Ask HN: Why not Y-Factor? - <AUTHOR> seeing all these reality shows for singers, entrepreneurs hell even pornstars lately, why isn't there a show/broadcast with some of y-combinator's teams? Sam Altman as judge? Paul as mentor? I would be a huge fan (probably would apply too). <comment><USER2> I can guess a few reasons.

1\. 90% of a startup is just hard work, it isn't something that makes for good television. Imagine, a person creating and adding content to their financial statement. Not exactly good television.

2\. IMO it trivializes the true nature of what YC team & the startups/entrepreneurs do, which I don't think any of the Y Combinator team wants to do.

3\. Hard work almost always trumps an idea. You can have a so-so idea succeed amazingly well while an idea you felt was just out of this world great fails. This usually happens because the entrepreneur doesn't work hard enough or fails to see the opportunities. And all this takes a lot of time to work out, so it isn't sexy television.

However, I could see a behind the scenes documentary following one class from YC from acceptance to 1 year post YC. Document what the process is like, how hard it is, let the entrepreneurs have a video confessional, etc. Almost like a pure documentary but with a little Big Brother (the TV Show) tossed in there as you could put video camera's up to catch times you don't have a crew chasing people. I do think that could be really interesting, and having the YC team and the class all giving feedback and details. This show though would cater to a small audience by TV/Movie standards though, likely those who wanted to apply to YC and a specific bread of entrepreneur. But I do think it would be interesting.

There is a movie called startup.com from 2001 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/)) that did a similar documentary type show, and we all watched it around that time. Definitely interesting, but as you can imagine probably cost more to produce, edit and distribute then anyone made.

</comment><comment><USER3> There have, or are going to be, a few actually:

1\. Startup U ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_U](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_U)) Was a show about Draper University and their incubator program.

2\. Jason Calacanis is working on a reality series now, just not sure when it is to be released. ([http://calacanis.com/2016/02/29/why-im-doing-a-reality- show/](http://calacanis.com/2016/02/29/why-im-doing-a-reality-show/))

3\. BravoTV had Start-ups Silicon Valley ([http://www.bravotv.com/start-ups- silicon-valley](http://www.bravotv.com/start-ups-silicon-valley))

As the other comment pointed out though there are problems with doing a startup reality show. In order for it to "sell" and be worth the production time, there needs to be a level of drama that is added to the show or "instigated" by the director/producers. The other big problem is that 80% of the show would be just watching people code or sit in meetings. Finally, as a viewer you would want an underdog that prevails or at least one startup that becomes a unicorn. There is no way to predict this from the start for sure.

Jason has stated his desire to keep it authenticate, so we will see.

</comment><comment><USER4> I struggle to see how would might scale to a multi-billion dollar venture...or rather many given the opportunity cost that the distraction of a television show is likely to create.

<comment><AUTHOR> Imo yc is not only about creating billions. They fund nonprofits etc. That would be cool and a tremendous spread o f knowledge for startupers</comment></comment>


Anyone have any sites with nice dinner recipes? - <AUTHOR>

Looking for a variety of meat dishes.
Would be nice to find a site with some high quality recipes that isn't crap-laden with ads, etc.
Any suggestions ? <comment><USER2> I find that this site helps when I'm indecisive:

<http://whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using <http://www.food52.com> lately.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 for a nice clean design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I created my own site <http://cookingspace.com/> because I need to track my intake of vitamin K. Each recipe shows an approximate amount of 22 nutrients tracked by the USDA. The recipes are most of my favorites. Anyway, a simple site, but does what I need. Try "Show random recipe" or "Show random daily plan" to see some random recipes and aggregated daily diet plans.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am currently working on a recipe project: <http://www.recipecan.com/>

The goal of this site is to get people to make food and then blog about the recipe, ingredients, taste, etc. If there are any cooks out there that wish to join let me know and I will fire you an invite. I'd love to get some 'hacker' recipes up there.

</comment><comment><USER6> adblock and <http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/> works for me.

a handful of blogs from the cooking forlder of my google reader:

<http://justcookit.blogspot.com/>

<http://www.toomanychefs.com/>

<http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/>

<http://www.101cookbooks.com/>

also I'd be a fool not to mention my own site

<http://thecookofbob.blogspot.com/>

Mine's not crap-laden with ads, but it's not really crap laden with much tbh.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.indobase.com> has a good listing of dinner recipes at <http://www.indobase.com/recipes/category/dinner.php>

</comment><comment><USER8> Recently found <http://www.notakeout.com/>.

It is a beautiful site, the recipes are great (unique and tasty), and the instructions and step-by-step instructions are awesome.

</comment><comment><USER9> I started this site as my first MVC just to keep track of recipes I've made and liked. You're welcome to jump on and add your own...

<http://cookbuk.com/recipes>

</comment><comment><USER10> I regularly use epicurious.com. I often find myself scanning multiple recipes for a particular dish and using some combination of them to create my own version.

</comment><comment><USER11> Try <http://www.kitchendaily.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> my 3 favorites are:

<http://allrecipes.com> they have ratings; large selection

<http://epicurious.com> they have ratings; more sophisticated

<http://showmethecurry> Indian recipes that actually work via video

<comment><USER13> you forgot the TLD on showmethecurry.

<http://www.showmethecurry.com></comment></comment>


Is CTR useless? Are marketers looking at the wrong metrics? - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=139367

<comment><USER2> CTR is useless without hard numbers on clickfraud.

If every click was a 'real' click then it would go a long way towards getting an idea about conversion rates and so on on new traffic to your site.

With clickfraud an unknown all the numbers that depend on it are also unknowns.

There was a time that we spent a ton of money on adwords, it started off real well, then after a while we realized we were still paying about the same money as before, but no sales came out of the traffic that we bought.

There are some really tricky things going on here, one of them is that as long as advertisers don't wise up to CTR not being a very relevant metric (end-to- end conversion is) that there is very little incentive to combat click fraud, as long as it is not too blatant.

It directly increases the bottom line for the middlemen, and the defrauders both, at the expense of the advertisers.

Your tracking has to be very precise to document exactly which users are fraudulent and which ones are not. Simple checks such as seeing how 'deep' a user goes on your page, or whether or not they get style sheets and other static stuff no longer is enough to make a classification.

Impression based metrics are even worse.

The only system that comes anywhere near working is performance based advertising, but that can be very hard to couple to a large number of products.</comment>


Dataspace 0: Those Memex dreams again - <AUTHOR> http://natecull.org/wordpress/2017/06/26/dataspace-0/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a pretty good start to reconceptualizing our systems. I think about this a lot.

I also think about what are the more higher level systems that will be required in the far future... something that can run a whole probability distribution of the kind of program I want to create and as it quizzes me derives entire systems around the context of my desires... something like that would require a language around systems that we can't do now because we feel a generalized higher level thing will have to be so dumbed down as to not be useful. I think we forget that a higher level system, if it worked way harder, could actually do the right thing at all the lower levels.

<comment><USER3> I've also thought a lot about this problem (I recognize a lot of the intermediate steps); I've got even a good idea on user applications that could benefit from that unified data and computation model.

In fact, I'm more interested in the practical applications than I am in the underlying model. However, I'm glad that such model is something I'm familiar with as is logic programming, and not some obscure branch of category theory full of point-free abstract operators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, similar dreams for about 35+ years -- and they are still not fully realized as a spare-time hobby. It's a harder problem than it looks at first. I use the names Pointrel and Twirlip for my experiments on GitHub, SourceForge, and elsewhere related to triple stores, shared documents, and more. My undergrad work in that area indirectly helped inspire WordNet -- started by my undergrad advisor at Princeton, George Miller, just as I graduated.

One related post on that from me from 2005: "Python implementation of Memex" [https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156379&cid=1311190...](https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156379&cid=13111905)

A more recent experiment: [https://rawgit.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip7/master/src/ui/twirlip...](https://rawgit.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip7/master/src/ui/twirlip7.html)

Would love to help realize with that, say: [https://decentralizedweb.net/](https://decentralizedweb.net/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's an orthogonal thought. Kubernetes is really popular, but it really should've been Erlang or some other kind of distributed Smalltalk that vaguely smells like serverless. Distributed objects failed originally because RPC was a leaky abstraction.

The idea of a "server" at this point, then, is basically an extremely coarse- grained unit of work and locality. You deploy some binary onto a box on a rack, you ensure that the stuff on the binary stays together in one place.

But what we really care about is objects and functions/methods, and having related objects be closer together. In the ideal world, we should just be able to throw more and more machines at a cluster, and have it transparently rebalance objects underneath, taking into account load and affinity.

<comment><USER6> One of the more important ideas here is that you have to simulate time within your Actors/Objects [1]. There is so much possibility here, but since the status quo more or less "works" in market terms, it's hard to push for anything better.

[1] [https://oneofus.la/have-emacs-will- hack/files/2005_Teatime_F...](https://oneofus.la/have-emacs-will- hack/files/2005_Teatime_Framework_Design.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting musings. I think the author dismissed graphs a bit too early. Making lists another first-class object (e.g. by always having nodes be lists) might be a bit less elegant but would work for his constraints.

The data structure he describes in the last article is actually well known in Prolog as difference lists (except that you can't do higher order logic programming with them). Converting between terms and lists is also well supported by Prolog. Granted, the syntax is not as nice as using S-expressions with special sugar for terms.

<comment><USER3> A free-form graph is hard to serialize. If the goal is to have the syntax close to the meaning, tree terms are simpler, and then graphs can be modeled on top of them.

