IBM Runs World's Worst Spam-Hosting ISP? - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/10/ibm-runs-worlds-worst-spam-hosting-isp/ <comment><USER2> I'm afraid that IBM seems to be having lots of problems with data centres and infrastructure. I'm hearing from a number of sources, largely independent of each other, that in Australia their PaaS solution is merely an IaaS solution, they have dreadful manual monitoring and manual processes (I was told in one data centre that IBM was literally copying in host files for hostname resolution).

I'm also hearing stories of medium to large tier companies actively looking at their SAP contracts as there have been outages caused by infrastructure issues (ridiculous things that shouldn't have happened), and along with a massive drain of expertise in IBM's ranks they have severely damaged their value proposition.

Obviously my claim is anecdotal, but it's honestly not looking good for IBM lately.

<comment><USER3> Your comment reminds me of a news report here in Australia - 3 banks suffered a multiple-day outage when their IBM mainframes hosting transactional data were corrupted so badly, the banks weren't sure they could even recover the transactions:

[http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/the-real-reason- st-...](http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/the-real-reason-st-george- bank-of-melbourne-and-banksa-are-suffering-a-long-internet-banking- outage-20151005-gk1g62)

The relevant paragraphs are these:

"But when the system came back up early Sunday morning, a major data corruption was found by IT experts in the IBM mainframe Information Management System (IMS) database hosting the data, so all systems were shut back down about midday Sunday AEDT, a source close to the bank told Fairfax Media.

"IBM IMS and CSC Hogan experts are trying to figure out how to restore the databases without losing any transactions that were done on Sunday morning," the source said on Monday afternoon, referring to IT outsourcers IBM and CSC being called in to assist, and Hogan, an integrated suite of core banking applications."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Spamhaus and some other antispam lists can be extremely aggressive with their filtering, sometimes blocking whole networks because of a couple reported incidents of spam. They are also, in my experience, completely unresponsive when contacted for information on why the blocks are in place. So it's not like they're making it easy for abuse departments to comply.

In some cases (don't remember if this was spamhaus though) the list owners will suggest that if you pay them a consulting fee, they might assist you (where assist means forwarding the message that got flagged so you actually know what spam they're talking about). The lists that do this are running an extortion racket, but unfortunately the people using them don't really see that side so they think they're just following best practices by using them.

I hate spam. But having had to deal with the people running these blocking lists, I hate them too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought softlayer was high tier, managed service.

<comment><USER6> So did IBM when they bought them. The reality hasn't matched that impression.</comment></comment>


Facebook's Rittenhouse Mistake:Speech blackout for defense threatens due process - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-rittenhouse-mistake-11599260134 <comment><USER2> Facebook is not the government. First Amendment doesn't apply.

So far, anyway. So far.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ungated: [https://archive.is/faWrt](https://archive.is/faWrt)</comment>


Arduino controlled espresso machine project (german) - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftruly-coffee.de%2Findex.php%2Fde%2Fdie-variable-steuerung%2Fdualboiler-2&edit-text=

<comment><USER2> Is this site yours? Some comments about the format: It's difficult to navigate because it has a javascript menu that doesn't appear in the translation. Even in the non translated page, if you click in the wrong place you get an error page with a message:

> _Lieber Besucher. diese Seite ist leer und besteht nur aus technischen > Gründen. Die passenden Dokumente dieser Rubik findest du links im Menü, wie > z. Bsp. :_

> [autotranslation] _Dear visitor. this page is empty and exists only for > technical reasons. The matching documents of this Rubik you can find in the > left menu, such as Ex..:_

I think that it's annoying for non technical users. You should at least replace it with something like the items in the respective dropdown menu.

PS: If you remove the "&hl=de" from the Google Translator URL, each user gets the UI in whatever language Google thinks is better, instead of German. I get Spanish because I live in Argentina. [https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=...](https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftruly- coffee.de%2Findex.php%2Fde%2Fdie-variable-steuerung%2Fdualboiler-2&edit- text=")</comment>


Unsupervised Predictive Memory in a Goal-Directed Agent - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.10760 <comment><USER2> OMG...This is amazing! They call the low dim compressed representations "State variables" and is very close to the ideas described here: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.08568](https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.08568)

Brilliant stuff!

</comment><comment> loa-in-backup So it begins. This is going to be important.</comment>


Overdoing the interface metaphor - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/441168915 <comment><USER4> He's missing the point. That calculator app isn't there for _him_ , it's there for new users.

If you sit down at a computer for the first time, and need to do a calculation, you want something that behaves exactly like you're used to - <USER2> calculator that works just like the one in your desk, a painting program that works as much like a set of paints and brushes as can be managed.

That's not 'overdoing the interface metaphor', it's being _faithful to expectations_. Sure, there's a better interface for the calculator available, but people that would want one generally know how to install one.

The Java interface metaphor is a telling one: an interface is a promise to the user. Changing the interface forces the user to change as well, and people seldom want to.

<comment><USER5> By following this way of thinking, the designer of the first calculator should have made his product look as much like an abacus as possible, so he wouldn't confuse the new user.

What you're saying is reasonable, but it misses the fact that you have to find a balance between being familiar and exposing the capabilities of the software you're using.

The calculator is a good example, because it's actually very painful to use such a calculator on a computer. And saying new users can't grasp the way a proper computer calculator works mean you didn't try hard enough to explain to them. It's really taking the easy road.

On a side note, i always wondered why we don't see the same kind of walkthrough you have got in many videogames in software. There should be an interactive walkthrough mode in every packed application in windows/osx. It would be a much better solution than trying to mimic real world objects by providing an interface that imperfectly behaves like the users preconceptions make him expect.

<comment><USER4> >first calculator should have made his product look as much like an abacus as possible, so he wouldn't confuse the new user.

No, he should have made it look as much like a calculation sheet as possible, and he did (calculators were made for accountants initially). The point was that you should use the interface your user expects, unless you are attempting to fill a demand that hasn't been met.

>And saying new users can't grasp the way a proper computer calculator works mean you didn't try hard enough to explain to them. It's really taking the easy road.

It's not. Saying new users 'cant' grasp it would be insulting - it would be much more accurate to say that they don't have the inclination to. If I'm going to use a tool once per month on average, then a slow, clunky interface is far superior to a faster one that I don't know how to use yet.

>There should be an interactive walkthrough mode in every packed application in windows/osx.

That would be useful in a lot of cases, and we're starting to see more of them now that producing video isn't so damned difficult. But they still take time and effort to read; they still make demands on the user.

>it's actually very painful to use such a calculator on a computer.

'Painful' is a perception. It's painful to you, because you're used to something else - it is blessedly familiar to my grandfather; it was the only thing I showed him that didn't need explanation.

<comment><USER5> > 'Painful' is a perception. It's painful to you, because you're used to > something else - it is blessedly familiar to my grandfather; it was the only > thing I showed him that didn't need explanation.

Well no i was not talking about the perception. Even your or mine grandfather would agree that an actual calculator is better than the calculator you have in windows, because you have real keys instead of drawed ones. And if you start using the ones on your keyboard, which actually makes much more sense, the drawed ones become useless suddenly. The workflow you have with one of those fakes calculators is not only worse than with a well designed one, it's way worse than with a real one, and that's the whole point.

> If I'm going to use a tool once per month on average, then a slow, clunky > interface is far superior to a faster one that I don't know how to use yet.

This deserves to be quoted because it's very true, but i still think, in the case of the calculator, and maybe in the case of other apps, that a way better compromise could be made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > As an interface designer I am often asked to design a "better" interface to > some product. Usually one can be designed such that, in terms of learning > time, eventual speed of operation (productivity), decreased error rates, and > ease of implementation it is superior to competing or the client's own > products. Even where my proposals are seen as significant improvements, they > are often rejected nonetheless on the grounds that they are not intuitive.

> It is a classic "catch 22." The client wants something that is significantly > superior to the competition. But if superior, it cannot be the same, so it > must be different (typically the greater the improvement, the greater the > difference). Therefore it cannot be intuitive, that is, familiar. What the > client usually wants is an interface with at most marginal differences that, > somehow, makes a major improvement. This can be achieved only on the rare > occasions where the original interface has some major flaw that is remedied > by a minor fix.

\--Jef Raskin

</comment><comment><USER7> Amusingly, the interface Marco points out as not having any real-world equivalent is actually fairly close (barring lack of keypad) to what my Casio scientific calculator does - calculation history, variable references, editing and all. The inability of most bundled calculator applications to live up to a £15 pocket calculator has been a source of frustration for me for quite some time - it's not that the calculators fail by replicating a real-world object; it's that they fail by not replicating the _right_ one :)

</comment><comment><USER8> It is funny, when injection molded plastics were first introduced, companies tried to make them replicate the look of knotty pine wood. Then some Italian designers got to them and showed off the intrinsic beauty of plastic (organic forms, translucence) paving the way for designs like the iMac. Seems like the same thing is happening with iPlatform apps.

