Your Kitchen Sponge Is Gross and Microwaving It Doesn't Make a Difference - <AUTHOR> http://www.countryliving.com/home-maintenance/cleaning/a44198/how-to-clean-kitchen-sponge/ <comment><AUTHOR> Relevant quote from the cited article:

 _Sanitation by boiling or microwave treatment has been shown to significantly reduce the bacterial load of kitchen sponges19, 21 and can therefore be regarded as a reasonable hygiene measure. However, our data showed that regularly sanitized sponges (as indicated by their users) did not contain less bacteria than uncleaned ones. Moreover, "special cleaning" even increased the relative abundance of both the Moraxella– and Chryseobacterium–affiliated OTUs (Fig. 3B). Presumably, resistant bacteria survive the sanitation process and rapidly re–colonize the released niches until reaching a similar abundance as before the treatment (Fig. 6A). This effect resembles the effect of an antibiotic therapy on the gut microbiota40, 41, and might promote the establishment of higher shares of RG2-related species in the kitchen sponges. Although further analyses, including controlled sanitation experiments, are needed to substantiate these findings, our data allow careful speculation that a prolonged application of sanitation measures of kitchen sponges is not advisable._

<comment><USER2> Great quote: _Recently it has been shown that in particular Moraxellaceae get significantly enriched on cotton laundry during a domestic washing process._ I guess laundry detergents aren't so great at lysing bacteria!

This paper didn't specifically mention _how_ sponges were microwave sterilized, but one of the linked references specified 1 minute on "high". (~1500W, 100% duty cycle, you'd guess) Presumably that wouldn't get any higher than 100C. Would pressure cooker autoclaving work better? There are, of course, bacteria that can survive autoclaves, but I don't know of any that are also pathogenic or coliform.</comment></comment>


"They Have No Use for Someone Who Looks and Dresses Like Me" - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140325160616-16553--they-have-no-use-for-someone-who-looks-and-dresses-like-me?trk=eml-ced-b-art-M-0&midToken=AQHHy9b_jZx3Cw&ut=1Qc5PziQGF-C81 <comment><USER2> To be fair, many tech companies have no use for someone who looks and dresses differently from them either. For example, a fifty year old woman who comes to an interview for a developer job wearing a business suit. She could be an incredible developer, but sorry, she wouldn't fit into the culture...

<comment><USER3> So what? Unless you have some SJW agenda it doesn't who builds the system, so long as the system gets build (and build well).

Washington needs geeks because they can't build the systems without us and they can't get geeks because they are washington. Geeks can build a system with (or without) a few workers.

<comment><USER4> I didn't read GP to say that it was necessarily a bad thing - only that they were pointing out that the social discrimination cuts both ways. In my experience, they're right, it does.

<comment><USER3> That is true and sad. I just don't think it is as important.

<comment><USER4> Why do you believe that?

It seems to be that discrimination is either bad or not bad. Are some individuals more worthy of consideration?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a lot of (understandable) cynicism here. But if this makes you mad and you want to do something about it, email your links/resume to jobs at hcgov dot us.

We're a team of a dozen or so software engineers (many ex-Google and YC) who've been working on fixing Healthcare.gov for the future, since December. We're actively looking for experienced software engineers. Several have joined in the past few months.

(If you've seen this comment before, we were looking, but now we're very-much looking.)

The external environment may be frustrating compared to what we're all used to, but internally and day-to-day we're running like a startup-- github/node/backbone/AWS/asana/standups/etc. We're finally shipping and we're going to keep shipping.

Change starts with a small group of thoughtful, committed software engineers (...paraphrasing...) and there are many groups now seeding different parts of the system; our area is Healthcare.gov and associated systems. Because we began in a crisis situation, and other unique factors, some of the usual downsides mentioned in this thread don't apply to us.

Email us! We can also refer you to the other groups referenced in the OP if they make more sense for you.

<comment><USER6> > We're a team of a dozen or so ex-Google and YC software engineers

Coincidence or nepotism?

<comment><USER7> Actual nepotism: "we're a team of painfully inexperienced and/or incompetent people, some of whom aren't even engineers, but we're all from the Dickerson family 'cause the boss-man is a Dickerson".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't imagine government employment and software engineering culture ever meeting. In a government job seniority and time in job counts more than competence. You sit on your ass for long enough and you get more for it. In the Bay Area the new and young eat the still beating hearts any of the old and cranky people who made the poor decision to mentally check out later in their career and stopped learning. Most engineers who want a career don't check out because they know this, the fire inside them never dies.

This field is fast paced, and the government bureaucracy is antithetical to fast moving changes. It crushes souls, it does not inspire innovation. Not even powerful technology behemoths with lots of brain power can save themselves from new kids beating out new technology in their dorm room. How could the federal government ever adapt to such a system? Expect more healthcare.gov disasters until they figure this out.

I am specific about the Bay Area although I know some other places are similiar because I've seen cultures clash when a big company from Texas acquire some new SF startup and the cultures collide when you have a place where being friendly is important meet a startup where competence is the only currency that counts. It doesn't matter if you're friendly, it doesn't matter how long you've been in that position, here nobody cares about these things, although being friendly is nice it is not enough, and in many places you can get by somehow in a way you can't in the Bay Area tech scene.

<comment><USER9>
         It doesn't matter if you're friendly, it doesn't matter how long you've been in that position, here nobody cares about these things, although being friendly is nice it is not enough, and in many places you can get by somehow in a way you can't in the Bay Area tech scene.

The problem is that this attitude overflows into everyday lives, and that's why people protest the Google bus. People don't want to live in a world with insensitive assholes that get their jobs done. They don't want to live in a brave new world devoid of history and culture, segregated by industry, education, age, and class.

They especially don't want to live next door to the enlightened bay area techie that can't stop complaining about his company's acquisition by those darn Texans.

<comment><USER3> Why should we care about them? Let them rot, if it comes to where we have to we have more money to buy guards than they have.

<comment><USER10> Because we live in a world that is not homogeneous and are all enriched as a result. Ending up as one's own version of Howard Hughes, locked in a room with a gun and a pile of money, is unappealing to me.

<comment><USER3> I strongly disagree that we are enriched as a result. In fact if the world didn't have these conservatives in it we would have been much ahead.

And just because there are some people you don't want to associate with doesn't mean you don't want to associate with people - just that after compulsory schooling I don't want to talk with/spend time with about 80% of the world. That leaves a bit over a billion, so it doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This Tim O'Reily blog post on Linked In is about a Time magazine article which is about the rescue of the Healthcare.gov project by technical experts from "outside government" and is actually pretty interesting, at least to skim.

Could we get it a better title for the HN post that might encourage more people to follow the link?

<comment><USER12> Actually can we get it submitted with a title that explains what it is, and then have a mod change it to the first H1 on the page without comment? Thanks in advance

<comment><USER13> The mods have been doing a much, much better job of explaining title changes recently (and occasionally either reversing them, or not making them in the first place.)

