www.shenlanguage.org/></comment>


Wuhan Is Returning to Life. So Are Its Disputed Wet Markets - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-08/wuhan-is-returning-to-life-so-are-its-disputed-wet-markets <comment><USER2> > "It's misleading to focus on wet markets when we discuss the outbreak," said > Si, of the University of Waterloo. "It overshadows the true problem here, > which is the supply chain of wild animals. We shouldn't demonize wet markets > because of the coronavirus outbreak."

I think this is important to differentiate.</comment>


Show HN: A list of all the issues that effected AWS, Azure and GCloud in July - <AUTHOR> http://cloudstatus.eu/report/july/2015

<comment><AUTHOR> We've compiled a list of all the issues that were posted for the month, we haven't edited or cleaned any. On the 31st of July AWS had an outage of sorts. AWS status was green but we had already been sending out the alerts to our users.</comment>


Hamming distance between two words - <AUTHOR> http://stochastix.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/distance-between-two-words/

<comment><USER2> That's...a great undergrad blog post that goes into much more detail than necessary (and juggles symbology, IMO), but if you are going to go into so much detail, why not discuss Levenshtein Distance?

</comment><comment><USER3> Writing a little application which takes two words of equal length and prints the valid words path from one the other is a great exercise. Staring with the first word, change one letter at a time, so as to end up with a valid word in the language of choice, until you have the other word. Try turning "comic" into "flair".

This is difficult for a human to do. So do doing it code is interesting and revealing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty cool stuff. My only objection is that it's easy to explain this stuff in algebra, explaining it in plain English is a nice exercise for the reader. ;)</comment>


Tesla has already started making cars again at its California factory - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/11/21254871/tesla-fremont-shutdown-factory-production-model-3-y-elon-musk <comment><USER3> Over the last 2 months, I have lost all respect for Elon. And I have a long history of Tesla / Elon fanboi-ism in HN. I am also a Tesla owner. But the recent twitter tirade from Elon absolutely broke me. He predicted "zero cases" in April from COVID, and has simply doubled down in conspiracy theories since that tweet. Everyday he relentlessly retweets conspiracy theories about COVID deaths and concludes half truths and lies about the virus.

He also suddenly found his "Free America" spirits, while being completely numb about how the Chinese government shutdown its cities and lied about the virus.

Now it is all starting to fall in place. When I bought my car in late 2016, Elon promised FSD in 3-6 months. We are still decades away from FSD and my Tesla still randomly phantom brakes on Autopilot

This factory saga is the latest where he unleashed his followers to wreck havoc on a county health officer, who is anyways under pressure of re-opening. And of course, not to mention that he has no concerns about workers in the factory.

I think the conclusion is fairly simple - Elon is not special. He is the same old.

<comment><USER4> his recent interview on joe rogan was also a bit wierd, saying that most of of the cases are fake so that hospitals can get more money...

i found that a bit wierd because he was complaining about twitter where people just say things without evidence, and there he was saying things without presenting any evidence...

<comment><USER5> > In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is > suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a > reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a > death certificate as "probable" or "presumed." In these instances, > certifiers should use their best clinical judgement in determining if a > COVID–19 infection was likely.

source: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/vsrg/vsrg03-508.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/vsrg/vsrg03-508.pdf)

> The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) yesterday released new > guidance implementing several provisions included in the Coronavirus Aid, > Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. These provisions include:

> \+ A Medicare add-on payment of 20% for both rural and urban inpatient > hospital COVID-19 patients;

> \+ Waiver of the long-term care hospital (LTCH) site-neutral policy for > COVID-19 patients;

> \+ Waiver of the LTCH "50% Rule" for COVID-19 patients; and

> \+ Waiver of the inpatient rehabilitation facility (IRF) "3-hour Rule" for > COVID-19 patients.

source: [https://www.aha.org/advisory/2020-04-16-coronavirus- update-c...](https://www.aha.org/advisory/2020-04-16-coronavirus-update-cms- releases-guidance-implementing-cares-act-provisions)

It's very clear that this is _potentially_ happening on a mass scale. There is nothing preventing it from happening, at least, and the hospitals are under serious financial pressure due to the inability to perform elective surgeries. You cannot invalidate what he's saying. It's easy to chalk that up as yet another conspiracy theory. But at the same time, why _wouldn 't_ a hospital take advantage of programs like this? There's very little threat of it coming back to bite them -- there's no enforcement.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand this accusation. There should be a very easy way to see if COVID deaths are over-reported by comparing with last year's death numbers, isn't it ? Unless, we believe magically more people are dying this year due to heart attacks or respiratory diseases

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus- missing-deaths.html)

<comment><USER5> > Unless, we believe magically more people are dying this year due to heart > attacks or respiratory diseases

I wouldn't say it's "magic" but I do think that this year has been very abnormal to the point that mortality rates aren't directly comparable.