I think the super literal interface metaphor is a symptom of people responding to polished aesthetics. For years designers have had to work in the handcuffs of cross browser compliance, small file sizes, and as a result most sites look boring.

Along comes the iPhone with these little app confections that are:

\- single purpose: so they don't need cluttered nav and work really well

\- replicating physical objects: so the metaphors generally make sense opposed to say a tag cloud

\- Were made by Mac enthusiasts: Who tend to make really nice looking stuff

Now a lot of folks are thinking that the key to good apps is making it look like/replicate some real world object. While this is part of these apps appeal it is just one layer.

I think if the delicious monster/panic/icon factory teams got a hold of the calculator he was holding up as a great design it would be far more popular. It looks impressive functionally and he is right that we shouldn't be beholden to old technical constraints. It is just a boring from a UI/Eye candy POV which is important in a retail world.

</comment><comment><USER9> His preferred calculator seems fairly close to using ipython which is what I would do.

<comment><USER10> I use a python REPL as my calculator. I went through many different apps until it hit me that was what I wanted.

<comment><USER9> The main thing the calculator program seems to have over python is easy unit conversions.

Also, I have to admit that python 2's default behavior regarding integer division is not what one expects from a calculator (I expect 3/2 = 1.5).

<comment><USER11> Instacalc.com might be closer to what you want.

<comment><USER12> I ran across instacalc.com when looking for linux equivalents of soulver -- very nice web app.

<comment><USER13> Awesome, glad you're enjoying it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You need to be used to typing formulas into a computer (^ and sqrt and so on) to use the non-physical calculator. Most people aren't. Sure, it's easy enough to learn, but the average user opens his OS calculator probably only a few times a year. He gets what he is used to and that's probably a good idea. Slow to work with but no learning required.

If you need a calculator regularly you should probably get something different. You wouldn't write a novel with TextEdit or WordPad.

By the way, there is a much better way to do quick and dirty calculations which doesn't require you to fire up the Calculator. Try Spotlight. And not just simple arithmetic. Try sqrt(2) or e^2 or sin(pi/2). Good enough for my very occasional calculatory needs. So, in a way, OS X offers best of both worlds, but some bells and whistles (which you might not need anyway) may be missing.

<comment><USER15> Spotlight failed on e^2...

Pretty cool, though. I've long known about Spotlight's dictionary definitions, but had no idea it could perform calculations.

<comment><USER16> It didn't fail for me. And +1 for spotlight calculator. It's SO fast and always there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looking at his preferred calculator, I really see no visual cues of what functions are supported. Is it a simple calculator or does it do complex formulas. The normal OS X calculator acts like the physical object and gives the clues of a physical object. This is not to say I think the translation of a physical object is the best solution, but I really think that some better visual hints need to be given then just a blank document for new users.

The page turning Apple built seems to me the right way to go because it is simple gesture we grasp instinctively, the content is paged, and it looks good.

We can do so much better then physical objects on computers (look at the interface to many puzzle games), but it really needs to assist the new users and get out of the way of the old.

<comment><USER18> "Looking at emacs, I really see no visual cues of what functions are supported..."

<comment><USER19> Don't you think that is a good thing?

<comment><USER18> Yes, it's a very good thing.

Guys, I'm an emacs lover. I was just trying to nullify the argument against Soulver that the parent brought up by making an analogy to emacs which also has most of the functionnality hidden and yet is super great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When making instacalc I had some of the same issues -- why do we emulate the existing calculator with its limitations?

I feel spreadsheets are the other extreme of interface overload -- way too much power. There's nothing in between (you get 1 editable field with calc.exe, and hundreds of thousands in Excel).

In my own usage I want to optimize the 90% use case, like an interactive "back of the envelope":

* Real-time editing & results

* Show the few calculations I care about at once (both question and answer)

* Ignore gritty programming details (does variable case matter? Do _spaces_ matter? Why can't a name be "net sales = 3")

* Make difficult conversions easy ("15 cows/day in minutes per cow").

There's always tradeoffs between familiarity & forging a new direction.

<comment><USER20> Spreadsheets strike me as way too much _abstraction_ , rather than power. Both for most users, however. They're also generally quite poor abstraction, IMO, as relational connections are often very hard to show without being way over the average proficient user's skill level, and spending a lot more time creating a pretty display sheet rather than leaving it all in rows & columns.

That said, a lot of that is because people abuse Excel _horribly_ , to do everything and wash the dishes and walk the dog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just use the Google search-bar up over there on the right.

<comment><USER22> The Google search bar is an excellent calculator, because it understands words too. You can do "50 million * 3%" and it will answer "one million five hundred thousand". That's easier to interpret than a whole bunch of zeros. It also interprets units "20 mph * 3 hours" = "96.56064 kilometers". "20 mph * 3 hours as miles" = "60 miles". Also the auto-suggest feature completes calculations so you don't even need to hit enter.

<comment><USER23> Instacalc is another good one.

<http://instacalc.com/>

<comment><USER22> Nice. I just turned it into a stand-alone app with Prism; now I have Soulver but free (and dependent on an internet connection). The bookmarklet is also really handy.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Glad you're finding it useful... I've contemplated turning it into a desktop app also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The only reason I can think of to make an interface that mimics a physical object is that the new interface is more likely to be instantly recognizable and intuitive to a user looking at it for the first time. In this case you're designing the interface to work best for a new user, which generally means it won't work as well for an advanced user. I would guess that designers of basic calculator apps, like the example in the post, are designing for the new or occasional user and assume that anyone doing lots of calculations will move on to something more efficient.

The problem with extending physical mimicry to more complex software is that the interface ends up adopting design compromises made for the physical world. I remember the idea of a "virtual shopping mall" where you would virtually walk through the mall, look around and pick a store to go into. But a shopping mall has to be a certain size because it has to hold a certain amount of stuff. It takes time to walk from one end of a mall to the other, but there's no reason to extend that compromise (made to gain physical space) should ever be made in software. For anything beyond a very simple application you're better off asking the user to learn a few things about how the software works and designing the interface for its medium.

</comment><comment><USER25> Slightly off topic, but I find the Python REPL to be the best calculator out there.

<comment><USER26> I never stopped using bc. Why you'd want one of those things with GUI buttons I dunno.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Whenever I see a little Mac app that's apparently quite popular and has a price attached, I can't help wondering why nobody releases a Windows version with the same price tag.

Proven market + 20x customer base = potential success?

Note to whoever jumps on this: Do it with Omnigraffle first. I'll buy the first copy!

<comment><USER28> Simple reason? They're making "enough" off the Mac version and quite frequently the people who make the well-designed clever little mac apps (see: omni, &c) have absolutely _no_ inclination to develop for Windows.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps I wasn't clear.

Why doesn't one of the smart, ambitious, young developers here at HN, who is probably looking for a side project develop an Omnigraffle or Soulver clone and start selling it? I can understand why the Omnigraffle people themselves are too busy driving expensive cars through the hills around Silicon Valley to do so themselves.

Considering how many time-waste-ish sites we see come through here in "Rate My Site" form, it's clear that there's plenty of dev-power getting squandered on a daily basis.

I've just given two concrete examples of applications that real people are paying real money to use. Personally, if I had the time I'd be spending it building WinSoulver rather than BigAssTextMessage.com.

<comment><USER29> People on Mac are more amenable to pay for software than on windows, generally speaking.

<comment><USER30> Conversion rate for BCC on Macs is nearly double that of Windows. I have always attributed it to my stunning design, rigid adherence to the HIG, and use of cutting-edge Mac-centric programming languages like Java Swing. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I noticed something about Propellerheads Reason, the old music studio program. Its interface emulates a rack of devices where you can draw cables between the ports to create a sort of modular setup. Everything is made to look like authentic hardware gear. Just like in the real world, there could only be one cable in a socket at a time, although there didn't need to be any such limitation in a software environment. Later, they kind of fixed this - <USER3> adding a separate "splitter" module which duplicates its input signal into two outputs (iirc).

<comment><USER32> The drawing cables between ports part is what works, even if the animated dangling is a little silly when they could be neatly routed.

What's terrible about those Pro Audio UIs is the arrays of fiddly little knobs arranged in the same cramped pattern they are on the hardware. They have improved the usability over the years by making the dials effectively sliders -- scrubbing on an arc is just a degenerate case of scrubbing on one axis.