As for lists of lists, the most recent article uses them for an in-memory optimized representation:

[http://natecull.org/wordpress/2018/08/16/dataspace-10-an- arr...](http://natecull.org/wordpress/2018/08/16/dataspace-10-an-array- representation/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very similar thoughts. I have tried a universal data model for a while for solving personal data as well as business data (small and medium businesses)...I had built an App and then put that in cold storage as I am still not clear in my head on how I can go about presenting it to the world.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have attempted to address this in the vision & internal structure of a tool I wrote (AGPL): a work in progress which is planned to meet most of the requirements mentioned in the article. I wrote it (after trying org-mode, collapsible outlines in other tools, etc). It uses postgres, and I hope that "sharing" data exchange features between multiple instances are coming (though it already does export to org-mode-like text, to readable outlines in the latest dev code, and to html). The best code is that in github, though an older and useful downloadable .jar is available. Currently, it is keyboard and desktop-only (text-oriented). It also is the most efficient/effective thing I have found for organizing notes/lists/details of all kinds, and should be easy to learn to use, as all the essentials are on the screen. There is a tutorial.

It makes an internal knowledge graph as one uses the product (stored in postgres, runs fast). It builds an object model on the fly as a side-effect of using the product, using relationships, numbers, etc as knowledge at an atomic level where words are secondary. The best info organizer (for my style at least) that I know of, though (so far) less feature-rich than many products. I hope the About page at that link explains the present and future well.

(Part of the eventual purpose of the tool is to help individuals and mentors via maturity models that apply more generally to life before getting into any particular topic. That could easily be misunderstood, and there is more about that at the web site (below). Part of the idea is to help in the development/growth of self and others -- skills, knowledge, positive character traits, anything good -- in any area of life that one chooses, so we can have good goals instead of trying to make life seem fulfilling with empty searching for more pleasure/power/attention.

And by marking things done or "archived", it also provides a journal feature or personal log, of entries created or archived in any date range (defaulting to "yesterday and so far, today", to help with daily standup reporting).)

[http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) (And yes I plan to move to https fairly soon :) ...as well as adding anki-like and other features someday.)

Candid feedback welcome, especially via the site (2 mailing lists; direct email in footer). Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER10> > And files are just too big for the small pieces of data we want to point at.

Files can be any size you want. Why does the author say this?

<comment><USER11> Files are associated with inodes, which have nonzero size. They are also segmented into multiples of the block size of a filesystem, so even a 1 bit file effectively takes up 4KB if your block size is 4KB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would have included Gelernter's "Mirror Worlds" as a reference.</comment>


CEOs Who Cheat on Spouse Twice as Likely to Cheat at Work, Study Shows - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/ceos-who-cheat-on-spouse-twice-as-likely-to-cheat-at-work-study <comment><USER2> 1 day ago: "CEOs Who Cheat in Bedroom Will Cheat in Boardroom: Study (bloomberg.com)": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20656992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20656992)

</comment><comment><USER3> This study also, unintentionally, correlates cheating at work with stupidity. Anyone who thought they would find actual women on Ashley Madison was deluded about male-female dynamics in the real world and clearly didn't understand women. And, anyone who gave a "service" like that personally identifying information was just a fool.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the study: [https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/07/29/1905329116](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/07/29/1905329116)

</comment><comment><USER5> The study says all of the information is publicly available. Where can I find the Ashley Madison data, and how can it be verified?

<comment> vincent-toups There was a big, high profile leak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would be interesting if this is ever used by a board to oust a CEO:

"We are reducing the likelihood of future errors by removing you"

<comment><USER7> > "We are reducing the likelihood of future errors by removing you"

It's discriminatory. I doubt this would be legal.

<comment><USER6> Every decision is a discrimination of an alternative decision.

<comment><USER7> > "Every decision is a discrimination of an alternative decision."

Let's put aside the whole "at-will employment" (which I doubt applies to CEOs) discussion.

You can't fire someone for cheating on their partner. People are allowed to have personal lives, and they are allowed to make personal mistakes.

If you could fire people for cheating on their partner, why stop at cheating when there are so many other personal life choices/factors that could "put the company at risk"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> TL;DR: A CEO who is dumb enough to get caught cheating on his spouse, is twice as likely the do the dumb things needed to get caught cheating at work.

</comment><comment><USER9> The business of business is messy. Capitalism will forgive most ethical or even criminal misadventures of it yields profits. That's not capitalism's fault, it's just how humans operate.

</comment><comment><USER10> TL;DR: Cheaters gonna cheat.

<comment><USER11> I suppose it could be generalised as _" people who cheat on one thing are twice as likely to cheat on a different thing too"_, or to quote the article directly: _" Our study indicates cheating in one context carries over to cheating in others"_.</comment></comment>


I just noticed that Firefox now gives you a way around this - <AUTHOR> http://home.comcast.net/~wolfand/

<comment><USER2> Care to tell us what that way is?

Bit rude of you to link to that without warning. (The natural assumption is that the link is to an explanation/discussion of this problem, not an instance of it.)</comment>


Hacked: Investigating an Intrusion on My Server - <AUTHOR> https://thedarkside.frantzmiccoli.com/tricks/2016/08/27/hacked-investigating-intrusion-on-server.html <comment><USER2> This article was absolutely painful to read. Let me try a different ending:

> Conclusion:

1\. Ensure the files that php is running are not writable by the same process. Different app -> different user.

2\. Unless you're planning to send emails from the server, firewall output on those ports. If you do plan to, firewall everything apart from that server (you can setup alerts when DNS changes, it's not going to happen often for email hosts)

3\. Disable most unnecessary functions and modules. Anything touching eval, str_rot13, exec, and many others should be killed right away.

4\. Enable basedir.

5\. If you can't handle regular system updates, don't run your own server. If you can't handle wordpress updates, host it with someone else.

6\. Wherever you host, make sure your app can be easily redeployed. You can't rely on dates to see when anything changed.

7\. If you can't handle system upgrades, don't think that docker or any software is going to solve any of your problems.

<comment><USER3> I've never worked with PHP before, so basedir meant nothing to me. A minute with Google turned this up:

[http://php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.open- basedir](http://php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.open-basedir)

I have to say, for all the general brain-deadness we hear about from the PHP community, the core developers have made a lot of progress on cleaning up their mess. I don't know of anything equivalent to this functionality from Python or Ruby.

<comment><USER4> I think basedir like functionality is a good idea, but this is not the languages responsibility, this is an operational concern.

There's too many ways around it if you're trying to do this in a language ... for example, limiting checks on the open() call would be relatively straight forward, but what about people who use syscalls directly from the language? Or what about shelling out to another process?

Chroot jails get kind of close of this in a very broad/blunt way, but back to my original point: This is not the languages responsibility

<comment><USER2> PHP doesn't have direct access to syscalls. (not without extensions anyway) exec / system / other shelling out functions should be disabled unless you actually know you need them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In short: an old server running un-updated software was broken into not once but at least four times since the start of the year.

The post describes some steps the author took to investigate and block the attack. It's an entertaining reading, but I'd strongly advise against trying this at home: it is not worth the risk. Reinstalling the system from scratch instead would have been much more prudent.

<comment><USER6> Yep. "Treat servers like cattle, not pets".

I won't recommend Docker but something like Ansible can be used to make reproducible servers.

<comment><USER7> I think running a Docker container for Wordpress or Joomla installs. If setup correctly with the right folders setup as volumes (i.e. wp-content for WP) and the rest would be part of the docker image. If WP gets corrupted/infected, then starting a brand new image would remove most of the corrupted files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fun read. If you ever get hacked, I recommend just destroying the server and starting from scratch and a clean backup.

If you try to find all backdoors and left over rootkits, you will end up forgetting one and being re-compromised.

<comment><USER9> You can learn a lot by investigating how the attacker got into your system.

<comment><USER10> Sure, but you shouldn't continue using the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One may find the following resources useful for measures on how to secure one's infrastructure:

\- Security Guide: How to Protect Your Infrastructure Against the Basic Attacker [0]

\- 7 Security Measures to Protect Your Servers [1]

[0] [http://blog.mailgun.com/security-guide-basic- infrastructure-...](http://blog.mailgun.com/security-guide-basic- infrastructure-security/)

[1] [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/7-security-...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/7-security- measures-to-protect-your-servers)

</comment><comment><USER12> Question about this:

It's not possible for me to track all the 0 days for every piece of software and library that my servers run. One of my long running servers could have been backdoor-ed by a 0 day 6 months ago and i probably wouldn't know it. The servers are kept updated but 0 days don't care about that by definition.

What's the best practice here? Should we pre-emptively have our servers rebuild daily just in case a 0-day backdoored them?

<comment><USER2> > What's the best practice here?

Defense in depth.

Remove the unneeded code so it never executes. If it's needed, block features you don't need. For the rest go one level higher and block operations you don't need. (php.ini controls, file permissions, LSM, etc.) For operations that are allowed, ensure data/code separation to prevent persistence. When that fails, have a very restrictive firewall so that data extraction and attacking other systems is difficult. Have network restrictions again one level higher. (switches / cloud network) If everything fails, have detailed logs to know what failed and when. If even that fails, have backups. If that fails, have company insurance prepared.

> Should we pre-emptively have our servers rebuild daily just in case a 0-day > backdoored them?

Depends on your threat model and available money. Are you trying to stop automated malware or state actors? In the first case a good configuration should be enough. In the second you may want to start thinking about how you're going to verify the firmware your harddrives are running. And there's a whole spectrum in between.

I mean, to block majority of php blog/cms malware it's enough to make sure your code is owned by user A, php server runs as user B, and B cannot write to A's files. 0-day or not, lots of stupid automated malware stopped.

> It's not possible for me to track all the 0 days for every piece of software > and library that my servers run.