See [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The interesting thing is that Obama had this figured out and it helped him get reelected...here's what the guy who ran his campaign's IT infrastructure looks like: [http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/harperal...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/harperalone.jpg). The story ([http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when- the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/)) of how much better Obama's IT was than Romney's is a fascinating read.

But there are so many regulations to government contracting that you can't simply choose the people most able to complete the project. You have to choose from the limited set of people that have jumped through all the necessary hoops and cleared all the necessary hurdles, which basically eliminates anyone capable of producing something usable/stable. When all hell's breaking loose and you're attempting to avert a crisis, only then does it seem that you can bring in qualified people, but those people aren't going to be paid the hundreds of millions of dollars that the original incompetent team was paid to create the mess in the first place.

<comment><USER15> There are multiple layers to the woes bedeviling government IT (and government work in general).

The contract award process is indeed broken and often awards contracts to the large fish who fail regularly. Part of that is because 'prior performance' carries signifiant weight, meaning that if you're Lockheed Martin and you've done a 15000 user enterprise resource planning project before you have a leg up on the 50 person IT shop that hasn't, even if said IT shop is far more competent.

But really before you even get to the contract, the fact of the matter is that a lot of the full time government employees making the IT decisions are flat out incompetent. The contractor might have smart people that can do excellent work but if the FTE continually makes bad strategic decisions the best coders in the world are not going to be able to deliver a great system. The original article goes a little bit into that where it talks about how technical people in government don't have the power.

Another problem is that government people are rarely held accountable for their failures. They in turn often don't hold contractors accountable.

Then there's the fact that the government has systematically reduced the amount of full time employee programmers in favor of contractors. That isn't necessarily bad in some ways, but basically it results in the government paying a lot more money to get the same technical expertise. The argument is usually, "Yeah but we don't have to pay for a contractor's benefits." Yet the government is paying 2 or more times the cost of a full-time employee per year for the contractor bill rate.

I think for government IT to truly improvement there needs to be some serious structural changes to the way government work is done from contract awards to employee accountability to the composition of the government work force. It really will need to come from the top, and unfortunately the people at the top usually don't make things like that their priority which is why we're here today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unfortunately the TIME article is now behind a paywall. However I read it back in February and for those of you with a subscription, I highly recommend reading it.

Having worked at Google I can tell you I have infinite respect for the quality of SREs. They really know the deep dark levels of the system, and take their work seriously, especially given some of the messes they have to clean up. I can't even imagine the shitstorm Mikey Dickerson flew into when he volunteered, but the fact that he was described as the guy who was "actually helpful" is not shocking.

I'm not sure exactly how the Obama administration dragooned the tech companies to send volunteers. However, if Obama and Larry Page did have a convo, I like to think it went something like this:

      Obama: Mr. Page, we have a dire situation and we need a team of your best men now.
      Larry: What do you need exactly?
      Obama: 10 of your SREs to help us fix a production system we can't understand.
      Larry: ... you can have 1.

<comment><USER17> Or perhaps...

      Obama: 10 of your SREs to help us fix a production system we can't understand.
      Larry: ... you'll only need 1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Government will continue to have major problems hiring some of the best people in the tech industry until they stop screening for past use of drugs, even soft drugs like marijuana.

Considering that two states (Washington and Colorado) now make it legal for its citizens to purchase and consume marijuana from the age of 21 onward, it's ludicrous that the federal government can sustain itself by completely excluding the citizens of two states from holding federal jobs.

There are absolutely other structural and cultural problems that prevent government from attracting the best from industry, but an insistence on a drug-free past has already and will continue to be a show stopper until attitudes (and procurement requirements) change.

<comment><USER15> If you don't hold a clearance weed usage won't really be a problem. And if you do apply for a clearance, past marijuana usage is not necessarily a disqualifier. What they're screening for is substance abuse that might be problematic enough that they could compromise your ability to keep secrets. And they want to see that you don't lie about past use. I know more than one person who has smoked weed in the past and still gained a clearance.

But really I think the absurdly slow and convoluted gov't application/hiring process, lower pay, and paltry starting annual vacation are bigger deterrents to joining government IT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of a recent remark[1] by an FBI executive about how the federal governments drug testing policy was hampering their ability to get leading cyber-security expects on staff. A policy that very few top technology companies share.

Obviously this isn't the exact situation as described by the article but it still goes to show how out of touch the federal government is with the tech industry and how much catch-up they need to play if they want the best of the best.

[1] [http://www.ibtimes.com/fbi-director-says-agencys-pot- policy-...](http://www.ibtimes.com/fbi-director-says-agencys-pot-policy-needs- reform-attract-cyber-security-professionals-1588245)

</comment><comment><USER20> The big problem is that the people in government who spend the money don't actually have to earn it, which means that they don't value it. It's the same way with Trust Fund babies, who suckle off their parents' wealth and spend it all on drugs and partying. Since they didn't have to earn the money, it's meaningless to them.

What happens in government is that the ones who spend it have all this power, they don't value the money, so then it goes to people that give them kickbacks, and then there is no accountability. Except in the government you talk about hundreds of millions and billions of dollars as opposed to millions and tens of millions around here.

The government needs to take up a different way of budgeting their money. Instead of cutting budgets where people can save money, they should be increasing budgets of those people that can save money or spend it wisely. There are so many things wrong with how the government spends money, no wonder people hate paying their taxes, when they see $300M spent on the government website that could have been made in SV for less than 1% of that.

<comment><USER15> The fact that in government work spending money wisely is not critical the way it is in private sector is a component of the problem. But I think the more fundamental problem it points to is a lack of consequences for poor performance. An agency can waste a lot money but rarely does any experience consequences for it. A department can fail miserably on big initiatives, small initiatives and everything in between but again, rarely does anyone get fired or even disciplined for that. Even in the most high profile government IT failure in US history, no one was asked to resign.

Start creating real accountability for government organizations and the right people can actually rise to the top and the wrong people can get weeded out (rather than waiting until the bad apples retire). People will start paying a lot more attention to their budgets when they're actually held responsible for using them wisely.

> Instead of cutting budgets where people can save money, they should be > increasing budgets of those people that can save money or spend it wisely.

While that sounds like a simple solution, it would incentivize people to make ill-advised cuts one year so the budget could be increased next year. Really all that needs to be done to end the end of fiscal year spending spree is to not reduce budgets when an organization doesn't spend all of it in a given year

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I must have missed the mention of the big consulting firms that make TONS of money on bad government development practices.

Hiring and promotion are certainly amongst the first things to fix. But you're going to have a tough time retaining decent engineers in a toxic environment, one that has been around for many, many years and is probably impossible to fix.