The worst are plugins that have these cramped UIs but aren't representative of physical hardware -- some are worse than the worst Kay's Power Tools UIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Please note that Soulver is available for Mac and iPhone only and the full version is 20$.

<comment><USER33> I think I'll stick to bc for the time then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wholly agree with nevinera on this. That calculator is there for people who don't know another interface for calculators. Sure, there are better tools, but sometimes simplicity & mimicry are best.

For a brief side-topic, Soulver is interesting. Good in many ways, but lacking in a fair number.

For two examples, from a feature request I sent in a while ago.

1) Matrix calculation is effectively not possible, though you can fake it through massive function hacks. This means an enormous amount of the math I would've used it for simply could not be done.

2) This is a big and simple one: fractions go in, decimals come out. There's an "answers" floating palette you can pop up, but guess what. _You can't select the text_. Loads of useful information, and all you can do is _look_ at it. I requested this be changed quite over a year ago (I mean, heck, why not?), but it's still the same.

Also, the last update was _three years ago_. Barely-developed programs frighten me.

</comment><comment><USER34> Excellent ideas in the article. I think it's interesting that he mentions iPhone/iPad apps that emulate page turning. I remember when that was a popular fad for newspapers/magazines that were moving to the web. They all had to have fancy flash/java, whatever interfaces that emulated a magazine complete with page turning animations. It was the kind of thing that must have _looked_ like a million bucks when demonstrating it to the CEO, but was universally hated by actual _users_. :-)

Other good examples from the web would be the many attempts that have been made to create web based "shopping centers" and museum interfaces that would try to recreate the experience of walking through a shopping center or museum. Of course those all failed wildly because it's a hell of a lot easier to just click on a menu than to walk down a "virtual hallway". :-)

</comment><comment><USER35> I agree that physical metaphors are overused. Unfortunately, they sell software: [http://delicious- monster.com/images/librarypage/screenshots/...](http://delicious- monster.com/images/librarypage/screenshots/Delicious-Library.png)

<comment><USER33> I guess eye candy sells in general:

<http://apcmag.com/disco_public_beta__burn_baby_burn.htm>

I predict the next App Store success will be a tip calculator app with wooden side panels set on fire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Another excellent calculator (multi-platform, too): <http://www.speedcrunch.org/en_US/index.html>

By default, it has a keypad, but you can turn it off easily enough.

<comment><USER23> OT: Thank you for reminding me about this calculator. I had it installed on my old laptop and I forgot to install it on my new one. By the time I missed it, my old laptop was re-imaged and re-deployed. I could not remember its name and my google-fu was failing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> In that Tandy Trower article about Windows, he mentions including simple apps like a calculator and what not, to show off _what the UI toolkit is capable of_ , not necessarily as useful end-user productivity tools (though those, in the form of Write and Paint, would eventually be added).

It seems we've inherited the calculator app because that's what everyone has always done before.

Also, digital cameras _do_ make fake shutter sounds...

</comment><comment><USER38> Oh man that looks cool I can't wait to try it. I'm a hedge fund accountant and I would love a way to keep a trail of calculations open like that. A lot of times when I'm doing tricky Sherlock Holmes reconciliations a spreadsheet is total overkill and too confining.

Thanks for posting, swombat! New item on my TODO.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think the guy in "The Essentials of User Interface Design" says the same thing somewhere in that book.

</comment><comment><USER40> Since we're on the topic of calculators ...

Is there something like Soulver or Speedcrunch, but also handles unit conversions a la google calculator?

instacalc is OK, but doesn't handle units properly either.

edit: www.encalc.com seems to do units right, but allowing only one expression at a time is limiting.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yeah great, we just needed some "dc/bc" clone in a window at 19.95$. I agree with the interface mistake, not with the product...

Use dc or bc!

</comment><comment><USER42> The calculator app is much more intuitive than some text app for general users, just like the finder is much more intuitive than the terminal.</comment>


Gitualize – Like YouTube for GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://gitualize.com <comment><USER2> Looks like the site is down. [http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/gitualize.com](http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/gitualize.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> The site is back up. Sorry for the interruption.

<comment><USER3> If I enter a public Github repo and click on Gitualize, its taking forever to load. Don't know what is wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry to hear that. Can I ask which repo you are requesting so I can try to reproduce the problem?

<comment><USER3> Sorry. I checked in the Network tab of the chrome developer tools. I'm behind a proxy server. So it is not loading. No problem with the website or the application :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This would be better with a slider control / scrubber handle for the timeline bar, beyond just the play/pause control.

Like Perforce Time Lapse: [http://www.perforce.com/resources/tutorials/using- time-lapse...](http://www.perforce.com/resources/tutorials/using-time-lapse- view-2) but online.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. That feature is on our todo list, and I agree that it will add a lot once it is complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was thinking this would use [https://code.google.com/p/gource/](https://code.google.com/p/gource/)

Now I'm thinking it definitely should even if its just an extra feature.

</comment><comment><USER6> this is pretty cool. Sped through some good ruby engines that I follow and learned that the first 20 commits were tests. nice way to learn programming practices.

</comment><comment><USER7> Down again.

</comment><comment> V-2 Still down.</comment>


Three new physics experiments could revamp the standard model - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-particle-physics-experiments-revamp-standard-model <comment><USER2> They use physics grad students to build the wiring assemblies for the detectors?! And they work?

<comment><USER3> Always have always will!

<comment><USER2> Just seems like something that professionals would do! You wouldn't let an aerospace engineer wire up a flight controller, but I guess grad students are cheap :)

<comment><USER4> Grad students are actually more expensive, because they're slower and more likely to mess up than a pro would. However, you still want the grad students to do it.

A successful experimental physicist needs to have a deep feeling for how their experimental apparatuses work, _including_ all the grungy real-world details that theoretical models don't cover.

You get that feeling by building and using the tools, and since the point of being a grad student is to learn how to be a successful experimental physicist, they've got to be the ones who build the tools!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Web designer for side project? - <AUTHOR>

I've got a side project that really could do with a new design, generally I would butcher a themeforest design however there really aren't any suitable ones due to the type of website, so I suppose my only option is to get one custom made.
I'm a bit adverse to places like oDesk/Freelancer as it's hard to judge how good someone is, also there isn't a massive budget at it's only a hobby with very little traffic/revenue.
Any suggestions would be great :)
The website is quite similar in content/style to that of stackoverflow, hence why most of the templates out there just don't really match up. <comment><USER2> Meeet[0] was made for this.

[0] [http://meeet.co/](http://meeet.co/)

</comment><comment><USER3> you can try deviant art and freebbble, both sites also have a lot of "ui freebie" or "ui kit" that u can just build about pretty much anything with...</comment>


Underwriters and Short Sellers Manipulate Share Prices - <AUTHOR> https://thefinancialoligarchs.com/2020/03/14/hmny/ <comment><USER3> I've read this twice, can anyone actually point out where the article links short sellers and share price manipulation?

The closest thing I can see is that the shorts are accused of closing their short position by acquiring shares in a secondary offering, which not only is legal, but also a smart thing to do if you think the offering is priced high and you're short.

<comment><USER4> I don't blame you, the author miss uses the term short sellers in the beginning then uses it correctly later on. Which is confusing, initially they use the term to mean "any investor selling their shares of stock" which is annoying.

Then later they use it correctly WRT a firm needing to buy the shares they sold back to give them back to the original lender, which I assume in this case is Charles Schwab.

All in all, this article seems like a rough draft and needs to be proof read. I was REALLY critical and had to really focus to squeeze meaning out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What exactly is this part supposed to mean?

"There's something about the look on the guys face on the right though. Something that just kinda….rubs you the wrong way..You seeing what I'm seeing?"

This is so weirdly written with all sorts of random asides that makes it hard to take seriously/understand what the point is.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Bears who only consider the math of the business model as it stands today, either don't understand what makes a good investment or have ulterior motives"

not quoting the author, but fuck off.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it might be a great business model for movie theaters to offer themselves. This would be true especially if their gains from selling subscriptions (and from selling food) outperforms their marginal loss on opening up more shows in theaters. I think the margin loss on opening up shows should be quite low, assuming real estate and buying permission to screen movies be the main cost. I believe the marginal cost of more shows - <USER2> employees to clean up the seats, manage crowds (including entry / ticket checking), and wear and tear of seats might be relatively lower.

The business model just doesn't make sense if you're buying seats at a high cost from cinema theaters, and selling subscription passes. The trump card here would be to get movie chains to offer unlimited seats on your platform in return for a high percentage of the subscription fee. Negotiation skills matter!