That's why it's nice to run unmodified distro software. Because these guys can track it for you: [http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/](http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/) (for example, any reasonable distro has similar announcements)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You should consider running this malware detection script[0]. That script is designed to catch malware php scripts. I've used it before with lots of success. You will also want to check the access logs for all php scripts hit in the last few months. Your hacker's spam script is likely being activated/ran by a GET or a POST to that script. That's a pretty cheap way to screen for other compromised files.

[0] - [https://www.rfxn.com/projects/linux-malware- detect/](https://www.rfxn.com/projects/linux-malware-detect/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I did get one of these OVH spam warning emails too once. It was for a failover mail server. It turned out that the software I was using (smartermail) wasn't using TLS by default so the link between the failover and the primary server was unencrypted. Spammers often target failover over primary servers. And OVH was interpreting the failover passing on the spam back to the primary server as me sending spam.

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't delete the outbound mail queue as they have a header in them which tells you which php script sent them.

Also in the httpd logs look for POST 200's to scripts that shouldn't be getting them, and look for long query strings esp with base64 in them. Check those scripts and also scripts messed with by the same user-agent and ip's.

Never just delete anything, always check the contents and write a script that can search and nuke it en masse. e.g. Find | xargs | sed etc.

When I had issues earlier this year I had postfix outbound throttled right down, and a script to shut it down completely if the queue got big. So if I got the monitoring email about smtp going down I'd know I'd missed something ;)

Ps, wp-cli, you need it in your life :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for sharing your intrusion story. Although it is always painful for the person to experience, it gives good insights on what happens in the wild. As the author of security tools rkhunter and Lynis, it is still a sign that basic (and advanced) system hardening remains needed for a long time.

The other comments show that there are so many things you could do. But some are more relevant than others. That is something we want to test for in Lynis with upcoming updates. One focus area will be detecting Drupal/Joomla/WordPress installations. If anyone wants to help out the open source project and make the web a safer place, this is your chance to help: [https://github.com/CISOfy/lynis](https://github.com/CISOfy/lynis)

Thanks again for sharing!

</comment><comment> fake-name Ahhh PHP, where `assert()` `eval()`s strings passed to it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wish it was easier to convert "standard" dynamic web pages into static HTML easier. There's one or two Wordpress sites I'd really like to get rid of updating over and over again (which is still less work than actually reading mostly meaningless Changelogs and making a decision if there are security issues that actually apply to me). Probably, my solution to this problem will be "wget -r", plus a bit of sanitizing.

<comment><USER18> There are plugins for this - Simply static, staticpress and more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does }__ appear in your logs? All versions of all branches of Joomla prior to I think 3.4.6 had a problem with serialization that allowed arbitrary PHP execution.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here are my advice:

1\. once compromized, start with a fresh copy. Use ansible to define automatic installation scripts so that the server can be fully reinstalled in a "snap". Use backups of the user data to restore.

2\. Automate upgrades. It's a piece of cake with ansible.

3\. Stay away from php. There are too many potential loopholes. I now start using go to implement my web servers. Especially if the web site is static. Check Hugo or tools like that. I implement dynamic servers with go and Iris that uses fasthttp.

<comment><USER21> > I now start using go to implement my web servers.

Then again, you can write buggy/insecure code in any language.

I don't think I've seen any articles about potential security pitfalls when writing web services (or code in general) in Go. I'm actually interested if there's anything surprising out there.

<comment><USER20> The difference is that we have a better control on what is being done when using a statically typed language. Of course it is always possible to create a vulnerability too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is always something to be learned. Thank you for sharing.</comment>


Ask HN: Cheap Paradise with Reliable Internet? - <AUTHOR>

I need a holiday to code. Where in the world would you go (preferably in the East) that is by the ocean, with affordable living expenses, reliable Internet and (optionally) good surf? Obviously, cheap piña coladas are non-negotiable. <comment><USER2> Koh Samui, Thailand

We're bootstapping here and I'd say its paradise. Beaches in the morning to work and then by evening we duck into our local for a pint and some more work.

Even with ridiculously long days its relaxing.

Rent = ~$350/month (clean bungalow, 5 - 10 min walk to the beach with internet)

Good Internet = ~$40/month or so If you get setup with a SIM card and TrueMove, they have WiFi around the island that does a respectable 8mbit and ~1mbit up

Food = ~$3 - 10 per meal depending on how much food you get. You can go cheaper, but thats for convenience (prices of restaurants in the area we work)

Drinks = ~$0.50 - 4 this depends where you go, but a mojito in our regular is around $2.50

Feel free to get in touch if you plan on coming out! firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, jamilv! I will definitely get in touch when I visit Thailand :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Puerto Rico, the whole island is covered by AT&T LTE. AirBNB listings span the gamut from obscenely cheap to $150ish gets you a luxury accommodations.

Rent a car, get the ezpass for tolls as well and you can see the sights.

Direct flights from the east coast are as cheap as $150 one way, pick and choose your days...

Oh and no customs or passport for US residents!

</comment><comment><USER4> My first choice would be Antigua. Second choice St. Lucia.

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

Kind people, english speaking, decent internet (not super high speed but quite manageable)

</comment><comment><USER5> San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the suggestions! Others have also recommended Thailand and Vietnam. Thoughts?

<comment><USER6> Thailand is definitely great and affordable, so is Vietnam.

Kozhikode and Mangalore in India.

Also coastal cities in Goa, India as well.

Several cities in Sri Lanka might work too.

Also Playa Del Carmen + Cabo San Lucas in Mexico.

<comment><USER7> Definitely Sri Lanka!.. Especially the south west where you could have the occasional surf.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Feedly.com for Email Newsletters - <AUTHOR> http://classroom.ng/dude

<comment><AUTHOR> PLS Don't be too harsh. Still working on it. Your advise and suggestions are greatly needed more than your clicks. Thanks :-)</comment>


Don't want the NSA to read your email? - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/21/dont-want-the-nsa-to-read-your-email-use

<comment><USER2> This does't seem to make any sense because optical character recognition isn't needed to read emails. The text is already there as character data - the font isn't doing anything to hide that unless its physically printed.

Encrypting all your email would be a better idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure a font will have much to do with the NSA reading your email...</comment>


Internet use reduces study skills in university students - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200117085321.htm <comment><USER2> Clickbait title. If you look inside, they are correlating internet addiction to lack of motivation to study.

This would be expected of any addiction, and so they had to jazz up the title.

<comment><USER3> Addiction is one extreme of the usage pattern. The effects of increased internet usage could be seen before reaching that stage.

<comment><USER4> > The effects of increased internet usage could be seen before reaching that > stage.

But that's true of any addiction - alcohol, drug, gambling, etc. You can see the effects before it reaches the extreme stage.

<comment><USER5> I don't know what you're getting at here. These are all bad addictions that would result in "reduced study skills" I'd imagine. Similar for other addictions, like gaming or television.

But I'm not sure an addiction to reading, or an addiction to painting, would necessarily have the same negative effect. Sure, an obsessive addiction where you can't do anything else, but that isn't what's discussed here.

I'd hypothesise some addictions have a worse effect on study skills than others.

<comment><USER6> "Addiction" is defined as a behavior that impairs other aspects of your life to a large degree, so yes, even a reading addiction would have these effects by definition.

<comment><USER7> The definition of "addiction" varies by field. In economics, "addiction" is the phenomenon of a behavior having increasing returns on investment. (Which means that if you do some, you'll want to do more.)

This has the disadvantage that it is near-totally unrelated to what most people think of as "addiction". But it has the advantage that it is a coherent concept, which isn't true of most offered definitions.

In the vernacular, "addiction" just means that you disapprove of someone's behavior.

In medicine outside psychiatry, "addiction" refers to the phenomenon of physical withdrawal symptoms in the absence of something. For no particularly good reason, you are not considered to be addicted to oxygen. But that's not part of the definition, it's an implied codicil.

Psychiatry defines a single "addictive disorder", which is compulsive gambling. Nothing else is considered addictive. This seems to be a response to the fact that no one has ever provided a workable definition of addiction. (See e.g. [https://www.porticonetwork.ca/web/fundamentals-addiction- too...](https://www.porticonetwork.ca/web/fundamentals-addiction- toolkit/introduction/dsm-critieria) : "The term addiction is no longer used to describe substance use disorders. It was felt that the term was so loaded with associations that it lacked precision.") This comic ( [http://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/2014-03-21](http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-03-21) ) provides an amusing illustration of the issues. But for a less irreverent joke at psychiatry's expense, this formal paper ( [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5328289/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5328289/) ) spends some time making fun of the fact that compulsive gambling is the unique "addictive disorder" while compulsive stealing, which is mostly identical except in the specific behavior expressed, is an "impulse control disorder".

Here's how the different systems classify caffeine:

Vernacular: addictive if you're a Mormon; not otherwise.

Economics: not addictive; no increasing returns.

Medicine: addictive. (Withdrawal causes severe headaches.)

Psychiatry: not a substance use disorder. (Consumption of caffeine may be compulsive, but it is not a "disorder", itself not a well-defined term.)

I suggest to you that the definition you provided, "a behavior that impairs other aspects of your life to a large degree", comes from psychiatry, but is actually part of the definition of a "disorder", not an "addiction".

<comment><USER6> Thanks, you've taught me something.

That aside, I'd like to congratulate you on how non-confrontational your comment was, making it easier for me to reply that you've taught me something. I will try to emulate that in my comments in the future.

<comment><USER7> It only feels fair to note for the record that the closing line of my comment was edited in. :/ (Along with the reference to the paper on "expanding the definition of 'addiction'".)

<comment><USER6> My whole life is a lie

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All they have is correlation and they paint a narrative of "causes", ugh.

> In addition to the links between levels of internet addiction and poor study > motivation and ability, internet addiction was found to be associated with > increased loneliness. The results indicated that loneliness, in turn, made > studying harder for the students.