Nobody is saying coronavirus isn't real. A lot of people are dying from it, but that doesn't mean it can't be overreported.

<comment><USER3> If you are trying to say that there is a global conspiracy across multiple nations to over count COVID deaths, you have do better than say "this year has been weird" to account for excessive deaths.

<comment><USER5> A "global conspiracy"? I feel like you're arguing in bad faith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"I love my job personally, just tired of feeling like a chess piece," this [Fremont employee] said. They also said they wouldn't feel safe assembling cars right now because it requires such close-quarters work. "We get lured in by the 'Tesla Dream' of saving the planet only to get treated so poorly that even though I love my job, I'm not willing to risk my health for him."_

Silicon Valley used to be famous for people like Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Andy Grove and Gordon Moore, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. In the latest generation, we have people like Zuck and Peter Thiel and Elon. No wonder our reputation is worse than Wall Street's.

<comment><USER7> I dont think this view represents the majority. My cousin and her husband work there and are quite frankly going gaga at home and chomping at the bit to go back.

Although it is a big factory they work quite spaced out in their departments. The health officials in CA must have found some issues they were not aware of, but due to talk tomorrow so will be interesting to see their point of view on the latest developments.

<comment><USER8> > I dont think this view represents the majority.

The media has developed a bad habit of amplifying the views of tiny discontented activist minorities inside major companies and presenting their opinions (which are often radical) as if they were typical of the majority. After seeing many examples of this kind of total distortion over the years, I simply can't believe any reports about what employees at major companies think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article from the NYT ([https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/business/coronavirus- elon...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/business/coronavirus-elon-musk- tesla-california.html) ) seem to indicate that all of that fuss was to open a week early because Musk really wanted to.

Somewhat pathetic to sue your local government for that.

<comment><USER10> I'm not saying I'm fully behind Musk here, but the May 18th reopening date comes from an anonymous county official who told the Times about some nonspecific negotiations they were having, so I think it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The county's official stay-at-home order isn't set to expire until June.

<comment><USER11> The official wasn't anonymous. Here's his bio: [https://www.acgov.org/board/district1/about.htm](https://www.acgov.org/board/district1/about.htm) which seems to suggest this is exactly the sort of person who would be involved in such negotiations. I wouldn't take that with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER10> Fair. The article I read said he was anonymous but I do see his name is available in other sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Damn [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1259945593805221891](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1259945593805221891)

> Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be > on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be > me.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure how I feel about having it come from the rich and powerful, but I have to grudgingly admit that this is a true attempt at civil disobedience. If the health concerns are as severe as Alameda County says, they can and should arrest him.

<comment><USER13> It's not civil disobedience. It's "Tesla has such a liquidity problem that if we wait another week it'll go bankrupt and my net worth will be negative".

Also note that he's opening at 100% (not 30% staff) and seems to have taken zero measures "learned from Shanghai". I'm guessing when his plane arrives he'll bring in a couple of masks for the photo ops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Move the HQ to Nevada! I would like to live in a world where you can live other places than the Bay area/Seattle/NYC and work for great companies.

<comment><USER13> You think Tesla is a great company?

<comment><USER15> Probably one of the most influential companies ever IMO. Tesla needs another decade to totally revolutionize sustainable transportation.

<comment><USER16> So three decades total? That's not a revolution. That's a reaction to slowly evolving government policies. Thank the governments of the world for the change you see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tesla already executed on the changes needed extremely quickly in China, where they seem to have done both 1. Much more successful and effective lockdowns and 2. Brought things back online competently fast.

Seems like policy makers in the US fail on both counts, no?

<comment><USER18> I think you're making a massive mistake comparing 'the US' and China for a whole number of reasons. Firstly, The US has 246 deaths per million people, New York has 1381 deaths per million, California has 69 deaths per million people. So if we're actually staying on topic of the California plant, actually California is an example of the US doing relatively well. And the reason they're doing well is _because_ of their stringent lock down rules. In fact California probably is doing better than China did in reality - <USER2> China's deaths per million is stated as 58 and that's clearly a number no one really beleives.

Secondly you need to think about the fact that Musk is going ballistic about the US being a totalitarian state- and we're meant to be looking at _China_ as the comparison? Really? I'd love to see a Chinese CEO make statements about the Chinese government like Musk makes about the US.