</comment><comment><USER7> Very annoying font size.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I ended up using reader mode but somehow all of the pictures got shifted by 1 paragraph. Sill better than the original layout

<comment><AUTHOR> were you using a desktop or a phone?

<comment><USER8> Ubuntu 18.04

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is about MoviePass, by the way. I don't blame them for trying it. This same model seems to be working out great for car wash subscriptions.

Apparently a lot more people are willing to squeeze the most possible value out of watching new movies in the theater than out of getting their cars washed, though. In hindsight, it seems obvious that the former has more pull, but maybe this was not as clear before.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've followed Bitcoin for a while. What seemed to happens there was the deliberate manipulation of the price using all means available (ads, etc.) The result was a few winning big.

I have no reason to believe the same doesn't happen on the real stock market.

<comment><USER11> 3 big differences on the "real" stock market: the professionals are more sophisticated, it's incredibly regulated & litigated, it's vastly bigger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very angry, but somewhat interesting.</comment>


Google's library for dealing with phone numbers (Java/JavaScript) - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/libphonenumber/

<comment><USER2> Somewhat unrelated, but I've grown to dislike the Skype addon for Firefox because of its phone number recognition. It gets far too many false positives. Even numbers several digits short of being a phone number are often mistaken as one, throwing off the formatting of the page.

<comment><USER3> It's worse on the iPhone! It's hard to tell if a number is a genuine hyperlink or something the iPhone has recognised as a phone number.

<comment><USER4> Just tap and hold, you'll see which in about a second.

<comment><USER3> I know, but I'm lazy and I'd like to be able to know by looking at a link instead of tapping and holding each number for a few seconds (and then pressing the cancel button if it's a phone number).

<comment><USER4> Apple could put a little phone icon to the left or right of the auto-generated links. In my usage though phone numbers are very rarely linked (where would they go?), so when I see a linked one on an iOS device I assume it will trigger a phone call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now I feel bad for not posting it here as well (I posted it on reddit a few days ago: [http://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/et5az/libphonenumber_g...](http://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/et5az/libphonenumber_googles_common_java_library_for/) ) :(

I often avoid posting java links to HN, thinking that the HN community is more focused on Rails / node.js / python. Guess I should reconsider :)

Funny how this intangible karma stuff affects me :)

<comment><AUTHOR> And I regret not blogging about it on my personal blog and linking that here to generate traffic and potential subscribers there. LOL.

Of course, it may not have actually been a wasted opportunity as the (google.com) URL part of the title probably accounts for a large percentage of clicks.

P.S. I upvoted your comment to generate a little more karma as compensation.

<comment><USER5> Hehe. Not sure you should do that though (according to the HN guidelines, one should submit the original source) ;)

Thanks for the upvote, that's kind of you!

In retrospect, I shouldn't have "whined" in my previous comment. As the Facebook quote goes ("If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook"): had I wanted to post this on HN, I would have posted it on HN!

I'll try to post more links in the future (Java or otherwise), and stop trying to anticipate their success according to some pre-conceived notion of what the HN crowd likes: if I think it is interesting, someone else might like it as well ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found this today whilst I was looking for a solution to standardised formatting of phone numbers. I was hoping for a ruby solution, but this is an extremely complete library supporting formatting and validation for 228 countries/regions.

<comment><USER6> How much work would it take to make a complete ruby port?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well... habermann24 (<https://github.com/habermann24/libphonenumber-ruby>) looks like he's started on a ruby port and he also has his phoney library which doesn't appear to use the same dataset and doesn't work properly for Australia.

I am planning on just using the Java version with JRuby - it will probably be faster than a pure ruby version anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've looked around and haven't found a PHP port of this.

Given the usefulness of this library, I've been inspired to give it a go: <http://github.com/damncabbage/libphonenumber-php>

(Java --> PHP is tough going. Come back in a month. ;) )

</comment><comment><USER8> This would be good for Twilio, which doesn't have any phone number validation methods in its libraries.

<comment><USER9> That always struck me as an odd omission.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, when you think about the amount of data collection required to reach this level of coverage I don't blame a smallish start-up like Twilio for not having a library.

After all, if you want to test to see if a number is valid, try and call it.

<comment><USER10> It's a daunting amount to approach, but it rarely takes more than an hour or two per country. I've been doing something similar for my current project, because I want to take phone numbers in national form and show them in both international and national forms.

<comment><USER11> So if you need to handle the 228 countries this lib handle, you _only_ need 228 to 556 hours of work ...

<comment><USER10> Well, given that I'm taking longer than that to collect my data for each country, it seems like a bargain!

<comment><USER12> This stuff is non-trivial. I'll guess that I have spent in excess of 50 hours working on just the UK data in the last couple of months.

The problem is this. Although there are hundreds of websites with UK area code lists, almost all of them are either incorrect, out of date, full of typos, or are generally unreliable. Even lists from "official" sources cannot be relied on with any degree of certainty. The obvious errors are easy to find and correct. It took a long time to find out there were many non-obvious errors and there are likely more errors still to be uncovered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fun fact: The swiss phone number they use in the example apparently is the phone number of Google's Swiss Office in Zürich.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have been looking for similar lib in C\C++.

</comment><comment><USER10> Awesome! I'm currently working on a project to deal with all sorts of phone numbers in bulk. I've already duplicated some of this in my own way, but I think it might come in handy for the rest.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is pretty cool -- how do they deal with changes to the metadata, like when a country has a new code?

<comment><USER12> A code review tool is used to propose changes to the code and metadata and to review and comment on proposed changes.

When everyone is in agreement, the internal Google version is updated with the proposed changes.

Once testing is complete, the java code and metadata is pushed to the public version.

The final steps are to produce the javascript port, and on a less regular basis the .jar file in the "downloads" section is also updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> invalid country code for 994 (Azerbaijan) tried both with 00 and without

<comment><USER17> <http://code.google.com/p/libphonenumber/issues/entry>

<comment><USER16> thanks</comment></comment></comment>


Why Are New York City's Streets Always Under Construction? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/18/nyregion/new-york-101-streets-repair-and-maintenance.html <comment><USER2> As an engineer who has worked in both the design and construction side of utility work in NYC, allow me to explain why utilities are such a big problem. Every utility not owned and operated by the city or MTA must pay the city for use of their right of way, meaning streets and sidewalks, in between property lines. If a utility were to operate within outside of the right of way in private property they would have to pay the property owner to use the land As an easement.

A utility company has an agreement with city and pays the city on those terms to move the facility when told to do so at own cost (gas lines are exempt because they are international lines). It also must pay contractors when working near those lines for the discomfort they cause.

Utilities don't just have conduits or pipes running down, but also manholes and chambers, and some of them are huge. I once came across a 90' x 60' x 40' underground substation. These chambers cause other utilities to avoid them by switching lanes and going to the sides. These switches cause greater infrastructure density, or more pipes in an area.

For places like manhattan, telephone company requires more conduits and wires in every street than any where else. Some companies insist in a conduit just for themselves, like Amazon AWS to run their own services. Parallel to that are electric lines that require large pipes for the huge area it serves. Same goes for gas main and the next annoyance e.g. Steam, which is difficult to move around.

If the city were to come and build something, pretty much everyone has to move things around. This is what causes a significant spaghetti buildup. Eventually, it becomes virtually impossible to locate or record location of everything. Add to that the age of records and the frequent loss of records.

Designing utilities is an art of patience. Constructing around them is far worse. Recording them is poorly done. I was very peculiar about accuracy of records but even I had to sometimes wing it. And I am pretty sure few take the time to painstakingly record and draw stuff like I did.

Problems like this make me imagine that all utilities should be placed vertically in a chamber easily accessible and maintainable. But that is naive.

<comment><USER3> That explains a bit but it doesn't explain why manhattan's streets are so much more fucked up than cities of comparable size and complexity elsewhere, many of which are much older.

<comment><USER4> I was taken aback by the state of the roads in NYC when I first visited. How on earth can a country so in love with cars not have their roads in better condition? The condition of footpaths wasn't much better. Especially horrible was trying to avoid stepping in the pool of stinky fluid that leaks out of the trash baskets on the corners of intersections.

Still loved the place though! :)

<comment><USER5> Because cars are second class citizens in NY.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The street outside near my apartment has been under constant construction during the entire 5 years I've lived there. They literally tear open the same part of the street multiple times, and cover it back up again, only to tear it open again, etc.

One day I asked one of the workers why they keep tearing open the same part of the road, why couldn't they just replace everything that is broken in one go?

