Heroku is down again - <AUTHOR> https://status.heroku.com/ <comment><USER3> MASSIVE Storms in VA area where us-east-1 is. 326,000 customers without power already, worst lightning I have seen in my 20 years of life. Sky is intense blue/green/purple. This is most likely what the issue is

<comment><USER4> No matter how powerful we become as a species with our technology, we are still at the mercy of the clouds. Pretty cool if you think about it.

<comment><USER5> Or if we just built our power grid underground like rational people.

<comment><USER6> Underground cables have many problems like rats (and other vermin) or people harvesting copper/metals.

<comment><USER7> Do they? Here in Germany the entire cabling within cities is underground, only the high voltage long distance lines are above ground. I've never heard a story about people stealing underground cables (they do steal e.g. train track above ground cabling). That also wouldn't make sense, digging up those cables is much more effort than taking them down from a post.

I've also never heard stories about issues with rats.

Power outages still happen, but they are quite rare - in 30 years I can only remember twoish.

<comment><USER8> Rats are a common menace with all sorts of cabling. Large parts of scotland recently lots broadband due to rats eating cables ([http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/12/dirty_rat_downs_virg...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/12/dirty_rat_downs_virgin/)).

Apparently it's the insulation on the wires that they like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> EC2 status:

8:21 PM PDT We are investigating connectivity issues for a number of instances in the US-EAST-1 Region.

8:31 PM PDT We are investigating elevated errors rates for APIs in the US- EAST-1 (Northern Virginia) region, as well as connectivity issues to instances in a single availability zone.

8:40 PM PDT We can confirm that a large number of instances in a single Availability Zone have lost power due to electrical storms in the area. We are actively working to restore power.

<comment><USER10> 8:49 PM PDT Power has been restored to the impacted Availability Zone and we are working to bring impacted instances and volumes back online.

<comment><USER9> 9:20 PM PDT We are continuing to work to bring the instances and volumes back online. In addition, EC2 and EBS APIs are currently experiencing elevated error rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How many times does this have to happen before heroku spreads across multiple regions?

<comment><USER12> You say this like they can just snap their fingers and provide regional services.

<comment><USER13> Well, nothing of scale happens overnight.

But anyone deploying a critical application to AWS makes a point of cross- region data replication. Heroku have long known that they lose potential customers to, say, Engine Yard as a result of only hosting at US-East.

One can only conclude that this is a clear business decision on their part. I can hardly believe that Heroku's engineers are incapable of it. Indeed I would be very surprised to learn that they _haven't_ brought up an instance of their platform at, say, US-West, for testing or proof-of-concept purposes.

Of course, productising that is a different matter. Extending the control plane, front end, and pricing/billing systems might have considerable associated project cost. Perhaps they have concluded that the costs outweigh the additional revenue. Or, just haven't got around to it yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can we update the title to something like "AWS US-east-1 is down" instead of just Heroku?

<comment><USER15> > informative titles get changed

> uninformative titles left intact

hn 2012

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why does the AWS dashboard show all green when that is most definitely not the case?

<http://status.aws.amazon.com/>

<comment><USER4> The red check marks are in VA and can't be displayed.

<comment><USER17> If only they did multi-AZ hosting like they keep telling us to do when there's outages :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yup, a lot of services served by AWS are having issues. We're seeing a huge spike in incidents being triggered in PagerDuty.

(fyi: our customers are still being alerted)

<comment><USER19> What infrastructure do you use for alerting your customers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My app with 2 dynos is down.

Their status site is running fine altho it's not reporting errors: <https://status.heroku.com/>

Their Helpdesk is down: [https://api.heroku.com/helpdesk/login?timestamp=1341025835&#...
Devcenter is down: http://devcenter.heroku.com
AWS isn't reporting any errors: http://status.aws.amazon.com

<comment><USER21> That's standard. You'd expect them to run everything they have on their own service except for the status site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Please link to <https://status.heroku.com/>, pointing to a broken URL is pointless.

</comment><comment><USER23> Think that netflix is down too. so much for chaos monkey?

<comment><USER24> i think netflix ceo just signed up for a rackspace account

<comment><USER25> Rackspace got hit by a truck last year and went down for a while too. Not cloud != perfectly reliable.

<comment><USER26> Slightly different scenario however: the power was shut off by the fire marshall if I recollect correctly.

Rackspace (and many, many other co's) tend to have functional UPS units & generators. Amazon tends to choose the cheapest datacenter facility imaginable and then these sort of failures occur.

Given their size they'll inevitably fix the power issues though -- they've got the finances & they're capable to add a few levels of redundancy.

<comment><USER25> I found the reports about the outage - it was 2007 (so obviously much more than a year ago) but _very_ similar to one of Amazon's recent outages - <USER2> truck took out a transformer, Rackspace fired up backup power, but cooling failed to start so Rackspace had to shut it all down to avoid melting everything.

Looks like Amazon wasn't the only one with inadequate testing of their continuity plan. And I don't think Rackspace offered alternate Availability Zones at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There are US-East problems, looks like:

      - One AZ is down
      - API commands are spotty and may return incorrect results
      - ELB looks screwed
      - IP reassignments don't seem to be working
      - Who knows what the fuck else is broken

</comment><comment><USER28> Don't think it was just heroku, lots of other sites were down as well, netflix.com, etc. most likely another AWS issue.

</comment><comment><USER29> I can't get to netflix.com. That is no good. Luckily all of my 75+ east servers seem to be ok.

<comment><USER30> netflix.com is down here as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reddit also seems to be experiencing some difficulties. Are they still on AWS?

</comment><comment><USER32> We're in AWS East and definitely fighting some issues here, though we're trying to understand what is happening.

</comment><comment><USER33> We have dozens of servers that are unavailable at the moment (US-East). Obviously AWS is having major issues.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's been fifteen minutes since our site in US-East went down and AWS Status hasn't said anything yet.

</comment><comment><USER34> Ugh, the EC2 administration console is done. Being in other availability zones won't save you..

</comment><comment><USER35> As of 10:16 CDT, I can't reach Netflix or Heroku, although AWS status (<http://status.aws.amazon.com/>) is not yet reporting any current outages.

</comment><comment><USER36> Aws East connectivity issues, 8:21pm:

<http://status.aws.amazon.com/rss/ec2-us-east-1.rss>

</comment><comment><USER37> This is the motivation I needed to spread my EC2 instances across multiple availability zones. When the power comes back.

(fandalism is down)

<comment><USER27> Don't assume that'll save you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Just started up try using filepicker.io and it seems to be down too.

Beginning to feel pretty lucky though -- this is at least the 4th AWS-East outage that has made enough of a splash to notice but missed my instances. Upgrading to multiple availability zones was scheduled for Monday anyway.

</comment><comment><USER39> Simple solution to this is to have a backup or failover to a non-AWS Datacenter too, basically don't be just dependent on one Datacenter. E.g. MS Azure/Google/Rackspace This not only spreads your risks but keeps your customers happy.

<comment><USER40> There's nothing simple about that. :)

<comment><USER39> Yea, but it should be done by providers like Heroku who can talk to multiple datacenters :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Google Appengine's just fine. Dont't know how many AZ i'm on and don't want to know :)) The more i see about amazon failures the more i think VM are just not high enough for me in the abstraction layer...

