If net neutrality falls, what happens next? - <AUTHOR> This is one of those things that we're just going to have to wait and see about, but I can't get the question out of my mind - if the FCC chooses to back the ISPs, what happens next?
Is a hacktivist group, deciding that the internet shouldn't be turned against it's users, going to DDoS the root DNS servers? Is everybody going to just hold their breaths, and continue with business as usual? Will a significant number of developers jump ship?
What do you think? <comment><USER2> Companies will gradually start selling services piecemeal at what will be promoted as a "discount", where you buy a tiered package of sites. "Obviously, you only need Facebook, Google, and Buzzfeed. Why are you paying for that shitty internet you don't need?"

Public praises the lower bills, talk shows argue incessantly, and nobody grasps either the tech or the economics: the price of the discount is that large tech/infra companies no longer have to worry about competition, and can levy arbitrary entry fees.

Gradually the big companies open up walled app stores that let you run your internet applications within their parameters, rules, and fees. Since this is the only way to reach anyone, smaller upstarts/devlopers grudgingly accept the new way of things, until the whole shenanigan is disrupted by a little guy meeting an unmet, undervalued need out of left field.

And the cycle repeats.

<comment><USER3> > Since this is the only way to reach anyone, smaller upstarts/devlopers > grudgingly accept the new way of things, until the whole shenanigan is > disrupted by alittle guy meeting an unmet, undervalued need.

If, as a startup, I can't reach any customers anymore, why even take that risk and start a company? Why, as a VC / angel, would I want to invest in companies that are more or less destined to lose out (Internet based businesses). I think it'll have a huge negative impact on businesses, especially new Internet based businesses and this will lead to less innovation and less startups. It all depends how severe things get, but since there's really nothing to stop ISPs from charging businesses and customers whatever they want, I wouldn't be surprised if the current tech/Internet boom slowly fades away as company after company finds that it's just not worth trying to compete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice if NN advocates focused on improving competition in the ISP space instead of using this as a reason to give the FCC control over yet another communication medium. Mesh networks and more ISP choice would "enforce" net neutrality via consumer signals instead of the "just make it happen" solution being proposed.

<comment><USER5> This sounds nice but is illogical. Actually creating alternative competitor networks are insanely prohibitively expensive, and will likely back up against a backbone served by one of the few capable ISPs anyway.

Besides that, competition is artificially stifled by government sponsored monopolies - but competing ISPs like it that way. It makes new markets difficult but on the up side, makes price collusion easy (and the threat of competition non-existent).

Like it or not, the fight is on the beaches of the FCC, and we don't get to move the front lines willy-nilly in this fight.

<comment> loup-vaillant > Actually creating alternative competitor networks are insanely prohibitively > expensive,

Luckily, you don't have to. Just nationalise the last mile (and maybe some more infrastructure like the DSLAMs, I'm not sure), and have ISPs lease it. And don't offer bulk prices.

That way, barrier to entry drop, there are less advantages to being big, and the environment is less prone to monopolies.

The idea is simple: let free market and competition run wild where they actually work, and let the state have the inevitable monopolies.

<comment><USER5> I love this idea and have even spoken to some pretty fundamentalist libertarians that see nationalized last-mile fiber as a solution superior to the government sponsored monopolies we have now (and continued easements and digging up of people's property any time someone wants to introduce some competition).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Americans have swallowed second rate telecommunications services, extortionate prices and lack of competition for ages and will continue to do so, because the alternative is evil socialist government regulation.

<comment><USER7> You're wrong on that. The problem with the US telecom industry is really bad regulation, not lack of regulation.

The US already has so-called evil socialist government regulation, to an extreme. The US economy, including the telecom sector, is among the most regulated on earth. Per dollar of GDP, nobody passes more economic regulations each decade than the US Government.

The US Government has been in control of the telecom infrastructure when it comes to regulating it, for decades. Their incompetence at setting up a functional environment is a huge part of the problem. They've been screwing it up when it comes to ISPs for 20 years.

'Evil socialist government regulation' isn't helping Canada or Australia either. And exactly like in those instances the problem is really bad regulation, not lack of regulation.

The US has faster average internet speeds than: France, UK, China, Italy, Australia, Canada, Brazil, India, Norway, Russia, Taiwan, Germany, Finland, Israel, Austria, and so on.

In fact, there are no large countries by population above the US in speeds other than Japan and South Korea (both of which are generally far beyond everyone else). Most of the fast countries are tiny in population: Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Hong Kong, etc. - and even then, the US isn't drastically behind them.

<comment><USER8> The problem with US Politics is that nobody cares what words mean. Keep your laws off my body when the telephone is in the bedroom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Right now most of non-neutral networks exist specially outside of the US in cellular networks. They allow Spotify or other media streaming services deliver content to the user without charging user's data plan. Most of the companies competing in media streaming space, specially those with paid subscribers are big enough to pay the ISP for the fast lane (Beats, Netflix, Rdio etc). One exception is the fast lane (or maybe VIP lane in this case) for Facebook in developing countries. I've seen Facebook let users with no data plan whatsoever use the service in Türkie. You can see how this makes it hard for other social networks to catch up.

I don't think US cable companies make a tier system for websites. It doesn't make sense. All the non-media traffic isn't much that worth the discrimination. Most of the un-neutrality will be in cellular networks and media delivery.

<comment><USER10> Are you/were you Amish? I've never seen Turkey spelled with "ie", and Google seems to think that's the Penn. Dutch spelling.

<comment><USER11> In Dutch it's Turkije - there's a j in between ("ij" makes a single sound, and the "e" is another sound). "Turkie" would sound weird in Dutch too and it's not Dutch spelling, though I guess it looks like it.

<comment><USER10> According to Wikipedia, the Pennsylvania Dutch are actually from southern Germany, and have no connection to Holland or Dutch.

<comment><USER11> Oh I didn't get that "Penn." part, that explains.

<comment><USER10> Sorry. I was too tired to spell Pennsylvania. =P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We actually have an example of "non neutrality" in France. One of the major ISP (Free) is throttling Youtube because it considers Google should pay them for the traffic to their users.

Consequently, Youtube is pretty slow on this ISP.

<comment><USER13> Really?

> France's telecoms watchdog has cleared one of the country's largest ISPs of > throttling YouTube.

[http://www.zdnet.com/isp-free-cleared-of-throttling- youtube-...](http://www.zdnet.com/isp-free-cleared-of-throttling-youtube-in- france-7000018367/)

<comment><USER14> yes really. i have free (the ISP). youtube barely streams 240p (with hiccups) sometimes it doesnt even display the page. same for downloading on google play. you rarely even get push notifications.

some other sites are slow as well albeit its not as bad as google sites, such as facebook and apple (incl. app store, software updates etc.)

Its been gradually worse and worse over the years, and now im switching away from that ISP in a month. its unbearable.

<comment><USER15> Does this include Googles CDN servers? Fonts, JS files, etc.?

<comment><USER14> yes, anything that goes through their peering which is what they throttle. and the cdn servers go through the peering for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Let's parse the premise.

"If net neutrality fails"

\-- "net neutrality" \-- you probably mean the currently popular version of this, which is "don't let ISPs create fast and slow lanes, and charge for the fast lanes." Or, even less precisely, "Don't let ISPs slow down the Internet."

