Anonymous Wikipedia edits from the Norwegian parliament and government offices - <AUTHOR> https://files.jaribakken.no/wikiedits/no/en.html <comment><USER2> Better to just link to the tool: [https://github.com/edsu/anon](https://github.com/edsu/anon).

++

\- Denmark ([https://twitter.com/FTingetWikiEdit](https://twitter.com/FTingetWikiEdit))

\- Sweden ([https://twitter.com/RiksdagWikiEdit](https://twitter.com/RiksdagWikiEdit))

\- United States ([https://twitter.com/congressedits](https://twitter.com/congressedits))

\- Chile ([https://twitter.com/CongresoEdita](https://twitter.com/CongresoEdita))

\- United Kingdom ([https://twitter.com/parliamentedits](https://twitter.com/parliamentedits))

\- France ([https://twitter.com/wikiAssemblee](https://twitter.com/wikiAssemblee))

\- Canada ([https://twitter.com/gccaedits](https://twitter.com/gccaedits))

++

 _Local government:_

\- North Carolina ([https://twitter.com/NCGAedits](https://twitter.com/NCGAedits))

++

 _(To those wondering, no interesting edits so far.)_

<comment><USER3> Nice. They should probably modify the tool so that the links go to the https version, not the http version.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like a great thing to submit a pull request for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting data, but I fail to see anything sinister going on here. Skimming through the list, it looks like 90% of the articles fall into one of three categories: Streets in Oslo, embassies in Oslo and people I mostly haven't heard of (i.e. not politically controversial characters). I don't see any edits intended to sway public opinion.

<comment><USER6> Same here, my only worry is that maybe that's exactly the strategy they use to blur the waters. On the other hand, propaganda can't be that forward, can it?

<comment><USER7> "Muddy the waters"? I think lines, not water, are blurred :)

<comment><USER8> It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to understand what was meant : )

<comment><USER9> "Rocket engineer"? I think surgeons work on bodies, not rockets :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's phrased like this is some big evil scheme going on but looking at the edits it's exactly the kind of stuff I believe the government should keep up to date on Wikipedia.

<comment><USER11> seemed to me like it was explicitly phrased so you WOULDN'T think that.

imagine the title (and source) if they were making controversial edits?

<comment><USER7> I think he's bothered by the vaguely sinister use of "anonymous". It's a true adjective, of course, but not really worth including in the title unless you're trying to imply something bad (and get page views).

<comment><USER11> it being vague is the reason i concluded it _wasn 't_ part of a big evil scheme.

if this was part of some "big evil scheme", the title would be far less innocent. do you disagree?

so to say it is "phrased like this is some big evil scheme" seems disingenuous. i try not to make assumptions, especially when it comes to headlines and "news".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looking through the first 20 or so, all I can find are added links, cross- references and improved grammar. Someone's lunch pastime maybe :)

<comment><USER13> I randomly scanned through the list and found the same thing, nothing suspicious.

If the government was really determined to change history, you would think they wouldn't be doing it from their own IP ranges...

<comment><USER14> The thing is we are conditioned to believe that anything the government does, especially anonymously, is necessarily bad.

From what I've seem on the list, this has been some kind of an effort to actually improve the arcticles, and update government related information, like embassy addresses and websites.

It looks like there is a bunch of responsible, well intentioned and helpful people in the government - at lealst in Norway.

<comment><USER15> Are you Norwegian? Because my understanding is that Scandinavians tend to be the most trusting of their governments and have the least corrupt and most transparent governments (perhaps excluding Iceland). It would strike me as odd to hear someone from Norway say they are conditioned to believe anything government does is necessarily bad.

<comment><USER4> Why excluding Iceland all the sudden? Iceland and Denmark have traditionally been included in the Scandinavian "zomg bestest democracy!!" model.

<comment><USER15> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchenware_Revolution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchenware_Revolution)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's a Twitter feed of wikipedia edits that originate from the US Congress - [https://twitter.com/congressedits](https://twitter.com/congressedits)

My favorite is the edit of a congressman's bio from saying he used to be a "corporate lawyer" to "attorney".

</comment><comment><USER17> Wikipedia is getting very awkward - it is clear that some articles are 100% propaganda, while others appear to have honest insight into world events.

I guess it's good to break the habit of thinking that history (like AP US History) can be read in an "unfiltered" way, but without something like a comprehensive database of every single Wikipedia edit, with tools to help detect bias (example: CIA wants to edit an article) Wikipedia will become a victim in the information arms race.

In this particular case, I think statistics can reverse the obvious "tragedy of the commons" situation with Wikipedia.

For example: tools to help with associating edits / edit conspiracy / sockpuppet detection

</comment><comment><USER18> What source of edits do you think would yield more interesting results?

</comment><comment><USER19> This is one of those cases where the changed Title on HN misleads [1]. These aren't changes from the 'government' they are changes from 'parliament and government offices'. Occams Razor would suggest they are more likely to be staffers and the occasional Patsy Cline-loving MP, rather than cabinet policies being enacted.

[1] Title as I write is _" 10 years of anonymous Wikipedia edits from the Norwegian government"_

<comment><USER20> That deliberately inflammatory wording also relies on the fact that some people hear "government" and immediately thinking of intelligence agencies or cynical political operators and ignore the fact that, particularly in well- reputed free countries like Norway with extremely low corruption rates, there are many government employees who feel a mandate for actual public service, and are doing non-trivial research & analysis, etc. to make sure that lawmakers and other parts of the government make the right decisions.