</comment><comment><USER42> I have 3 customers -- what the are they going to do, those poor souls!!

</comment><comment><USER43> Comcast's login server looks like it's down too: <http://login.comcast.net>. Prevents me from logging into HBO Go. No Netflix either. :(

</comment><comment><USER44> Everything still down for me. Would have expected some redundancy...

</comment><comment><USER45> Apparently it's AWS East.

</comment><comment><USER46> Ahh I was just using crunchbase and its now down, must be related.

</comment><comment><USER47> I just lost a potential hire because of this, was demoing my app to someone and it wasn't working, she thought it was because of the product. Damn you heroku!

</comment><comment><USER48> Come on not another power issue, what happened to the generators... and the back up generators that they fixed few weeks back.

<comment> excuse-me The little red ribbon that you pull to get the AA batteries out is stcuk underneath - they are looking for a pen to flick the battery but since everyone switched over to Fire tablets there aren't any pens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> idea for heroku : allow customers to host a "my app is down page for blah blah reason" where they host their status page (rackspace I guess?). Who think this would be useful? My users see a blank page right now when they go to ZeTrip, I'd rather show them a static page saying : "our site is down due to amazon lack of redundancy."

<comment><USER50> Cloudflare lets you do this afaik. I'm not sure I'd trust a service to show a proper 'this site is temporarily down' page when something very bad has happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's not Heroku that is down, AWS is down.

</comment><comment><USER52> We use Heroku for our event tools, thankfully we have nothing live this weekend or this would be a disaster.

</comment><comment><USER53> Loadbalancers are down for me: Getting 'Response contains invalid JSON' upon attempted termination.

</comment><comment><USER49> "heroku status" command returns : All Systems Go: No known issues at this time.

</comment><comment><USER54> Cloudflare Always-Up isn't showing on my page - is Cloudflare affected too?

</comment><comment><USER55> Heroku's uptime for June is going to be.. not so hot.

<comment><USER56> For shissle.

Had to move off Heroku for my latest app. That amount of downtime would put me out of business.

To bad. I really like the Heroku platform

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> did the datacenter get flooded or what? this is just "major" downage.

<comment><USER31> It's likely related to the power outages across VA

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> AWS should call them Unavailability Zones.

<comment><USER58> I had the same thought, but it's not HN material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> what a winner! And they charge!! FUX.

</comment><comment><USER59> I can't believe that guys at heroku are not ready for such situations!

They rely ONLY on virginia's instances because its the cheapest, without caring about customers.. or thinking of replicating their services in multiple locations for such issues!</comment>


Startup Visa Canada - <AUTHOR> http://startupvisa.ca/ <comment><USER2> I think it is a great move to exploit the fact that USA immigration laws are hell bent upon shutting doors in the faces of startups unless you are the next Facebook. What really bothers is the high fee of $150k. I mean companies bootstrap or seek angel investments in the range of $15k-$100k. What on earth makes them think, if I already had that cash, I would be willing or even think of relocating? If my business already has enough traction, then why would one bother. And if at all I had to relocate spending that much, I would rather do that in making the right inlays into US.

<comment><USER3> i've been asked to sign on...and honestly I am wrestling hard. In principle - as a Canadian Entrepreneur - I am for it. But, it's hard for me to imagine many scenarios where it works. What kind of non-Canadian entrepreneur still has 30% of the company after raising $150? I wish it were true that it would work this way all the time, but the odds are really slim IMO. If it is, chances are we're talking about someone who has "done it before", and in those cases they likely have more freedom to move around and don't have the same need for VISA. It seems to me a like misdirected energy. And how about a program that incents talent to come home? That's something I'd love to see today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a Canadian citizen who has worked hard to get a US visa to be able to work in SF/Silicon Valley, but has the 'easier' option of being based north of the border, I'm not really clear why a startup would want to be based out of Canada.

I'm not against the idea of a startup visa for Canada but the site startupvisa.ca might want to sell some of the benefits of being based in Canada because I'm not seeing them.

<comment><USER5> Canada has advantages for someone coming from the developing world. Better internet infrastructure than many countries, educated workforce, socialized health care, a culture very welcoming to immigrants, easy access to the US market, and proximity to Canadian and US investors (particularly Bay Area and Seattle).

It's also easier to get foreign workers, generally, into Canada, so you have your pick of the local workforce, as well as the rest of the world (even Americans!).

I've worked for a startup in Vancouver that took advantage of all the above. Vancouver is one of the best places to live in the world, period, and it's especially great for raising kids or if you're into outdoor sports. So it has its charms even if you already work in a startup hub like San Francisco. You could probably do something similar for Montreal or Toronto, although it would be a harder sell. And the startup would have to be pretty hot or pursuing a unique niche.

If opportunities were equal, there would be very little reason for a startup to choose Canada over the USA. However, since the USA seems determined to shut the door here, Canada can take advantage of that.

<comment><USER6> The biggest reasons to do a startup in Canada are SRED claims, , depressed wages (in Vancouver), and enforceable non-competes.

People say Vancouver is the best place to live, but I'd rather live elsewhere, Portland or SF come to mind.

<comment><USER7> Enforceable non-competes may vary by province; I haven't had a reason to check it out, but they may be against labour law in Ontario.

<comment><USER4> Enforceable probably only in Canada. I doubt there is little to no legal redress for anyone competing across the border, esp in California which bans non-competes.

I personally wouldn't put an employee under a non-compete - a) because they tend to be unenforceable and b) I wouldn't work under such a contract myself.

<comment><USER7> After I got into work, I did a quick search and found that it's not under labour law as such, but Ontario courts (and presumably Canadian courts in general) frown on non-competes. This article from 1999 suggest that non- solicitation agreements are acceptable, but there's nine conditions that make a non-compete acceptable because it's an 'exceptional' situation.

<http://www.zvulony.com/non_compete.html>

This is upheld in other articles that I've read that are more recent:

[http://www.toronto-employmentlawyer.com/law- advice/employmen...](http://www.toronto-employmentlawyer.com/law- advice/employment-law-article.php?row_id=14) [http://blogs.hrhero.com/northernexposure/2008/10/14/noncompe...](http://blogs.hrhero.com/northernexposure/2008/10/14/noncompetes- in-ontario/) <http://www.brazeauseller.com/articles/29/12/2008/245.aspx>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The $150k bit seems entirely unreasonable. Are they expecting immigrants to have funding before they launch their startup? Or are they only hoping to attract rich Indian and Chinese college students/grads riding on Daddy's money? Either approach seems naive if they truly want to build a vibrant startup culture in Canada.

<comment><USER9> It seems reasonable if they want to attract VC firms too (or already have them), so the VCs can find entrepreneurs overseas and send them to Canada.

<comment><USER8> That seems like an edge case, and a strategy predicated upon the US remaining unfriendly to qualified immigrants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I was asking about startups in Canada in HN a few weeks ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2060383>), I got a very negative picture basically stating that tech startups do not exist in CA.

<comment><USER3> Startups exist in Canada, but there are only a few markets that are starting to develop quickly (Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver) - none of which is as active as San Fran. The Valley is a unique place, but let's not forget, most companies are not started there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a step in the right direction. It's definitely not ideal but 150K is better than 300K.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think money and resources are global, you just need a good reason for investors to buy your idea.