<comment><USER15> Yeah the poor environment can be frustrating and demoralizing. Recently I had to deal with an environment where I wasn't allowed to deploy code to the development server myself. I had to copy code to a shared drive and wait for a scheduled job to copy the files up, and it only ran every 15 minutes at best, sometimes an hour.

I had to fight to get that changed but it's just indicative of the serious dysfunction in the organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article brings up the UK's GDS, but it operates in a completely different political environment, where the words "big government" don't have the same menacing undertones they do in the US. The federalist system, combined with a dislike of government spending, renders US government efforts to simplify their citizens online interactions essentially fruitless.

Take applying for driving tests, for example: in the UK, there's one central body that administers them, so one website can cater to all comers (and it's not massively difficult to roll out country-wide changes). The US has 51 different state-run DMVs, each with their own regulations and application processes. The amount of money it would take to centralise that system is enormous, to say nothing of the political wrangling it would take to wrest control of even a small portion of the process from the states.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform. Don't kid yourself." \- Frank Zappa to a bunch of (apparently?) British hippies on "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" some time before or during 1970.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's kind of funny. Not sure how badly this guy dresses. I've seen people wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and sandals that look well considered, maybe CEO of a space start-up, and others that look like a hot mess. Ostensibly both parties should find less ways to be insulted, avoid posturing, and avoid visually fatiguing fashion faux pas. No need to spend money, spend a little more time choosing wisely. But not so much time that you want people to have the impression you care but not really and end up with lululemon.

</comment><comment><USER25> They don't even feel ashamed for being technically illiterate because they're not "nerds."

[http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/9cdz79/ko- computer](http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/9cdz79/ko-computer)

</comment><comment><USER26> Time Magazine covers is why I subscribe to "hacker" news

</comment><comment><USER27> They have no use for us, and We have no use for them, either.

If we (engineers) would stop serving the state, which has now become tyrannical, it would be forced to change.

Engineers supporting tyrannical states is a classic case of Rand's "sanction of the victim."

(I'm looking at you, NSA. But also at anything involving Obamacare.)</comment>


Remember when we were shocked that Verizon would give us up willingly? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order <comment><USER2> If they're collecting all the calls to and from our phones, can they _please_ start doing something about the dozens of spoofed calls I get each week trying to sell me scam services? Please?</comment>


Ask HN: Sales Letters - <AUTHOR>

At the recommendation of a fellow HN reader, I've been reading the book "The Ultimate Sales Letter" by Dan Kennedy.
In short, the book is a good guide on writing the sales letters most often seen in direct mail, but now frequently seen on some landing pages as well, particularly for products such as ebooks.
Based on other comments people have made here, I have no doubt that letters written like this -- long, 4-6 pages, written in a folksy, kitschy way -- are effective for many target customers out there.
My question is as follows: has anyone used this format for something besides a kitschy mass consumer product? In other words, does such a writing style work for more sophisticated buyers, such as execs or tech savvy people? The book suggests sending such letters to executives but I cannot imagine responding well to such a letter were I to receive it at my office.
What are your experiences with sales letters? Who does it work well for, and who doesn't it work well for? What changes have you made to the basic method to increase efficacy? <comment><USER2> I've personally never been a fan full stop - we get quite a few sales letters a week and most go straight in the bin (we will find you). All that gets noted is the product and the name.

Anything over 2 pages is just ignored entirely here. A single page with a simple bullet list of what your trying to sell will be the most likely to get read.

But I dont promise that is what everyone, everywhere does (obviously).

<comment><USER3> I somewhat agree with ErrantX, but I think it depends on what stage of the sale you are at. I received an intro e-mail sales letter months ago which was more than a screen long and went on into too much detail for an intro. If you are trying to get a client, i don't think this works. You have to get them interested with a catch, and give them a bit of info, and let them come to you to get more, or follow-up with more.

Overload at the beginning is a big no no i believe.</comment></comment>


Where is GitHub most popular in the UK? - <AUTHOR> https://geonet.esri.com/blogs/james/2015/07/09/where-is-github-most-popular-in-the-uk

<comment><AUTHOR> Interactive map from the article: [http://appsstage.esriuk.com/app/developerevangelist/224/wmt/...](http://appsstage.esriuk.com/app/developerevangelist/224/wmt/view/d147785761984557b69c73adf4a8e2da/esri- github/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd like to see also the list ordered by rate. I made a small extract:

      City       Acc.    Pop.   Rate
      Cambridge  1313  128515  1.022
      Brighton    588  163000  0.361
      Oxford      551  171380  0.322
      Bath        231   88859  0.260
      [...]
      Edinburgh   801  782000  0.102
      London     9291 9787426  0.095
      Glasgow     558  589900  0.095
      [...]

Cambridge is a clear outlier. Do you have any explanation? Too many students? More prone to report the location?</comment>


No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning - <AUTHOR> http://m.phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html <comment><USER2> The diagram in the story sort of looks as if our "universe" is actually the ejecta from a black hole / singularity.

Ponder this, I shall.</comment>


Privacy Pretense: How Silicon Valley Helped the NSA - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140246/abraham-newman/privacy-pretense?

<comment><USER2> The difference being that we have to accept things like a terms of service or a EULA to use google's services, the NSA provides me nothing, does it surreptitiously, and I cant sue the NSA for misusing my data because there are no regulations, and according to the courts I cant prove I am being spied upon so there is no proof they are spying on me.

What a crock.</comment>


Visitor Tracking Without Cookies (or How To Abuse HTTP 301s) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scatmania.org/2012/04/24/visitor-tracking-without-cookies/ <comment><USER2> The laws don't define cookies narrowly. Just because you're not using an http set-cookie header doesn't mean you've circumvented privacy laws. For example, UK law:

<http://www.aboutcookies.org/default.aspx?page=3>

6\. - (1) Subject to paragraph (4), a person shall not store or gain information, or to gain access to information stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user unless the requirements of paragraph (2) are met.

(2) The requirements are that the subscriber or user of that terminal equipment -

(a) is provided with clear and comprehensive information about the purposes of the storage of, or access to, that information; and

(b) has given his or her consent.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, the new EU ePrivacy directive is not about "cookies" per se, but storing and re-accessing data you store on people's computers. Cookies are the main example of that, but it also applies to anything that can re-identify a user.

<comment><USER4> In a sense the "Cookie law" is a confusing misnomer. Not only "cookies", but also local storage, flash cookies, plugins, toolbars, and even resources like images, HTML, CSS and JS fall under this law.

The Dutch minister spoke of (freely translated): "Everything that reads or stores your data on your appliance, without permission, without a functional goal other than tracking".

Some techniques like browser fingerprinting ( <https://panopticlick.eff.org/> , but also possible with <http://modernizr.com/> ) don't store anything on your appliance, but would still fall under the "reading your data from your appliance" part of our law, if used for tracking purposes.

You would need permission to use the "grey" technique from the article. Even if you were to store that data in aggregated form.