The problem with this is, the FCC is actually not proposing to let ISPs create "slow lanes". It is proposing to allow ISPs to charge fees for better quality of service, not to degrade the service that's already provided. In fact the proposals quite specifically forbid this.

\-- "if ... fails"

The problem with this is, net neutrality is not in effect now. And has not been at all in history, except for a brief period before the courts shot it down (because the FCC was overstepping its authority). And, nothing like the "fast/slow lanes" version of the predicted net-neutrality-copalypse has happened.

So to say "what if net neutrality fails" has it exactly backwards. We already know what the no-net-neutrality world looks like, we are in it now. The real question is, what if it succeeds? What will happen then?

<comment><USER17> > The FCC is actually not proposing to let ISPs create "slow lanes". It is > proposing to allow ISPs to charge fees for better quality of service, not to > degrade the service that's already provided. In fact the proposals quite > specifically forbid this.

That is a meaningless distinction.

There is absolutely no difference between "creating a slow lane" and "charging for better quality of service, not to degrade the service already provided". Therefore, it doesn't matter if the FCC "specifically forbids this."

If "fast lanes" are allowed at all, _all_ lanes will be "slow lanes" by default. It doesn't matter if the FCC "forbids" slow lanes, since every lane is a slow lane already, so _technically_ the FCC's rule wasn't broken.

This is how it works today. Every lane is a slow lane on Comcast, by default, unless you pay them for a "fast lane".

> "Fast/slow lanes hasn't happened yet"

Yes, it has. Are you in the US? Have you ever attempted to load Netflix or YouTube on a Comcast or Verizon connection in the past year? There's slow lanes _everywhere_.

The only difference is the prediction -- we predicted Comcast would make us pick between slow and fast lanes, like cable packages. (like [http://aattp.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/neutrality.jpg](http://aattp.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/neutrality.jpg)). Turns out they instead went to individual websites and CDN's and made them pick the slow/fast lanes. But it's the same problem.

There's no coincidence Netflix suddenly works after paying an extortion fee to Comcast. _Thats_ the number 1 example of the "fast lane" scenario playing out already. [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/04/after-...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/04/after-netflix-pays-comcast-speeds-improve-65/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> America would be seen as less competitive. There would eventually be a brain drain in the mid-term as developers either did not emigrate, or did immigrate out of the country as other markets offer better value. Developers will start creating programs so that all traffic is masked and can not be differentiated, things like usenet will proliferate. Hardware entrepreneurs will created localized meshnets in major cities. Also, people could actually flip out. It is the dumbest thing to do from a political standpoint. Ancient Rome placated the people with panem and circus. Poverty is already pretty widespread so many people live for entertainment. If you knock this out people will wake up a bit when they have to pay a fuckton of money (that they don't have working minimum wage) for netflix.

It will likely lead to a massive decline in American supremecy.

<comment><USER19> Your theory is that we will be seen as _more competitive_ if we give government bureaucrats more power to regulate and arbitrarily rule over the free market?

<comment><USER18> No. The question was "If net-neutrality fails...". This is my prediction for a world with failed neutrality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You need to realize packet filtering is not without costs. Nor is negotiating with most companies. Finally, you can't get blood out of stone. Altogether meaning -- the ISPs will go after the largest of traffic producers with a threat of pay or be throttled. Some evidence, beyond what Netflix says for eg. [https://twitter.com/msonnabaum/status/504073659124703232](https://twitter.com/msonnabaum/status/504073659124703232) suggests something like this is already happening. But I can't see Verizon putting up an online shop saying "Buy X TB of VIP traffic for your domain". In the long run -- perhaps even that will happen. And then? And the you will pay...

</comment><comment><USER21> At first nothing. Most of the change will be behind the scenes where ISPs will start charging content provides more and more to deliver their content. They'll leave the little guys alone, and on the slow lanes, for now. But if your site gets popular plan to pay the piper! After a while, say 5 to 10 years the ISPs will lick their lips and start offering competing services. They will keep these services at arms length so it doesn't look so much like a competing service, e.g. NBC (which is Comcast). They'll squeeze the various third party players and buy some of them up in the end.

So the future looks a lot like the past: ABC, CBS and NBC with a smattering of a few others, e.g. Google.

</comment><comment><USER22> Net neutrality is already "failed", thanks to binopolies in service areas such as Comcast/Verizon and Verizon/At&T. What happens next? You really don't know? America has the slowest internet speeds, slowest download speeds and is the most expensive in the world. You can thank the FCC and our corrupt, corporations-over-people government. What to do? cut off cable service - it is the only thing that will hurt them, and hurt them we must because reason and fairness mean nothing to corporations - they are bottomless pits of greed and will never stop squeezing until we squeeze back.

</comment><comment><USER23> As someone who ran a wireless ISP for 3 years, there is the possibility of new competition. Wired networks are crazy expensive, but we were able to build a profitable infrastructure by renting rooftop space on tall buildings and doing directv style installations. Consumers weren't willing to pay much, so we ended up focusing on business customers. If enough people are willing to pay for neutral pipes, it might reinvigorate competition in the space--at least in dense urban areas. Our big fear at the time was fiber rollouts. Neutral nets would be a competitive advantage against big players we didn't have back then.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nothing.

Quality of service will remain, at worst, as it currently is, and no one will notice a difference.

Netflix et al. will continue to host cache devices with ISPs, torrents will still work, video chat will still work, and chances are no startup will ever be forced to pay ISPs to deliver their packets.

No one will ever be presented with the option to purchase a "Social Media/Streaming/whatever Internet Package," but maybe they'll be offered the option to upgrade to a more explicit SLA with bandwidth/latency guarantees.

Maybe some kids will DDoS an ISP or two, but the effect will be nil.

That's my prediction.

<comment><USER24> _Nothing._

Exactly. Where there's competition, ISPs won't be able to keep their market share with a restricted service. And in areas without competition, they will gouge you one way or another regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We create collective ISP's. WISPs are more and more viable and advances in RF technology will make backbone cheaper and more distributed.

</comment><comment><USER26> What happens next: Sea levels rise to enormous levels, anarchy, and human beings become extinct.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think it will need to get rather bad, before people will act. Before that any tools made would be used.

<comment><USER28> I'm somewhat interested in the tools, to see how the internet would route around the problem.

One idea would be to make a browser that can 'leech' off sites that paid for fast lanes. Say, you store your data onto Google Drive, Facebook, etc and the browser will load the actual content off of these services and present it as if it were its own unique web site, stripping off all of the host site's branding. I won't say that's necessarily ethical, but it does feel like an inevitable consequence if things ever got _really_ bad.

You'd probably gain web hosts that advertise having peering deals for all of their hosted sites, so you just pay more money to host on them and your users "magically" get faster service.

VPNs would likely play in a lot. I'm not sure how businesses would tolerate their required secure connections being throttled in the extreme.

I wonder if a VPN service provider could pay for a fast connection to your ISP, giving you a link around it? Perhaps instead of Netflix at 100% speed, $tinywebsite at 20% speed, this could give you 70% speed across the board by connecting you with a neutral backbone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> You won't ever find out because no information will come to you not intended by someone else.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this a question about Internet Neutrality or internet neutrality?

e.g. ISPs like CBS or AOL?