Each place has its own pros and cons. Establishing yourself in Silicon Valley brings different kinds of issues like salaries. According to the WSJ, most VC funds are spend on employee wages because of competition from Google and Facebook. [http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/12/29/the-war- for-t...](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/12/29/the-war-for-top- talent-in-silicon-valley/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Good initiative. I'm interested in such program as startup founder. However, if implemented as proposed, it wouldn't give me any benefit. Amount of 150K is too high.

</comment><comment><USER13> > The $150k bit seems entirely unreasonable.

Fair enough, but what criteria should they use?

Remember - the goal is to increase startups, not to let random people into Canada. (They have other programs for the latter.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Ask HN: What would be the best location in Canada?

<comment><AUTHOR> Vancouver, but I'm biased :)

<comment><USER14> How about Waterloo? Google has offices there.

<comment><USER3> I'm a fan of Toronto...but I'm biased too</comment></comment></comment></comment>


References to white men still dominate college biology textbooks, survey says - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/references-to-white-men-still-dominate-college-biology-textbooks-survey-says/2020/07/24/3874cfec-cce7-11ea-b0e3-d55bda07d66a_story.html <comment><USER2> Oh no, how unfortunate that Charles Darwin's name appears in Biology textbooks. I am getting extremely sick of the media's obsession with race.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are references like statues? Should they be torn down?</comment>


Futhark 0.6.1 released – High-performance functional programming on the GPU - <AUTHOR> https://futhark-lang.org/blog/2018-07-09-futhark-0.6.1-released.html <comment><USER2> "Fast automatic Futhark-Python FFI" and the REPL improvements sound like big improvements.

</comment><comment><USER3> This project is super cool. I wish that I had a use case for the stuff in here, but I dont really do any high performance or GPU programming. Maybe I will one day, but in the meantime keep up the good work!

<comment><USER4> Same feeling here. I wonder if it's more expensive to load data into the GPU than to simply process it "more" sequentially in the CPU locally.

<comment><USER5> It depends on the data and the workload. I did some work on GPU accelerating viewshed calculations - basically, line of sight from a point where cells are marked visible or not visible. It's really useful in radio mast planning.

In this case, the result of any given cell doesn't rely on the result of any other cell. This leads to the neat case where every single cell can be, in theory, calculated at once. In this case, you essentially get n-times speedup for n-time increase in processing power.

The other, often overlooked, bonus is that the GPU simply isn't the CPU. As long as you're waiting on stuff to finish there, your CPU is free to do what it pleases. In my case, whenever I started, I immediately triggered the intialisation of the GPU, and then started reading command line switches, reading in the data from disk, etc. Likewise, when the GPU was doing the heavy lifting, I could start on the slow IO involved in preparing the output, creating files, writing out metadata about the shape and limits of the output that's trivially calculated.

In the end, the speedup varied, but at peak it was turning an 8-hour CPU bound workload into one that taken 2 minutes. What was once a full days cycle where you set up your simulation, did busywork for the day, and then collected results and thought about the result overnight at home can now be done while getting a coffee, and allowed people to make mistakes and play around.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: what features would you put into your home automation system? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Close garage door or verification it is closed. Turn off outlets (parasitic devices or just something I forgot). Drop water heater temperature when away assuming not tankless. Pet feeder/treats. Close/open shades depending on temperature and time of year. Water shutoff (burst pipe? leaky toilet? bad neighbor?). Watering plants (bonus if based on soil moisture). Run dehumidifier based on moisture. Control ceiling fan speed in bedrooms rather than air conditioning entire house. Turn off gas if pilot light goes out (furnace, oven). Warning on radon, CO2, smoke, etc

Of the above, the dehumidifier is one that I'd really like living in Minnesota. My dehumidifier's built in threshold for running is poor so I use a timer. It is far from optimal.

</comment><comment><USER3> To start with, let me control everything through a web browser. The usability of our heating system is appalling.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd like AC, lighting, and stereo to turn on and off automatically based on whether I'm home.

</comment><comment> T-zex All stuff that stereotypical wife is supposed to do.</comment>


Mindrosia:  My controversial Facebook app for generating promising Facebook app ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6485754204

<comment><AUTHOR> Please try it out and let me know what you think!

Some discussion on it can be found here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=82787>

[http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi- bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board...](http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi- bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=riddles_general;action=display;num=1196013038)

<http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?pid=16026></comment>


Ask HN: Going Corporate or Startup Direction in Europe? - <AUTHOR> I am about to graduate in Computer Science + Business in couple of months and I am still thinking which is the right way to go. Either corporate and get some experience for couple of years or try to make a startup even though I lack some experience?<p>What are your thoughts? <comment><USER2> A great option is to join a small startup that you find interesting. Small startups are great to quickly get exposed to a lot of things, to make a difference quickly, and see the results of your code in production faster. They are risky, but at the beginning of your career, that's actually a good thing.</comment>


Verify email sender is not spoofed? - <AUTHOR>

hello! is it possible to verify that an email's sender address has not been manipulated, given access to the complete mail headers.
i ask because i think of creating a service where users can do actions by writing and the receiving mails.
so there would be the possibility of people abusing the service to spam others via my mail server.
thanks a lot for helping me! <comment><USER2> _hello! is it possible to verify that an email's sender address has not been manipulated, given access to the complete mail headers._

No. I can send you email with whatever sender address and headers I like.

</comment><comment><USER3> You will need digital signatures of some sort. But that raises the barrier of entry quite a bit.</comment>


Startup accused of scamming employees scrubs its online presence - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/30/wrkriot-vanishes-after-scam-accusation/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm naive but I was struck at how empty this company's mission and vision was (nevermind its ethics, which were well-covered in the original Medium post), and yet the founder and his friend/CTO put in so much of their own money into it. Were they complete greedy fools, or is VC money that easy to glom on to? WrkRiot didn't even have a "soon-to-be parodied by Silicon Valley HBO", TEDdy nonsensical ring to it, e.g. "its like Airbnb, but for your 401K". It was just a straight up dull and stupid "Yeah, we're gonna beat Linkedin" pitch, just as if someone were to throw $1M of their money behind the claim "We'll take on Google by using advanced AI machine learning!"

According to their Crunchbase [0] (which could obviously be incomplete), there's no institutional investors listed in their initial or seed round. I mean it's one thing to waste other people's money on a dumb idea, but this seems masochistic.

[0] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/1for- one#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/1for-one#/entity)

edit: Another befuddling thing besides the enormous headcount was the fact that the original whistleblower was brought in from Dallas and offered equity _and_ a $135K salary _and_ a signing bonus. That seems like a huge chunk of money for a marketing executive at a small tech startup. Again, ignoring the reality that he couldn't really afford her, what did the CEO imagine would be investors' reaction to such a pricey hire?

<comment><USER3> $135k for a competent person? I'm hiring!

<comment><USER4> Cash value is relative.

In the Bay Area $135k salary isn't even enough to rent a one bedroom apartment at current rates.

If you make $135k in the rust belt you can live in a McMansion and own two cars.

<comment><USER5> > In the Bay Area $135k salary isn't even enough to rent a one bedroom > apartment at current rates.

You mean "in San Francisco" — I live in the East Bay and split a one-bedroom with my boyfriend for $1400 per month.

<comment><USER6> Where in the east bay are you paying $1400 for a one bedroom??