The kind of people you hire to do that sort of work are exactly the kind of people who are going to update Wikipedia when they see something wrong or incomplete — or possibly the person who might get a message if someone can't find the right info on Wikipedia.

<comment><USER21> The same thing is true for the vast majority of the Wikipedia edits attributed to the US Congress. Not only are most if not all of them written by staffers and other government employees who almost certainly not receiving any direction to make the edits, they're almost all innocuous spelling or grammar edits and a large portion of them aren't even on political pages.

I don't know if I'd attribute it to public service so much as boredom and personal hobbies, though. The headline, of course, is the same as in this case - that "the government" is making Wikipedia edits, with malicious implications - though there have at least been _some_ cases of vandalism, probably by staffers.

<comment><USER20> public service might be too specific a term – it's really just a desire to share or correct something you know about. People on HN are used to thinking of e.g. [http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/) as a tech geek thing but there are an awful lot of wonky types who feel that compulsion about other fields.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chameleon: browser fingerprinting protection for everybody - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ghostwords/chameleon

<comment><USER2> Can't you get fingerprinted solely by the use of chrome extensions? For example by using 5 specific extensions let's say Pocket, Google Dictionary, Adblock, xxx and Chameleon can't get fingerprinted by that? Does this extension offers some kind of protection against that?

<comment><USER3> General-purpose Chrome extension enumeration[1] should have been fixed some time ago, maybe here: [http://crbug.com/45876](http://crbug.com/45876)

There are still issues with fingerprinting based on specific attributes of a particular extension (for example: [2]), however.

1: [http://www.skeletonscribe.net/2011/07/sparse-bruteforce- addo...](http://www.skeletonscribe.net/2011/07/sparse-bruteforce-addon- scanner.html)

2: [http://blog.securitee.org/?p=277](http://blog.securitee.org/?p=277)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "for everybody as long as you're using Chrome or Chromium" (or perhaps another browser that accepts Chrome extensions)

<comment><USER3> Hi, Chameleon dev here. "Browser fingerprinting protection for everybody" is Chameleon's mission statement, not a description of present state (which is dev-only, not even beta software). Sorry for the confusion.</comment></comment>


Physicists propose experiment to see the 'grin' of quantum gravity - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-find-a-way-to-see-the-grin-of-quantum-gravity-20180306/ <comment><USER2> To save time and dredging through pop-sci journalism for those who have some background knowledge already:

[https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.11...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240402)

[https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.11...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240401)

<comment><USER3> And to rip off the abstract "We show that despite the weakness of gravity, the phase evolution induced by the gravitational interaction of two micron size test masses in adjacent matter-wave interferometers can detectably entangle them even when they are placed far apart enough to keep Casimir-Polder forces at bay. We provide a prescription for witnessing this entanglement, which certifies gravity as a quantum coherent mediator, through simple spin correlation measurements."

<comment><USER4> A key point is that they have not measured the effect yet so it's not known whether the entanglement will be measured. Both papers describe a gravitational entanglement detection through measurement of evolution of a separate quantum phenomenon (e.g. nitrogen spin in a diamond lattice).

One challenge, which is commonly a problem for laboratory gravitational experiments, is that many other force interactions dominate over short distance scales (electric, magnetic, or even vibrational phonons) so excluding those is critical to showing the entanglement is gravitational. This means near perfect electrical, magnetic, and vibrational isolation... and probably measuring their coupling amplitude them to show that it is perfect.

As usual in experimental physics, the problem is not in detecting the effect, but in not detecting all the other interfering effects. It borders on proving a negative.

<comment><USER3> Having not seen this sort of theory before, it felt as though the sort of thing that may be a widespread hypothesis but the data are prohibitive to collect.

<comment><USER4> They have teams working on it now, but experiment is notoriously more expensive than theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find the subject fascinating, but the main impact I got from reading this was learning how a young, curious, extraordinarily intelligent person with immense potential and who already contributed so much is murdered by human stupidity. I'm reminded of a line from Elton John's song about John Lennon's death, "It's funny how one insect can damage so much grain" and wonder about the amount of grain destroyed by insects such as Hitler, Stalin and so many others. Don't have much of a point to make, just some reflections about the human condition

</comment><comment><USER6> Just a dumb layman question: can gravitons (assuming they exist) escape a black hole?

<comment><USER7> No.

I imagine there is some context for this question, but I can not really give a better answer without knowing the question. My guess is that the question stems from a misunderstanding what a graviton is, so I will grossly simplify and say: graviton is to gravitational field what photon is to electrostatic field.

<comment><USER3> True but the photon and graviton both transmit fields. For a black hole to pull matter in it must push out gravitons. Unless there really is no graviton particle and the Higgs tells space which way to curve. Ie gravity is an emergent property instead of a force.

<comment><USER8> > graviton particle and the Higgs tells space which way to curve

The Higgs does not play that kind of role. It is a common misconception, since Higgs it often referred to as "giving mass to the other particles", which is true, and called the Higgs-mechanism, it does not influence the curvature of space-time that way. That is all due to the graviton (assuming, which it is also commonly believed, that gravity is quantised).

Mass is one thing, interactions between masses another.

<comment><USER3> You took out part of my comment and only commented on the part you took out. In my original statement I made that statement as a hypothetical and in a context supposing there isn't a graviton particle. My desire was to communicate that for gravitons to fill their hypothesized role for gravity they must somehow transmit the gravity from a BH.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is gravity, fundamentally quantum? I thought the jury was still out

<comment><USER6> From what I understand of the article, it is still totally undecided, and that is what this experiment aims to address, although it still won't provide any insight as to the exact quantum nature of gravity. It will merely decide _if_ it is indeed quantised. And even there, Freeman Dyson appears to disagree (according to the article)...