</comment><comment><USER30> Could it be a business case to open up the routing system to users?</comment>


Ask HN: Internship in Israel? - <AUTHOR>

I'm an Israeli high school graduate and I'm looking for a short term internship in the coming months. I'm doing C# development for the better part of 5 years now and am also proficient with Javascript and (to a degree) Haskell. I'm also interested in computer security. I'm eager to learn new stuff though so if you're a Ruby or Python or C shop I'm sure I can blend in.
If you work in an Israeli company or know someone who does and think you can handle an intern for circa 3 months I'd love it if you contact me (here or by mail if you prefer, email@example.com).
A partial portfolio of my work can be found on my Github account: https://github.com/MichaelAz
Cheers! <comment><USER2> I know Intel has a bunch of software written at the Haifa location, and that they take interns.

That being said, I don't know if they take high school graduates or just university students, or if they're currently hiring. However, it's a place you could look.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am looking for a remote internship : github profile github.com/toutouastro

</comment><comment><USER4> contact me "o at tomodo.com"</comment>


How Hacker News and FreshDesk led me to quit my job and launch my own startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.maaxmarket.com/marketing-automation/story-of-maaxmarket/ <comment><AUTHOR> Can someone suggest a better hosting platform for us? It don't think Godaddy is helping us scale. We are on the ultra premium hosting option and the site cannot even handle 100 users at the same time.

<comment> grey-area In the short term, switching most pages to static html would do wonders for speed and let you work out a long-term strategy. Static pages behind something like nginx should handle any load.

Your problem might not be your host (thought Godaddy is unlikely to be good), as much as a lack of caching on whatever website software you're using (WP?).

<comment><USER2> You can slap a caching plugins on wordpress and make 99.99% of requests never hit the database... usually takes you from being able to serve 10 requests per core to a few 100.... (Not as good as static HTML, but I am not sure he needs the million pages per second yet)

<comment> grey-area Yes sure, by short-term I meant for the next few hours - static html might be an easier option when the server is on fire. Think of it as a poor man's caching :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A little advice: state what you do in the first sentence. Lost my interest after one paragraph.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. Thanks for the advice. I was trying to post my experience in launching a startup and not detailing into what the startup does. We are working on simplified marketing automation platform that does email and social media automation depending on customer's online behavior. Very similar to marketo and pardot but simplified and priced for small business

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really don't understand what the whole product is about - I don't think you communicated that very well - but never the less congrats and good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> We are still in the process of updating our site. Your point is duly noted. Our product actually automates repetitive marketing tasks like emails, social media posts like tweets / facebook etc... depending on leads's behavior. We are building something similar to marketo and pardot but more simple to use and very cost effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I click the "Beta Sign Up" button, it opens TWO modal overlays. I noticed this because it broke tab order when I was filling out the form.

Happens in both Chrome and FF 41 on OSX. I was able to close one of the overlays and successfully submit the other one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for noting it. We are fixing it right away :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice post, congratulations and all the very best for your venture. I'm from Chennai too and at some point plan on starting a company there, it was nice to read through the planning, experience etc. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How's your experience with legalzoom? I'm in the process of incorporate my side project, and as a not US person I'm looking on the best way to do it. From opening the company, the bank account (without having to take a plane and go to the US just for that), and also all the work that needs to be done during the year (taxes, accounting, and I guess many more)

<comment><AUTHOR> The process has been fairly simple. You need to have atleast one person having SSN in order to incorporate the company. I can help you with more details on type of corporation, bank account and few other details. Please email me firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You might want to get some caching on that WP site. And decent hosting so it's not so horribly slow to use, under virtually no load.

You might also want to explain what it is your software actually does. "Marketing Automation" is fairly broad in scope.

<comment><AUTHOR> We just moved on to the best hosting package available in Godaddy. But the site is still slow :(

They want us to move to a VPS and we need to migrate our site to a better server soon

<comment><USER9> I would recommend trying Webfaction (for a simpler option), DigitalOcean or AWS instead of GoDaddy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the difference between "startup" and, say, "company"?

<comment><USER11> It's my understanding that you're working on your "startup" until you've found a repeatable way to generate profits. Once that occurs you then begin working on your "company".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like the story, but I think you should explain upfront what the service is. Most people have a 8 second attention span, so you want to get the point of what your service does across in a fast way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure thing. Point noted. We are working on marketing automation platform similar to marketo and pardot, but simplified for small businesses and at an affordable price point.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have a prototype of the product that you can check out at [http://demo.maaxmarket.com/app](http://demo.maaxmarket.com/app)

</comment><comment><USER13> First of all, congratulations. Can you tell us more about why you chose Chennai? Does it have a good startup ecosystem?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah... chennai has a better startup ecosystem compared to other metros. More than that, this is where I grew up. I was able to convince few of my college friends to join me and help me get this venture started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> First of all My Hearty Felicitation and the logo seems to be much perfect. Wish you all for your future endeavors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a trillion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are quite some broken links on your website (for instance careers link). You might want to fix them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. We are fixing those links right now. We will be changing that very shortly. Thank you so much for your feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a mirror for this? Or has the URL changed? I am getting a 404…

<comment><AUTHOR> Please allow 5 mins. we are hosting the server right now in Microsoft Azure. We will keep you posted when the site is up. Our site crashed due to huge volume of traffic

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is very good to hear. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much. We are in the prototyping phase and will be launching the product very soon

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great post! A minor correction - the name of the language is Go, not golang. Also, Chennai le enda area?

<comment><USER19> From my understanding golang is a perfectly fine name for Go and much easier to Google.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with cold hands whilst coding? - <AUTHOR> I find that my hands and fingers get very cold whilst coding. Does anybody else have this happen, and if so what (if anything) do you do to counter it? <comment><USER2> Gloves. Yes, seriously. There are a number of skin-tight insulating gloves on the market, typically for arthritis and often designed to improve circulation. Some have open fingertips (or you could cut the tips off yourself) so they don't get in the way of touch on the keyboard. It's not the coolest fashion statement, but they really do help.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have this problem only if I haven't exercised and/or eaten that day. I would suggest regular meals (every 3-4 hours you are awake) and exercise in combination with using space heaters to warm the air within your area.

</comment><comment><USER4> From a medical perspective your problem is circulation, exercise, eat right, use supplements, and take a break every couple hours by walking around, working out, or anything. It'll go away in a couple months.

<comment><USER5> From my perspective, a relevant medical factor is germs. I clean my keyboard and wash my hands frequently for this reason. I've also worked on lots of underlying medical stuff (including circulation), but that's a long terms process (and can take way more than a couple of months depending upon what the underlying issues are). In the short term, killing the germs on the keyboard and on my hands does wonders.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry, you've lost me here with the correlation between cold hands and "germs". This seems like more of a psycho/physiological condition.

<comment><USER5> It's okay, I lose a lot of people. But I'm getting well when doctors say it can't be done, so I'm pretty confident of a lot of my observations, the rest of the world's disbelief not withstanding.

Peace.