<comment><USER7> I live in the Richmond Hills and my MORTGAGE is less than that.

<comment><USER8> Yes but... Richmond.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, its so terrible here. I live in the hills overlooking the entire city of SF. I have a view of the bay bridge, the golden gate bridge, angel island and alcatraz from my backyard.

There is zero crime since I live in the hills. There are nice restaurants and nice people.

So yeah, please continue thinking that this place is uninhabitable and stay in SF. :)

Funny how people said the same thing about the Mission 10 years ago, or Oakland 5 years ago.

<comment><USER8> Richmond still has the highest violent crime rate in the Bay (and the highest murder rate).

Plus is probably the worst possible commute location while still being in the Bay.

Don't get me wrong - the hills are nice, but there are PLENTY of reasons why your place is cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As much as I dislike 'trial by the internet & social media', in this case there seemed to be a long enough trail and corroborating evidence from others that outing the CEO involved was a necessary public service to the community.

He seems to be a serial abuser of his team and stakeholders, and the forging of payment receipts was just downright criminal. I hope there is enough evidence now for criminal action to be brought against him, and he is prevented from ever trying to run a company again in the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER10> I especially feel for the H-1Bs who were tricked into working for this character. Because they require a sponsor to remain in the US, leaving the company would also mean leaving the country and giving up a huge opportunity. Working through an unfamiliar justice system in an attempt to recover their wages is also very risky, especially if they realize the company is broke. I hope some good will come to them but I suspect this will just be a "life experience."

<comment><USER11> Having being fired and then having to leave the country.

The worst part about the thing is how dehumanizing it feels.

"Here you have paid taxes for years ! please leave now, we just valued you for your economical output"

It made me a stronger individual as a result, I know I am not owned anything. But you still develop an emotional link to your environment after being there for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This happens to more startups than you can imagine. I have been severely stolen from and defrauded of shares by a startup in North Carolina. They did it to several employees and investors and remain impossible to gain contact with even while appearing on podcasts with people like Randi Zuckerberg. Getting walled out of a business even with lawyers looking over documentation due to lies and deceit is a sickening feeling.

<comment><USER13> LOL just name names instead of making us hunt around.

<comment><USER14> Lawsuits yo, don't want to go around accusing people of crimes unless you've got lots of free time to spend in court defending said accusations.

<comment><USER12> Exactly this. Shouldn't be too hard to connect the dots if people really wanted to but I won't specify the names in public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm very fascinated by the phrase "disgruntled former employee". Obviously she's disgruntled, that simply means one is unhappy. But the implication is that because one is unhappy with their employment experience, one somehow loses credibility.

Where is it, and why is it, that people who one minute will rant against evil corporations on the other hand when reading about how an employee was mistreated will blame the victim? (I'm speaking generally, but for instance when Amazon's practices came to light there was a bit of victim blaming going on here.)

Why is the presumption of innocence for the employer so strong?

This goes further into hiring practices-- if you look at it objectively, hiring practices are very one sided. Employers make the demands take all of the time for questions, will rebuff questions they don't want to answer (like what's the cap table look like? how many shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis? - things you need to know to evaluate the offer) while simultaneously demanding to know your salary history- and recently I've seen reports of employers demanding poof of salary history with the threat of termination if you don't supply it.

Market forces can make one player have more power than the other, and in the great depression employers had a lot more power. but it's fascinating how the culture has enshrined that power, and people accept it.

If you complain about an employer, this is not taken as a sign the employer is bad, it's taken as a sign you are bad.

But if you complain about bad service at a restaurant, we don't assume you're a bad eater.

<comment><USER16> >Why is the presumption of innocence for the employer so strong?

Simple human group dynamics. In their "collective wisdom" a group of people, in this case, a company, simply can't be wrong. The disgruntled employee outlier is the one that's in the wrong. Human nature is to punish those who "rock the boat", even if they rock said boat with good reason.

<comment><USER17> Good point. It's the same dynamic as with burnout, where it's common to assume that it's the burned-out employee that is sick/weak, rather than the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems to happen a lot with companies and individuals caught doing dodgy stuff. Not sure why though, they do realise the internet doesn't just 'forget' about things, right? That the Streisand Effect will mean this information will be screenshotted and archived everywhere and that they won't be able to fool anyone else like this?

Or that it pretty much 'confirms' their guilt for a lot of people?

But yeah, not surprising this has happened already.

</comment><comment><USER19> From yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379518)

<comment><USER20> Note that the current submission has more information about the aftermath as a result of that article. (i.e this is not a dupe)

<comment><USER21> I think he's just trying to share the original Medium post as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Honestly, one's record does eventually catch up with one. This is going to last for this individual for awhile (if not forever)...

I've encountered people who reported title inflation on their LinkedIn page, oversold what they did, and when starting their own venture, due diligence pointed out severe faults the individual papered over.

Good or bad, things will catch up with you eventually.

<comment><USER13> >Good or bad, things will catch up with you eventually.

Any truth to this besides superstition, perspective, and cognitive bias? To me it's one of those things we tell ourselves to delude people into thinking the world makes sense. Also a great thing for a terrible person who's succeeding to say.

<comment><USER23> Really? You've never seen people permanently harmed by bad things written about them online? We recently didn't move forward with a particular candidate for this very reason. I guess people can change their name but, baring that, the Internet lasts forever. And anyways, if you do the most basic of diligence on someone you hire or do business with, name changes and the like are easy to discover.

<comment><USER13> >You've never seen people permanently harmed by bad things written about them online?

What about all those people who get away with being assholes who we don't realize are assholes because they're so successful? What about the good people fucked over by bad luck who we never hear about?

Basically your comment just reinforces what I was saying. You're using the situations you're aware of to explain the way the world works in a way that makes you happy.

<comment><USER24> Amen. "Name and shame" only works to some extent (re: Jacon Appelbaum) but if the person isn't that prominent, or the story doesn't get traction, then the normal human tendency to try and put it all behind oneself is a factor (along with not wanting to deal with "victim blaming") Then the story eventually turns into just gossip and is left in the past...

Due diligence is a good idea, but for the first asshole I dealt with, there were stories, but the person who introduced me to him didn't tell me because of "ethical concerns". Even though he knew the stories were true and that this guy was problematic. He is also very secretive, so any due diligence I might have done probably wouldn't have turned up much (i.e. any lawsuits would have been hard to uncover). I picked up clues though and didn't put together a full picture of this guy's character till it was too late because I was too focused on the work. My take on the whole thing was everyone in the past that had been ripped off by this guy chalked it up to "life" and so nothing ever stuck to him well enough. Typical shady businessman...

As for the second full blown psychopath I've dealt with... he had a reputation, I thought it was all more gossip / sour grapes, and I didn't look hard enough because I trusted the people who were giving him a pass (though my intuition was complaining). Never again. We all got screwed over and I had to spend £4k to defend myself against this idiot's bogus threats of lawsuits (my fault for being manipulated...)

So if I ever do business with anyone else again, the only answer is A) trust no one and B) be a psychopath for defensive purposes. Capitalism these days practically demands that you think like a psychopath because the majority of people you deal with are going to do the same. That goes for management as well - employers are not your friends. They merely may be idiots, but you are only a resource to be exploited by them.