<comment><USER10> Dyson seems to be making a more abstract argument — that if the domains where a graviton could be detected are inaccessible to us, then they effectively do not exist (if a tree falls in a forest...). At least that's what I took away from the description in the article and his dismissal of the proposed experiment as not having a bearing on his objections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

</comment><comment><USER12> Original source: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-find-a-way-to- see-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-find-a-way-to-see-the-grin- of-quantum-gravity-20180306/)

Previous postings/comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16534057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16534057)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16536208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16536208)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16531016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16531016)

<comment><USER13> We changed the URL to that from [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/quantum-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/quantum- gravity/555107/?single_page=true).

Those previous HN submissions don't count as dupes because they didn't get significant attention. This is in the FAQ: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> off topic, but; before clicking the link I guess I was kinda surprised the Atlantic would get in on a story like this but then I saw that its a reprint from Quanta Magazine. Anyone know what their partnership is?

<comment><USER15> Seems that The Atlantic is a syndication partner with Quanta along with a few others.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/about/](https://www.quantamagazine.org/about/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> it could take a decade or more to pull it off.

My question why is it getting so long to get result How do software step in to help streamline research ? I can not help thinking this is steve job 'next' company time in the sun</comment>


Have the folks at XLABS really achieved 99.92% compression? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theserverside.com/feature/Has-a-New-York-startup-achieved-a-99-compression-rate

<comment><USER2> > On an ordinary Windows laptop, Saldana used the command line to invoke a > utility that created a compressed file from my original video file.

> the compressed file size was about 4 KB.

> On the same Windows laptop, Saldana invoked another utility that > uncompressed the 4 KB file. Uncompressing took about 10 seconds. The > uncompressed file was identical to the original file.

Occam's razor: the "compressed" version was a link (shortcut, symlink, hyperlink, whatever) to the original.

> Despite maintaining a healthy skepticism, I have two reasons for believing > the files were identical. First, Saldana played the uncompressed video on > the Windows laptop. The uncompressed video looked exactly like the original > video. That was nice, but it didn't prove anything. I wouldn't be able to > identify an unfaithful video copy if it bit me on the nose.

> The second proof that the original and compressed files were identical was > much more compelling. Saldana put the uncompressed file on my own USB drive. > Later that day, on my own computer, I ran the uncompressed and compressed > files through a bit-by-bit comparison program. Sure enough, the two files > contain the exact same sequence of 0s and 1s.

> It should be noted that for security reasons, Saldana didn't copy the 4 KB > compressed file to my USB drive, so I don't know what bit sequence was > inside the 99.78% compressed file.

All of this is consistent with the file being a link.

A more thorough test would have performed the compression and decompression on two different, non-networked machines, so that the only information available to the decompressor is the 4K file.

After that, we need to start removing layers which can be used to obscure the results, eg. performing a more low-level analysis of the compressed version, using machines which the authors have no access to (eg. to avoid a hacked OS/driver which reports false file sizes)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty serious scam, and not the first that revolves around video compression. Barry Burd ( is that his real name?) is just a clueless tech journalist without the background or skepticism to realize how many times this scam has been launched. Some examples.. Madison Priest and his "magic box". David Kim Stanley and Pixelon. Adam Clark and the Tolly Group. Or Raystream: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3211630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3211630)

</comment><comment><USER4> Video streaming does not need lossless compression especially over the internet (unless of course it's really is 99% - then why not!)

But leaving this aside - more independent tests are needed to prove these claims.

</comment><comment><USER5> NO. Hoax.</comment>


Xkcd: Click and Drag - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/1110/

<comment><USER2> 1/8 scale (256x256 tiles): <http://edc.srvs.us/1110-eighth/>

1/4 scale (512x512 tiles): <http://edc.srvs.us/1110-quarter/>

1/2 scale (1024x1024 tiles): <http://edc.srvs.us/1110-half/>

full size (2048x2048 tiles): <http://edc.srvs.us/1110/>

None of them crash Chrome on my Mac, but good luck with that...

<comment><USER3> I made a high res PDF (text balloons are readable) - <http://s.rlink.co/JZ6G>

<comment><USER4> Thanks, that's the most usable version I've seen in this thread yet. You win 3 gold Internets.

<comment><USER3> This one is even more usefull: <http://xkcd-map.rent-a-geek.de/> (give that guy a diamond Internets)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote some JS to add keyboard controls to the map, because clicking and dragging is for suckers. <http://www.potch.me/blog/press-and-hold.html>

<comment><USER6> I've integrated this into a full-screen view: <http://ares.aylett.co.uk/xkcd/>

<comment><USER7> Thanks man, that's especially useful to find the Easter eggs since you can use ctrl + or - to zoom in and out and stay oriented. Between that, and using this as a map, you can pretty much check out the whole comic without getting frustrated: [http://www.wickedglitch.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/resul...](http://www.wickedglitch.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/result1.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bwahaha, upper left corner (waaaay up). I'm working at a small startup. Our business model is "taking free drinks from industry events and reselling them".

Edit: Holy shit I had no idea how huge this was! I'd pay for a massive framed poster of this thing.

<comment><USER9> 'stupid feebsd' and a crashed plane

<comment><USER10> "Copy that Gold Leader. I'm already on my way out." with X-wing. And "Becky?" Deep in the caves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't use any of the spoilers, image maps or sites that stich it together, it is much more enjoyable when you discover the entire image through the viewport dimensions as originally intended.