<comment><USER6> Forgive my delay, glad things are looking up. Best to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tend to keep my keyboard on my lap, where it gets fairly warm and radiates onto my hands. When even colder inside, I use a laptop, which essentially has a heated keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER8> Knitted hand warmers. They're fingerless gloves, basically.

</comment><comment><USER9> I went to school in a very cold place, and this was a problem. Gloves didn't do squat. Sometimes I got the feeling that they made my hands colder.

I programmed under the blanket.

If that's not an option, you could (god forbid) exercise strenuously (do 50 jumping jacks), after which you would be very warm for several minutes. :D

There are those hand warmer things that you can get at any gas station. You shake them and they're hot for hours. You could put one in each glove...

</comment><comment><USER5> I wipe my keyboard down before I get started, wash my hands with warm water, get adequate amounts of good quality sea salt, and drink warm coffee. I also worked on my underlying health and my hands are less prone to getting cold now that I am less anemic and such.

</comment><comment><USER10> Try wearing long sleeves. And/or a hat.

If your body is cold, your extremities get screwed.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you smoke or drink caffeine, these can cause vasoconstriction which reduces blood flow to your hands.

If the problem is really serious, it could be a medical problem called Raynaud's Syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER12> heh.. i seriously have this problem too. Funny you brought it up.. anyways I use a small desk heater, I blow across my keyboard area. Not sure how I feel about using gloves, and I do drink a big cup of hot coffee, and generally doesn't help much.

</comment><comment><USER13> yes I use a blanket, but then again I work from home.

I find getting a hot cup of tea / coffee works.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good books to read as a developer? - <AUTHOR>

I think I am still a junior level web developer, but recently, I had been assigned to a major project at my job. So I am on my way to becoming a senior developer. I want to start reading books on development and good programmer ethic and management skills. Can anyone recommend me any good books? <comment><USER2> I personally feel developer is not about technology, but we should be aware of how in earlier times people behind the technology inventions have lived, worked to bring up great things what we are currently used. So my one of the oldest and my personal fav. is :

Digital Deli: [http://www.atariarchives.org/deli](http://www.atariarchives.org/deli)

Currently out of print, but I own an copy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's some general books I think will make anyone a better programmer if you spend the time to internalize the subject matter. Don't really know any about management etc.

1\. SCIP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs)

2\. Introduction to Algorithms (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein)

3\. The Art of Computer Programming (Vol 1-3).

4\. Programming Pearls

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure those are the best resources for a web developer. While these are good things to know, I'd focus on mastering the stack/framework one is using as a web developer.

For example, If you're doing Ruby on Rails, I'd focus on reading a solid book about Ruby and then one about Rails. A lot of people try to get good with a framework, without having a solid understanding of the language used.

Algorithms and data structures are a good solid requirement, but chances are you are doing CRUD / REST apps with a web framework and you need to master the framework and back-end language used first, before you dive deep into algorithms and the likes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would recommend you to look into this book: HTTP: The Definitive Guide

As a web developer understanding how the Internet stack and some specific protocols work, could very easily make your life easier.

<comment><USER6> This does indeed look like a great book but it's from 2002, I understand that the internet changed a lot in the last 13 years?

<comment><USER5> This is about the fundamentals of HTTP, most of the changes are based on these fundamentals.</comment></comment></comment>


Secrets to getting Digg to send you visitors - <AUTHOR> http://www.gettingmorevisitors.com/2008/04/28/secrets-to-getting-digg-to-send-you-visitors/

<comment><USER2> Wow, one of the worst SEO articles ever. 3 points, and the author isn't even sure if the 3rd is possible, or how to go about implementing it. The other 2 are lame and likely to have negative impact.

Here is how you get Digg to send you visitors: publish something interesting and relatively current. Note, this is pretty much a universal guide to SEO and gathering traffic.</comment>


The Browser Operating System - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/the-browser-operating-system/

<comment><USER2> Microsoft Research does some really exciting stuff. Most of what they do is real hackers' material, the sort of stuff you'd expect from a guy in his mom's basement or Ph.D's theses.

They have some really interesting prototypes and proof-of-concept software out that can be downloaded from <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/>

It's a shame that most of their research (stuff like Singularity and this IE- OS project) never see the light of day, but some of the stuff you _can_ DL is really nifty... and rather unheard of.

<comment><USER3> The Singularity source code is available at <http://www.codeplex.com/singularity>

Don't be so sure that MSR stuff doesn't ever see the light of day... or hasn't already in one form or another...

(oooo insider speaks in cryptic tone.... cue Twilight Zone music)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> the actual paper is here: <http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/79655/gazelle.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER5> No.</comment>


Ask HN: A dead simple, domain based, black-list-only adblocker? - <AUTHOR> I am looking for an adblocker, that works entirely by black listing, blocking nothing by default. If I visit a site and the ads are annoying, I can then click a single, quickly reachable button and all ads are blocked for that domain from there on out (until I may or may not click that button again at a later day).
I don't mind some setup, if it then works without any major flaws. I understand that some ads might sometimes leak through the cracks, as with any other adblocker. That's fine. However every time I google thistopic and hackled with possible solutions I ended up somewhat unhappy with the convenience or some other part of the experience and wind up not doing it.
Any tested and working solutions would be very much appreciated. I am using chrome for windows. <comment><USER2> Not quite one button, you have remember what field to aim for in the detailed menu for the one click, but uBlock can do this: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic- filtering:-tu...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic- filtering:-turn-off-uBlock-everywhere-except)</comment>


Useless Ethereum Token (UET) ICO raises 45k$+ after being added to an exchange - jorge-d https://etherscan.io/address/0x00d0fd20924037c2b182d0aa0b139434a0b1a081 <comment><AUTHOR> How does one go about getting their token added to an exchange?</comment>


100 PFLOPs: China's Supercomputer Circumvents U.S. Sales Ban - <AUTHOR> http://vrworld.com/2016/04/13/china-circumvents-us-sales-ban-tianhe-100-pflops/ <comment><USER2> ARM on the server, finally. Good news for people hoping to move beyond the stranglehold of intel/x86 in computing. Thank you, US foreign policy, for the unintended side effects.</comment>


Ways to dismiss technology - <AUTHOR> http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/5/24/not-even-wrong-ways-to-dismiss-technology <comment><USER2> I think the author is attacking a strawman. The common ground to most successful technologies is that their potential was recognized early on, and many people worked on realizing them, at least after breakthrough proofs-of- concept. That was the case for airplanes, televisions, computers, mobile phones, etc.

But what people "dismiss" \-- although, I would say _question_ \-- is not the technology's ultimate success, but its timing. Machine learning, and the eventual AI, was Alan Turing's dream years before the first computer was built. He talked to his friend Claude Shannon about supervised learning in 1943, and Shannon proposed letting computers absorb culture and arts, too (playing them music, in particular, an idea that Turing first found surprising). In 1946, Turing wrote about unsupervised learning, talking about equipping computers with wheels, arms and cameras, and letting them roam the countryside. Neural networks were invented circa 1942, and Turing started researching them in the late 40s. The algorithms used _today_ for machine learning were invented in the '60s, but the theory behind them pretty much stalled in the '90s.