The conclusion of all this stress over the past 7 years is that character truly does matter, in all areas of life and to focus on that first off when evaluating a person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it just me or there's an actual increase in scams among startups lately?

e.g. yesterday's post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12384071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12384071)

<comment><USER26> It's a sad fact of the world that, where there is money to be made, there will be scams. I'm surprised it doesn't happen a lot more often tbh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You realize you're arguing with a complete stranger and telling them that the place they live is shitty right?

Is there a point where you have an ounce of self awareness and say "jeez, I'm kind of a shit person."? Just curious.

<comment><USER8> Richmond is _objectively_ a place with lower value housing. There's no arguing with that. You may not like it, but it's true - and there are reasons for that.

Your original comment was talking about how cheap it was to live there. You getting offended by me pointing out _why_ it is cheap says more about you than me.

If you're ashamed of why the place you life is cheap... maybe don't bring up that it is cheap?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I doubt they can succeed given its on HN.</comment>


Qatar's F-15s Will Feature New 'Low Profile' Heads Up Display and New Cockpit - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19731/qatars-f-15s-will-feature-new-low-profile-heads-up-display-and-new-cockpit <comment><USER2> Do any pilots want to chime in about the utility/value of touchscreen UIs vs. tactile controls in planes? As a non-pilot I don't really want to comment, but I know they're controversial and I personally find them obnoxious in cars.

<comment><USER3> Not a pilot but like you I can't stand them cars. Tactile means I can keep my eyes on the road, which is the only thing that matters while driving. I found myself glancing at the screen before touching it and got rid of the touchscreen only device that was in my car and replaced it with something that has the major functions under a button. And I don't use it for navigation, I have a dedicated device for that I've placed on the right of the rear view mirror.

Airplanes have to deal with turbulence and I really would not want to change any critical settings on a touch screen while being bounced around, I remember when I still had the bloody touchscreen device in the car I mis-touched and I had no idea how to get back to where it was before, it took a stop at a gas station to reset the interface. In general I think the obsession with getting rid of knobs and buttons is a bad thing.

I'd love it if there was a general prohibition on touch screens in cars, I'm pretty sure that it is a safety issue. Any device that requires that you take your eyes of the road in a vehicle is a bad device.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Even with force feedback I don't think these interfaces will ever be as good as physical knobs, buttons, and sliders. "Good" in the sense that they can be reached, perceived, and manipulated with our senses completely without eyesight. For instance I recently drove a Volvo V90 (every control on a large flat screen) and the climate control for seat heating was tiny and slow to update -- I had to take my eyes off the road to find it, aim at the specific setting I wanted, _and_ wait to see whether the setting had changed as intended; by contrast in my current Volvo V60 there are physical buttons that I press (without aiming because I know exactly where each one is) and they instantly change the settings as desired.

<comment><USER5> Could haptic feedback be "granular" enough to mimic specific shapes of knobs and switches?

<comment><USER6> Introduce vibration. Physical controls give you a topology to orient to. A flat screen doesn't.

Every control becomes an exercise in sustained hand-eye coordination.

Talk about your distracted driving -- or flying.

Can haptic feedback really help with that? (Serious question: I haven't had the opportunity.)

<comment><USER4> That's one crucial aspect of the problem. My fingers can navigate across physical controls, simply using my sense of touch, without triggering any of them until I exert sufficient pressure. Could this be emulated in theory with haptic feedback? possibly, but nobody is offering such flat-screen UIs at the moment.

<comment><USER7> One reason i actually liked resistive screens, because i could rest my fingers on it without triggering anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Touchscreen provided by (drumroll) Elbit! The _Israeli_ military electronics company.

Qatar has always had a weird diplomatic position for an Arab state.

<comment><USER9> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Qatar_relatio...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Qatar_relations)

Qatar seems to have good diplomatic relations with that country, since the 90s

<comment><USER8> Yeah. And at the same time is considered a major Hamas supporter.

And is a close US ally, and hosts the Taliban's exiled leadership.

And is a GCC member, and maintains friendly ties with Iran. (Though the KSA has lost patience with that lately.)

Qatar excels at playing both sides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess we've kind of lost the war on pointing out that it actually stands for "Head-Up Display"...

<comment><USER11> Moot point, because a fighter pilot will never say "head." That and the word "box" are strictly prohibited.

<comment><USER12> Interesting, why?

<comment><USER9> Apparently you are not supposed to say anything rude or even mildly sexually related on the PA, according to [0]

No idea about "box" tho, is that even remotely sexual (not an english native)?

[0]([http://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4224](http://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4224))

<comment><USER13> [http://urbandictionary.com](http://urbandictionary.com) is often helpful if you suspect there's something you might be missing. Even as a native speaker, I find it useful. I'm not always hip to the yout patois.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why does Qatar need 72 F-15s?

<comment><USER15> They've managed to piss off Saudi Arabia/the rest of the GCC, _and_ they are between the GCC and Iran. It's conceivable they could be fighting Iran, GCC, or both. There's an argument that having a lot of capability will deter actual aggression. 72 F-15s are a bargain compared to an actual war.

It's also a way to buy closer relationship with the US.

I'd feel a lot worse about any other country spending money on potentially needless arms; Qatar is solidly in the "we have extra money" range as a government.

<comment><USER16> Am I the only one that thought you were saying Qatar pissed off GNU Compiler Collection? I should learn more history / geopolitics.

<comment><USER17> Happens. A common mistake today's AI would probably make. But we humans have strong value for the CONTEXT.

<comment><USER18> When I saw GCC, I asked Google Assistant what it was and it actually made the "mistake"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is the "low profile" HUD any different than typical ones? Also why do they mix up the HMD? Is the HMD going to replace HUD by using some kind of parallax- free motion-compensating technology? I'm confused by the article.

</comment><comment><USER20> Makes sense to upgrade a proven design rather than risk everything on the F35.

<comment><USER21> The F-15 is indeed a proven design, but against modern integrated air defense systems it is going to have a really, really hard time without extensive support from other platforms (EA-18G for protective jamming as just one example). And even then the crew of an F-15 may find themselves in a situation they can't survive. Even if F-35 isn't the answer, 4th generation aircraft have serious survivability issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> OTA updates are going to be brutal XD</comment>


NovaSAR: UK radar satellite to track illegal shipping activity - happy-go-lucky https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45523677 <comment><AUTHOR> If you are interested in more details than BBC's article has:

\- some more detailed specs: [https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite- missio...](https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite- missions/n/novasar-s)

\- launch report & video: [https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/09/16/pslv-c42-mission- statu...](https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/09/16/pslv-c42-mission-status- center/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder what the 'refresh-rate' is of a scan, as in how many times a second/minute/hour is the image refreshed. I doubt such a wide area could be real-time. Guessing it's enough that it's possible to track and locate rogue ships.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.sandia.gov/radar/video/index.html](https://www.sandia.gov/radar/video/index.html)

These videos are pretty old, IIRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For once, news about the UK Government tracking things that DOESN'T look like 1984.

</comment><comment><USER5> What's the problem with "illegal shipping" anyway? Surely it's not worth launching a satellite just to stop the odd customs-evader?

What is this really for?

<comment><USER6> To establish precedent for the UK policing the worlds oceans - a goal its had on its roster for centuries now.

<comment><USER7> Well, they did use it to stop slavery...