It is also much more enjoyable when you don't know what to expect

<comment><USER12> agreed. Much of the comedy comes from the subversion of expectations...

...although some nerds prefer figuring out puzzles. And yes, nerd in this case is a term of endearment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a torrent of all the images: <https://ubuntuone.com/4VxOo5cnInZWQUEplIdb2c>

<comment><USER14> I was having trouble downloading the torrent, so I wrote a little script to get it for me:

<https://gist.github.com/3748257>

Warning: 6mb worth of files.

Edit: Github repo with all the images and the script, so that people don't need to hammer the xkcd server:

<https://github.com/danielribeiro/xkcd_grab>

<comment><USER15> And here is how you get a web page you can open to view the whole thing in a one sitting:

      perl -e'print "
"; print /X$/ ? "\n" : "" for @ARGV' {{13..1}n,{1..19}s}{{33..1}w,{1..48}e,X} > index.html

Warning: gigantic page, may crash your browser. (Not as bad as it might seem, since many tiles are missing.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Simple way to share positions:

var p =$('.map').position();prompt("Have someone run this code to see this position","$('.map').css({'left':"+p['left']+", 'top':"+p['top']+"})");

This gives you a snippet you can send to someone else to run.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

Also, don't want to drag? <http://www.potch.me/blog/press-and-hold.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> Excellent! I feel like Randall is getting closer to producing an actual game with his worlds and characters. I look forward to what he has in store for us in the future.

<comment><USER18> I think he already has:) Look around you at all the people playing. Hint: the ones writing code are winning...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A map: <http://imgur.com/GDJPL>

<comment><USER19> the white square at 11n11e is not at the good position on this map.

I wonder why 11n11e and 11s11e are empty.

<comment><USER20> All of the 11x11y squares are empty, the south ones are just black instead of white. I've not worked out why yet.

<comment><USER21> Somebody in another forum pointed out that 1111 is the next comic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Phew, found both the edges, traversed all of the tunnels. Finally I'm free!

Also, really impressed. The way the tunnels on the left side met up with the Mario tunnel was pretty cool.

<comment><USER23> There are 4 edges :) Under the tunnels there is a whole new world ;)

<comment><USER22> 4 edges o.0

You mean to say that under the tunnels, that is under all of the black, there is more? And there is more stuff in the air too?

Ima kill Randall Munroe >_<

<comment><USER24> the "total image" is 165888 by 79872, fwiw.

<http://edc.srvs.us/1110/> seems to have a pretty complete tiling

<comment><USER25> Astonishing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A practical introduction to the Backtracking algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER27> The very last image to the right, "I wonder where i'll float next?" is a reference to Randall's first xkcd comic; <http://xkcd.com/1/>

</comment><comment> Digit-Al The mind boggles. How long must it have taken him to create this. It is HUGE. I have been scrolling round for about 20 minutes and still have not found an end to it.

<comment><USER28> from: <http://imgs.xkcd.com/clickdrag/1110.js>

      var size=[14,48,25,33];
      var tilesize=2048;
      var map_size=[(size[1]+size[3])*tilesize,(size[0]+size[2])*tilesize];

So 165888x79872!!!

<comment><USER9> easier to find it here

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I created a full high res PDF of the image (only 11MB), with readable text balloons. — <http://s.rlink.co/JZ6G>

<comment><USER29> Could anyone create a torrent for this? Dropbox has killed the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I had to stop because my hand began to hurt.

You have my deepest gratitude for reminding me what discovery and exploration feels like.

</comment><comment><USER31> full screen (at least in chrome):

        javascript:$('#comic').removeAttr('style'); $('.map').css('z-index',1).css('background','#fff');$('body').css('overflow','hidden');

</comment><comment><USER32> Does the comic remind anybody else of Terraria? 2D scrollers are the best games...

</comment><comment><USER33> It's disappointing that it appears this won't make the front page. It appears the domain is on a blacklist.

Makes sense from a cheap humour perspective, but that's not what this one is about.

<comment><USER34> It's on the front page as of right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> You guys do realize that new panels can be added to the world at any time (and existing ones can be modified). Who's to say the world is static?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4542347>

<comment><USER13> The bit at the end[0] is hex for 'ProPuke is awesome'.

0: /* 50:72:6f:50:75:6b:65:20:69:73:20:61:77:65:73:6f:6d:65 */

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> My attempt at hammering the xkcd servers -- also colours missing tiles correctly (black/white depending on south/north): <http://explog.in/xkcd.html>

[edit: basically lays everything out in a single huge page so that you can scroll instead of dragging]

</comment><comment><USER37> I just spent 5 minutes exploring and don't think I've seen even 25% of it. Had a grin from the off as well.

</comment><comment><USER38> my hacky way of killing Randall's server:

      curl --limit-rate 40K -O http://imgs.xkcd.com/clickdrag/\[0-100\]\{n,s\}\[0-100\]\{e,w\}.png

Then to remove all the 404s:

      find . -type f -size 345c -exec rm -f {} \;

Woo! No code.

<comment><USER39> Use "curl -f" and it won't save the 404 output

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I made a little grid with all the tiles on it (they are smaller than the original ones). I hope it makes the navigation easier... Each tile is clickable (it redirects to the original picture)

<http://www.baffo.org/xkcd/>

</comment><comment><USER41> I have made a very low-res polar coordinates version: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/543600/1110polar.png>

I will make a larger version later tonight.