The question is, then, not whether AI is ultimately achievable, nor whether current machine learning is useful in some domains. The question is _how far_ is (actual) AI or generally useful machine learning. Given that we've been working on the problem for 75 years now, no major theoretical breakthroughs have been made in the past few decades, and that most successes are due to better hardware but with uncertain future scalability, I see no rational reason to expect a breakthrough in the next 5 years (very smart people in the '40s, '50s and '60s were equally convinced that AI is around the corner). I would never dismiss the promise of AI, but I would certainly question the unbridled enthusiasm some people have for machine learning's current form.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Where Cellnet missed it, Orange got much closer to the actual capability: > the future is wire-free. Why is your phone tied to the wall of a particular > room with a piece of wire? Cellnet was guessing about applications while > Orange talked about the breakthrough.

This part caused problems for me. For one, Cellnet survived. So we have evidence that whatever they did wasn't the wrong choice. Second, a sales pitch or value proposition is not a technology prediction, it's an attempt to get money in trade for a product. It's not just right to talk about specific applications, but fairly important to demonstrate the practical utility to a buyer. This has been studied widely and is falsifiable. Plus, anecdotally, I've never bought something because a sales guy said "but it's a breakthrough!", I pay for things when I see clear value to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Quote: "Bringing this back to 2017, I've suggested elsewhere that voice interfaces do not have a roadmap to become universal computer interfaces or platforms. Machine learning now means that speech recognition can accurately transcribe the sound of someone speaking into text and that natural language processing can turn that text into a structured query - that's one breakthrough. But you still need somewhere to send the query, and it is not clear that we have any roadmap to a system that can give a structured answer to any query that any person can pose, rather than just dumping you out to a keyword search of the web. To even start making voice interfaces useful for general purpose computing rather than for niches, I would suggest that we would need general AI, which is (at best) a few decades away."

An interesting way to distinguish the potential between new technologies. I would say that someone might argue that a fully autonomous car would also require general AI for example. If we would argue that "no, it should just have less casualties than human drivers", we can continue with arguing that a voice interface will be abundant by just having fewer mistakes than by typing words or having queries better answered than by a text interface. On the roadmap will then probably be more sensors than microphones alone and it's hard to dismiss such a technological progression only because at some time we might need general AI to continue the technological progress.

<comment><USER5> The entire field of UI design exists because it's almost impossible to capture user intent _even when you present them with a damn button that has their intent written on it_.

UI design is about guiding people through a series of explicit and difficult- to-fuck-up gates to make it clear what they want.

What about voice inputs or AI is so powerful that it could _entirely reverse that trend_ and go the other way to a UI where you can say whatever you want and still end up with a UI that's impossible to fuck up?

I really think the AI bulls should spend just a little time on a serious, professional interaction* design team working on a product that's critical to daily commerce before they go announcing that voice obsolete screens.

\\* not graphic design, not motion design, not UI design. Nuts and bolts interaction designers who are responsible for metrics

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _What mattered was seeing the value of the capability, not predicting any particular applications_

How can you separate the value of a capability from its potential applications? Surely he doesn't mean scientific/intellectual value so.. how else can a capability have value?

<comment><USER7> That quote stood out to me too. My question is, if there is a new capability (Bitcoin is a good example) then how do you invest in that capability? Sure you can pick a company working on some application, but they will almost certainly miss the real value of the capability.

<comment><USER8> "how do you invest in that capability?"

It's not clear to me that you can. How would you have invested in air travel in the time of the Wright brothers? None of the companies that eventually came to dominate existed then.

<comment><USER9> I think in this light you either invest in an inventor or radical innovator, or a component of their supply chain. One is: I'm going to make this happen and all these things will happen, the other is: this thing is happening so we should should to these things. This is why the path from venture (paradigm shift) to public (shifted) is important, the best public companies indicate a fundamental in other businesses, they are enablers. However, over time you become a commodity item on a supply chain and run risk the "enabled" companies will out innovating you as they build their capabilities and margins .</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Working With A Board Of Directors - My Approach To Getting Things Done - <AUTHOR> http://roachblog.com/2010/03/31/board-of-directors-my-secret-to-getting-things-done/

<comment><USER2> Geez. This is the type of talk that makes me never ever want to get VC funding....

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh, don't worry. VC's come with even more agendas...</comment>


China's High-Speed Train Map Puts U.S. Transportation to Shame - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@parismarx/chinas-high-speed-train-map-puts-u-s-transportation-to-shame-272e6694c04d <comment><USER2> "While the United States is busy talking about making itself "great again" by demonizing immigrants and trans people while it continues to decline as a world power, Europe and China are expanding their forward-looking systems of high-quality transportation to position their regions to challenge American power, and prosper in the coming century."

More of that objective and quality journalism. Ignoring the grammatical mistakes, why throw in a silly quip like that? Especially considering that europe and china aren't too fond of "immigrants" or trans people.

<comment><USER3> You actually raise a good point, for China at least. I would argue that the EU is, generally, more progressive than the US when it comes to immigrants and trans folks.

<comment><USER2> > I would argue that the EU is, generally, more progressive than the US when > it comes to immigrants and trans folks.

Is this is the same EU where people of turkish descent who lived in germany for 3 generations are still not considered german and where european politicians of african descent get bananas thrown at them? Where in europe are trans people treated better than in the US? Or are you talking about generations of north african immigrants who are confined to ghettos in france and who are pretty much barred from any positions of power? Or are you talking about the african immigrants in spain who are pretty much relegated to rummaging through garbage or prostitution? Europe isn't a utopia people love to pretend it is. All the monkey chants and racist vitriol directed at black and asian soccer players at soccer games should make that obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not a fair comparison. Train is more suited for China since car ownership per capita is lower. Between cars and planes in the US, it's hard for trains to compete. High car ownership rates in China would be bad for the environment given the large population. So, nice cars in the US, nice trains in China

<comment><USER5> It's a fair comparison. Cars are about 3X slower than bullet trains, even when there is no traffic. If SF to LA had a bullet train, it would take less than 2 hr instead of 6 hours. That's huge difference even if you don't count for return trip. More cars per capita is due to lack of such train network in first place. If you go to places like Switzerland which is pretty sparse, trains are defacto way to travel even when people could easily buy car if they wanted to. The country heavily invested in public transit resulting in lower cars per capita.

<comment><USER4> I see your point. However, many things work in small countries like Switzerland where the population is more homogeneous and highly educated wouldn't work in large countries like the US with a more diverse population. Moreover, the tax rate is also quite different. Public transit like trains require tax money. However, car buying is more individual's decision. Unfortunately, raising taxes is quite unpopular in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The US really has no completed high-speed rail. The map for the US should be empty.</comment>


A cash crunch at the Gnome Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/594583/ <comment><USER2> Some more background:

[https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ](https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ)

[https://gnome.org/opw/](https://gnome.org/opw/)

Reading this, I don't understand:

* Why was "The Outreach Program for Women" allowed to so significantly impact Gnome's primary mission?

* Why is the Gnome Foundation is funding and administering this program to begin with? It falls far outside their foundation's purview, and is undeniably gender exclusionary: "The Outreach Program for Women (OPW) helps _women_ (cis and trans) and genderqueer get involved in free and open source software."