He told me that they often do find and fix the problems, but sometimes they can't find them and give up, or sometimes they do and only kind of fix them. Other times they do fix the problem, only to have another in the same area. He also said sometimes an electric guy will mess up the plumbing, etc. And they aren't allowed to touch and telecom stuff. He said that sometimes some crews will just cut out his work, or cut into their pipes, drill and bolt into their pipes or riggings, causing leaks, etc.

I'm sure at some level this keeps these guys busy but its a wonder we haven't been able to come up with some kind of better system or way of doing things in all these years.

<comment><USER7> I find interesting that you could read what the worker said as a metaphor to software development.

And if a worker were to look at how some code changes just looking at the files modified, he would probably notice that we keep tearing open and modifying the same piece of code many times, he might ask why can't we just fix all the bugs at once.

<comment><USER8> Imho, that is not a good metaphor, because all streets are basically the same, whereas software is always very different (and way more complicated).

<comment><USER9> That sounds a little bit like a software developer's bubble to me!

Yeah, most software is a bit more complex than underground utilities. But the latter are far from the same, and I'd argue it's actually much more difficult to prod, examine and debug what's going on underneath an active roadway than it is to debug a bit of software, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm in NYC currently attending a tech meetup. I received an Apple alert telling me that traffic was heavy and to allow for 40 minutes. Yet, I was able to arrive in 15 mins by subway: two stops express from 96th st to 42nd st. Then transfer local 4 stops.

<comment><USER11> While the world may seem to center around Manhattan, some people start their trips in savage lands like Queens.

Others find the prospect of standing on a hot crowded train that runs late and smells like urine less appealing.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, and the tokens are a frigging hassle!

I assume you have not ridden the subway in decades.

<comment><USER11> Just last week. It was like 120 degrees and awful.

Travel-wise, It was the best option for me, but I totally sympathize with anyone wishing to avoid the experience.

<comment><USER7> 120 degrees in the train or on the platform? The trains have usually A/C, and if not, you can report it.

I commute on the 8 ave line every day and I've never been on a train without A/C.

<comment><USER13> Oh, it happens. Not often, sure, but you will experience it one day. The first sign is that everyone else will immediately turn upon entering the carriage, just like they do if some homeless person is using it as their personal toilet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 'peek and shriek' is great and totally describes some of the stuff I have to deal with at work too

</comment><comment><USER15> tl;dr. Because there are a ton of them. There is a ton of stuff below them. And there is a ton of stuff above them.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder about the breakdown of pothole causes. Yes, Nature's way will cause potholes and they will naturally expand if not rectified.

But then I think about the construction crew down the street from me, in Philadelphia, that didn't properly fill in and tamp down the trench they dug for a new sewer line. "Just fill it with some stones and dirt, and throw some Home Depot black top down on it," the foreman said, I imagine.

The thing grew, and became a gargantuan pothole. Eventually the city fixed it, and granted this probably has everything to do with the contractor in question, and I've seen larger construction companies doing things right, but I'm convinced we could eliminate a lot of potholes if crews just did the job right.

<comment><USER17> There was a case of a german geothermal company that drilled a hole down to the ground water without sealing it properly. Turns out there was a huge deposit of Anhydrit below the town. In combination with the water it formed plaster and expanded in volume causing cracks on the buildings on the surface.

[http://www.sbz- online.de/Cache/GENTNER/10024/0609-01-OPT1_Mz...](http://www.sbz- online.de/Cache/GENTNER/10024/0609-01-OPT1_MzEwNzc3Wg.JPG) [https://hausmannskost.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/risseg.jpg](https://hausmannskost.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/risseg.jpg)

<comment><USER18> The story mentioned by the parent seems to be this: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebungsrisse_in_Staufen_im_Bre...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebungsrisse_in_Staufen_im_Breisgau)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's somewhat strange to me that they have this whole article, but is't mostly just excuses for types of problems that just come from USA's perspective and actions on infrastructure... You don't see the same excuses in other places. They either fix the problem, or admit that it's not organised well enough, yet this article does neither. (as far as I understood from the text)

<comment> et-al Interesting. For me it was eye-opening because I had naïvely assumed all the construction was either for road repairs, or to build new subways; not the utility companies cutting up the road:

> But unlike Paris or Tokyo, where tubes and wires are usually bundled inside > a cavernous sewer system or tucked underneath sidewalks, much of New York's > underground infrastructure lies within five feet of the asphalt surface.

> Last year, the [transportation department] issued 223,271 permits, about > half of them to utility companies.

What do you propose that they do, though? Ideally we'd build a utility-only tunnel like Paris or Tokyo, but there's no space. You have the subway further underneath, and the sidewalks have basements.

Without a massive overhaul requiring eminent domain or a fire, the only solutions are better construction techniques, which they're looking into.

<comment><USER20> I always thought an elevated road like computer flooring for access. It would be a massive project, you'd have to step up to cross the street, and you'd still need access to the road below for the older, unmovable stuff. Either way, not happening, too much scope.

It falls back on evolving into something like the movie 'Brazil' with all of the ductwork ;)

<comment><USER21> this is essentially the story you will hear on the "Seattle Underground" tour. Instead of raising the city like they did in Chicago[0], Seattle built taller streets[1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground)

<comment><USER20> Wow, I didn't know about the Seattle Underground. Very cool. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I highly recommend Kate Ascher's "The Works: The Anatomy of a City" if you are fascinated by underground and other workings.

[https://www.amazon.com/Works-Anatomy-City-Kate- Ascher/dp/014...](https://www.amazon.com/Works-Anatomy-City-Kate- Ascher/dp/0143112708)

<comment><USER23> Good book, but too NYC-centric for my taste. OTOH, that made everything pretty concrete.

Another great book is "Underground" by David Macaulay. Beautiful, breathtaking drawings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am thinking it is a bit like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which has been continuously painted since it was built... The work crews when they get to the end of the bridge simply go back to the other end and start again... :)

EDIT: Just clarifying that it is not as simple as starting at one end and painting to the other and back again - simply that I have heard that there is always someone with a paintbrush or spray hose somewhere on the bridge working away.

<comment><USER25> They say the same thing about the Ben Franklin Bridge here in Philly. I don't know if it's true, but it is under some amount of perpetual work.

<comment><USER26> A few weeks (months?) ago, I started setting my old iPhone up to do time lapse videos, and once or twice noticed some kind of maintenance tram running between the two towers: [https://vimeo.com/179417477](https://vimeo.com/179417477)

<comment><USER25> Nice! Also you don't live too far from me :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Did anyone else click on the Empire City Subway link in the Article? This organization has intrigued me since I learned about them. You don't see their trucks often and when you do they are very low key looking, matte grey, simple block letters. They have nothing to do with the subway. Anyway if you missed it:

"Empire City Subway Company (ECS) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon that specializes in subsurface engineering and construction services. Since 1891, ECS has held a franchise from the City of New York to build and maintain a conduit and manhole infrastructure in Manhattan and the Bronx. ECS rents this space to telecommunications and cable television service providers."

If you want to run fiber in in either of those boroughs you need to pay Verizon. Kind of odd that a public asset is controlled by a private company. Its basically a shadow company. A 125 year old franchise?

<comment><USER28> It's not an atypical arrangement (though, usually it's more likely that the power company owns the conduits rather than the telephone company). Those arrangements arose because the city doesn't want to get into the business of building and maintaining conduits. ECS provides non-discriminatory access to conduits at public rates: [http://www.empirecitysubway.com/ratesbill.html](http://www.empirecitysubway.com/ratesbill.html). They charge Verizon the same rates as anyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just wonder, why do people in NYC bother to use cars? Bikes, subway and taxis are not enough?

<comment><USER30> No.

1\. NYC is _BIG_. It's 304 square miles, which is about 17 by 17 miles. There are many places where biking is too far.

2\. Subways, in contrast to popular opinion, don't go everywhere. Mainly, unless you live in Manhattan, or that's the only place where you want to go, the Subway system is quite lousy. Going from the airport to Coney Island takes an hour and a half by subway (according to Google), rather than half an hour by car. Now what happens if you have what to do in Queens, Far Rockaway, or NJ?

3\. Expensive and no point. Due to #2, most NYers have to have a car, if at least for those off days when they want to leave the city or what. Once you have the car, driving it is much cheaper than taxi.

<comment><USER12> 17 miles is not a long bike ride unless you do not bike. 90min at a slow 11mph pace. A lot of people do 90min commutes. Scary car traffic is a much bigger reason people do not bike such routes, not distance.

That said, for such distances a moped or ebike could be much faster, while still evading gridlock that would slow a car.