</comment><comment><USER42> Reminds me of Scott McCloud's infinite canvas idea: <http://scottmccloud.com/4-inventions/canvas/index.html> Impressive by the way!

</comment><comment><USER43> Here's my version of full map: [http://www.wickedglitch.com/2012/09/full-low- res-image-spoil...](http://www.wickedglitch.com/2012/09/full-low-res-image- spoiler-map-xkcds-click-and-drag/)

</comment><comment><USER44> Click and Drag without the distraction. put javascript:$('img[title="Click and drag."]').hide();$('img[title="Click and drag."]').parent().css('overflow','visible'); in the url bar

</comment><comment><USER45> Someone make a large poster of this thing, quick!

</comment><comment><USER46> And I thought it was going to be a short one. Got to get back to work. By the way, I play this game with Google Maps every day.

<comment><USER47> And have you already seen everything?

<comment><USER46> Not really. I will continue at home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Randall just got crazy (with a good meaning).

</comment><comment><USER49> Exploring this took me back to the days of playing the Dizzy series of games, wondering what was beyond the next screen.

</comment><comment><USER50> I just downloaded the image tiles and explored the world that way. Quickest way to make sure I saw everything!

</comment><comment><USER51> Ok, someone please glue all the tiles together! I can't wait to see all this magnificence!

</comment><comment><USER52> I wonder if this is a world record for the biggest comic ever.

Does anybody know?

</comment><comment><USER53> For some reason I want to load that as a map in worms armageddon

</comment><comment><USER54> whats up with the dinos? <http://xkcd-map.rent-a- geek.de/converted/10-297-507.png>

<comment><USER55> A classic: <http://xkcd.com/135/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I was looking for where the spider was hiding.

</comment><comment><USER57> Holy shit! I didn't expect it to be this big!

</comment><comment><USER58> This is just brilliant!

</comment><comment><USER59> this is strangely poetic</comment>


Postling gets funded with AngelList - <AUTHOR> http://venturehacks.com/articles/postling-funded

<comment><USER2> AngelList is the real deal. I've heard quite a few people having some success there. Even as a YC company, there is a startling hole after Demo Day... It can take months to close a round (it took us 5ish), even loaded down with Demo Day biz cards and meeting invites. If I were doing YC again today, I'd try to get on AngelList right after Demo Day...

<comment><USER3> Nothing but great things to say about AngelList. I applied with my startup and while we weren't selected for that week, Nivi sent me a nice personalized email and has been super friendly and always open to chat about startups.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dave Lifson, a Postling founder, describes the process from his point of view:

[http://caterpillarcowboy.com/post/489762022/the-inside- story...](http://caterpillarcowboy.com/post/489762022/the-inside-story-on-how- i-raised-200k-in-6-days)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll monitor this thread and answer any questions you have about AngelList.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are there investor concerns about foreign-based startups re: unknown corporate structure/governance, etc?</comment>


Show HN: Inbucket 2.0.0, disposable webmail server - <AUTHOR> http://demo.inbucket.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author/maintainer here. I see someone else posted Inbucket four years ago, but it's changed a lot since then.

Website: [https://www.inbucket.org/](https://www.inbucket.org/) GitHub: [https://github.com/jhillyerd/inbucket](https://github.com/jhillyerd/inbucket)

Inbucket was my first project in Go, and I have been slowly adding to it ever since.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a good off-the-shelf product customization app? - <AUTHOR>

I work for a jewelry manufacturer and want to build an experimental website to allow custom designed jewelry. The software would need to embed into a Amazon webstore and have this basic functionality: Allow users to select options to design a product through a database of pictures we supply, like: Design a Ring >> Diamond or Gemstone  >> (if gemstone) white or yellow gold >> (if white gold) choose a setting >> (setting is chosen) select a gemstone out of 14 choices<p>Anyone know anything like this? Google seems to have mostly enterprise solutions. <comment><USER2> Does Amazon webstore even have 3rd party apps? Do they allow you to control the HTML and Javascript only?

<comment><AUTHOR> They dont have a store, but you can control html and javascript and more.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Visiting Palo Alto this summer. What should a geek do/see/visit? - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone, I've never really traveled outside of my home town (Montreal, Canada) but I now have the opportunity to go visit my dad for a week and he is stationed in Palo Alto. The prospect of seeing with my own eyes the tech hub that I read news from almost on an hourly basis is mind-boggling to me and I already feel like a child that is about to go to Disneyland.
I really want to take advantage of the week to visit places that minds such as yourselves consider MUST SEE. If I can visit such places, that would be truly the greatest vacation ever.
Any recommendations? I should be going for June 19-25 if there are any time-sensitive places that you would recommend.
Thank you in advance, and cheers for making HN an awesome website to procrastinate to! <comment><USER2> Do heed the warnings that it's not really all that Disneyland. PA's a beautiful city, but its notoriety as a tech giant is largely shrouded by its quaint and quiet suburbanness.

My trips to the area have been very intensely business related so I don't have many tourist suggestions.

Food: Milkshake at the Creamery on Emerson and University. Beer at Antonio's Nut House on California Ave. Burger at Kirk's Steakburgers on ECR by Palo Alto High School. Slice at Pizza My Heart.

PA Places: Stanford Campus/University Ave. Take pictures, it's a beautiful campus. Apple store on University if a Steve Jobs pilgrimage is your thing. If you play any stringed musical instruments check out Griffon at Park and Margerita (I think, its near the Fry's at El Camino Real and Portage). You can't do anything other than take a picture of the HP Garage, but if you want to experience momentous Palo Alto history, there it is.