If an organization dedicated to "cis, trans, and genderqueer" members wishes to manage and fund an outreach program, that's their prerogative, and Gnome should be welcoming, but it makes little sense to manage it under the Gnome Foundation, and it absolutely should not financially impact Gnome's ability to _ship Gnome._

Given that the outreach program was started in response to the lack of women candidates for Google's Summer of Code, this program could (and given fiduciary responsibilities, _should_ ) have focused solely on non-exclusionary outreach to women Summer of Code candidates.

The push for biased inclusion has lost the forest for the trees.

<comment><USER3> I would definitely like to know how OPW caused increased turnover.

<comment><USER4> They meant cash turnover, not personnel turnover, I think. As in more money was coming in/going out, which led to cashflow issues.

<comment><USER3> That makes sense. I misread that badly.

<comment><USER4> I read it exactly as you did the first time through; it was unclear as written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love that within a couple hours of this being posted the only comments of any length are uninformed hiveminding about how attempts to involve women in the GNOME development community are excluding men and destroying society.

No substantial discussion of invoicing issues, no discussion of how governance could be changed to address these issues, no discussion of how contributors and users could get involved to fix things, no discussion of what the Gnome Foundation has accomplished and whether it could be more efficient about it.

No, just a bunch of uninformed ranting about things entirely unrelated to the OP. I guess on the bright side HN's utterly ineffective 'flamewar detector' will drop this off the front page shortly and send people back to the MensRights subreddit.

P.S. 'u mad, kg?' You bet I'm mad. The quality of discourse on HN keeps going down. I was genuinely curious about the GNOME foundation, so I click through and find out that most people didn't even read the article, as if this is friggin' Slashdot.

Props to the people who read the article and responded to comments with actual information; fight the good fight.

<comment><USER2> > _No substantial discussion of invoicing issues, no discussion of how > governance could be changed to address these issues, no discussion of how > contributors and users could get involved to fix things, no discussion of > what the Gnome Foundation has accomplished and whether it could be more > efficient about it._

I thought I was pretty clear on this point; the Gnome Foundation board appears to have operated far outside the foundation charter and if so, should be censured and ideally recalled.

Assuming that this assessment is accurate:

To address continuity of the OPW specifically, board members that wish to continue administering the OPW program can resolve governance and accountability issues, while ensuring OPW's continuity, by resigning and founding a distinct organization that has within its charter the administration of OPW.

Any remaining board members should be recalled, reaffirming the board's fiduciary mandate to operate within the Gnome Foundation charter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who want to donate:

[http://gnome.org/friends](http://gnome.org/friends)

<comment><USER7> this is also nice - [http://www.gnome.org/friends/amazon/](http://www.gnome.org/friends/amazon/) this links to a lot of stuff on Amazon you would have bought anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As far as I am concerned, they can go cry in a corner for what they have turned Gnome into. Gnome 3 and Unity can go burn in hell for all eternity (yes, words are a poor outlet for expressing my _hatred_ towards that interface). My donation dollars should be funding things better than such abominations!

This is far more deserving: Project Gooseberry and the Blender Foundation.

[0]: [http://gooseberry.blender.org/](http://gooseberry.blender.org/)

<comment><USER9> Let us say, without needing any hyperbole, that what they've recently wrought is not going to even vaguely motivate a whole bunch of people to bail them out, let alone fund them going forwards, especially after this multi-level debacle.

Debian wheezy's Gnome Classic is just barely capable for my elderly parents; I'm now reasonably happy with Xfce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who would have thought that a sexist program such as the OPW, would take so much from the budget.

<comment><USER9> Robert Conquest, per his 2nd Law of Politics: " _Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing._ "

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> But... but... Gnome 3???

<comment><USER11> Wow, -4 karma for pointing out that there _might_ be a link between circling- the-wagons on the very unpopular (at the least, "controversial") Gnome 3, which is the flagship project, and subsequent financial difficulties at the sponsoring foundation. Even if the immediate causes are attributed to other programs, it seems worthy of some reflection that the timeline seems to be "ship controversial software => stand by it without making popularly-requested changes => financial difficulties".</comment></comment>


Apple rejects iSinglePayer iPhone App - <AUTHOR> http://lambdajive.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/isinglepayer-iphone-app-censored-by-apple/?preview=true&preview_id=29&preview_nonce=94ad9174dd

<comment><USER2> I don't understand the purpose of this post. The author seems to disagree with the rejection, but more interested in promoting the rejection than actually getting the application published.

Clearly there is no attempt made to assuage the notion that the application is "politically charged", with language like "The rejection of iSinglePayer from the App Store is but the latest blow to supporters of single-payer health reform" dominating. The author instead urges readers to "spread the word on Apple's censorship", which seems like a pretty blatant attempt to coerce a private enterprise to publish his political agenda. Is that _really_ the sort of thing you want to have associated with your cause?

</comment><comment><USER3> Ugh. Nothing stinks more than when somebody feels wronged and starts throwing around the the c-word. In order to be censored you need to have a right to express yourself in the first place. And when it comes to Apple's private app store, ya don't. If you want to express your views on single-payer health care (a cause with which I agree, btw) without fear of censorship, go demonstrate peacefully in front of your local courthouse.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, wikipedia defines censorship as "the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor". By that definition, just as Apple censors pornography from their app store, they seem to be censoring "politically charged" applications, as well.

So while it's (as far as I know) legal for Apple to decline "politically charged" applications, just as it would be legal for them to decline applications made by Jews, I don't think it's morally justifiable. While I agree with the cause of single-payer health insurance, I would be just as upset if Apple rejected the Druge Reader or Fox News app for being "politically charged".

Just as common carriers cannot discriminate against their users, once Apple provides a channel for businesses or people to sell things to customers, their power to decide what goes or doesn't go thought that channel should be limited.

<comment><USER5> I don't believe it would be legal for Apple to reject apps based on race, ethnicity, or religion of the developers.

<comment><USER6> It wouldn't, but not because of free speech laws, but because of anti- discrimination laws.

<comment><USER4> Would an application's political slant not be protected under discrimination laws, as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm puzzled by this rejection.

"Politically charged" doesn't seem like a valid reason for rejection (because by that standard, apps like Huffington Post on the left or Drudge on the right wouldn't have a place in the app store)

I hope Apple reverses its decision (and I also hope that the rejection was an unintentional mistake)

<comment><USER8> During the election another developer wrote an app that counted down the number of days until Bush was out of office, it was called Freedom Time. It was rejected and the developer emailed Steve Jobs.

He got a response: "Even though my personal political leanings are democratic, I think this app will be offensive to roughly half our customers. What's the point?

Steve"

[http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2008/09/steve-jobs-writes- bac...](http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2008/09/steve-jobs-writes-back/)

<comment><USER9> That would be valid if customers had to use the App! If it was compulsory. But, people only use the Apps they want to, the ones they download! So, if you don't like the counter, just don't download it.

There must be a way to stop this rejection-crazyness.

<comment><USER2> _So, if you don't like the counter, just don't download it._

You cannot count on people behaving this way, _least of all_ when it comes to politics.