While they don't use the phrase "causes", the in turn definitely suggests that they think internet addiction causes loneliness. Since we're apparently free to interpret correlation as causation, here's my interpretation:

Loneliness makes studying harder and is major contributing factor in internet addiction.

</comment><comment><USER9> Related Question - Do students still use study groups, where they physically get together in the same place, split up material and then share, quiz and mentor?

Even in the 90's and 00's I saw a decline in technical areas of study, but there was a time when this was the standard (and arguably only) way to get through your program (think Law or Business school in the 70's - 80's). There was just too much material to distill down for a single person. I wonder if this form of knowledge acquisition is largely dead...

<comment><USER10> Many students still do today for study/social groups. Just walk through any campus center or library. Some more complex courses really benefit from working as a team to reduce the individual load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The summary section says: "Research has shown that students who use digital technology excessively are less motivated to engage with their studies, and are more anxious about tests. This effect was made worse by the increased feelings of loneliness that use of digital technology produced."

That's a very different conclusion from "Internet use reduces study skills in university students"

</comment><comment><USER12> >"These results suggest that students with high levels of internet addiction may be particularly at risk from lower motivations to study, and, hence, lower actual academic performance."

Too bad that they didn't collect grades and test results and measure actual academic performance.

<comment><USER13> Hardly an established causality, but more of a reasonable assumption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Literacy causes degraded memorization skills! The town crier will tell you all about it when the sun dial points at XI.

</comment><comment><USER15> That is some absolute bullshit. Internet use was the single most important reason I got to learn what I did today.

Let me put it this way: Third world country, absolutely useless professors who are in the job because it simply pays (even random marks), and no actual technical skills to be learned.

If it wasn't for using the internet, I probably wouldn't have succeeded in university nor found a job.

<comment><USER16> "That is some absolute bullshit. "

I think you've have failed to grasp the issue.

Nobody doubts the internet as a transformational vehicle for information propagation.

The study attempts to show that constant internet use can demotivate people in study.

I believe it's true, because constant internet use makes it hard to concentrate for long periods: I find it much harder to simply 'read a book' these days, but that's just me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Doubt true for compsci majors...

<comment><USER5> It probably depends how you use the internet. The study says the main use of the internet was social networking (40%). If a compsci major is using the internet in the same way as typical students I don't doubt the results hold true in proportion. Study also notes that it resulted in increased loneliness, which would hold true as well.

<comment><USER7> "Computer nerds get even lonelier when they spend all their time on the internet" is a plausible finding, but most people probably aren't going to think about social networking first when they hear it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> But we don't have the statistics for each study, I'm in IT and it's inconceivable to stop using internet for learn it make research

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder what part of it is social media. I think it is particularly distracting in an age where FOMO is very real.

<comment><USER20> this dates back to aim at least

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Internet ise as a proxy for thinking that lessens the ability for deep work. Nice to see it confirmed by research.</comment>


Microsoft finally gives AppGet developer the credit he deserves - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/2/21277863/microsoft-winget-windows-package-manager-appget-response-credit-comment <comment><USER2> Discussed yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377992)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would hope that Keivan would be well compensated especially since they directly reached out in the first place. Credit in a Readme portion is the very least that he deserves. Even if the Microsoft team was only lightly influenced, the way to build a strong developer relationship community is to acknowledge someone else's expertise through proper compensation (monetary or otherwise). Besides, Microsoft can afford it!

<comment><USER4> It's always hard to know how much to generalize from the general HN sentiment, but...

For a company that seems to be trying really hard to win back the hearts of devs, it seems like a no-brainer to have a policy in situations such as this to give $$$ to the dev. Take it out of the marketing budget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > More specifically, we failed to live up to this with Keivan and AppGet. This > was the last thing that we wanted.

Bullshit.

Hopefully Keivan not commenting means he's going to get more than just credit in a README and whatever it is doesn't get locked under an NDA.

<comment><USER6> How can you come to conclusion that He's looking for some compensation?

<comment><USER7> Probably from his blog post, where he was promised a job, which typically comes with some.

[https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/](https://keivan.io/the-day-appget- died/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _[deleted]_

<comment><USER9> You're not just helping MS, you're helping millions (billions?) of their users - people who cannot afford the time (Linux) or luxury (Apple) of alternatives.

Think of a world without Firefox for Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thing that bothers me in this is that Microsoft made the effort to fly Keivan to the Redmond for interviews and meetings. Why do that? Apple sherlocks it's developer base all the time, and they give very little if none of the credit to original authors of the idea.

By flying the Keivan to the Redmond they gave him false hope of something, and wasted his time. Instead they should have asked about him nothing, if they weren't going to break software license doing their WinGet. It was withing their right to copy it.

Worse thing is to raise false hopes and false expectations. They will surely doom any relationship, regardless if it's about product sales or personal.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nobody in any of these threads has pointed out an original idea that AppGet implemented.

Looking at the list of features Keivan he was credited for, I see nothing original.

Microsoft's project is written in C++, Keivans in C#. Nothing was copied.

Nice witch hunt HN.

<comment> tech-historian Seems like you've captured the prevailing mindset at Microsoft that allowed this to happen in the first place. You'd be a good candidate to work there. Do you currently?

<comment><USER11> > Seems like you've captured the prevailing mindset at Microsoft that allowed > this to happen in the first place.

What's "this"? I haven't seen evidence of anything that's immoral or unethical here.

Care to give a rebuttal that isn't just more of the same rhetoric??

> You'd be a good candidate to work there. Do you currently?

Insinuations of shilling are such a chicken shit argument. They're also against the forum rules. Stop doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Marketing-speak is pretty strong with this product manager.</comment>


DeepMind CEO Opens Up on 'Dark Hours' at His Video Game Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/samshead/2018/11/07/deepmind-ceo-opens-up-on-dark-hours-at-his-video-game-company/#6546e12b46df <comment><USER2> Wow, I had no idea that this was the origin of DeepMind. Intriguing background.</comment>


Schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails using Calendly - <AUTHOR> https://siftery.com/stories/schedule-meetings-without-the-back-and-forth-emails <comment><USER2> I am amazed at how many companies are working on "scheduling meetings." How big is the market really?

I can also say that this is not a U.S.P.

      > Calendly is different because we built it from the
      > ground up to be simple, flexible and enjoyable.

it just isn't.</comment>


"WeLive" Apartments Let You Rent a Fold-Away Bed Behind a Curtain for $1375 - <AUTHOR> http://gothamist.com/2016/04/05/wework_welive_wedie.php <comment><USER2> No thanks. I pay just slightly more than $1,375 for the mortgage on my 4 bedroom house on 3 acres of land.</comment>


Mentoring in Gaza's first hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://dopeboy.github.io/gaza/ <comment><USER2> >>6 The gulf (UAE, Saudi, Qatar, etc) is the regional tech hub.

I would imagine Israel is the regional tech hub, even if there are few to no interactions with tech people in Gaza. Would it be more accurate to say the gulf is the regional tech hub for these programmers' day to day lives?

<comment><USER3> Does anyone know how the IT sector is in places like Dubai? I hear about a lot of need for skilled programmers there, but it's hard to glean insight from Europe. Anyone with first-hand experience?

<comment><USER4> I'm living in the UAE. As far as I can tell, there is a growing demand for skilled developers, especially in web and app dev positions. Most companies hiring are small in size, usually local startups, and most of them are operating in the e-commerce space.

Cool places to work at: Dubizzle[1] (Python + Django) and JadoPado[2] (PHP I believe).

[1]: [https://uae.dubizzle.com/](https://uae.dubizzle.com/)

[2]: [https://uae.jadopado.com/](https://uae.jadopado.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My father was born in Gaza, but got out as soon as he could and went to college in the states. I'm glad this is happening! There's certainly talent there like everywhere else. A big problem I see with Gaza digging itself out of these problems is the destruction of infrastructure, inability to get supplies and the effect this has on the job market. Software development is one of those few professions that, as you touched on, allow Palestinians to find a somewhat stable flow of work.

Thanks for mentoring and doing what you can there. I'd like to go and see some extended family sometime myself.

Edit: How available are things like computers? I remember when my dad brought electronics over as gifts it was usually something more-or-less unattainable, but this was years ago: Super Nintendos and things like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't inquire but based on what I saw inside the incubator, it seemed computers were pretty available. The only iffy thing when it comes to access are 3D printers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> " _I met a Gaza Sky Geeks staff member who told me about his story. His parents had to flee their ancestral home from Jaffa in 1948. He lost his childhood home in the war of 2014. He also lost friends and neighbors in the war.

Despite all of this, you would never be able to guess of any of his past after talking to him. In fact, the only reason I knew to talk to him is because I overhead someone else mention his past. He's the most upbeat, jovial guy at the space who was on his way to the U.K. in a couple days with an eye on a seed round for a startup he's working on. One might expect atleast some chip on the shoulder, some bitterness, maybe even a little anger. I haven't seen that from him or any of other Gazans I've met and that—more than anything else—has been the biggest surprise for me on this trip._"

This is amazing.

<comment><USER7> The author does a pretty good job of keeping politics out of his article, but my visceral feeling is that you're trying to do quite the opposite here by choosing that specific quote.

The author does not know the history of the land, nor does he claim to. But by drawing HN's readership to the quote about personal loss it's my guess that you're trying to politicize the issue. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's my hunch. I've seen many people use similar tactics before.

<comment><USER6> This guy has suffered, but instead of complaining he is pushing through it. We all have our problems, but since ue live in a personal bubble, examples like this can help us put our problems in a new perspective.

I am drawing attention to the amazing human resiliency, and what can we learn from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What was the process like in terms of applying for the Israeli military permit? Did you experience any problems with border control moving in and out of Israel/Gaza? Did you take your own laptop? What's the internet like? I'm assuming you don't get mobile coverage?