<comment><USER5> If I write a site that logs users in, I keep track of them merely by storing their username in a database as well as a cookie value representing that they are logged in, so do they need to accept terms before logging in?

<comment><USER3> There is often "implied consent" for storing local data that is strictly necessary to perform an action that a user has initiated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The more common way to do this is to stuff data in the ETags or Last-Modified date on a cacheable piece of content. This "hack" is at least a decade old, by the way.

Kissmetrics was actually using it in the wild for a while, but I think they stopped after there was a public outcry.

<comment><USER7> It's so old it's even in Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag#Tracking_using_ETags>

<comment><USER8> Being in Wikipedia is rarely associated with something being "old"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also evercookie <http://samy.pl/evercookie/>.

</comment><comment><USER10> Demo site appears down, but I get the gist of it. It's just abusing browser caching.

Rather than a bunch of ad networks and analytics companies finding workarounds, I'd rather sites just stand up to this obviously flawed rule. It's ill thought out, and I have no plans to offer one of those annoying "Hey, this site uses cookies, just like every other site on the internet!" alerts.

<comment><USER11> So in your opinion the flaw with the rule is that it violates your natural right to store cookies on your visitors browsers without asking?

If your visitors have to log in you might as well show them such a message. If they don't have to log in, there is probably also no reason for them to accept your cookies.

While almost every site on the Internet uses cookies, most of them are of no benefit to a visitor. And yes, technical solutions exist, but they are not really suitable for a vast majority of the population that simply does not know about cookies, and which cookies to accept.

<comment><USER10> It's not a natural right, it's a technical right. It's a fundamental storage mechanism of browsers. It means you don't have to log in every time you browser to my site, or you don't have to enter your birthday every time you want to browse mature content. It means advertisers are delivering the right ads, and that site owners can see where the bounce rates are highest for users and fix that page. Cookies are important, and the web functions better with them enabled and accessible to site owners.

Personally, I get annoyed when I'm badgered by notices, and sometimes even modal windows, for cookie notices. Of course your site uses cookies, it's just like every other site on the web. I shouldn't have to agree to a notice every time I visit a new domain. I have a browser toggle and if cookies offend me for some reason I can disable them.

<comment><USER12> Technical right. Fantastic!

Look at what cookies websites actually store.

When you go to many sites there are a bunch of other people spying on you and setting cookies that you didn't even know.

I don't agree with the implementation of this law, but I certainly agree with its intent.

<comment><USER13> No site can force you to set their cookies - you can simply turn that option off in your browser. You can even whitelist just the sites you trust, or blacklist just the sites you don't trust.

Not that you can really tell, anyway - it's impossible to know just by looking at a cookie what it's really being used for, or what data on you is being tracked. There are certainly good reasons to give cookies to users that have not logged in yet, though - one example that springs to mind is a CSRF token.

Lastly, what is this meant to achieve? The aim is to crack down on activity that was _already illegal_ before this law came in. Sites that were doing naughty things and tracking users illegally aren't exactly going to stop because they now have to show a notice about cookies. Before the law came in I said "they'd just not bother showing the notice" but frankly, the could abide by it - users would just click "yes" anyway out of habit!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This paper on browser fingerprinting shows that it is possible to identify a particular user, with reasonably high reliability, without using cookies or other tricks: <https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with paulsutter - this does not comply with the law, nor do any of the hacky workarounds that I've seen mooted (except perhaps server side log file analysis - old school). I've added a comment to that site, which is awaiting moderation.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it just me being perfectionist, or does needing to OCD your cookie data down to census level indicate that maybe your business model needs a little work? Are there certain niches where this degree of tracking is really necessary?

</comment><comment><USER17> Standard HTTP headers carry values that are distinct enough to uniquely identify most visitors: <https://panopticlick.eff.org/>

<comment><USER18> That uses mostly data collected clientside using javascript and flash. HTTP headers alone are no way enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Unless you want to get sued ([http://www.extremetech.com/internet/91966-aol- spotify-gigaom...](http://www.extremetech.com/internet/91966-aol-spotify- gigaom-etsy-kissmetrics-sued-over-undeletable-tracking-cookies)), I would avoid doing this until the legal grey area surrounding non-cookie tracking is resolved. I suppose you might be able to get a user to "agree" to this if you have them agree to a ToS when they sign up, but even then I'm not too sure of that.

</comment><comment><USER20> The irony with the demo... "Passager, rails deployments that just works" with a huge Error page showing security-sensitive stack traces.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ironic that the first thing that site does is try to set a cookie in my browser. I denied it. Also, I have JavaScript turned off.

<comment><USER22> How does the web look like from the 90's ?

<comment><USER21> It looks like the Web without privacy snoops whoring out visitor clicks to the highest bider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why not just use localStorage instead of cookies?

<comment><USER24> Because localstorage may pop a message window on some browsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As others have mentioned, this is old news. And this site should really be ignored as trash..."Scatman Dan"?

</comment><comment><USER24> Can be done with ETags too.</comment>


Knowing How to Use a Computer: The Cheap Ticket into the Elite Class - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/05/16/the-cheap-ticket-into-the-elite-class/ <comment><USER2> Not everyone can be in the top 1-5 % by definition. But everybody could be better off if they knew something about computing with data and algorithms.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Elite Class", in this context, does not mean "top 1-5%", but "independently wealthy by age 30".</comment></comment>


Apple is Now Accepting Mac App Store Submissions from Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.maclife.com/article/news/apple_now_accepting_mac_app_store_submissions_developers <comment><USER2> though i'm both an iphone user and a mac user, i'm not happy to see the app store coming to osx. it's not because i don't think apple needs a better "package" manager for their OS, indeed they do. macports is great, but limited. though software installation isn't a major problem i feel needs fixing in osx, it's true there's no real "apt-get" for a mac.

i'm unhappy about the coming changes because i feel they signal apple's becoming more meddlesome in OSX which, aside from drivers and such, has remained remarkably open until this point. with the iphone i'm willing to give up some degree of freedom/control, as i'm rewarded by the appliance-like stability of the device even though so-called "iOS multitasking" is a nightmare and needs much work.

however i can't help but fear that in trying to monetize the mac in this way, that there are some dark clouds looming over the horizon. and maybe that's all it is ... fear. i hope my fears are not founded.

that said, i can't look at apple's showcase products (iphone, ipad) and somewhere in my mind not start making preparations to move back to ubuntu at the first sign of trouble.

<comment><USER3> There does need to be a good OSS equivalent of the mac's user interface to allow for people to jump ship. Not graphically styled the same, but the actual UX.

Everything out there is based on Windows' taskbar style of [window > application > menu], whereas mac is roughly [application > menu > window], and allows for applications to be running in the foreground with no open windows. If there was a nix window manager that operated like this, I'd be making preparations to jump ship now.