<comment><USER6> .. and as well, exercise an iron grip over the third worlds' economy ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Many of you may remember past radar ocean surveillance satellites, perhaps most notably the Soviet US-A series of RORSATs:

[http://www.astronautix.com/u/us-a.html](http://www.astronautix.com/u/us-a.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A)

</comment><comment><USER9> FWIW Iridium already does the same thing on a global scale. Includes AIS and ADS-B tracking (tho both can be switched off easily).

<comment><USER10> That's not really the same thing at all - listening for a deliberate transmission from a ship announcing its location is easy, required only an antenna, and can be done from a cubesat.

This is an active radar in space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is it that basically every story coming out of the UK makes Orwell look more and more like a prophet?

<comment><USER12> Maritime law enforcement is a rather traditional role of the Royal Navy and hardly Orwellian. The radar-based satellite is arguably less worrying than the traditional US military spy satellites.

<comment><USER6> I don't remember voting for the UK to police my countries sovereign waters.

Fact is, the UK has no real place in the world if it isn't policing things such as the worlds oceans, or its finances. This is a role it has granted itself, un-democratically - one may even say, Imperiously...

<comment><USER13> >Imperiously

We've even built a death star! [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12169051/Massive- Dea...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12169051/Massive-Death-Star- model-revealed-for-Legoland-Windsor.html)

No, really,</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Realistic Skin Rendering in WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://alteredqualia.com/three/examples/webgl_materials_skin.html <comment><USER3> Here's the texture it uses (just from viewing source) - kind of interesting: [http://alteredqualia.com/three/examples/obj/leeperrysmith/Ma...](http://alteredqualia.com/three/examples/obj/leeperrysmith/Map- COL.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> Beautiful.

It's great seeing advanced 3D effects (sub-surface scattering and normal mapping? I think thats what we're seeing here) escape the realm of typeA games and show up on a web browser, running at a very acceptable framerate.

Looks like web3D really is taking off, can't wait for more 3D engines written on top of webGL so non openGL-wizards can get in on the fun :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this actually doing subsurface scattering or just taking normals that are barely in shadow and giving them a red glow? I can't tell which it is (and I'm not sure how I would visually.)

<comment><USER6> Author here.

It's approximation of subsurface scattering, modeled by combination of multiple Gaussian blurs done in texture space (there are 4 blur layers plus original normal mapped Blinn-Phong layer).

If you are interested in details, it's basically a simplified implementation of Nvidia's advanced skin rendering presented at GDC 2007:

[http://developer.download.nvidia.com/presentations/2007/gdc/...](http://developer.download.nvidia.com/presentations/2007/gdc/Advanced_Skin.pdf)

<comment><USER7> This is awesome! Are you able to implement the physically based specular term and still have acceptable performance?

You'll need the precomputed Beckmann distribution in a texture: <http://developer.nvidia.com/node/171>

<comment><USER6> Maybe. I didn't get yet to play with specular term, current one is just vanilla Phong.

There should be still some performance margin left, I tried to tune it to keep 60 fps on my notebook.

<comment><USER6> And it's done, if you clear cache and reload, it should be using physically based specular term.

Visual difference is quite subtle - skin feels more "silky" and ears are more shiny.

No noticeable degradation of performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I opened the tab and then forgot about it while reading other stories. Scared the shit out of me when I got around to this tab.

</comment><comment><USER9> Some of the other examples are pretty impressive too: <https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js>

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a little amusing how popular these WebGL reimplementations of 2004-era OpenGL demos are.

<comment><USER11> That's like saying "It's a little amusing how popular these web reimplementations of 2004-era word processors are". Dude, being on the web makes a huge difference. No software to install is massive. You can't link to a program running on your desktop. It's a great leap forward.

<comment><USER12> Really? You feel that reimplementing a word processor on the web is a major leap forward? To me it looks like old wine in new bags. I could link to word processor-like Java Applets in 1998. I realize it's not 100% the same, but trying to re-implement all these things we've had for 10 years in substandard technology just seems like a procession of Echternach.

(btw current web word processors barely approach Wordpad level - the level of functionality we had on the desktop in 1995).

<comment><USER13>
        (btw current web word processors barely approach
        Wordpad level - the level of functionality we
        had on the desktop in 1995).

And still I use google docs every day & can't remember the last time I used ms word, so maybe there is something to it ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So impressive, but so creepy.

<comment><USER15> There's a certain "plasticity" to the skin—very uncanny valley.

<comment><USER16> I think the plasticity comes from the ears and eyes, which to me seem a bit doctored.

I think the uncanny valley could be overcome with some subtle rigging to simulate a person's micro-gestures. Its not often you look at a human completely motionless, sans a wake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone got a screenie for those of us who don't have a computer than can handle WebGL right this second?

<comment><USER18> <http://imgur.com/vFpwu>

<comment><USER19> The head moves with mouse drag to present different angled views of the head with the light source staying static.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I half expected it to suddenly open it's eyes and cause me to change my pants.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice. I've actually been working on this. Work in progress: [http://content.screencast.com/users/shawnpresser/folders/Jin...](http://content.screencast.com/users/shawnpresser/folders/Jing/media/bdc11708-5fde-40b0-8e20-252dc3fa3b93/2011-09-04_0227.png)

</comment><comment><USER22> The face is cool, but three.js - the engine behind this - actually has quite a pleasingly orthogonal API as well. Worth taking a look at alongside this.

(And where is the save button when I need it ;_;)

<comment><USER23> Upvote the story and it's in your "saved stories". Your submissions too -- so in fact, HN has become my new bookmarks manager.

<comment><USER22> Thanks - I think I've actually had someone remind me of that before as well. Damn embarrassing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> OK, that's just creepy if you have a large screen.

Very good. But creepy.

</comment><comment><USER25> Firefox 4.0 Mac, hung for about 10 seconds with a black screen, popped open a window saying the script is unresponsive so I told it to Stop. It hung another 2-3 seconds, finally showed a face, and crashed the browser. Fun!

<comment><USER26> Macbook Pro 13" Core 2 Chrome. Worked for me and a little "choppy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> For fun, the figure should open eyes after a minute so of viewing =)

</comment><comment><USER28> everything in this looks real, except the eye lids dont have eye lashes so the light rebounding off the sealed eyelid looks crap. otherwise cool stuff

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe a silly question, but can you abuse WebGL for lets say multi-channel audio processing (byte array, data URI)?

</comment><comment><USER30> Any way to see what's there besides visiting the link? (no WebGL) - <USER2> picture or video?

</comment><comment><USER31> impressive. the lighting is a bit clipped - not smooth.

why didn't they do a beautiful girl's face instead?

<comment><USER32> >why didn't they do a beautiful girl's face instead?

Because it's a tech demo and it's a known texture in the OpenGL community? Not everyone in CS wants to stare at "beautiful girls", fortunately the Internet has created an outlet for such desires.

<comment><USER32> I'm sorry. I completely understand karma grubbing is frowned upon and I couldn't care less, especially about this post, but I really don't understand how people are downvoting this post. Feel free to downvote this one... I'm just genuinely curious what part of my post above this one is at all controversial.

Am I supposed to like women? Am I supposed to objectify women at every turn, especially in an industry where they're already highly objectified and slighted?

<comment><USER33> No, you're supposed to read the comment you're responding to in the context in which it was written. Did you bother to read the linked article before you responding?