 _There are ground rules every mentor had to agree to before going. We could not go anywhere unaccompanied_ \- Who's rule is this?

So. Many. Questions!

<comment><AUTHOR> For the permit, all the basics + scan of passport, LinkedIn URL, my parents' names, and my paternal grandfather's name (!).

No one had any problems at the border. Everyone is super professional and courteous. Those that were muslim and/or of palestinian decent took slightly longer.

I took my own laptop. The only different thing is you have to leave it open (but not unlocked) when it goes through the scanner.

We were mostly confined inside the incubator or a hotel so we had wifi most of the time. I _think_ it's 2G or 3G otherwise. Not sure if by an Israeli carrier or a Palestinian one.

The rules are set by the parent organization, Mercy Corps. They receive the bulk of their funding from USAID and my guess is those ground rules are impacted by that.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "LinkedIn URL, my parents' names, and my paternal grandfather's name"

Any idea why this info is required?

<comment> daniel-levin It's a special case of a more general (Israeli) bullshit detection technique. They'll ask something unexpected, but reasonable enough that an honest person would be able to say the answer immediately. The idea is that you bait a person presenting false information into revealing that they are lying. Security will ask a sequence of inane questions that a truthful person should be able to answer immediately. If a person being questioned grows shifty, nervous-looking, starts sweating, stops making eye-contact, or shows any other sign of illegitimacy, then the questioning will continue until (il)legitimacy is established. It is not a flawless method (see end of comment) but it usually works. It is virtually impossible to nail every single aspect of a BS story. If you're 100% legitimate, then you'll probably have no problems recalling things like your grandfather's name or the synagogue you were Bar- Mitzvah'd at. I'm a pale South African Jew - I was asked that.

Example:

Security: Are you a member of a Hebrew congregation?

Person: Yes, such and such a synagogue

Security: Who is the Rabbi there?

A legit person might say "Oh it's Rabbi so-and-so", but if a person hesitates, and has to think, and blurts out an answer like "Rabbi Cohen" then it is less likely they are being forthcoming.

In some sense, this is a very rough mental-Bayesian process of probability updating. A person arrives at the border / El-Al check-in. Security assigns some prior probability p_0 that a person should be allowed access, and via a string of questions, amongst other techniques, a posterior probability p_n that that person should be on that flight / in Israel is established.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent write-up and well done for doing this!

Were there any female instructors? If there had been some could they have led a female-only session in the evening?

<comment><USER10> Context:

        On the first day of the 48 hour hackathon, all female participants had to
        leave by 6:30 PM. This is because, under Sharia law, women cannot hang out
        with men they are not related or married to late into the evening.

(For people like me who glance at the comment thread before reading the article, or who merely skimmed the article.)

<comment><USER11> Seeing "Sharia law" referred to as a definite entity is a little strange. It's like someone saying "under common law...". It's cromulent, but only on general principals not many specific statutes. There are several countries that follow Sharia, just like many countries follow civil law or common law.

Relevant here because there are countries that follow Sharia that don't enforce such a curfew.

<comment><USER12> Does anyone have a definite idea which school of Sharia jurisprudence Hamas even follows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is turning into a very interesting AMA. Thanks dopeboy.

I wanted to ask if you felt in any danger at any time. Either in Gaza on onroute through the checkpoints?

What are the ambitions of the participants? Do they want to work / set up companies in Gaza or work abroad?

<comment><AUTHOR> I never felt in danger. But I'm also brown and everyone there told me I look Arab.

It's a mix - I couldn't tell you the proportions off the top of my head. There are hard emigration realities that force Gazans to do the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I work part-time for an Israeli tech company and am a Zionist; I assumed your post would be ultra political and demonizing Israel.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see your post was thoughtful, kept politics out of it and remained focused.

You're helping Gazans live better lives by teaching them a trade skill. That's a real kindness you did. Kudos.

<comment><USER15> I saw a presentation in person about this at one of Google's Startup conferences. I had to ask a ton of logistical questions like if they used the Israeli business formation and banking system to get funds in for seed rounds, turns out they use the UK and US because "f-ck that noise" lol

so I found that interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You got any keys sittin' in the trunk or do I have to come back next week for the fresh batch, dopeboy?

On a more serious note, this sounds like an amazing experience and I'm very glad you decided to share it with us.

That's very interesting the type of technology experience you saw in the crowd there. Surprised you didn't see more Python, iOS/Android, or any of the Javascript frameworks like Node. The internet cutting out with the electricity must have sucked though. Especially for people without generators.....how are you gonna Stack Overflow?!

</comment><comment> tuna-piano Great writeup.

You touched on it - but was there much political talk at all? Or was it just the normal kind of conversations?

How was their english?

<comment><AUTHOR> There was - and I usually started it. I deliberately left them off this piece.

There's general angst against Hamas. There's universal mistrust of Israel. There's a good deal of division on how to engage with the Israelis / what to negotiate for.

Their English is good. They could understand everything I said. Sometimes it took them awhile to express certain words and phrases. During the hackathon pitches, about half the teams opted to speak in Arabic. In these instances, judges were paired with translators.

<comment><USER17> The only times I read about Gaza is when Israel had just invaded it, pictures of dead bodies and bombed out buildings. Having never seen any description of what it's like inside, reading its name brings up thoughts of suffering and sadness and nothing else.

Thanks for writing this up and taking those photos. I could not have imagined there are places in Gaza that are just like my own office. It looks like a great place to be.

<comment><USER18> Your comment reminded me of Banksy's recent short film (spoof advert) on Gaza: "Make this the year YOU discover a new destination" [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3e2dShY8jIo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3e2dShY8jIo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wouldn't it be cool if there was street view in Gaza? If you search for Khan Yunis you find lots of pictures of dead bodies and smoking buildings, but absolutely nothing about what the city actually looks like.

</comment><comment><USER9> Are there any relevant internet restrictions?

Is there any program for remote google-hangout type help, or remote buddy system, or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't test the limits. All the social media and news websites that I use on a daily basis were accessible. The only interesting thing I can say is I did a visual traceroute and all traffic was routed through Ramallah which is in the West Bank.

Everyone used Skype for remote work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What was the educational background/level of the participants? Where did they get programming skills from?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most were in university or had recently graduated. They got their skills from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow, this is an awesome write-up. Kudos to you.

</comment><comment><USER21> Really interesting. Shame that they can't deal directly with Israelis, with all of their start-ups and like-minded technology types.

<comment><USER22> I can never reconcile my respect and admiration of Israeli achievements in technology with my disgust at their horrible treatment of the Palestinians.

<comment><USER23> I'm struggling to imagine a single country in the world that would act as humane as Israel in a similar conflict.

<comment><USER24> Im struggling to understand what people hear when Amnesty International declares Gaza as worst humanitarian disaster since 1967.

"It could be worst, at least they aren't gassing them in camps"

<comment><USER23> Apart from AI's dubious record on that — you understand that these two statements about the conflict are not mutually exclusive, right? Of course Gaza is a humanitarian disaster, even extremen right-wingers would agree with you on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great story! Thank you for sharing your experiences!

I'm curious how did you find out about the event in the first place?

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend at Google passed it along. She was on a particular mailing list and it caught her eye.

Google for Entrepreneurs provides some financial assistance to Gaza Sky Geeks which is probably why they put it in the mailing list in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "On the first day of the 48 hour hackathon, all female participants had to leave by 6:30 PM. This is because, under Sharia law, women cannot hang out with men they are not related or married to late into the evening."

Why am I not surprised.

<comment><USER27> There is no as such sharia law that prohibits women to be back by 6:30.

<comment><USER26> Well apparently someone is enforcing these rules. And it is clear that Hamas supports thus enforcement

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm an Israeli, I'm also a NodeJS core member and an open source guy with a lot of web experience. I've contacted Gaza Sky Geeks multiple times and offered assistance.

They took almost a month to reply. Apparently, Israelis are not welcome. It's a shame that my only way to experience my neighbors is through serving in an armed forces war.

<comment><USER29> I dated a Tunisian guy once and he was also frustrated he couldn't get into an Israeli university solely because of his nationality. This whole rift saddens me.

<comment><USER28> I agree - it is equally frustrating. If you send me his contact information I'll see if I can contact some people from my university and see if there is something that can be done.

<comment><USER29> That is truly nice of you. However haven't contacted the guy in years. Thank you though! The world needs more people like you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> this is awesome. do you think you or anyone you worked with might be affected by that terrible anti-BDS law Cuomo passed (if you were in its jurisdiction?)

<comment><USER31> BDS/anti-BDS has nothing to do with prohibiting working in palestine and traveling to palestine. actually, the BDS movement affects israeli businesses in west bank by boycotting them

<comment><USER32> The BDS movement seeks to boycott all Israeli businesses, irrespective of their location.

<comment><USER31> it does. but it hits the west bank businesses harder than others

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So very true. I think if Mexico and Canada not only declared dead their intent to destroy the US but also decided to shoot rockets onto civilians on a daily basis (as does Hamas launches from the Gaza Strip), there would definitely be a tough response should they not stop (as the military invasion of Gaza). One also needs to consider that Israel offers cost-free, no-strings-attached medical care to Palestinians who show up at their borders with Israel. Israel also provides the Hamas regime and Gazans with power, water, and internet connectivity, all of this despite being fired on daily, having their civilians kidnapped and attacked by smuggling tunnels dug straight into Isrsel's territory, and being threatened with destruction. I definitely don't agree with many decisions the Israeli government has made, but despite what many believe, Israel definitely supports the Gazans and Wesr Bank residents in many ways.