<comment><USER31> It's 17x17 miles in a straight line, something that is impossible given the geography of the city and its waterways. I just picked a random cross borough trip from the Aquarium to Yankee Stadium and the shortest bike-traversable route is 22.3 miles despite the 2 locations being just 17.7 miles apart as the crow flies. That is a pretty straight route as well.

<comment><USER12> More to the point, the average NYC car trip goes under 3 miles, the length of a pleasant 11 to 18 minute bike ride.

It is OK to use more than one mode!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So, does anyone know how this compares to other cities?

Because over here in the UK (especially in London), it feels like there's a never ending stream of roadworks being done at any one point in time. Heck, the roads themselves look like a patchwork quilt made of whatever pieces of asphalt and cement were lying around that week.

So any comparisons? Is New York worse than other cities of a comparable size? In the US or abroad?

</comment><comment><USER33> If there is one person I would like to meet in the world, it is the NYC Subway Dispatcher. When you are on the subway, he/she never carries good news. It always starts like this...

"Ladies and gentlemen: We are being held momentarily by the train's dispatcher..."

<comment><USER34> The "Ladies and gentlemen, we are being held momentarily" is not the dispatcher, it's an automated message and is the voice of Charlie Pellett ([http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-most- recog...](http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-most-recognizable- voice-in-new-york)).

<comment><USER33> I know it's not the dispatcher himself. The voice, however, often says we are being held up by the dispatcher and we will be moving shortly.</comment></comment></comment>


The new Python Cookbook is out  - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Python-Cookbook-David-Beazley/dp/1449340377/

<comment><USER2> The Python Cookbook has been a great resource in both of the previous editions. I've been following Dave's pain in writing this on twitter, so I have no doubt that this one will be the same. This is a "must have" on any python hacker's bookshelf!

<comment><USER3> Is this a good book for someone that uses the language for quite some time, but never studied it deeply?

I'm looking for something like 'Effective C++' (but for Python of course): a collection of recipes and good practices that would allow an experienced programmer make a better use of the language.

<comment><USER4> Martelli's Python in a nutshell is the best I have seen on python. Not a cookbook, more of a reference, but this guy is extremely precise and rereading is always deepening my understanding of python.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, the most recent edition only covers 2.4 & the at-the-time proposed 2.5.

The best equivalent now is the language reference at python.org.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations to David Beazley!

</comment><comment><USER7> A bit strange that it costs $28.91 on Amazon.com but £38.50 on Amazon.co.uk.

<comment><USER8> There's an app for that. <http://www.cheapriver.com/#?q=python%20cookbook>

<comment><USER9> Or just go to bookdepository.

Seeing it for ~€30, which is ~£25

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I write a lot of code in C# and am just starting to learn how to use the latest async tools in the language. There are now built-in parallel sorting implementations [1]. So I looked for similar recipes in this book. I see on page 512 something called ProcessPoolExecutor() which looks promising...

1\. <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd460688.aspx>

</comment><comment> brown9-2 O'Reilly is selling the ebook for more than Amazon is selling the print book: <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920027072.do>

<comment><USER11> And they are pretentious enough to say "Save a tree - Go digital"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love Python's philosophy. But i always prefer Rails for my web projects. Maybe i'm addicted to Ruby and Rails. Could someone show me the way to be additecd to Python ?

<comment><USER2> Use pyramid. It's exceptionally well designed. It has very sensible defaults out of the box, but literally everything about the framework is swappable if you need it to be.

I can't comment on rails, but I spent quite a long time with django before switching to repoze-bfg (pyramid's previous name). In my experience you don't hit the same wall that you tend to with django when you need to step off the the common path.

</comment></comment><comment> jam-python Just ordered this, based on the previous editions feedback.

</comment><comment><USER13> Affiliate linked I see.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know this was something you weren't supposed to do. Seriously, if I could delete this link, I would.

If this is a problem, I'll donate all proceeds to the charity of your choice. I'll post images of how much is earned.

<comment><USER2> That's very kind. I have a better suggestion though: How about you distribute the proceeds in proportion to the total points of authors with upvoted posts suggesting that people go any buy the book? My comment above has two points already!

Even better - the algorithm you write could go into the 4th edition of the Cookbook :-)

P.S. Everyone should go any buy the book. (I want this comment to count too!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea, but it turns out to be not that much was to be had by the amount of grief and shame I've accumulated: just $66.66 so far.

I seriously need to write down a list of "unwritten rules that get you spanked". :P</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pursuing the Next Level of Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/technology/03koller.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin <comment><USER2> Article content is pretty empty, other than saying she uses statistics. Any pointers to her papers?

<comment><USER3> "Article content is pretty empty, other than saying she uses statistics. Any pointers to her papers?"

<http://ai.stanford.edu/~koller/papers.cgi>

enjoy!

<comment><USER2> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=180047>

</comment><comment><USER5> >After three decades of disappointments, artificial intelligence researchers are making progress.

Do you think AI progress is going to continue accelerating for a while?

<comment><USER6> Old-style AI solved a few of the "smart" things that people do, such as playing chess and proving (simple) mathematical theorems. I predict that new- style AI will solve a few of the "dumb" things that people do, such as keeping our balance and getting a visual sense of our 3d location and orientation.

The difficult part will continue to be those areas where we're not just doing combinatorics and we're not just doing statistics. The meaning of a sentence is formed both by the grammar, which is nearly combinatorial, and by the meanings and connotations of the words used, which are hardly combinatorial at all. I doubt that this sort of thing will just fall out from bayesian networks, or from any simple development based on bayesian networks.

<comment><USER7> Language will be difficult for quite some time due to its links with culture and the fact that it is always evolving and cross polinating between languages.

I don't believe there's any way to solve that without an AI that can actually learn and drive it's own understanding by observing and interacting with its environment both physically and through mimicry.

<comment><USER8> "Language will be difficult for quite some time due to its links with culture and the fact that it is always evolving and cross polinating between languages."

How much trouble do you have understanding things written in English 100 years ago? 400? 800? Older works require footnotes, but they don't introduce new verbal _concepts_ \-- you can footnote Chaucer in modern English, and I suspect that a Chaucer scholar would be able to describe modern concepts by building on old ideas -- there isn't a discontinuity where you have some concept that simply cannot be linked to the words Chaucer would have used.

So the problem is not that language changes too fast.

<comment><USER2> I think what he is saying is that the generation and extraction of concepts requires context that language may or may not provide. If you think about the approach of AI with language, it is almost the opposite of how humans learn: presentation of grammatics/language first and the extraction of concepts from this, whereas humans learn basic concepts of reality before speaking, and language is a partial representation of what they know.

<comment><USER8> That's true, but it's not at all what he said. He argued that language is a hard problem because it's linked with culture, and always changing. I think this is incorrect, because it doesn't stop humans from picking up second languages or from understanding older texts in their native languages. The hard part is whatever loop humans have that translates sentences into concepts -- not the loop that uses one sentence-concept chunk to link a new sentence to a new concept. That's in the library, not the interpreter.

<comment><USER2> _That's true, but it's not at all what he said_

What he implied from culture, I took to mean a polymorphic mapping of "sentences" or "units of communication" in a given understood context that can be learned only through experience.

 _it doesn't stop humans from picking up second languages or from understanding older texts in their native languages_

It doesn't stop them, but it is far from trivial to learn a new language or to even resolve syntactic,lexical, or sematic ambiguity without context, even in a native speakers language: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity>. The ill- posed nature of this mapping is not static, and for people not speaking their native language or young children this becomes the basis for some forms of comedy.

As far as I know we have no generic grammar that can generate the rules for all languages; there is no universal "interpreter", and it is not certain that "concept" can be decoupled from "phrase" or "sentence" without context, so I don't think your separation of "library" and "interpreter" holds.

<comment><USER7> That is in fact much closer to what I was thinking. The cultural context is important when it comes to understanding the less formal common grammar we humans tend to use more frequently and which is littered throughout the Internet.

We can understand 400, 800, etc year old text, but one of the first things you'll notice is the language has terminology and informal phrases that may die off, live on, or evolve over the years. Toss in ambiguity, metaphores, double entendres, etc and it's not as simple. Perfect example would be Shakespeare. His style is rife with creative linguistic twists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> is it true most AI was based on logic stuff? no wonder it failed. it's like making a building out of iron legos and wondering why it isn't flexible

<comment><USER7> For a good read on the subject of AI and how humans think check out the book OnIntelligence by Jeff Hawkins. It covers some about the previous attempts at AI and why they failed.