 _There must be a way to stop this rejection-crazyness._

Broad rejection under the banner of "politically charged" is probably the most sane solution for Apple. The more they permit, the greater the backlash over any particular rejection, and the more their permission would be construed as endorsement.

For instance, suppose a pro-life and pro-choice application are both approved for the store, but one ( _it doesn't matter which_ ) is only approved with a higher age limitation than the other due to content. Even if Apple's rating approval were completely consistent with other applications, the discrepancy between these two is practically guaranteed to cause a shitstorm. Multiply that by every other axis of approval or rejection and every other political issue in every country Apple runs a store.

<comment><USER9> What I cannot understand at all is why I'm able to install any kind of software on my mackbook and why I can't do this on my iPhone. It's just absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> oh, man. i was all ready to vote this up until i read the article's real headline: "iSinglePayer iPhone App Censored by Apple."

i appreciate the article's submitter removing the editorial slant in the original headline, but that doesn't improve the content, i'm afraid.

<comment><USER11> I'm not following you. What is wrong with the content of the article?

<comment><USER10> the app was not 'censored' by apple. they are free to approve or reject any app they want, for any reason. the article posits that the author's views are being supressed, and that's just ridiculously wrong. it's like news.yc commenters having their comments [dead]ed for flaming, then claiming that they are being 'censored'.

the author is free to take that position, i guess, just as i am free to stop reading any article that talks like that.

<comment><USER6> If it was rejected due to its "politically charged" content, what would be the difference between that and censorship?

<comment><USER12> Because Apple makes it very clear in their TOS that they don't want that. And obviously, the iSinglePayer app is politically charged. The developer of the app decided to develop it anyway, and now he's claiming he's being censored.

It's kind of silly, actually. People seem to think they have some fundamental right to be approved into the AppStore, which is simply not the case.

<comment><USER6> How does making something clear in a TOS not make this censorship?

Censorship, as defined by Wikipedia: "Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor."

How is this not censorship on Apple's behalf? I'm not saying they're not _in their right_ to censor the content on their AppStore, I'm just saying _it is_ censorship.

<comment><USER12> Okay, according to that definition, you may be right. Ultimately, I think it's up to a judge to decide; censorship is not as black and white.

Take Google for example. They automatically filter various type of sites from their index (phishing, link farms, etc). According to the definition on Wikipedia, that is censorship too: it's communicative material, which is considered harmful by Google.

<comment><USER6> Why would the definition of the word 'censorship' be up to a judge to decide? And why would a judge be involved at all? It isn't illegal to censor something.

The fact that this is censorship doesn't mean that Apple aren't in their right to do so. They are, as much as I dislike it.

Voicing one's discontent with their policy is probably the only way we can make them change it, though.

<comment><USER12> Ok in that case, indeed, censorship can be applied. But to me, that means it completely loses its value: in essence, it would be the same as "filtering", which I don't think is the intent of the law.

<comment><USER6> (For some reason I can't reply to your last post, so I reply here instead.)

No, censorship is not illegal. Freedom of speech protects your right to speak without getting silenced or punished for it (with some limits, like hate speech) by the government.

But your freedom of speech does not imply that you are free to express anything in any _private_ arena. For instance, on this board we are not allowed to use inflammatory language or basically be douches in any way. This does not conflict with freedom of speech, because you are free to express your inflammatory opinions _somewhere else_ , like on your own blog or in your own kitchen.

Freedom of speech does _not_ give you the right to publicize anything on any private platform anywhere (like the App Store).

<comment><USER12> Okay, so if I understand you correctly, freedom of speech is violated by censorship, but censorship doesn't always violate freedom of speech.

Guess my interpretation for the word always was wrong. I figured censorship meant the act of limiting freedom of speech; you seem to define censorship as any act of filtering.

Would you classify Google's filtering of web content as censorship ? If not, how is that different from Apple filtering AppStore applications ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One day Apple will realize the feeling of suffocation going through most iPhone developers.</comment>


Calloc or Malloc? Any thoughts? - <AUTHOR>

To the best of my understanding, it is largely equivalent to say:
int * i;
i = (int * ) malloc(10 * sizeof(int));
as it is to say:
int * i;
i = (int*) calloc(10,sizeof(int));
The one allocates a memory block of size 10 times sizeof(int), the other allocates ten memory blocks each of size sizeof(int) and has them all initialized to 0. So effectively the only difference in this case is calloc initializes the blocks to 0 whereas malloc does not. And calloc is more computationally expensive. But in the end a similar result obtains.
Normally I use malloc, but out of curiousity I read up about calloc and this seems to be the answer, that they are basically the same except calloc initializes n number of blocks to size size_t instead of 1 block of some given size size_t, calloc initializes the values to 0 where malloc does not, and calloc takes more time for the cpu to do than malloc does. So with some minor differences the above two statements should do the same thing - i.e. I can use the int arrays allocated thusly the same. I think. :-)
Anybody have any thoughts? Which is better to use normally?
(by the way http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/node11.html is where I was reading up on these functions) <comment><USER2> Calloc clears the memory to all bits zero. All bits zero doesn't necessarily mean zero values. Not many people will make this distinction and happily write broken code thinking that calloc always clears the values to zero accordingly.

calloc's zero fill is all-bits-zero, and is therefore guaranteed to yield the value 0 for all integral types, and '\0' for character types -- but does not guarantee useful null pointer values or floating-point zero values.

Some C implementations represent null pointers by special, nonzero bit patterns when it can be arranged so that inadvertently using those values triggers automatic hardware traps.

<comment><USER3> I'm just curious, but can you point me to an implementation of C that doesn't treat (void*)0 as NULL?

<comment><USER4> ( void* )0 _is_ NULL, in that NULL is (most usually) #defined to be ( void* )0. But the literal 0 in a pointer context doesn't guarentee that the null pointer is actually all bits zero.

To put it another way, if you have a literal zero in a pointer context, the compiler will replace it with the machine's representation of a null pointer, which _may or may not_ be a machine word with all bits zero.

I _think_ that's right...

<comment><USER5> You are theoretically correct.

But: can you name a platform where a null pointer is not represented by zeros in binary?

<comment><USER6> See section 1.14 <http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/c-faq/c-1.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First: Lose the cast. It's not needed in C, clutters the code, and can hide real problems (like implicit declarations of the functions -- this can cause crashes on 64-bit architectures). A void* exists solely so it can be assigned to any type* without casts. It's useless for any other purpose.

Yes, they are effectively the same. I'd suspect that on most systems (glibc, certainly) calloc more or less does:

       mem = malloc(nelem * size);
       memset(mem, 0, nelem * size);
       return mem;

<comment><USER7> He didn't actually say he was using C, and I always include the cast. It's more portable, and doesn't really clutter the code since everyone is used to seeing that exact expression

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the openbsd man page malloc(3):

When using malloc() be careful to avoid the following idiom:

               if ((p = malloc(num * size)) == NULL)
                       err(1, "malloc");

         The multiplication may lead to an integer overflow.  To avoid this, calloc() is recommended.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it's different on OpenBSD, but I think the spec says they're essentially equivalent; i.e. it's permissible to just call malloc with the product from within calloc

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I always use calloc when allocating many blocks at once, as you said. Yes, you get a free bzero() with it, but that's not why I use it.