Finally, the government isn't even saying that Tesla shouldn't reopen the plant, they're just working on making sure they're doing it safely. And you should be listening to the government about this, because it's been pretty conclusively demonstrated by Musk that he can't be trusted on this topic.

<comment><USER19> > China's deaths per million is stated as 58 and that's clearly a number no > one really believes.

China's Covid19 deaths per 1 million is actually 3, not 58. As of today, 4633 deaths for a population of 1.4 BN. Maybe that's manipulated, but it's hard to believe they are hiding 95% of the deaths.

So, yes, in the matter of Covid19, we should better look at China as the comparison. Did you see drones checking if people are wearing masks? Did you see temperature checks when people enter various buildings. Photos where absolutely everybody is wearing a mask, fully covering their nose (not like in the US where they wear it under their chin many times). Rapid testing, people being escorted to a quarantine center, etc, etc.

Now, I am not arguing in favor or Tesla resuming production. I don't know much about this to have an opinion. But strictly on the topic whether we should admire the Chinese response to the Covid19 infection, I think we should give credit where credit is due.</comment></comment></comment>


Dashboard May Not Be Just Another CRM - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009/03/03/dashboard-may-not-be-just-another-crm/

<comment><USER2> Why the separate domain name? It's bad for SEO and branding. I didn't trust that it was really techcrunch until I clicked around. They should have made it it.techcrunch.com or something.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone please explain how these "simple" CRM's are planning on beating out Salesforce? Salesforce is not your typical 800-lb gorilla, they actually seem to change rapidly AND have the priceless appexchange network and development forums built on their product.

Are these companies trying to win via pricing? Lead Log doesn't publicly post pricing, but if it's competitive with High Rise, it IS significantly cheaper than Salesforce user-for-user.</comment>


JS1K 2014 – Dragons (JavaScript demo contest) - <AUTHOR> http://js1k.com/2014-dragons/

<comment><USER2> The link the list refers to on Wikipedia worth the history of box alignment in CSS is actually quite fascinating and deserves a read on its own.</comment>


Uber Seeking To Sell Oakland Building - <AUTHOR> http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/08/24/report-uber-seeks-to-sell-uptown-station-oakland-building/ <comment><USER2> Am I reading this right?

> Orson Aguilar, president of Oakland nonprofit The Greenlining Institute, > which spearheaded the "#NoUberOakland" campaign, said he expected Uber's > earlier announcement of retrenchment might lead to the building's sale.

> "Uber, with all its challenges, could still do something for the community > and make a win for everyone's benefit if it had dedicated significant space > for a training center."

Are they simultaneously saying that 1) NO - Uber shouldn't come to Oakland and 2) We're mad that Uber is leaving?

I have to be missing something...

<comment><USER3> Yes, the food is terrible and the portions much too small.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Regardless of Uber's drama, I was really looking forward to having more major tech companies spread out throughout the Bay Area. There's no reason they should all be concentrated on the peninsula and South Bay.

I understand the concerns regarding gentrification, but all this concentration is just stratifying the haves from the have-nots.

<comment><USER4> The reason historically is proximity to the executive(s) residences. Exhibits are the locations of Netflix, Workday, and Seagate in the early days.

<comment><USER5> IBM, Intel, AMD, 3COM, Cisco too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's pretty sad that the local community has been so self-destructively negative about the benefits of a major tech company moving in. This could've meant new jobs, new housing, and new life to what is currently a pretty crime- ridden and sad part of the bay area…

<comment><USER7> Would it though? It sounds like a great example of gentrification. Those develops and such that move in will just drive up the rent, bring in restaurants and such that cater to their desires, and then push out who was there with higher prices.

I mean, I'd like this not to be the case, and love to hear of examples where things actually got better for people already there but I just haven't heard it.

<comment><USER6> I think gentrification is awesome. I fully support improving the area with new restaurant, bars, stores, housing. Local housing values will improve as the area becomes more desirable. Also key is cleaning up the crime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The company has donated $70,000 toward helping Oakland students attend > college, and given away $30,000 worth of free rides to Oakland > organizations.

Is this a significant amount? Not to look a gift horse in the mouth...</comment>


A few reasons to avoid StartSSL - <AUTHOR> http://danconnor.com/post/50f65364a0fd5fd1f7000001/avoid_startcom_startssl_like_the_plague_

<comment><USER2> My experience getting a personal code signing certificate with Comodo was just as bad, but their support had the English language skills of a 5 year old and they offered fewer options for verification.

For me, they couldn't even find my phone number on my bill and asked me to highlight it and re-send it. Plus, they were absolutely fixated on getting a phone bill that showed the logo of my service provider. I've had the same phone number for 10+ years and even offered to arrange for them to call my phone company and verify the info.