[http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff- Hawkins/dp/080507456...](http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff- Hawkins/dp/0805074562)

<comment><USER4> That book is in my top 5 favorite books ever!

<comment><USER10> I keep hearing about this book. Can anybody tell me if it is a pseudo- scientific look at the topic? I don't mean this in a particularly negative way. Rather, what I mean is does it put forth a lot of as-yet unsubstantiated claims perhaps backed up with some hand-waving analysis?

<comment><USER11> The book is great. His criticisms are spot-on.

His proposed solution is bold, but as of yet, unproven. It's probably wrong, and in a way, he admits to that in the book (he says we'll need a lot of changes).

If you get bored on chapters 6, skip it.

<comment><USER12> I second the recommendation of skipping chapter 6 - when I read this comment I went to check where my bookmark is because I had gotten bored while re- reading, and it was near the start of chapter 6 ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11>
      "My husband still berates me for not
      having jumped on the Google bandwagon at the beginning,"
      she said. Still, she insists she does not regret her
      decision to stay in academia. "I like the freedom to
      explore the things I care about," she said.

That seems a bit silly. Given the computational infrastructure available at Google, it would seem that it's the only place where one would be free to try all kinds of ideas unavailable elsewhere. If she's as brilliant as they make her seem, I'm sure they'll let her work on whatever she wants.

</comment><comment><USER13> did she invent bayesian spamfilters? i know there was ideas about it before paul graham did it.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.paulgraham.com/better.html> The footnotes here cite earlier work, as does the referenced Slashdot article.</comment></comment>


NASA's New Horizons Discovers Frozen Plains in the Heart of Pluto's 'Heart' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-new-horizons-discovers-frozen-plains-in-the-heart-of-pluto-s-heart <comment><USER2> Seems like this entire Pluto mission has opened up quite a few questions for Geologists. For such a small world so far from the sun, it sure has some very interesting features and characteristics. The recent mountain range photo/3D map was incredible.

We live in some exciting times. Every few months we have a new probe somewhere teaching us so much about our tiny corner of the universe.

<comment><USER3> Exciting times is a bit of a stretch. I was cutting black and white pictures from newspapers of Viking on Mars when I was a kid. 40 years later we're finally checking out Pluto.

Things will get exciting when the cost drops 100x and we're beaming back hi- def video and images 24x7 from all the planets and moons in our solar system.

Let's dream a little bigger and set the goal much higher.

<comment><USER4> Folks, I appreciate that you don't like melling's opinion here, I have problems with it too. But can we not create an echo chamber by downvoting it into oblivion? That's not what voting is for. Let him have his say, if you disagree, then post a response. The way to win an argument is not to bludgeon the opponent into silence.

<comment><USER5> On HN, it's completely appropriate to use downvote for disagreement (this has came up over and over again, but I doubt it's gonna change). Generally, I tried not to downvote for _just_ disagreement, but melling's comment is pretty much the text book sample of the middlebrow dismissal, or gratuitously negative that we try to avoid.

<comment><USER6> > On HN, it's completely appropriate to use downvote for disagreement

No. It is not appropriate at all! You reply for disagreement. You do not downvote.

Downvotes are for useless messages, flamebait, off topic, things like that.

Downvote for disagreement leads to reddit and no one wants that.

<comment><USER7> Check out what PG says about this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

<comment><USER8> I don't agree with him there, because unpopular opinions should still be expressible. The downvote allows you to suppress opinions that you don't agree with which I don't think fits with the spirit of discourse that a good community should have. If someone says something inflammatory, suppress it. If someone says something you don't agree with, disagree with it.

<comment><USER9> I agree.

Is it time we move on and form our own opinion about the use of the downvote as a community instead of always deferring by quoting pg, whilst whose values and contributions are obvious, has only posted 1 comment[1] (and no submissions[2]) since his last active day 475 days ago?[3]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pg](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pg)

[2] I do not know however if he reads or still votes on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The numerical accuracy and calculations needed for getting the spacecraft so close to Pluto must be pretty awesome. Does anyone know what the precision is on calculations like these?

Also, anyone know why the spacecraft has to do a flyby, as opposed to, say, going into orbit around Pluto? Is it because the fuel involved in slowing down the spacecraft would be forbiddingly heavy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, basically slowing down enough to orbit Pluto would have required too much extra launch weight, although the difference isn't enormous. The best candidate, a nuclear-electric propulsion system, would have approximately doubled the spacecraft's mass. This Stack Exchange question has more information: [http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9851/requirements-t...](http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9851/requirements- to-orbit-pluto)

<comment><USER11> Additionally, from the linked paper [1], it would have required a 15 year transfer phase and a more capable launcher than the Atlas V.

The report proposed using a then-unavailable Ariane 5 variant, which would have delayed the launch to 2016 (to line up the gravity assist with Jupiter) and put the final encounter with Pluto at June 2033.

[1] [http://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/doc/PRO/ACT-RPR-PRO- ISTS2004-Plut...](http://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/doc/PRO/ACT-RPR-PRO- ISTS2004-Pluto.pdf)

<comment><USER12> So basically, if we can build a new probe within the next year and a half, and if this new Arianne variant is now available, we might have a chance of sending an orbiter to reach Pluto by 2033? That sounds like an opportunity that's too good to pass up if we can pull it off.

I mean, the flyby's awesome, and it's bound to give us all sorts of new insights on the formation of the Solar System, but having a permanent orbiter there would let us continually study Pluto (and its moons), giving us that degree of information on a continuous basis.

<comment><USER13> >if we can build a new probe within the next year and a half

The amount of cost and level of precision and robustness required tends to mean that these probes take years to plan, design, build, and test. It's also far from clear that the value of the science of sending an orbiter to Pluto would outweigh other potential missions (that also wouldn't have the same timing constraints.)

<comment><USER12> Sure, though it sounds like the ESA's been planning such a probe for quite some time already. The linked report even has specifics on instrumentation payload and the mass thereof, and includes a rendering and parts list for the proposed "POP" probe. We'd just need to do the "build" and "test" parts, and while that likely would normally take a couple years, I reckon we could cram that into a year and a half with enough effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stunning.

I expected just another dusty cratered rock.

<comment><USER15> So did the scientists. In fact, the lack of craters is really suprising because it suggests that Pluto is still active, which would require a hot core. Unlike other bodies it the solar system we have observed, we cannot attribute this to tidal forces, as none of Pluto's moons are big enough [1], which means there is a currently unknown mechanism powering Pluto.

[1] And even if the big one, Charon, was, it is tidally locked in Pluto- stationary orbit.

<comment><USER16> It's probably too early to start guessing, but have scientists come up with any possible explanation for the "hot core" yet?

Could Pluto have an unusually large amount of radioactive elements in its core, despite its low density overall?

Could it have recently collided with a large KBO, melting much of the surface even though the core is long dead?

Could it have been subjected to large tidal forces relatively recently, e.g. it was much closer to Neptune until a few hundred million years ago?

<comment><USER14> > Could Pluto have an unusually large amount of radioactive elements in its > core

I heard Real Scientists mention that as a possibility. We didn't expect much radioactive material out there, but we also have very little real knowledge.

I can't be the only one hoping Pluto is shaped by Plutonium?

> Could it have recently collided with a large KBO

I like that idea. I guess a planet that is mainly ice could absorb that without showing obvious scars.

> Could it have been subjected to large tidal forces relatively recently

I think it has to have been a moon of Neptune for that to have any major effect. Don't know if that's at all feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If anybody else has the problem that the first and last word of each line is cropped, just disable the ".after-body, .article-body" css. This brings back the scroll bars.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Data from New Horizons will continue to fuel discovery for years to come."

why will it take years?

<comment><USER19> They are gathering a lot of data but their transmission speeds back to Earth are very slow. They are also including a lot of redundancy in their transmission from what I understand, since there is a several year window to transmit so they might as well use it.

<comment><USER20> Adding to that, it will take time to develop models that can explain these unexpected features! Even with all the data in hand, it may take a number of years of intense study and perhaps simulation to make a convincing case for any single explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Serious question; how would they know it's no more than 100million years old. I consider myself a some what smart guy but this is... beyond me :)

<comment><USER14> Because there are so very few craters. During the 4+ billion years we thing Pluto has been around, vastly more objects should have crashed into it.

If the surface is 100 million years or less, the number of craters makes sense.

Or we could have some other basic assumption wrong. Science has only known about this since this morning...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Where did the water come from on Pluto?

<comment><USER23> Not all of the ice is water ice. Some is methane ice, carbon monoxide ice, etc. That being said, I've definitely heard members of the New Horizons team speculating about water ice being responsible for some of the mountains they've seen and even the idea of Pluto having an internal ocean at some point.