<comment><USER34> Israel has occupied Gaza and West a bank, and resistance to military occupation is legal per the Geneva conventions. Gaza has always resisted the Israeli occupation hence it's punishment. There are continuous attacks upon Gaza from Israel too. The disparity in armed power and thus destruction is massive. In the last Gaza war about 20000 tons of bombs were dropped on Gaza, whereas what they launched against Israel was maybe a few tons.

<comment><USER35> 1\. Israel is no longer in control of Gaza 2\. if you're going to fire stuff at a x1000 stronger military power, then maybe it's time you made better decisions (ref: peace deal made by Ehud Barak back in 2000, which Arafat sunk for no good reason)

<comment><USER34> Israel is in control of Gaza, as recognized by most observers. It controls the airspace, sea, and everything that goes in and out, as well as of course the continuous incursions into the territory.

According to the ceasefires which Israel has signed with Hamas, it's supposed to alleviate the siege on the strip, but it has never lived up to those ceasefires, whereas Hamas has. Continuing to devastate the territory economically, of course the people there will revolt!

<comment><USER21> Are you joking? If you lived next to Gaza, how could you trust them? They repeatedly have said they want to _destroy_ Israel, in speech after speech, thousands of rockets fired indiscriminately into Israeli towns and villages, dozens of attack tunnels dug, and it's in the Hamas charter that Israel must be destroyed. There's some evidence that ISIS is now operating in Gaza, and some Gazan Arabs have gone to Iran for combat/terrorism training.

If not for the extremists controlling the Strip, and dominating the hearts and minds of its residents, Gaza could be a high tech paradise: foreign investment there could be huge, with Israeli factories and tech centers set up, agricultural enterprises, and billion dollar Mediterranean resorts along the gorgeous coast.

<comment><USER34> The idea that Gaza is a threat to Israel is not true, Israel has a huge, sophisticated military. It is Israel which is the threat to its neighbors, it's launched many wars. Israel has preached the same kind of destruction about Gaza and actually carried it out.

Regarding the history of Israel and the Palestinians, You should look at the history of the occupation. In the Gaza Strip, the 5m high walls concrete walls between the few thousand settlers who use way more resources, occupied about 1/3rd of the land, while over a million people lived around them in poverty. It's very cruel and brutal apartheid/imperialism by Israel understandably made Gazans angry. Things like arbitrary detention, mass torture of Palestinians, assassinations and so on which are the underpinning of the military occupation, this is what pushes people to extremism.

<comment><USER26> Well the walls have been working fantastically well for Israel. Suicide bombings just don't really happen anymore. Yeah sure, the knifings have been going on, but those kill a lot less people.

15 years ago there used to be a bombing every week.

<comment><USER34> The suicide bombings only came after attacks by Israel, each one was a response for an attack by Israel, for example attacking apartment buildings with helicopter gunships. That's important to remember - they have a context.

Yes the wall is working well for Israel, it's annexed more of the West Bank by default, and is disrupting the lives of Palestinians massively, and also the migration of wildlife.

There's been quite a lot of violence lately, death toll is still pretty high since late 2015.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Political talk is abnormal? The number of conversations I've had about Trump recently must make me an outlier, then.

<comment><USER37> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11859233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11859233) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER36> Perhaps I should have been more direct with my point: I think it is disrespectful to Palestinians to expect that their "normal conversation" doesn't include any sort of reference to their political realities, as political realities are part of everyone's normal, in any society that acts even under the pretense of democracy (and Hamas was elected).

It would have been odd if people living in a territory that had electricity for six hours daily and mostly closed/highly regulated borders didn't have normal conversation about topics that are, inherently, political.

<comment><USER13> I think you are overanalyzing the post that used the word "normal". I think he/she was talking colloquially and didn't mean to imply that political talk is abnormal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The Gaza strip is an enemy state of Israel so, if you are Israeli, you immediately lose your citizenship by entering the Gaza strip (or any of the other enemy states).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_nationality_law#Cancel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_nationality_law#Cancellation_of_citizenship)

<comment><USER39> > cases in which the state can initiate a cancellation of citizenship of an > Israeli citizen

That is not the same thing as "you immediately lose your citizenship". Does this actually happen frequently?

<comment><USER40> Israelis go to Gaza all the time - typically Muslim relatives, and sometimes aid workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> amazing story, dude!</comment>


Ask HN: What problems is prolog well suited for? - <AUTHOR>

I am interested in exploring logic programming. I was wondering if someone could tell me, or shed some light on what problems prolog is good at solving, and how I would integrate it into say, a java application.
From what I have read on the subject, I understand prolog is not a general purpose language, but information has been sparse on where it is especially useful to use. I know some HN users have made use of the language in some of their own projects and I would love to hear why, how, and where.
Thanks guys. <comment><USER2> I know it's used a lot in AI. Problems involving backtracking. Expert systems, rules engines.

Further more, it's good at solving any problem since it's Turing complete.

To use it in Java I'd say one would embed an interpreter and provide an API for accessing Java logic, or use a bridge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know of any books I could get started with?

<comment><USER2> <http://www.learnprolognow.org/></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Merry Christmas - <AUTHOR> Merry Christmas fellow HN'ers.<p>2018 went so fast. I hope that 2018 was good for everyone and that you all have a prosperous new year. <comment><USER3> It's almost midnight on the 25th where I am and this is the first time somebody wished me "Merry Christmas" today. Thank you. Merry Christmas and best wishes to all of you as well.

<comment><USER4> Merry Christmas! And best wishes for a splendid 2019.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a Murphy's law variation associated with central heating systems failing on Christmas eve? Never mind, Merry Christmas HN!

<comment><USER6> I think this falls under Finagle's law.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finagle%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finagle%27s_law)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> મેરી ક્રિસમસ! (Merry Christmas) From Junagadh, Gujarat, India [1]. 1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junagadh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junagadh)

<comment><USER8> મેરી ક્રિસમસ! It feels joy to connect with another Gujju on HN.

<comment><USER9> +1. Merry Christmas!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Merry Christmas to everybody that continues to makes this community a procrastinator's paradise!

( _And the lurkers too!_ )

</comment><comment><USER11> Merry Christmas from Scotland!

Anyone have any Hackernews hacks to get over a cold fast?

I've tried pills, roast potatoes, hot toddies and bad Christmas TV....

<comment><USER12> It might be too late, but one thing my brother taught me is to demolish a LOT of orange juice the moment you start to feel unwell (drink it as if you are thirsty all the time - I did five litres of it in about twelve hours), crank the heating up to make your bedroom uncomfortably hot and sleep as much as you possibly can.

I don't know the mechanism behind it working for us - my brother and I are a bit of an oddity in that we both have insanely effective immune systems (and like running experiments on ourselves), but it works for me. Might work for you, might not!

<comment><USER13> Something to search, "Vitamins C megadose"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to fellow HN'rs from the lap of Himalayas :D (Nepal)

मेरी क्रिस्मस |

<comment><USER15> Merry Christmas from another Nepali on the other side of the world (Bay Area) and missing home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Merry Christmas from Shanghai! 圣诞节快乐!

[https://www.baidu.com/s?ie=utf-8&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_idx=1&ch=&...](https://www.baidu.com/s?ie=utf-8&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_idx=1&ch=&tn=baidu&bar=&wd=%E5%9C%A3%E8%AF%9E%E8%8A%82%E5%BF%AB%E4%B9%90)

<comment><USER17> I'm sure that you didn't mean to offend but Shèngdàn actually means the birth of Kongzi (Confucius), and using it for Christmas is only due to Western Colonialism, trying to dominate and erase Chinese culture. 耶誕节快乐!

Edit: Yes, your link shows that every year there is this "Western Christmas craze" in China. It is a commercialized, fashionable holiday for young people to have fun - but this also shows how disrespectful it is that they associate this with the traditional title of Kongzi. Kongzi said that through festivals and rituals we learn to become more humane. Is this the spirit by which Western Christmas festival is celebrated today?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Merry Christmas, HN! This community is something I check in on every morning — I'm happy I can always find something new or interesting to learn about each time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Рождество құтты болсын! Merry Christmas from HN'ers of Kazakhstan!

<comment><USER20> Kutty bolsyn!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Linksmų Kalėdų from Lithuania!

</comment><comment><USER22> Merry Christmas to you all from Africa. Its about 4pm here, family napping after all the food.

</comment><comment><USER23> メリー・クリスマス (Merry Christmas) from Japan!

</comment><comment><USER24> Vrolijk kerstfeest!

</comment><comment><USER25> Feliz Navidad from San Juan, Puerto Rico!

<comment><USER26> Feliz navidad from Caguas!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Feliz Navidad from Atacama - <USER2>

<comment><USER25> Merry christmas! The Atacama, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Merry Christmas from Israel :o

</comment><comment><USER29> Merry Christmas from my family currently in beautiful snow covered Western NY.

</comment><comment><USER30> Feliz Navidad from Barcelona!

<comment><USER31> From Madrid too

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Frohe Weihnachten!

</comment><comment><USER33> नाताळचा हार्दिक शुभेच्छा! (Merry Christmas!) From Pune, India.

</comment><comment><USER34> среќен Божиќ (Merry Christmas) all from Macedonia (E. Europe)

</comment><comment><USER35> Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Romania :)!

</comment><comment><USER36> This is such a random, yet wholesome post and thread. I love it!

2018 has been quite a year for me and HN has definitely helped by being a great community for fascinating discussions and interesting reads. To anyone else going through a shit time, reach out, talk to a friend, try to make 2019 a happier year. Stay strong.

Belated Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year everyone!

</comment><comment><USER37> Merry Christmas & Best wishes to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER38> Joyeux Noël, depuis la Suisse romande :)

<comment><USER39> Bonnes fêtes (de Nyon)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Fröhliche Weihnachten!