Unfortunately, everything seems to be taskbar-based with menus attached to each window. And the only attempt at improvement is that there's some pride in trying to cram more widgets on a taskbar.

Alt-tabbing is another area for improvement: on the mac command tab switches between applications, whereas on windows it switches between windows.

I know this is personal preference, but the Windows taskbar _literally gives me a headache_ on a daily basis.

<comment><USER2> ubuntu is coming remarkably close these days, and i think 11 will be even better. it's just that it's not fully functional on newer macbook pros yet. not sure when support will get there for things like "automatic graphics switching" either. but when if/when it does, i'll probably jump ship.

i just get a warm feeling from using ubuntu. i've already got it loaded on my old white macbook and it works great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad to see an app store coming to the Mac. I had an idea to build an app store for Mac and Windows as a startup a while ago, because I wanted to bring the convenience of Linux package managers like apt to Mac and Windows PCs and include commercial apps. I chose not to pursue that idea, because I predicted that something like this was already on Apple's roadmap and that they would beat me to it. It only made sense, since they already had most of the infrastructure in place with iTunes and the iPhone app store. I guess it turns out that it was a wise decision. (I feel like I should give Joel Spolsky credit for influencing my decision to not pursue that startup with his post on platform vendors: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html>)

<comment><USER5> Could still work on Windows (which is the bigger market anyway) whitelabel it and sell a version to Dell,Sony... you get instant traction and the vendors are happy (percentage of proceeds) but of course you have to sell it to Dell, HP, and Sony...

<comment><USER4> I had thought of that. As soon as the idea went from building an app store that I would use personally to one that would be Windows-only, I knew that I wouldn't be passionate enough about it to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't help but wonder how bad the initial round of "gold rush" type apps are going to be? If anyone had an iPhone when the app store first launched you'll remember all of the absolutely terrible apps that did well on the basis of being the only thing that existed.

<comment><USER7> I imagine that effect will be lessened, because people already have the option of buying/downloading apps for free on their computer. Sure, companies will hire contractors to pump out some crap, but I don't think people will feel as compelled to buy it.

<comment><USER8> there's also a very large body of high quality iOS apps, especially games, that could be ported with minimal effort

<comment><USER9> Not really. Most high quality apps are optimized for small touch screens, not 17" monitors with a mouse. And anyways, UIKit and AppKit aren't that similar, you'd end up rewriting almost everything.

<comment><USER10> Actually cocos2d-iphone, one of the THE premiere 2d game iOS toolkits added a Mac target a couple months back.

If you wrote your iOS game in that, you can pretty easily port it to the mac.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like people are already squatting for app names too, which is lame. See: <http://twitter.com/iTod/status/29635860674>

<comment><USER8> The assumption you're making here is that the person who's claimed 'Fluid' doesn't have a legitimate use for it</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you stay focused on one idea? - <AUTHOR>

I have been working on one startup or another since I was in my teens. Not one has been super-successful, but that's ok because I expect that as an entrepreneur. I've learned a lot along the way.
What I can't seem to do, however, is stay focused on just one idea. I am a developer and an ok designer. I'm good at what I do (in general, as a developer) and am constantly coming up with new ideas. I have a few that I really like, and I've spent serious time on a few of them, but I find myself becoming bored of each idea before too long, and then I am off thinking about or looking into some other new and exciting idea.
How do you stay focused on just one idea? It feels like any decent idea could be profitable enough to help me leave my job with enough persistence, but I can't seem to stay focused or excited about just one idea. What I want is independence and to build something that other people really love to use. I'm fine with a lifestyle business instead of a home-run, if that means I can work for myself. I'm now in my early 30's, and it feels like time is slipping away. I work on my projects in the evenings, generally around 20 hours per week.
I think of myself as a single founder, not because I don't want to or won't work with someone else, but because I haven't yet found someone who is as dedicated to actually building something, anything, as I am. I've teamed up with people a few times, but they all fizzle out (they underestimated the time involved, got married, had a baby, etc). I'm open to really finding someone else to work with, but I'm not sure that will really fix the problem.
Does anyone else have this problem? If so, how do you stay focused on just one idea when its no longer "fun" (for me that would be things like marketing, building the back-end, etc)? What can/should I do? <comment><USER2> 1) pick a project large and difficult enough that you don't already know how to accomplish it. I certainly will not have fun if I already know how to accomplish the task before I've begun.

2) daily progress. It doesn't have to be consistently a huge amount of progress every day, but it should be enough progress that you could grab somebody and say "hey take a look at what I did today" and be able to show them some new functionality you've added.

3) responsibility. You should feel bad if you are not making progress. If there are no consequences then it's easy to slide off the cliff.

To help myself with #3, two weeks ago I began making daily video logs (like from the movie Avatar). Every day I tell the camera what I have accomplished, and I present a quick 1-2 minute demo of the new code or functionality. But most importantly I tell the camera what I will accomplish tomorrow. And in tomorrow's video log I better either have that task completed or I have to fess up and explain to the camera why I didn't get it done.

<comment><USER3> Captains Log March 9th 2011:

"The delete bookmark function of we_made_a_delicious_clone was not complete this morning due to far too much reading of HackerNews"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You have to realise if you're not focused on one project your mind is going to be scattered everywhere and you'll end up with half assed products or incomplete projects. I made this mistake when i was trying to start something like 3 companies at the same time when i was 15/16, i wanted to do it all. You just can't.

For example if you had a series of essays to do in a certain amount of time, they'd all probably be mediocre or incomplete. Yet, if you had to do one essay in the same amount of time that one essay would be pretty impressive, you'd have time to proof read, spell check, change areas etc...

Pretty poor example but you get the idea.

Find one and stay focused on it.

When the idea becomes no longer fun get some feedback, nothings more motivational than feedback. There's going to periods were you just can't be bothered or were it tires you out and the next task/step is soo complex you procrastinate for weeks, you have to identify this and the fact that it happens and push forward.

On thing i do, it's pretty weird, start with really small tasks and build up til' you're in a productive state. (do the dishes, reply to emails, make breakfast lol) When it comes to the hard part (opening up the code editor and getting started) what i do is kinda' go consciously unconscious, you phase out everything, the task, every thought in your head (you might even go light headed), complete yet forced zen and just start coding, when you "regain consciousness" you'll have already started the task and it will be less of a mountain.

And prioritise.

I'm currently at university, in my first year, working on my new start up. It's more important than university to me, i haven't been a class all term and only about 2/3 lectures this term because i'd rather be designing/programming. My priorities are with my idea not with this degree, i have a load of other ideas and what i'll learn from this start up with help me with the others later on.

Just shelve the ok ideas and push forward with that one idea you love the most.

D

</comment><comment><USER5> Good question. Imagine you are the owner of a franchise you admire (i.e 1800-GOT-JUNK). Could you build it and keep it successful?