No? Didn't think so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think the lighting is more impressive than the skin. Still, a cool tech demo!

</comment><comment><USER11> Amazing. We are surely looking at the future of porn.

<comment><USER23> Downvotes notwithstanding, I think saturn is fundamentally right.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: why not an API? - <AUTHOR> We get all these ideas about why not do X, why not do Y, etc. Let's just let these people implement their ideas.
In the Rails world web apps are set up to have APIs by default. That way if somebody thinks a site should be better in a particular way, they don't have to ask anybody's permission or convince other people. They just build it, and if they were right, then people use it, and if they were wrong, they know for sure, instead of nursing a grudge for years about their great underappreciated feature idea or blah blah blah.
It's much more interesting to have a lot of people building different clients for your system than it is to speculate about what might or might not be a good change. Speculation overlooks the fact that these changes are implementation-specific, and the fact that you won't know how you like it until you try it. When a bunch of different people build a bunch of different clients, you find out for a fact what is or isn't a good idea by looking at what clients succeed and what clients fail, as well as what features everybody copies vs. what ideas die on the vine.
A good example is Twitter. I tried most of the popular clients, hated them, stuck with the Web interface, and then Tweetie came along for iPhone. now I prefer to read Twitter on my iPhone even if I'm sitting at my computer, because it's just better (in most cases) than the Web interface. Something like 80% of Twitter's traffic is API traffic, not Web traffic, because practically everyone has a favorite client that isn't the Web site.
I know people find my blog posts about what's wrong with Hacker News interesting. But the thing is, I am not one of those people. I am so bored with talking about what's wrong with Hacker News. And as boring as my own posts about the subject are, all you other people who post Ask HN links about the subject, your posts are even more boring. Wouldn't you find an alternate HN interface implementing my ideas more interesting than reading me rant? Wouldn't you rather build alternate HN interfaces than whine to pg as if he were your daddy?
Lacking an API, I've resorted to hackery. Eric from Internet Duct Tape wrote me a Greasemonkey script which auto-filters Hacker News for links to domains I don't want to see and hides those links. Ironically my own blog is on that list; I don't want to get into comment wars here or anywhere.
I still hear about it from friends and co-workers when my blog "charts" here, but I can tell you all that a HN which makes comment wars impossible or at least harder to get into is much, much better than a Hacker News which makes them easy. I also have a 100% Arrington-free Hacker News through the same script, and let me tell you, my Hacker News is ABSOLUTELY more fun to read than yours. More fun for me to read, anyway, which is really the main point. What one person needs out of a user interface will be different from what another person needs. User interface should vary by user. You can customize Photoshop and you can customize emacs. You should be able to customize any Web app as well. <comment><USER2> I love the simplicity of HN but yeah, I would love to be able to tweak. There's definitely something strange about the concept of a website for hackers these days being... well... not hackable.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this was suggested somewhere else, but why not just have a HN script repository where people could upload and rate HN Greasemonkey scripts? It seems simpler than creating your own HN client via an API.

</comment><comment><USER4> Use the RSS feeds. Hack away.

<comment><USER2> The links RSS feed doesn't have much information beyond the links. No submitter, no points. This makes them a lot less useful for hacking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> whats the question?

<comment><AUTHOR> can we get an API?

<comment><AUTHOR> or, to put it another way, why not an API?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> ok, you know how all my posts about Hacker News being doomed rocket to the top spot on the site?

and this question isn't even on the front page?

THAT is why Hacker News is doomed.

if the people reading Hacker News WERE ACTUALLY HACKERS they would have already demanded an API, and this would be the number one topic of discussion. real hackers are more interested in getting an API than discussing why or why not their site is or is not doomed.

my blog posts on blah blah blah Hacker News is doomed SHOULD NOT be less interesting to hackers than a question about getting an API.

doomed, doomed, doomed.

<comment><USER6> Actaully, pg has been asked this before and his answer was 'Yes.'

So we're only doomed x 2.</comment></comment>


Nike's self-lacing sneakers turn into bricks after faulty firmware update - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/my-left-shoe-wont-even-reboot-faulty-app-bricks-nike-smart-sneakers/ <comment> jake-low > "My left shoe won't even reboot."

The future is somehow both weirder and more mundane than I ever dreamed.</comment>


Bringing Up Babel - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/features/bringing-up-babel <comment><USER2> You would not believe how much crap my partner and I had to put up with for raising our children bilingual. "You're going to confuse them." "That's so difficult." "They're going to do poorly in school." Or even "oh, that'll help them get a job!" (No, that is stupidest reason to raise a kid bilingual.)

I'm glad there's a little bit of a reversal in views on this, now.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a bilingual speaker: For someone ostensibly trying to fight stereotypes around bilingualism, this article sure covers all the stereotypes without doing much to dispel them. But I guess an article stating: Listen up, my kid speaks two languages! wouldn't have met word count. They're individuals who have two language tools at their disposal instead of just one.

</comment><comment><USER4> We use the term "programming language," but I wonder how much like learning a real language it actually is. Will we see some of the same benefits as bilingual individuals?

Does learning multiple programming languages make it easier to learn other languages in adulthood?

<comment><USER3> Well, there's language types, if you get into Comparative Programming Languages. There's imperative languages, query languages, object oriented languages, and mixes thereof. Maybe we could call them programming accents.

<comment><USER3> Imagine what that would do to dispel listing a key word list of languages ever touched, if we could just say, I know how to work with loops and functions, or I can compose systems of objects, or I know that a database can store, retrieve, and manipulate data. No more "I know C, C++, C++11, Javascript 5, Javascript 6, Python 2.7, Python 3.5!" If you're that dependent on people not looking up the syntax when they need to, you're either hacking into a computer at the site of the computer, or have no idea what the job entails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Though it was about the ES6 compiler :(

<comment><USER6> Though it was about Katharine Hepburn!</comment></comment>


Droplets: A low-cost swarm robotics platform for teaching and experimentation - <AUTHOR> http://robohub.org/droplets-a-low-cost-swarm-robotics-platform-for-teaching-and-experimentation/

<comment><USER2> You can make one of these BristleBot-like (ie. Hexbug-like) "steerable vibrobots" for around $10 if you're willing to forgo the professional design. Here's an article that discusses one approach: [http://www.hizook.com/blog/2011/09/08/infrared-remote- contro...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2011/09/08/infrared-remote-controlled- rc-steerable-vibrobot-created-naghi-sotoudeh)

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool, but whoever filmed their video should be fired. I've never seen anyone actually get real people to cross uncanny valley before. Thoroughly creeped out. Haha.</comment>


Hi-Tec-C Pen Metal Case Kickstar campaign goes big - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend of mine from college started this project without any anticipation of how large it would be. Good example of the immediate success that can be derived from fulfilling an unmet (and perhaps not previously even considered) desire.</comment>


Photo of butchered rhino is this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year winner - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41656188 <comment><USER2> You guys should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[0][1] which fights these poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[2], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed.

There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular animal and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor these cuties [5][6]. It's a good gift.

You should also check out [http://reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs](http://reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs) for a daily dose of elephant gifs.

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

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti- Poaching_Fo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti- Poaching_Foundation)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander)

[3] [http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/](http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust)

[5] [http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp...](http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp?N=318)

[6] [https://www.instagram.com/p/BZz6S-fFBQL/?taken- by=dswt](https://www.instagram.com/p/BZz6S-fFBQL/?taken-by=dswt)

<comment><USER3> Even if you're just posting links to your favorite charities and soliciting donations, it's still spam.