<comment><USER15> To expand on the internal ocean point:

One of the big problems with Pluto is that we would not expect it to still be active. One of the hypothesis that has been proposed is that the heat from Pluto's formation is trapped in an internal ocean and is slowly being released as the ocean freezes.

Of course, even if this isn't what is powering Pluto, the other mechanism might still make the core hot enough for liquid water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So... can Pluto be a planet again?

</comment><comment><USER25> an image search and it comes out alot of old concrete walls... wtf? [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&imgil=5aN7IeRgNSROxM%...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&imgil=5aN7IeRgNSROxM%253A%253Be0ydH3kgOUanNM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fmxgem.com%25252Fcement- wall.html&source=iu&pf=m&tbs=simg:CAES0AEazQELEKjU2AQaAggDDAsQsIynCBpfCl0IAxInlQZTxhWWAdQHlAbRB7cB0wfSB-o31ijgIek35SfeKN4p6zfyN9coGjBp3W2RRFi4SPoHYjxHphGVCXR3FnoGj9JgOxICbwxpPTfDNBIumJiPXaigKF4GzMkMCxCOrv4IGgoKCAgBEgQLG_1RpDAsQne3BCRo- ChEKD2JsYWNrIGFuZCB3aGl0ZQoGCgR3YWxsCgcKBWZsb29yCgoKCG1hdGVyaWFsCgwKCm1vbm9jaHJvbWUM&fir=5aN7IeRgNSROxM%253A%252Ce0ydH3kgOUanNM%252C_&usg=__VO_hG5r7hi__xUqX8sBSClvYXSI%3D#imgrc=UqnRtPx3jyjxQM%3A&usg=__VO_hG5r7hi__xUqX8sBSClvYXSI%3D)

</comment><comment><USER26> What an annoying amount of crap on that page for a publicly funded website. Even the back button is hijacked.</comment>


Side project: from idea to profitable in just a few hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneurloop.com/non-app-calendar-from-idea-to-profitable-in-just-a-few-hours/

<comment><USER2> Insightful post!</comment>


Price of Sublime Text 3 upgrades revealed - <AUTHOR> http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/upgrades

<comment><USER2> A pretty fair price I am more than willing to pay for what helps me do my day job quite well. Sublime is an amazingly simple and powerful text editor, I'll pay the #30 upgrade few when 3.0 is released shortly, it's nothing considering the amount of money it's helping me to make for freelance work and my day job.</comment>


Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459 - <AUTHOR> https://humaidq.ae/blog/qnap/ <comment><USER2> RAID drive fails, "I regretted installing ClamAV".

Don't regret it! It allowed you to find a drive failure before a second drive failed, and allowed you to recover your data while it was still recoverable! This is a good thing!

Archival data is a tricky problem. If you don't regularly read it, you may find that when you do need to read it, that the sector has suffered some bit rot. What's one of the most likely cases where you have to read archived data? When a hard drive fails and RAID is doing a rebuild...

So, by all means, run a ClamAV scan! Or better yet, run a ZFS scrub monthly or so. I've been a huge fan of ZFS for my archive data, mostly historic photos and Google takeout data now, because it can detect silent corruption and can do scrubs to verify and repair any hard drives sectors that have problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice. Will keep it mind when setting it up with the new drives!

<comment><USER2> Oh, my other advice is: Avoid Seagate drives. Historically, I've found Hitachi to be the most reliable, and the BackBlaze hard drive stats seem to confirm that, though they tend to have small numbers of Hitachi drives. This is because they optimize for price not reliability. I've had good luck with other brands, but I've pretty much had universally bad luck with Seagate. Last year I replaced the last of our Stagate 15K drives with SSDs because, largely, I was tired of doing warranty returns every month or two.

<comment><USER3> > _Oh, my other advice is: Avoid Seagate drives ... I 've found Hitachi to be > the most reliable ... but I've pretty much had universally bad luck with > Seagate._

Don't take this personally but this advice is fairly useless.

For every person like you, who has "found Hitachi to be the most reliable" and "had universally bad luck with Seagate", there's someone else who has the exact opposite advice.

Our opinions are shaped by our own experiences, of course, and (most of the tine) it's hard to change our minds or convince us otherwise.

The (unfortunate) truth is that there's no one brand of HDDs that really is "the best" \-- especially for all use cases! If there were, well, we'd all be using them by now and all of the other manufacturers would have already went out of business.

<comment><USER2> I would generally agree with you, but it comes from a decently sized sample set (not huge, a few thousand), but also because it seems to be backed up consistently by Backblaze's stats. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was surprised that there are very few PC cases made for small NAS. So this solution of buying a consumer product and installing FreeNAS on it makes sense.

<comment><USER5> These things are great for small NAS.

[https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/servers/proliant- microserver/proli...](https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/servers/proliant- microserver/proliant-microserver/proliant-microserver/hpe-proliant- microserver-gen10/p/1009955118)

<comment><USER6> My FreeNAS has been running for years on an older ProLiant, off a USB stick, in an Ikea desk cupboard with poor ventilation (some gaps around the front door, and a 4 inch circle drilled in the back). The only failure so far was the old USB stick, once I reinstalled and put a new stick on I could see my ZFS data again.

I should probably update the software, but I already broke it once trying that, so for now it's sitting happy as a dumping ground for files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Qnap actually has a new OS called Hero Edition that uses ZFS by default, coming in Q3.

[https://www.qnap.com/quts-hero/en/](https://www.qnap.com/quts-hero/en/)

<comment><USER8> Why not support the company that actually supports the development of ZFS instead? I don't know anything about Qnap but FreeNAS has a wealth of robust functionality. I'd be curious as to why people would prefer Qnap?

<comment><USER9> Looking at FreeNAS's page, it's all "Get Quote" nonsense for anything rack mounted. Needs a system configuration page with prices to play around with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At college I built a Linux cluster for a project and for the SAN/NAS I used XigmasNAS. It's so much smaller and less bloated than FreeNAS has become.

I had trouble configuring parts of the cluster but overall XigmaNAS worked well.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is timely!

I have a QNAP TS-251 (two drive bay model) that has been collecting dust for roughly two and a half years. Somebody was able to install a ransomware program on it, I suspect using the QSnatch[1] vulnerability. I triple pass zeroed the system storage and mothballed it.

Two months ago decided I wanted to do something with this machine again, so I bought two new Seagate IronWolf drives and installed FreeNAS (it can boot to and run from the USB 3.0 port on the back).

Is it the perfect hardware for FreeNAS? Nope - barely meets the minimum 8GB RAM requirements. But it's running as a media backup and Plex server, and doing a fantastic job at it. When I outgrow this hardware I'll certainly replace it with something I can also install FreeNAS on - consider me a happy convert.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/dvh7n2/qsnatch_malwar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/dvh7n2/qsnatch_malware_general_post_information_and/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting.

I have a TVS-471 that I run the default QNAP OS on. That said, I only use it for typical NAS workloads like:

\- serving media \- file storage \- device backup \- off-site backup

I recently started using the Hybrid Backup Station app and have been pretty impressed. I've got three jobs - Multimedia, Photos, and Archive backup. They all go to BackBlaze B2 on slightly different schedules.

Been really pleased with it. That said, I do find the UI a little clunky so I can see why the author chose an alternative for their use case.

I've got a cheap $150 NUC I use for more typical *nix server stuff that sits next to the NAS. It mostly runs an unbound DNS Forwarder for now but I plan to expand its usage further.

</comment><comment><USER13> Rather than waste time using one of the proprietary NAS systems like QNAP and Synology, why not support a system that runs and supports unmodified Linux and publishes full schematics like the upcoming Kobol64 [https://kobol.io/](https://kobol.io/)?

</comment><comment><USER14> Is that typical for QNAP to allow alternative OS installs? I know with Synology you cannot.

<comment><USER15> I have Debian running on my TS-451A for quite a while now. Except the front LEDs, everything is working completely fine. It is pretty much just a plain x86_64 PC with an UEFI firmware. The TS-251A is exactly the same but with 2 instead of 4 drive bays, as far as I know.

It's very neat for its low power usage and small form factor.

<comment><USER16> Raw debian right and not the qnap vm?

How did you layout the partitions?

What's on the 512m internal?

I have one in the basement I've tried to install one too many times and I need to remotivate.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft is so desperate they pay developers to develop apps for its phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Digs+Into+Its+Piggy+Bank+to+Pay+Developers+for+Windows+Phone+Apps/article24402.htm

<comment><USER2> You shouldn't editorialize headlines.</comment>