The issue we face is that our 'ideas' are entirely unproved, while a franchise is proven, so while there is risk, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I think the absence of a 'light' allows us to drop a 'idea' and pick up another one thinking this will be better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you hit the nail on the head. So do I just need to take that risk with some idea that _may_ work, rather than keep thinking about other cool ideas that also _may_ work? I'm willing to risk/invest the time. Its just tough to stay focused.

<comment><USER6> Also maybe join up with a start-up group or other entrepreneurs in your area to keep you motivated and to share your successes, failures, and concerns. A support group can go a long way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A good way to stay focused is to quit your job and put yourself in a position where you have to make money in order to survive. Then it's going to be very easy for you to decide what to focus on.

Disclaimer: this is what I did, wouldn't recommend it to everyone, YMMV, etc...

<comment><AUTHOR> Man, I wish I could. I have no savings, a wife, and four kids who depend on a steady salary. You're probably right, and maybe that would be the best thing to do... but I just can't take that leap yet. That's essentially why I work 4-5 hours every evening in addition to my day job - to have some glimmer of hope of being able to some day build something that takes off enough to allow me to leave this place.

<comment><USER8> Definitely don't go the route of quitting especially if you have children and a family to support.

Personally for me, what I did was talk about my idea with a cousin of mine. He got really interested in it and now we're working together on it. I would recommend talking to other people (your wife, your kids, your friends, etc) about your idea and see if you can get them excited. I did - and I got even more excited to hear their excitement.

Also, always try to set goals. Both long term and short term. When you see that you are achieving those short term goals, you'll feel like you've accomplished something and sooner or later, hopefully it'll snowball. Good luck!

<comment><USER5> I think its a fallacy that if you quit your job you will have a do or die mentality.

If you don't have a plan, a proven business, or clients, then the probability of you spinning your wheels and going broke is very good.

<comment><USER8> Yes, a lot of people love the rags to riches story and it makes for good entertainment value. But really the key is your mind and determination to succeed .. and perhaps a greater purpose other than yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am an entrepreneur and I have run into a similar situation a number of times ( I have about 2-3 partially complete apps lying dormant ). I think this is a problem you face when you haven't had a single successful product _shipped_. Sure, you might have built a few partially-complete apps, but you haven't _shipped_ anything yet. So your brain starts playing tricks on you, you'll think that your _next_ idea has a _better_ shot at _success_ and that's how you lose interest.

One way to overcome this is: When you have a new idea, 1) Come up with a bare minimum list of features. 2) Give yourself a week or two weeks time to finish it. 3) Once you are done release a free beta and get customer feedback.

The point of this whole exercise being _to reduce the window of work to a short period_ in which you can stay focused. Think of it as some kind of a _minimum viable product_ (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product>).

Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER6> Push yourself to stay focused. Do somethings you like and some things you don't each day so that you are not faced with a giant list of things you don't want to do.

Also make sure your not just looking for an excuse to not launch. Tackle something small, get it done and get it out. Then rinse and repeat. "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

</comment><comment><USER10> Feedback from a real customer.

Nothing has ever given me more focus and motivation that someone saying, "I would pay for that." Especially if it's someone who has paid me for things in the past.

</comment><comment><USER11> Focus on a project that you love: one that you truly support and one that you truly believe in. If you're 100% devoted to a cause, it will be much easier to continue pushing on even when it is no longer "fun". Remind yourself why you started, what you have achieved along the way, and what you still hope to achieve. Then just work towards achieving your goals - no matter how big or how small. Once again, if you're completely devoted, you'll take pride in your gains and this should keep you motivated.

</comment><comment><USER12> wow, it's as if you just read my mind and wrote it down here. Do you live in Israel by any chance?

<comment><USER13> Same here

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't.</comment>


Achieving a failure - <AUTHOR> http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/01/achieving-failure.html

<comment><USER2> Anyone has a clue of what's the company he's talking about?

<comment><USER3> I think there.com. The business week article from 2007 lists three startups he was involved with. A recruiting firm he founded in college, There.com, and IMVU.com. IMVU is described on wikipedia as generating over 1 million a month in revenue, so it probably isn't that one. And the business week article has Eric describing There.com as having a focused strategy, but not having any idea what customers want.

Link to article:[http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc200...](http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc20070326_796549.htm?chan=technology_special+report+--techs+best+young+entrepreneurs_tech%27s+best+young+entrepreneurs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This strikes me as the type of thing that comes from people groomed in the corporate world. Companies with huge customer bases and revenues can't afford to do anything less than move mountains, because mountainous results are the only thing that matters.

Personally I've always worked on smaller things. I've never had an interest in being a cog in a giant machine. As a result I've always had the luxury of an agile team and rapid feedback cycles.

When it comes to startups, sure I want mine to be huge... but the way I see it, most huge companies were small companies once (maybe I'm wrong). Given the odds of creating a $500,000, $5,000,000 or $50,000,000 company, doesn't it make sense to aim for early success and use real revenues as a launchpad to the next level, and just sell the company if the potential ends up not being there?

I know some ideas are either huge or nothing (eg. electric cars), but I don't think most web startups fall into that category. Being the next Google is sure appealing, but can it be manufactured? Where does aiming high hit diminishing returns?</comment>


Seagate slapped with a class action lawsuit over 3TB hard drive failure rates - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3028981/storage/seagate-slapped-with-a-class-action-lawsuit-over-hard-drive-failure-rates.html <comment><USER2> Finally! Seagate has been dropping the ball on drive stability for a long time now, and the failure rates on these 3TB disks is completely unacceptable. Additionally, seagate's own RMA department has been failing terribly, with a lot of their "recertified" disks being returned to customers with serious conflicts, ranging from a high number of uncorrectable sectors to logic board problems that completely cripple systems they are installed in.

Nasdaq:STX is down 1.80 points (5.92%) right now. It was down around 6.76% about an hour ago. I hope, for the sake of their shareholders & customers, that seagate gets it together.</comment>


Publishers will make or break RSS, not readers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.superfeedr.com/publishers-make-break-rss/

<comment><USER2> Has anyone got any links to "influential" tech bloggers claiming RSS is dead? I know there has been a lot of fuss about it with google touting "dwindling users", yet I still haven't seen any such claims laid out in this article. Did I miss the boat / was I simply oblivious to such nonsense?

I also question google and their trite "dwindling numbers" excuse. They've downplayed reader ever since the bootstrap-esque debut of their "stupid bar" its been in the dropdown, even though it is the only thing I ever used/use the "stupid bar" for. This may be my tinfoil hat speaking but something tells me this spring clean has more to do with promoting google+ / fostering real page views (ad views) than anything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, a quick lookup would give you that: <http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/05/rest-in-peace-rss/> or that [http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/13/google-readers-death-is- pro...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/13/google-readers-death-is-proof-that- rss-always-suffered-from-lack-of-consumer-appeal/) or many many many other...