A comment search for "You guys should consider donating" yields 9 highly similar results with your name attached.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=You%20guys%20should%20consider...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=You%20guys%20should%20consider%20donating&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

<comment><USER2> Fite me irl. Note that each of these comments was highly upvotes so community has spoken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Faith in humanity". Always makes me wonder why some people hold this kind of unproven belief that the human race as a whole is a good and loving one and that evil is only the exception. There is no such thing. Humans can and will behave like monsters when the incentives are there, whether it is for their own survival, or their own benefit.

<comment><USER5> What's the point of a comment like this? It seems pointlessly negative and about as far from insightful as statements like "all charity is ultimately self-interest, by some definitions".

What do you, or anyone reading your comment, get out of it?

I'm a tiny bit pissed off, but perhaps that's just morning grumpiness. But I'm also honestly curious.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you that comments like that do not add to anyone's knowledge. These are kinda too extreme to get right at first part of life and obvious at the second. If someone positively explained to me what life really is when I was young, I wouldn't spend around a decade on bs ideas that are simply not there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Incredibly sad. Rhinos are real-life unicorns.

Farm them for horns (removing the horn is painless [0], once the horn is removed release into the wild), tax the production of horns, use the tax money to find conservation and security.

The increased supply will decrease prices, making the hunting of rhino less profitable.

The argument against this is that increased supply will increase demand. Also, its not hard to see corruption eating away the profits, and therefore investment into conservation.

[0] [http://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/does-it-hurt-a- rhino-w...](http://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/does-it-hurt-a-rhino-when- it-gets-dehorned-20160907)

<comment><USER8> Why they don't just remove (and destroy) the horns from baby rhinos, and then again periodically throughout the rhinos' lives?

<comment><USER9> Baby rhinos don't have horns (they grow a bit like hair), and these are not domestic animals. It's like saying "why not tag all the mountain lions in the US, then you know where they all are".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Brent Stirton says the things he's seen have dented his faith in humanity

It's sad that we're not advance enough to become a higher being that can co- live with other beings without ... contention.

When I was in elementary school, my the text book and so my teacher often use the phase 'Human conquered the nature' (Or 'conquers', my memory is fuzzy about that).

Then as I grow up, I start to wounder, is that actually true? We're the part of the nature. How can we label ourself as a conqueror if we're part of it?

But that phase seems imprinted in lot's of peoples mind deeply: We're the conqueror, and so the nature is just a pool of resource for us to use.

Since we're the conqueror, we can decide what to do, what not.

That rhino's horn is nothing but a resource to us. We need it's horn, so we collect it. Killing the rhino is just the process of collecting. So we have no feeling killing it, neither care about that rhino will die in the process.

And sometime, we not just do that to rhinos, because as conqueror, we decide which or who will be conquered.

</comment><comment><USER11> As sad as the photo of the rhino makes me, I find the photo below of the elephants in the palm plantation even sadder. So much of Southeast Asia's forests have been destroyed to create palm oil plantations. It's not only devastating for animals like the pictured elephants, but it's also a big contributor to climate change.

Anyone who cares about the environment or ethical treatment of animals should be reading labels and avoiding all products containing palm oil.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anywhere I can access higher quality versions of these?

<comment><USER13> [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSkwEJHTLV...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSkwEJHTLVMJ6og4MahwELEKjU2AQaAAwLELCMpwgaYgpgCAMSKNoV_1grBFdcV3hX9CsoVphWnFfcKhzmrLdY3rirVN9Q-hjmWOI8q8DkaMPb3PQLBduPlE69anJ7vmjCbT2t_16D8fag8nq93VJqJwkfPMw3hEw7lST-4_1lET1rCAEDAsQjq7-CBoKCggIARIEjo9o7Qw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Really makes me wonder if the tide will ever turn back from total annihilation of all life.

<comment><USER15> It would require the world to get together on a war footing to tackle threats to sustainability. Right now. Vanishingly unlikely.

I suspect this is a pattern repeated throughout the universe. Once evolution kicks up a species with the behavioural flexibility to escape ecological limits on its reproductive success, it's likely just a biological inevitability that it will pullulate uncontrollably. It will thus wipe out everything in its path until its own nest is fouled and it dies back.

If the species in question happens to be one that, like ours, has attained that flexibility via higher-order cognition, it will invent justifying rationalisations for its destructive activities (destiny, economic growth etc). But in the end it's just biology.

<comment><USER16> We have yet to meet the Fermi Great Wall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "My first child is going to be born in February; I'm 48. And I think I left it such a long time because I kind of lost faith in a lot of the work we see as photojournalists. You lose faith in humanity to some extent."

I share his sentiment. Such luck we have with this amazing planet, and all we do is destroy it. Humanity is disgusting.

<comment><USER18> Humanity is amazing. Billions of years of nothing but mindless senseless suffering and death in the natural world, and finally we emerge, a creature that can think beyond the next meal, next kill, next rape. Even if we do it imperfectly, the fact we can try at all is possibly the most special thing that has ever happened in the entire universe. Humanity is amazing.

<comment><USER19> You mean to say millions rather then billions? [1]

Either way, thanks for the positive message.

[1] [http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/evolution/AnimalEvolution.shtml](http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/evolution/AnimalEvolution.shtml)

<comment><USER20> It's pretty crazy that life started on Earth about ~4 billion years ago, almost as soon as there was liquid water, but the Cambrian Explosion didn't occur until about ~0.5 billion years ago. Really makes you wonder what the heck was going on for three and a half billion years. Also, maybe it's an indication that life is easy to come by and exists in every little nook and cranny in the Universe, but complex multi-cellular life is a larger hurdle.

<comment><USER4> Yup, this is a very likely possibility, that even if life emerges the other conditioms may not be present to make it evolve to the next stage. Even the fact that humans have made it ahead of other species is not given at all. Other apes were far less lucky.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many of you guys smoke weed? - <AUTHOR>

I doubt I will get a huge answer on this, but I am curious. I personally never got into the smoking scene and find the smell to be horrible. My brother on the other hand spent a good year or two smoking and what I felt to be acting dumb. His claim to fame was that many successful people he knew smoked. However, while he smoked he really didn't do much, wasn't productive and ultimately ended up having to "restart" school and his career.
When I find out that someone smokes I am usually surprised unless they fit the stereotypical hippie look, doesn't do much and spaces out in mid conversation. I just read through a different post where a couple people outlined their day to include pot and it got me thinking afterwards.
So HN:
Do you smoke? If you do, why and do you find it beneficial? If not, why and what do you think of those that do? <comment><USER2> I think you'd get more response with the yes/no vote which is at least publicly anonymous.

Speaking of which, how does one initiate one of those yes/no vote posting anyway? Do you need a certain level of karma? Or am I just missing it?

<comment><USER3> Right, and while we are at it, why don't we all post our "smoking a fat joint" photos on Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, I don't. But then again, I don't drink either, so I'm definitely not representative of HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Was there some thread that discussed drinking too? I don't find myself drinking much just because of my work out schedule. A glass of wine here and there, but nothing to get me drunk.

<comment><USER5> +1 same here.</comment></comment></comment>