Nope! After days I got fed up and used Photoshop to merge an old paper bill that had logos with a current PDF bill that didn't have logos. They don't care about verifying your identity. All they want to do is follow a pre-determined checklist of criteria so they can cover their ass and take your money.

As an added bonus, the Windows 8 SmartScreen Filter treats personal code signing certificates that aren't popular the same as unsigned code.

</comment><comment><USER3> That guy sounds like an incredibly whiny douchebag.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try addressing the arguments he is making, instead of his personality.

<comment><USER3> His argument is: this process is annoying, difficult and takes actual effort.

As extra validation is. It is a pain in the ass. Get over it.

He was the one to make the commentary on the process showcasing his personality so it's open season on that dialogue.</comment></comment></comment>


Gamebridge: Fitting Square Pegs into Round Holes Since 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://christine.website/blog/gamebridge-2020-05-09 <comment><USER2> What does this _do_? Around halfway through the article:

> One of the more interesting side effects of getting inputs over chat for a > game like Mario 64...</comment>


Fans Favor Wikipedia Over MySpace For Band Lookup - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/03/22/music-wikipedia-search/ <comment><USER2> Just an inquiry here, but does anyone not use wikipedia for their first reference point for just about anything these days?

When I am looking up something it goes: Google, then wikipedia because it's usually the first hit. It's like an online cliffnotes for anything and everything.

[http://16.media.tumblr.com/CPmAN9xMYodpf32isth4vH7Zo1_400.jp...](http://16.media.tumblr.com/CPmAN9xMYodpf32isth4vH7Zo1_400.jpg)

<comment><USER3> I find myself asking people more often than doing the data research now. As in, people are becoming my preferable first reference point. Social bookmarking, forums, facebook, twitter. "Ask HN/NM"...</comment></comment>


Is using GoDaddy going to hurt my company? - <AUTHOR>

Some of the godaddy madness and idiocy is starting to worry me. I have been using godaddy for years as my default domain register, their service is excellent and I did not have a single problem with them.
Lately I see vast numbers of ignorant people bashing godday, their usual claim is "goddady sucks, i never used it (because it sucks), but it sucks".
Why the f are you even talking if you have never used it? Some more claims about their constant up sales. Just ridicules. goddaddy will popup a single window to suggest some more domains, then you just click "no thanks". That's it.
If anything, it works as opt-in, you must pick it manually to buy it.
All the other supposedly godaddy shenanigans, are in fact the users fault, either they didn't understand what they were doing, or their whole email account got hacked, but instead they go screaming at godaddy for losing their domains.
Now this SOPA thing. I have a better suggestions, lets boycott the whole US, obviously i don't want to do business with a government where people want to pass such laws... yeah.
No employee at godaddy cares about SOPA, it was most likely some management political decision, it backfired, but even now when godaddy stopped supporting SOPA people still spout nonsense around.
There is even a post on hn about a guy moving 60 domains and thinking godaddy cares, they don't. It is just their job, to make sure someone didn't hack your account, and when someone does and no one calls, you will remember this day.
I really don't want to leave goddady, but I am sure I will receive emails saying "why are you using evil godaddy? They want to destroy the internet". I guess most people don't know what a whois is, but still.
btw, read a book, or the wiki at least you  ungrateful ba... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Daddy#Philanthropy <comment><USER2> Go Daddy has already backtracked on their support of SOPA.

To answer your question directly - probably not. Unless your site caters to developers and other technically-inclined people, you probably won't be hurt by using Go Daddy. At least not directly.

There is a reason why so many people are angry about SOPA. Under the bill's current language, SOPA will cause more problems than it claims to solve. I will leave it to you to do some research on the language in the bill, but to summarize; SOPA will break DNS. SOPA will have chilling effects on freedom of speech on the web in the United States, and possibly abroad. It will put an unnecessary burden on small businesses and startups by forcing these companies to strictly police user generated content. Piracy is obviously a real problem that hurts developers, artists, and many others. But by and large, the tech community doesn't think that SOPA is a good way of dealing with the issue of piracy.

Go Daddy threw their support behind this bill, which will probably end up hurting most of their customers in some way. They were arrogant about it too, in that they basically brushed off the boycott as being a nonissue to them. Obviously, they changed their minds after people started transferring domains en masse.

If you have no qualms with supporting a company that doesn't care about keeping the web a level playing field for small and large business, then keep on using their services. Personally, I transferred my domain over as soon as I found out they supported the bill.</comment>