</comment><comment><USER41> gelukkig nieuwjaar from mountain view!

<comment><USER42> Fijne feestdagen from The Hague :)

<comment><USER43> Fijne feestdagen van België! Happy holidays from Belgium!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

</comment><comment><USER45> срећан Божић

</comment><comment><USER46> Maayong Pasko from Philippines!

</comment><comment><USER47> Feliz Natal from Portugal!

<comment><USER48> Igualmente!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Merry Christmas!

2018 was kind of mixed bag for me, but the good parts were _really_ good, so I am not going to complain, but look forward to a new year full of the usual surprises and craziness.

</comment><comment><USER50> Not christian but still Happy Christmas to all who are celebrating.

</comment><comment><USER51> Merry Christmas HN! Feliz natal from Recife, Brazil!

<comment><USER52> Merry Christmas to you too, fellow citizen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Merry Christmas and God bless us everyone!

</comment><comment><USER54> Merry Christmas from the warm heart of Africa, Malawi! Mulungu akudalitseni nonse! (God bless you all!)

</comment><comment><USER55> Maligayang Pasko from the Philippines!

</comment><comment><USER56> Laudate omnes gentes, laudate Domine!

</comment><comment><USER57> Feliz Navidad from New Mexico, USA!

</comment><comment><USER58> Feliz Navidad from Asturias, Spain!

</comment><comment><USER59> Merry Christmas, Happy Hannakuh, Happy Kwanza, and a great 2019 to all my Hacker News friends.

</comment><comment><USER60> C рождеством!

</comment><comment><USER61> Il-Milied it-tajjeb from Malta! :)

</comment><comment><USER62> It really did! Well, it felt pretty fast anyway.

Merry Christmas to all celebrating and happy holidays :~)

</comment><comment><USER63> Merry Christmas from Tel Aviv!

</comment><comment><USER64> Merry Christmas to all! And best wishes for a good 2019 everywhere in the world.

</comment><comment><USER65> Feliz Navidad desde Hangzhou

</comment><comment><USER66> З Різдвом!

</comment><comment><USER67> Merry Christmas to the whole of HN, you freaking amazing community! :)

</comment><comment><USER68> God jul, en dag för sent

</comment><comment><USER69> Feliz Natal from Brazil

</comment><comment><USER70> Feliz Natal from Brazil

</comment><comment><USER71> Feliz Navidad! Merry Christmas from Bucaramanga, Colombia =)

</comment><comment><USER72> 圣诞快乐 from Guangzhou!

<comment><USER17> 耶诞快乐!

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> krismas kee badhaee! Merry Christmas from India.

</comment><comment><USER74> Merry Christmas from Johannesburg, South Africa

</comment><comment><USER75> Merry Christmas from Slovakia. Veselé Vianoce!

</comment><comment><USER76> Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER77> Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER78> Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER79> Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER80> Merry Christmas or Happy Holiday everyone!

</comment><comment><USER81> Merry Gravmass from Long Island New York!

</comment><comment><USER82> Scheene Weihnachtn from Munich, Germany!

</comment><comment><USER83> Joyeux Noël , from Québec City, Canada!

</comment><comment><USER84> Merry Chrismas from the mid-south US!

</comment><comment><USER85> Merry Christmas Everyone! From India

</comment><comment><USER86> Merry Christmas from San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER87> Merry Christmas from San Francisco!

</comment><comment><USER88> Glædelig jul!

</comment><comment><USER89> Merry Christmas from the Odenwald.

</comment><comment><USER90> Buon Natale!

</comment><comment><USER91> Nollaig Shona Daoibh ó h'Eireann

</comment><comment><USER92> Frohe Weihnachten from Austria!

</comment><comment><USER93> Jubilous Yuletide from Finland!

</comment><comment><USER94> Merry Christmas from Pakistan!

</comment><comment><USER95> Merry Christmas from Maryland!

</comment><comment><USER96> Merry Christmas from Seattle.

</comment><comment><USER97> Merry Christmas from New York

</comment><comment><USER98> Happy Christmas from Bermuda!

</comment><comment><USER99> Merry Christmas from Canada!

</comment><comment><USER100> Joyeux Noël, from Burgundy.

</comment><comment><USER101> Fijne kerstfeest allemaal!

</comment><comment><USER102> Merry Christmas, Fellas!

</comment><comment><USER103> Merry Christmas friends!

</comment><comment><USER104> Boldog karácsonyt!

</comment><comment><USER105> Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER106> Crãciun fericit!

</comment><comment><USER107> Merry Christmas.

</comment><comment><USER108> Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER109> Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER110> Весела Коледа!

</comment><comment><USER111> Hyvää joulua!

</comment><comment><USER112> Merry Xmas

</comment><comment><USER113> Merry Christmas to all of you!

</comment><comment><USER114> Merry Christmas from Ottawa.

</comment><comment><USER115> Merry Christmas!</comment>


Ask HN: Which browser is the safest to use when making money transactions? - <AUTHOR> A friend of mine was stolen recently (on his SKRILL account) and I wonder which is the safest browser (at least in theory) specially regarding money transactions. <comment><USER2> Not really an answer, but ideally, your bank shouldn't rely on browser security alone. Serious banks allow some form of OTP transaction authentication, I've seen examples of matrix codes via snail mail or OTP generators that use the chip on a bank card.

I particularly like my bank's (ing.nl) solution: they can send you OTP authentication codes via sms. When they do, they also include the total transaction amount in the message so you can verify that what you're authorizing matches the amount shown in-browser.

Additionally, you shouldn't rely on browser security alone. My father got phished once because malware managed to overwrite his global DNS and proxy settings. Also, I got my mother weaned off Windows by installing a dual-boot system and explaining that she shouldn't do online banking in Windows anymore. A few months later, she asked my to remove Windows because she never used it anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> one without any extensions for sure. Read: Incognito tab.

You also have to make sure that your browser runs on a secure OS which is most likely more often the reason to lose money.

<comment><AUTHOR> My friend was in the process of updating his desktop to Windows 10 but maybe it's only a coincidence.</comment></comment>


SFMTA publishes list of names with license plates - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfmta.com/services/permits-citations/citation-overpayments <comment><USER2> Wow. Didn't think it could be real, but sure enough my girlfriend's old plate is listed. That's pretty disgusting, SFMTA.

 __Edit __

We just went through the process to claim the $125 through "surveygizmo.com". At the end it says "A customer service representative will review your information and respond to you within 21 days. If a refund is identified a check will be processed within 30 days"

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if anything interesting comes up if you correlate this data with the license plate camera data that Oakland released ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10642139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10642139)).

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for this. I scraped all of the PDF data, and threw it in a DB. Now it's searchable.

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

<comment><USER5> Is there a way to search by name?

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, no. There was no rhyme or reason to the way that they formatted the names. I guess I could implement a fuzzy search, but I'm still at work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This data can't be real. It says Steve Jobs has not one, but three license plates.

<comment><USER7> Wasn't he known for buying new cars all the time to get around parking fines (by milking the new car plates)?

<comment><USER8> It's reported that he leased a new Mercedes every 6 months so that he didn't have to put plates on the car at all.

[http://gizmodo.com/5853927/the-real-reason-steve-jobs- benz-d...](http://gizmodo.com/5853927/the-real-reason-steve-jobs-benz-didnt- have-a-license-plate)

I don't know if there was anything about parking fines involved; I doubt the guy was particularly concerned about them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> SFMTA is a truly awful organization.

</comment><comment><USER10> Details on California DMV records.. surprisingly, a lot of the data is technically public record:

[https://www.privacyrights.org/cradle-grave-government- record...](https://www.privacyrights.org/cradle-grave-government-records-and- your-privacy)

And here's the federal law on DMV record privacy. This would be a legal release of information, unfortunately (government agency "carrying out its functions"):

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2721](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2721)

</comment><comment><USER11> Appears to be illegal under DPPA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_Act)

</comment><comment><USER12> That seems like an oversight....

<comment><USER13> Seems plausible - they accidentally created 9 PDF files, accidentally uploaded them to a new page in their CMS which they accidentally created, on which they accidentally wrote instructions on how to search through the PDF file to find your (or your ex-wife/stalkee's) name/plate.

No clear signs of intent that publishing names linked to plates was exactly what they set out to do...

<comment><USER14> Well, it's obvious their intent was that you could find whether or not you were owed money by searching for your license plate or name. You weren't supposed to search for someone else's licence plate or name.

Of course someone should have noticed that you can do that, and that it's bad for privacy, but didn't. That's the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> they'll for sure take this down.

<comment><USER16> Bit late now. ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you end a non-winning argument in your PR professionally? - <AUTHOR> Getting in a pointless PR argument is one of the soul crushing reality developers face everyday.<p>How do you say "There's no point of dragging a non-winnable argument with you, so if you want this feature to be approved this afternoon, I'll revert back my changes so that you can stop bitching on this issue already!"? <comment><USER2> "No biggie, let's do it your way", there is no point of being passive aggressive or showing resentment.

It's a job, have discussions, not arguments. Chances are whatever you're arguing about now won't matter in 6 months. And if it does come back in a bad way you have public records clearing you off.

> Getting in a pointless PR argument is one of the soul crushing reality > developers face everyday.

Happened to me a few times in my previous company, moving to a new job with less man childs and power maniacs fixed everything. It's not an issue a PR issue, it's a people issue.