Get outside of PA: Definitely get down to Mountain View for the Computer History Museum. Apple's company store in Cupertino (1 Infinite Loop) is open to the public, go there, do that, buy a t-shirt, if you're so inclined).

</comment><comment><USER3> First thing is not to expect much. Your first reaction will be 'Is this it? Suburbia and McMansions?'. And you will be right.

The factor that makes it a 'tech hub' is the people (take them away and Palo Alto becomes utterly uninteresting), so you might want to see if any interesting tech types have time to meet with you (if you care to).

Having said that, this thread might have things of interest to see: [http://www.quora.com/Palo-Alto-CA/How-shall-I-spend-my- day-i...](http://www.quora.com/Palo-Alto-CA/How-shall-I-spend-my-day-in-Palo- Alto)

Since you're there for a while you should also take the train to San Francisco. Most of the startups there are in SoMa, so you should walk around there if you want to get a feel for what it's like.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fry's Electronics. Computer History Museum. Downtown Palo Alto (University Ave.). Downtown Mountain View (Castro St.). Hacker Dojo. Stanford University.</comment>


When you are no longer the smartest person in the room - <AUTHOR> http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2016/03/16/when-you-are-no-longer-the-smartest-person-in-the-room/ <comment><AUTHOR> I meet some entrepreneurs who are used to being the smartest person in the room. Many have been the smartest person in the rooms that they have been in–and my entering the room doesn't change that. But getting into a room with a prospect does because they are the expert on their situation and their needs.</comment>


A fast Go library for exponential moving averages - <AUTHOR> https://vividcortex.com/blog/2013/07/23/a-fast-go-library-for-exponential-moving-averages/

<comment><USER2> This is a special case of a digital filter where the weights are set to an exponential function. Apparently you can do things like tune for particular frequencies. It's a whole subfield in itself, but I found this a good introduction:

[http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm](http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've submitted a pull request as there's a bug dealing with the initialisation of the average.

If the value is 0, you're assuming it's uninitialised, but that's not true. A sequence of 0,0,0,0,0,0,1 is valid and should not have a final moving average of 1.

More generally, it's a really bad idea to encode information in numbers like this.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you help me find this article? - <AUTHOR> Not so long ago I stumbled upon a really nice article in some IT guy's blog about cognitive biases, logical fallacies and other 'truths of life' that he learned and found useful throughout his years.
It was stuff like "It's reasonable to assume that a complex system for which it took some time to reach the current state is very close to being in an optimal form under the circumstances". Everything was nicely structured and put to words beautifully.
I also assume that this guy is a big figure in IT since I've somehow found him, but I can't remember who exactly. Anything pops in mind? <comment><AUTHOR> Found it! [https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly- use...](https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly- useful-936f1cc405d)

<comment><USER2> The most recent submit was over a year ago. This one had the most commentary:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12040707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12040707)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Was it this gist, perhaps?

[https://gist.github.com/stettix/5bb2d99e50fdbbd15dd9622837d1...](https://gist.github.com/stettix/5bb2d99e50fdbbd15dd9622837d14e2b)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, but sadly that's not what I'm thinking of. The thing I'm looking for is more like a general take on life, how to think about things, how not to fall into common fallacies.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin about to reach 500$ - Mt.Gox  - <AUTHOR> https://www.mtgox.com/

<comment><USER2> Can anyone help me understand why the price is rising so rapidly? It was like $50 a while back. Now its 10x that. Is it because the difficulty to mine is rising exponentially? Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> Looks like the Chinese market is driving the prices up.

[http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/12/investing/bitcoin-record- hig...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/12/investing/bitcoin-record-high/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What are the transaction fees like on these services? I mean, if you just had a lot of Bitcoins you kept cycling through several wallets and back to your real bank account, would anyone be able to tell and how much would it cost to do?

<comment><USER5> Most Bitcoin exchanges have transaction fees around 0.5-1.0%

<comment><USER4> Right, but since the value of the coins is calculated as $ to whole Bitcoins, whereas the actual transactions can be in numbers much smaller then whole Bitcoins, there's no reason you couldn't cycle say, $10 of BTC until you got to 0.01c in value.

Meantime, the exchanges would keep looking like there were "a lot" of transactions for BTC worth a huge amount.

It wasn't long ago someone dumped $5000 of BTC and the price dropped "worldwide".

<comment><USER5> I am not really sure what you are thinking of doing?

You cannot drop the price worldwide with merely $5000 of BTC. If you buy, sell, buy, sell, etc, in cycle, you are not going to cause the price to continuously increase or decrease.

You can split a sell or buy order for $5000 in numerous small transactions, but it will have no more influence than a single $5000 transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. The graph isn't working but that's 10% in the last 24 hours.</comment>


Show HN: Run your own PaaS based on Docker and Traefik /w LetsEncrypt and stats - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/almarklein/mypaas <comment><USER2> If you are looking for something that is a little more turn-key than this I highly recommend CapRover [0]. I've been using it for years as my POC project PaaS. I haven't yet used it for anything production-facing but I've used it to test out ideas really quickly without having to think about billing (It's on a $20/mo droplet but I used to run it on a $5/mo before I added more projects to it).

I use it to prototype/test ideas quickly, get DB/Api/Client up, running, and publicly accessible (with HTTPS) without much hassle.

It has a number of "one-click" installs for stuff like WP, Jenkins, popular DB's, popular Queues, etc but also supports running docker images (which means PHP/Node/etc support is super easy). There is also multi-host support but I've never personally used that as, again, I use this just for dev and then move to AWS/DO once I have proven it out and I am willing to pay for DB's/EC2 instances.