Agreed on the Google+ analysis though :)

<comment><USER2> Techcrunch is influential now? :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Good one :) There was a similar article on TNW earlier in the week for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> RSS is trivial to implement, and there's considerable value in having a machine-readable version of a publication. New media consumption tools often rely on RSS to get started at the very least, and letting your competitors get a leg up when the new hotness comes around isn't good for business. Publishers who drop RSS do so at their own peril.

</comment><comment><USER4> I choose to not believe this, and live in the delusion that someone will create a hacked version of a Google Reader-like API for the sake of saving people time. Possibly and hopefully tldr.io does.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great article! Thanks Julien

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't hold your breath waiting for legacy media to announce and explain why they are dropping RSS support. Now that GReader is done, they have the PR cover to do it...watch!

"The Price of Information

The way I view the structure of the news industry is much more simple than the complexity everyone perceives. You have corporate (social group) information producers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today that gather, assimilate, translate, interpret, print and distribute information. The defining characteristic is not the flavor of the information produced, but that they are all selling bundled products.

On the other hand, you have the blogosphere that is gathering, assimilating, translating, interpreting and selling content independently. The closest thing to a common distribution network in the blogosphere is the RSS feed. There are many bloggers in the finance industry selling subscriptions at and beyond the price of print publications, so we know a paid market for information can exist in the Internet ecosystem. The remainder of bloggers are giving their information product away to maximize page views and the corresponding advertising revenue."

<http://nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=68></comment>


Ask HN: What happens to society when we have pocket AI lie detectors - <AUTHOR> With the recent news of AI being able to detect diseases and even sexual orientation from photos alone, it got me thinking; how will society be affected when you have apps that can tell with >95% certainty if you're lying?
It doesn't sound like it would be too hard to build, one of you would probably be able to throw something like that together in a very short amount of time, but what will the fallout be?
No more white lies. No more social grace and niceties. No more saving face.
Only brute, blunt honesty...
:edit
I want to expand the range of scenarios a bit; jealous spouses whipping the app out in public the whole time("Do you think she's prettier than me? Do you like him more than me? Do you miss XYZ?").
Children asking their parents who's their favourite. OR asking them if they regret having them. Or asking if dad REALLY is their dad.
What about employers asking if you're bluffing in salary negotiations? Or asking if you worked 100% of your hours. OR if you're looking to move?
Then, there's the legal side - at what level of certainty would courts accept lie detector apps as evidence? Would they?
What if politicians can be caught lying in press conferences in real time, and be called out for it? <comment><USER2> > It doesn't sound like it would be too hard to build

Heh, try then. We can't even understand complex sentences yet, much less process things like sarcasm. Even people have issues with that.

The examples you listed are also biased. Not untrue, but the sexual orientation one was based on self-published profile photos which completely changes the context.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe, I'm certainly no machine learning expert. My post was mostly a question on the consequences of having such an app available to the public at large, not so much the actual feasibility of building it in a couple of months.

<comment><USER2> It's not the question of a couple of months. Such app is not going to exist.

I mean, I'd be happy to speculate for some story ideas. But if you're being serious, then - this is not going to happen. Not from visual, voice, or other external cues. Not in our lifetime either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > No more social grace and niceties. No more saving face.

I don't think so. Even without the lie detector we mostly understand when someone is just being polite or trying to save face.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but there are scenarios where white lies are still used to deceive, but maybe it's seen as a lesser evil to avoid violent confrontation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There was an interesting book about 20 years ago on the creation of a perfect lie detector, The Truth Machine by James L. Halperin. It primarily dealt with the screening that would take place throughout your daily activities suck as signing up for day care or a new job when the detector would force everyone to confess any previous crimes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds interesting, will check it out, thanks!</comment></comment>


Google Maps on Android Will Now Show a Dedicated Ride-Sharing Tab - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/03/15/google-maps-on-android-will-now-show-a-dedicated-ride-sharing-tab/ <comment><AUTHOR> I hope they expand this beyond Uber and include Lyft too. I'd love to be able to compare times and prices in one place.</comment>


Running FreeBSD on OS X using xhyve, a port of bhyve - <AUTHOR> https://dan.langille.org/2018/10/02/running-freebsd-on-osx-using-xhyve-a-port-of-bhyve/ <comment><USER2> I've been using this setup for years and glad to see some info here on HN about it. It's very fast but more importantly for development it really does a great job for porting to the real thing. I've never built anything in Xhyve that fails on a real install. Most of the differences I've seen are in vmnet versus like an e1000 device. I don't believe it does full duplex as per the xhyve docs (its a TODO under virtio_net) and on the MacOS side there is no Tap device like with Hyperkit. Despite that web pages can be served quite fast, a lot of ops are a stub to mmap on the host. NFS runs really well as a native format to share between guest and host. Heh, I've left it on for a couple of months accidentally and was still running like a top. My only real gripe is NTP drifts when the host goes to sleep and there is not an out-of-the-box solution for that like say VMWare. Someone has gone part of the way with getting e1000 for FreeBSD with Hyperkit it just needs to be looked into more, but this is a good explanation- and explains the performance differences: [http://thebsdbox.co.uk/a-peak-inside-docker-for-mac- hyperkit...](http://thebsdbox.co.uk/a-peak-inside-docker-for-mac-hyperkit- wait-xhyve-no-bhyve/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope xhyve will become a first class supported feature that gets shipped with macOS. I see recent commits from Apple engineers [https://github.com/machyve/xhyve](https://github.com/machyve/xhyve)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've played with xhyve and dockers version of it -hyperkit-, too. Even wrote a little bash script to help with creation, start and edit of VM config files for it. If anyone's interested.

[https://github.com/Ozymandias42/xhyve- manager](https://github.com/Ozymandias42/xhyve-manager)

</comment><comment><USER5> AFAIK it's not a port of bhyve but a Port of the bhyve userland tools that tap into the MacOS hypervisor framework.

I wish there was a simpler approach to the hypervisor framework. I normally avoid using any third party software that wants to taint the kernel and third party hypervisors fall into that category. There is parallels desktop lite which can be installed from the App Store but it's extremely limited (and paywalled) for something that I suspect it's just a pretty interface to the hypervisor framework.

<comment><USER6> QEMU now has 'hvf' (hypervisor.framework) available in master as an accelerator, I think it was a summer of code project.

Wish I could use it, but the current implementation calls the xgetbv instruction which is not available on my Westemere EP processors.

All MacOS/QEMU needs is PCIE passthrough and you could have an amazing setup with thunderbolt accessories.

<comment><USER7> > QEMU now has 'hvf' (hypervisor.framework) available in master as an > accelerator, I think it was a summer of code project.

It was not a Summer of Code project, there was (is) a company called Veertu that did the work who sold a virtualization product for running Linux and Windows on macOS on the App Store. Because it used Hypervisor.framework, it could be sandboxed and could be on the Mac App Store.