> I'll revert back my changes

Settling on specs before implementing things help with that, it makes arguing much easier when you haven't already built a solution.</comment>


Why Do Websites Publish AMP Pages? - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/10/21/google-amp <comment><USER2> Gruber is precisely four days late to this conversation that unbeknownst to him we already had [1], prompted by this blog post [2] and already responded to by Google [3] (and discussed by HN [4]).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12722590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12722590) [2] [https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your- mobile-...](https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile- traffic/) [3] [https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your- mobile-...](https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile- traffic/#comment-55336) [4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12731311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12731311)

</comment><comment><USER3> Because they believe there's an ranking advantage to it. People will do all kinds of harmful stuff to their site if they believe it results in higher SERPs ranking.</comment>


This isn't about Chrome. This is about ElectronJS - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1069776335336292352 <comment><USER2> From the thread: "It hadn't appeared to me that with the acquisition of GitHub, Microsoft basically also owns Electron now. That's an interesting turn of events."</comment>


Real-time audio programming 101: time waits for nothing (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rossbencina.com/code/real-time-audio-programming-101-time-waits-for-nothing <comment><AUTHOR> This advice seems fairly generic, but I'm curious what has changed in audio programming since then?</comment>


The world expected a Chinese tech takeover. Alibaba can't even conquer Vietnam - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-chinas-tech-giants-success-stops-at-the-border-11568043193?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> just a quick note: the US couldn't conquer Vietnam either</comment>


Quantifying the Clickbait and Linkbait in BuzzFeed Article Titles - <AUTHOR> http://minimaxir.com/2015/01/linkbait/ <comment><USER2> I'll tell you guys a funny story. So, the Onion has this site: [http://clickhole.com](http://clickhole.com) Check it out, it's great parody. I actually go there.

So, the last time someone mentioned BuzzFeed - which I don't really go on, I don't recognize it or anything - I ended up opening it and opening Clickhole.com in adjacent tabs.

Now, since I don't read buzzfeed, I was then _completely_ convinced it was clickhole. It had like articles like this (from the current front page, not what I was reading but they'll do):

-23 Ways You Know Your Obsession With Your Cat Is Getting Out Of Control

\- The Definitive Ranking Of The Most Cringingly Great Dialogue In "Titanic"

and so forth. (The above are verbatim from the site right now.) But then I got to one, and I couldn't figure it out. (Just looking at the title.) I've actually found it just now, based on remembering a keyword. It was:

\- "Muslim-Owned Shops In Birmingham Were Attacked With Guns And Hammers"

I was looking at it and looking at it, trying to figure out the "joke" (why guns and hammers.) It was like a pun I couldn't get. Like the Onion was too clever for me. After about a minute, I gave up. And I saw on the tabs that I was on an actual site, not clickhole. I had to just laugh and laugh. The reason I couldn't figure out the joke was that I was on buzzfeed, which isn't satire! I just couldn't stop laughing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Max, great analysis. I was curious if you researched whether or not BuzzFeed is using the tactic of multiple titles for a single (partially generated) article?

The multi-title tactic was mentioned in the "The King of Clickbait" article and discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8810670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8810670)

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/virologist](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/virologist)

<comment><AUTHOR> There were articles posted in multiple categories, which caused misleading results due to double-counting when I first made the chart. ([http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2s6d1y/30_l...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2s6d1y/30_linkbait_phrases_in_buzzfeed_headlines_you/cnmk7y3))

The dupe articles had the same exact title, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I would love is a fully-integrated browser extension that detects/fades/hides clickbaity headlines/links/articles, using something like Bayesian spam filtering. I know there's already a node.js package that worked with this concept ([https://github.com/TJkrusinski/clickbait](https://github.com/TJkrusinski/clickbait)), but it would be great to have something that works like Adblocker on the various CSS classes where headlines usually lurk, something that would check all headlines instead of just some sort of blacklist for a few certain sites. Maybe it would include a crowdsourcing aspect, where users would, given two headlines, choose which one is more clickbaity, to train the system.

</comment><comment><USER5> > BuzzFeed was one of the first news sources to use non-neutral headlines that > deliberately invoke a reaction in the reader

Now now, let's not go overboard. BuzzFeed is a new tabloid, they didn't invent tabloids.

</comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating topic, but nothing surprising about any of the findings. (Does that qualify this post as clickbait?:))

An extremely interesting question IMO would be what is the longetivity of these tactics? Are there phrases that worked extremely well for a period of time, and then stopped being effective? In other words, how long before people get tired of clickbaits?

<comment><USER7> The fallacy of the clickbait charge against Buzzfeed is that they don't use clicks as a metric, they focus on shares. Buzzfeed learned from the once hot Upworthy (who originated the "You Won't Believe What Happened Next" style headline) that if a visitor feels like they were tricked into clicking on a link to your site then they aren't going to share it. You get a lot more traffic by delivering on the promises made by your headlines.

<comment><USER8> I think it's kindov subjective. A clickbait headline may "trick" a user into clicking on a link but it may also deliver on the expected content. Is there a blog post dissecting above hypothesis though. I'd be interested in reading it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm teaching a Unix/data course this quarter, and inspired by the OP (who I believe did an analysis/visualization prior to this) and other BuzzFeed-title analysts, I put together an exercise in doing a frequency distribution of BuzzFeed titles (really, an exercise in basic HTML parsing and regexes) [http://www.compciv.org/homework/assignments/buzzfeed- listicl...](http://www.compciv.org/homework/assignments/buzzfeed-listicle- title-parser/)

I gathered the links through their archive pages, which go back to 2006...I didn't run the exercise yet myself, but at one point did a quick count of total titles since 2006 and counted more than 200,000. That didn't seem right (and maybe my selector was off)...but the other day, I tried it with just the 2014 year and came up with more than 60,000 articles.

...that sounded _clearly_ off (the OP said he scraped only ~60,000 distinct articles)...but when I visited one of the archive pages to eyeball it...yeah, 60,000 articles in a single year looks about right: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/archive/2014/11/18](http://www.buzzfeed.com/archive/2014/11/18)

It's even more astonishing when you go back to the 2006 pages and see that there were days/regular weekends in which BuzzFeed published _no_ content at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh, I was not aware of the archive at all. However, looking at the archive, it appears that there are a lot of community, user-added posts so I'm unsure of the reliability of those posts.

<comment><USER9> Yeah it took me a bit of time to find the archive. Unlike you, I have a little more faith in BuzzFeed's SEO expertise and figured they would have to have some kind of sitemap ;)

Don't know about the community posts or how they're structured with the main content...it might be possible on a second pass to filter out non-Buzzfeed- staff posts based on the URL (which I assume contains the username of the author).

(Also, I don't know if they changed this since you attempted your last scrape via pagination...but now if you paginate too far, you will be rewarded with a Boyz II Men video)

<comment><USER10> [http://www.buzzfeed.com/sitemap.xml](http://www.buzzfeed.com/sitemap.xml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Someone definitely needs to make a Chrome extension that blocks these sort of things. Or an Adblock filter.

<comment><USER12> Several already exist. Here are a few

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/baitblock/nnonoddk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/baitblock/nnonoddkboglnjgnajhjiimgkclmciji)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gawkblocker/fbdakf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gawkblocker/fbdakfnfbdeccpildcaemgdipfkamghn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a great article for us marketers whose primary goal is shares and pageviews.

Unfortunately, it's sad to think that this is the state of journalism. <sigh>

</comment><comment><USER14> > Additionally, BuzzFeed was one of the first news sources to use non-neutral > headlines that deliberately invoke a reaction in the reader which then > subsequently tempts them to click on the article in an attempt to promote > virality.

I don't think this is a new phenomenon. Yellow newspapers like The Daily Mail have existed since shortly after the invention of the printing press.

</comment><comment><USER15> Through my research I have found you can trick someone into clicking a link but a share not so much.

I built a search engine that ranks on social shares and the social comments.

It's great for avoiding click bait in results.

[http://engu.me](http://engu.me)

</comment><comment><USER8> The analysis is right on. I once experimented with creating a single page website, literally a single page, by posting a listicle with photos. The webpage got over a million shares on Facebook.</comment>


Qt 4.5.0 released (Let the LGPL apps begin) - <AUTHOR> http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/03/03/qt-45-hits-the-virtual-shelves/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone here know anything about whether PyQT is planning on also switching to LGPL? On their license page, they say:

"Like Qt itself, PyQt is provided under a number of licenses depending on how it is going to be used. In fact, we try and follow Trolltech's licensing model as closely as we can."

So I'm assuming that they're planning on switching. Is anyone here on their mailing lists and/or have any other inside information of that sort about whether they're planning on switching?

<comment><USER3> I would assume they aren't - QT is owned by Nokia so they can afford to give QT away for free just for market share. Riverbank computing (makers of PyQT) is a one man band with bills to pay (it is availabel under the GPL). But if they don't then someone is going to start a community project to produce the swig wrappers themselves.

<comment><USER3> Having said that - perhaps Nokia might buy Riverbank to keep pyqt going, or Riverbank might feel they can support themselves on consulting/support contracts with a larger installed base of an LGPL pyqt?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The last time I looked at Qt, they had gone mad with the pimpl (private implementation) design pattern, and that made the classes much harder to extend. Needlessly harder to extend in my opinion.

Can anyone tell me if this is still the case?

I suppose it's only an issue if you're really pushing the framework, it shouldn't bother most people.

<comment><USER5> Not sure I'm expert enough to comment, but doesn't this make it easier to extend a class - because what you can and can't use/rely on is clear?

<comment><USER4> It's a double edged sword. On the one hand, you know what APIs they've committed to and won't change.

On the other hand, often you want to extend more then they would "allow". And because you're wrapping their APIs, when those APIs change, you should only have to change your code in the one place where you overloaded them.

There's a lot of bad things said about JFC/Swing, I won't repeat them here, but it did allow you to extend almost everything.

And as a side note, GridBagLayout is powerful and elegant, despite what some people say: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuLaxbFKAcc></comment></comment></comment>