I'm not affiliated in any way, just someone who likes it.

[0] [https://caprover.com/](https://caprover.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes, CapRover seems really nice. And also see Dokku. At some point in the past I decided both did not suit my needs. I can't remember the details exactly, but one thing with CapRover was that auth goes via username and password only, which I don't feel is safe enough (MyPaas uses RSA key pairs).

Anyway, I started out by tying Docker and Traefik together with a mix of Python and bash scripts. Eventually I decided to roll that together into something easier to maintain, so its also useful for others. And "others" includes my future self ;)

<comment><USER3> Just curious, what about Dokku didn't meet your needs? I'm the current maintainer of the project, hence the question :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I recall that Let's Encrypt was somewhat untrivial to setup (but this may have changed?). And I liked the idea of just pushing a container/recipy with metadata and let the server handle the rest.

I should add that when I found out about Dokku and CapRover I was already using Traefik+Docker, so I was also simply biased for Traefik (Traefik is awesome).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some suggestions/questions for the readmes:

\- It would be nice to have some screenshots in the status/analytics sections.

\- Does this use docker hub or does it push the raw docker image to the server or does it build on the server?

\- How can we deploy docker hub images (for cases where the image is built by CI or using a cache or something)?

\- It might be a good example to link to the examples directory from the readme. I almost suggested some examples, but then turned off my extension that hides the files on the repo homepage. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will update the readme to include more info.

To answer some: It pushes a zipped directory to the server, which includes a Dockerfile. There, the server builds the image and deploys it.

Deploying pre-build images is probably best done by using a Dockerfile that uses FROM to point to the pre-build image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> this looks quite interesting, but if I have my system defined in a docker- compose file which is effectively multiple containers, will this support that?

<comment><USER6> Do you know of any tools that do this?

<comment><USER5> docker swarm and kubenetes springs to mind, with the latter an overkill for a solo/developer...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about just docker swarm and swarmpit with traefik?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not know swarmpit yet. That seems really nice and it looks like it has overlapping goals with MyPaas. Does it allow you to do remote deploys?

<comment><USER7> Yes that is what they call service deploy. If Swarmpit doesn't satisfy you on deployment you can use Apollo or command-line. It's all up to you. Swarmpit is like having a kubernetes interface without the overbloat of Kubernetes. If Swarmpit evolves in the future it will not makes sense the Kubernetes. I am almost finishing a swarm only setup in 512 MB of free RAM. For Kubernetes you need at least 4 GB.</comment></comment></comment>


I tattooed a set of checkboxes on my hand 2 years ago to help me get shit done - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/8xbpg7/method_i_tattooed_a_set_of_checkboxes_on_my_hand/ <comment><USER2> I mean, good for them it they think it helps in their life.

I personally don't understand the obsession with getting things done. In the post, they say the tattoo remind them that there's always things to get done. I don't think that's a good way to think. If you don't rest, you can burn out, and then you can't get anything done.

But hey, whatever works for you. Tattoos are personal and symbolic. I get that.

And checklists are great tools - I can personally attest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminded me of the book, Checklist Manifesto.

[http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist- manifesto/](http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Did he tattoo the checkmarks as well?

<comment><USER5> You just use a marker for that part, duh.</comment></comment>


Payments on mortgages to be suspended across Italy after coronavirus outbreak - <AUTHOR> https://in.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-mortgages/payments-on-mortgages-to-be-suspended-across-italy-after-coronavirus-outbreak-idINR1N2A900G <comment><USER2> It seems like obvious decision during national emergency. The whole country is in quarantine. You can't expect household and small companies to pay interest like nothing has changed.

<comment><USER3> I just wonder how this works upstream. Don't the banks also owe that money to somebody? After all, value isn't just money, it's money plus time.

<comment><USER4> I think banks "create" (out of "no where" I mean) the money they loan. So they don't owe anyone.

<comment><USER5> Not quite. They get money from somewhere, that they loan out.

But because much of the money they got from somewhere can be requested at will (people can still remove money from their accounts), it is still liquid and still counts as money. So money is "created" this way.

That is how they create money. They don't _literally_ just create whatever they need, only central banks can do that.

<comment><USER6> Please see [https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly- bulletin/2014/q1/m...](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly- bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy)

> In the modern economy, most money takes the form of bank deposits. But how > those bank deposits are created is often misunderstood: the principal way is > through commercial banks making loans.

> Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit > in the borrower's bank account, thereby creating new money. The reality of > how money is created today differs from the description found in some > economics textbooks:

> • Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending > them out, bank lending creates deposits. > • In normal times, the central > bank does not fix the amount of money in circulation, nor is central bank > money 'multiplied up' into more loans and deposits

<comment><USER7> What this mean is that banks can go in credit of others and then sell that credit as money; they cannot just say "now I am a billion dollar richer" they have to find someone that promises to cover that billion dollar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, not sure if this is the same, but in Florida, after one of the more recent hurricanes, I was given the option to suspend mortgage payments.

All it does is suspend payments, not reduce the amount of payments.

So, once payment resumes, you still owe at least the same amount of debt.

[edit] As another poster mentioned, interest still accrues.

<comment><USER9> I think it's pretty clear what suspension means in this context. I can't imagine anyone is thinking that the government is making the payment for them in this time or something like that.

<comment><USER10> Why though? People suspend rational thinking to believe they're getting free stuff all the time.

<comment><USER2> Sharing the burden does not mean free. It's like ad hoc insurance or freezing the situation.