Google forked Veertu's GitHub repo, adding a few bells and whistles for use in their Android emulator.

Finally, the work was merged upstream to QEMU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the overhead of running in xhyve? Is it like a Linux kernel container, or more like KVM, or what?

<comment><USER9> It's a virtual machine, not a container based system. So it's going to perform somewhat like newer versions of VirtualBox I'd imagine. I'm going to take this for a test spin and if I get time I'll post back my benchmarks here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't running any BSD on OS X redundant?

<comment><USER11> No more so that virtualizing one linux distro on another. Or running a Windows VM on Windows....

<comment><USER12> And let's be honest, while macOS has a lot of BSD in it, it isn't FreeBSD.

<comment><USER13> For example: Pre-APFS, imagine running any software with a custom data store using file system holes. Definitely something you'd rather do in a FreeBSD VM than on OS X directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> nice nice

</comment><comment><USER15> It's been macOS for the last couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why run FreeBSD, a sibling of macOS? It's kinda incestual.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for sharing the scripts. The instruction is intuitive -- well organized and contains a very detailed description of the virtual disk part, very neat comments. As a long-time user of OS X and homebrew, I must say I become very interested in your solution -- running PostgreSQL natively on OS X, or macOS.

However, it makes me so confused that if it is your intention to run something heavy in a consumer-level Operating System. As far as I know, macOS has a newly-added but slowly-performed file system, named APFS. It might be good enough for single disk request but not good for the concurrent requests (like 4; ; ) -- I am not questioning/blaming about the old port design of either xhyve, OS X, or even hardware architecture SCSI, but that's where we can start now.

Anyway, there is a newly-adopted storage technology named NVME emulation which might help a lot in your case -- not only it handles with lots of disk requests at the same time (65535 queues and 65535 commands per queue), but also the architecture makes it possible to program the controller code in software, especially in user world. I don't know all details of NVMe but it works well in my experience -- both of consumer level and enterprise level -- it brings smooth disk latency in the virtual machine even under a very high bandwidth (50Gib transfer in nearly half a minute, can you believe that?). Do you know if it is possible to use NVMe emulation for faster disk access in xhyve and accelerate the PostgreSQL execution natively?

\- SCSI: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI) \- NVME: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express)

<comment><USER18> >However, it makes me so confused that if it is your intention to run something heavy in a consumer-level Operating System

I assume this is to build a development environment. Especially if you're working on a laptop, on a client-server app that needs to talk to a Postgress (or other) database, running the database in a VM so it goes where you go is a pretty common setup.

<comment><USER17> It is true and that's probably the most unclear part of the original blog. I think the author has given some kind of advice -- use a vnet based on host- bridge -- not sure why he just commented out from the script. In my understanding, if I am working on a laptop, I can just set SNAT rules which allow traffic from a private network to go out to the internet. Given that the number of connection won't be large (no more than 400 connections, or 500, a usual number of open file for one process), it is acceptable that the new connections can wait until a period of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be great if it was possible to buy MacBooks with FreeBSD instead of OSX, which is lately bigger and slower compared to FreeBSD.l, especially due to the useless graphic effects and the bloatware installed (iTunes as example)

<comment><USER18> I don't think iTunes comes pre-installed these days. It gets updated so frequently they decided to just prompt the user to do an install on first boot. Certainly if you do a fresh install of Mojave over the wire, as I did, it's pretty clean. No iTunes, Photos, iMovie, Pages or any of their pro-sumer stuff by default.

<comment><USER20> Good ninja edit, was about to tell you that you're wrong! iTunes most certainly does come pre-installed on 10.12, can't say about 10.14

<comment><USER18> I realized I was being a bit cavalier and did a bit of checking. Been a while since I bought a fresh Mac, but last time I must have done a fresh install off the wire straight away and forgotten about it. My bad.

<comment><USER21> I'm pretty sure iTunes still comes preinstalled in Mojave. Not to mention Chess, DVD Player, Home, News, Stocks, Books, and a fair amount of other crap.

I have a post-install script I always run that does sudo rm -rf on all the apps I don't like. Has no ill effects in all the years I have been using it, and makes my system feel clean.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Pollly – Editor for YAML localization and translation files - <AUTHOR> http://pollly.orson.io <comment><USER2> Can you explain what it's for? I'm familiar with YAML but I have no idea what "translate apps & sites" means.

Do you mean "translate" as in i18n? What kind of files would I be uploading?

<comment><USER3> I believe it's Rails translation files which looked like this:

en.yml: [https://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/blob/d14fe4e0a1c54d2...](https://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/blob/d14fe4e0a1c54d2897d250e941e93f1d62e3b4b6/rails/locale/en.yml)

fr.yml: [https://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/blob/d14fe4e0a1c54d2...](https://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/blob/d14fe4e0a1c54d2897d250e941e93f1d62e3b4b6/rails/locale/fr.yml)

In this case, I understand the need of the editor because managing large translation files by hand is a very time consuming task and overall painful experience. From going back and forth between trying to match translation files key-by-key (nope, pluralization rules differ from languages to languages) or trying to find the correct key to edit, to fixing merge conflicts.

<comment><USER2> So Rails doesn't use .po files?

<comment><USER3> There are gettext gem available, but by default Rails ship with the YAML translation thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [off-topic] Does anyone know of a CLI tool like jq that works with YAML instead?

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/dflemstr/rq](https://github.com/dflemstr/rq) seems to be something like that

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should handle errors more gracefully. I just tried uploading a YAML file that we're reading perfectly fine in Golang and your tool refused to open it with a "duplicate mapping" error.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just tried it. This is absolutely not a YAML editor. It doesn't even let you edit a single file. Very odd application, no idea what the goal is but it's certainly not editing YAML.

<comment><USER5> Yes. They seem to mean "Rails-style translation files that happen to be in YAML format" when they say "YAML".

<comment><USER7> I saw the title, "Simple, free, YML editor" and tried to use it for one of my ansible yml files. It doesn't even accept it. It wants two files to be uploaded which doesn't even make sense. So, it's not a YML editor and the title is wrong. Perhaps it should be changed to "Rails translation file editor, which happens to use the YML format"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's up with the focus on translation? No idea how that related to yaml.

</comment><comment><USER8> diff doesn't need a landing page, unnecessary text, images, and logos to be loaded.

The interface has too much friction for the user. Even WITH all the extra gumpf, scrolling and clicking I still have no idea what this is for.

<comment><USER9> Have you tried reading the description?

      > Localize and translate any apps or sites that uses YAML for localization.
      > Yaml is used in many languages such as Ruby, Python, Php and for Framework such as Rails or Symphony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the title should be updated, this is a translation helper tool that happens to work on translation files formatted as YAML.

This is not a YAML editor.

<comment><USER11> I really wish there was something like that though:(</comment></comment>