When I'm trying to allocate memory for many blocks of something, I'd use calloc just because it makes my intentions clearer in the code when someone else is reading it. If I'm allocating memory just for one area or block, I'd use malloc+bzero or possibly calloc with a clear block count of one. The efficiency in the end is pretty equivalent but it makes your code easier to digest to other people.

</comment><comment><USER9> calloc by default, then _profile your code_ , and if memset or calloc hits the top of the profile, start pruning them out.

You get a much bigger performance win out of swapping in a pool allocator, or, even better, arenas.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you want the benefit of the clearness of calloc without the time wasted on memset--just write a wrapper for malloc. Its not much effort, and it gets you the best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER11> i only use calloc when i have any chance of addressing an area that could ever potentially be empty. i more typically malloc if i'm making space and immediately fill it up completely with whatever goes in it so that any of the previous garbage is gone

</comment><comment><USER12> neither.. try using a language does dynamic memory allocation and garbage collection... it would save you a lot of headache...

<comment><USER4> ...unless you're writing code for an embedded system which has (say) 16K of RAM and a 1MHz processor, in which case that will cause you more problems than it solves.</comment></comment>


Can Hollywood's Biggest Media Companies Avoid Getting Crushed by Debt? - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2019/biz/features/att-disney-comcast-debt-1203107407/ <comment><USER2> So do companies scramble to buy out the competition? Are they incentive to take on debt to buy out other companies and expand before other companies do? And when one company does it do others need to follow?

Could anyone add some context?</comment>


Bring Google Fibre into Canada - <AUTHOR> http://avaaz.org/en/petition/Bring_Google_FIbre_to_Canada <comment><USER2> This can't happen because it is illegal for telecommunications providers to be foreign owned. The correct first step would be to lobby our "free market" prime minister to let the free market operate.

<comment><USER3> Are you 100% certain about that?

I work for a telco in Canada and the CRTC has just passed a ruling to allow competition into the market for the first time ever in this operating area.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think at least one of the new competitiors coming in is foreign owned. They'll be offering wireless, wireline and internet services.

<comment><USER4> This is correct. Please read about Egyptian Wind Mobile having issues entering market because they didn't have enough Canadian ownership.

[http://www.techvibes.com/blog/wind-mobile-violates-laws- on-f...](http://www.techvibes.com/blog/wind-mobile-violates-laws-on-foreign- ownership-courts-2011-02-05)

<comment><USER3> That article is from 2011.

In July 2012, the Federal Government removed that restriction[1]

[1][http://www.mondaq.com/canada/x/186386/Telecommunications+Mob...](http://www.mondaq.com/canada/x/186386/Telecommunications+Mobile+Cable+Communications/Its+Official+Foreign+Ownership+Requirements+Removed+For+Many+Carriers)

(This applies as long as the total annual telecommunications revenues of the new telco represent less than 10% of total Canadian telecommunications revenues, so it basically applies to every newcomer, which is what we have in our operating area)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So says the rest of the world.

But ISP business is low margin, labour intensive, which is not quite congruent with Google's high margin media sales model.

Like the 4 billion dollar bidding for wireless spectrum, I suspect Google's main motivation in launching Google Fibre is merely a warning shot to ISPs to shape up... and like Verizon did by outbidding Google in the wireless spectrum but still running the network according to Google requirements, the ISPs around the world will probably make sure Google has no need to enter their market, by ensuring seamless service to Google services.

So... if things work out right, Google Fibre will never stretch beyond Kansas City.

<comment><USER6> AFAIK cable internet profit margins are more than 90%. [http://insidedigitalmedia.com/cable-operators-will- abandon-t...](http://insidedigitalmedia.com/cable-operators-will-abandon-tv/)

<comment><USER5> I'm not American, and US broadband rates are eye-popping, so I agree the business is high margin as it is. But once there is serious competition, by the implied entry of Google Fibre, then the margin will shrink quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On that note, bring Google Fibre to the rest of the US to force US ISPs to act more competitively.

<comment><USER8> Canadian ISPs have effectively a monopoly. Competition is nearly nonexistant.[1]

The CRTC, which fills the "job of regulating and supervising the broadcasting and telecommunications systems in Canada". The execs of ISPs retire and join the CRTC[2], which allows monopoly (and corruption) to grow. [3]

As an example, the CRTC limits international competition (Wind Mobile [4]), under the guise of "promote Canadian ownership and control of the industry" [4] There's a reason that Orange mobile (and the other european brands) haven't come to Canada, and it's the CRTC.

In reality, Canadian Telecom is a farce that would not hold up to competition against other international telecoms.

[1] <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080325/155924648.shtml>

[2] [http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/New-CRTC-Boss-is-Ex- Roger...](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/New-CRTC-Boss-is-Ex-Rogers-Bell- Exec-118086)

[3] <http://www.srtv.on.ca/mf.html>

[4] [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/cabinet- ha...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/cabinet-had-right-to- overrule-crtc-on-wind-mobile-court-told/article580354/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would have to imagine there is still some challenge to 'bringing' Google Fiber to the remaining 48 US states. Sprint's presence in Kansas City was a large determining factor in its selection for the initial fiber deployment. Besides, there are still plenty of service providers (and attendant lobbyists) in this county who would prefer that fiber remain priced well above $70/month.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure, I expect that Google Fiber will be available throughout most of the US before the service comes to Canada, but prepending their arrival here the CRTC will have to restructure some of the laws that are currently in place. I feel it is best for Google to know that there is demand here sooner so that they can start having these kinds of discussions with Canadian lawmakers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They should totally spell it the Canadian way too :)

A nice dream. I suspect their priority will be US cities, but someday... someday...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahha, actually I did. A friend pointed it out minutes after I posted the petition and I corrected it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really wish Google Fiber would come to Canada. /signed

I'm so tired of Bell and Rogers... ;_;

</comment><comment><USER12> Google is sure to pay attention to this petition.

<comment><USER13> Well, it's certainly not hurting and gives visibility to the issue in general. The more people are aware that the ISP situation could be much better in Canada, the better.

In the meantime, I'll keep recommending Teksavvy.

<comment><USER14> Distributel too.. 28Mbit down for $50 a month.. no caps or contracts

<comment><USER13> Weird. It's the first I hear of them, and I thought I knew all the ISP choices around here. I'll check them out, thanks.

<comment><USER14> Have you heard of Acanac? Acanac basically slightly re-packages and re-sells Distributel's network.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Owning a car will soon be a thing of the past - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/23/owning-car-thing-of-the-past-cities-utopian-vision <comment><USER2> Ugh - There are restaurants but people still make a kitchen in their house.

Cars inspire beauty and passion, so car ownership is never going to be a thing of past.</comment>


Attacking Web Applications with Broken Authentication - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0l7smmKI_s

<comment><USER2> Wait, so this guy is recommending against storing predictable user IDs in cookies, and against pre-filling password fields such that the values can be read in the source for a page? Brilliant! /facepalm

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't think so.

I'm just showing you how to abuse that without doing much ;)

Seen such behavior on both local ISPs and an Information Security conference website. Its one of those things that should not be there but every now and then some webdev decides to include ;)</comment></comment>