<comment><USER11> It isn't really freezing if interest is still compounding. It's just reeling out more rope to fiscally hang someone with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Never EVER take this sort of offer. Banks made similar offers after Katrina. We seriously considered it, having just bought a house in New Orleans which we could no longer occupy. A quick call with the bank made it clear they weren't forgiving anything. Interest would continue to accrue and recapitalize. Four years later, we had made all our payments and sold at the expected profit. The lender then admitted many people had taken the offer and now found themselves with significant negative value on their homes simply through compound interest.

Avoid these offers like the plague.

<comment><USER13> It is bad advice to simply say, "never take a repayment moratorium" based on anecdotal advice from one very particular set of circumstances.

First of all, many people simply do not have the liquid assets (or any assets) to pay their mortgage while not receiving income. Many Italians who are not able to earn money during this period simply would not have been paying their mortgage regardless of a repayment suspension. So banks may as well get out in front of that rather than waste time sending hundreds of thousands of notices to people who are not able to pay. This is not a choice. Obviously if you can continue to pay your mortgage you should do so.

Second, there is a big difference between temporarily suspending repayment for 2? 3? months and what happened after Katrina where many people had stopped paying for many months or years. There is no way that a few months repayment holiday, even if interest does accrue during that period is going to push many mortgages into negative equity.

Third, Italian mortgages are absolutely capped at 80% LTV and many banks are more comfortable at 60% or even less. This is unheard of by American or UK standards but a consequence is that it would take years of repayment suspension and interest accrual to push into negative equity.

Fourth, negative equity is only relevant if you want to sell. Italians tend not to be super mobile anyway, so even if some people do spend some time in negative equity, only a subset of those people will be "stuck" and prevented from making a move they would otherwise make.

<comment><USER14> The UK essentially got rid of crazy 100% mortgages. You can still get a 95% mortgage, which is pretty desperate, but the rates on them are punishing, I haven't seen anybody say "Oh I saved 5% for my deposit now I can buy a house".

If you need a 100% mortgage now, all the big banks will tell you either to go away or talk to a specialist. The specialist will explain that there's basically no legal way to sell you a product on which obviously if anything goes wrong you default and lose everything _but_ if you can find a guarantor that'll eat the risk that's an option. The guarantor puts up capital (maybe your parents offer the home they've paid off) and if the mortgage fails that capital will pay for it. So you essentially don't have a 100% mortgage, you've got an 80% (or better) mortgage against two properties, but if things do go badly wrong you aren't going to ever talk to your parents again.

75% mortgages are pretty common here. 80% is definitely more common than 60% but things are much better than they were when idiots thought prices could only go up.

<comment><USER15> > The UK essentially got rid of crazy 100% mortgages. You can still get a 95% > mortgage, which is pretty desperate, but the rates on them are punishing, I > haven't seen anybody say "Oh I saved 5% for my deposit now I can buy a > house".

I can think of 3 people off the top of my head who have a 95% mortgage.

It's far more common than you think, especially in areas in the North where you can get a decent property for less than £200k (95% loans are capped at £400k)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well I for one am glad my mortgage isn't a smart contract on a blockchain right now.

<comment><USER17> I'm not a fan of blockchains either, but to be fair, they could issue a compensating smart contract for the duration of the suspension.

<comment><USER18> Can't wait until someone fucks up the code because there was a quick deadline and suddenly all of the bank's money is gone.

<comment><USER19> the flash crash?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Won't this result in new mortgage rates spiking massively (not only now, but after the crisis is resolved, because it's a newly identified form of tail risk?)

Not that it's important right now, but it seems like an interesting side- effect.

<comment><USER21> It looks like this was done by the banks voluntarily. So it doesn't increase the risk of this happening again in the future as a surprise. Secondly, this probably reduces the amount of defaults, liens, foreclosures etc. happening all at once that a bank really would rather not deal with.

Edit: according to [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-10/italy- neg...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-10/italy-negotiating- with-banks-for-mortgage-relief-in-virus-crisis) the government negotiated this with the banks, and TFA says that not all banks took the deal. So whatever it was, it probably softened the blow a lot.

<comment><USER22> Surely not as a surprise, this thing will be back next fall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> And renters?

<comment><USER24> Your landlord has bills to pay too.

<comment><USER23> Clearly – but if homeowners get mortgage relief why shouldn't tenants get rent relief? Covid-19 doesn't distinguish between homeowner and tenant. Seems kind of two-tiered to me.

<comment><USER25> Of course, hopefully mortgage relief will make it possible for more landlords to offer rent relief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Although not quite the same, ironic how Rome does have a _long_ history of debt forgiveness during times of crisis [0]

[0] [https://fee.org/articles/the-slow-motion-financial- suicide-o...](https://fee.org/articles/the-slow-motion-financial-suicide-of- the-roman-empire)

<comment><USER27> Wow there is an article with it's agenda clearly emblazoned on its sleeve. No messing :-)

The Roman Empire's collapse had dozens of interacting causes, from slavery and expansionism-collapse to leadership failures that make any corrupt politician today seem laughable.

To boil it all down to "Welfare" seems, disingenuous at best, and hopelessly partisan at the midpoint.

That said, yes, many societies have tried to make up for their systemic unfairness with debt forgiveness. Unless you fix the underlying causes however, the debt comes back.

<comment><USER19> Then you just jubilee again. Its a lot less complex/fuzzy if the king or church are the major lender.</comment></comment></comment>


Google AJAXSLT - <AUTHOR> http://goog-ajaxslt.sourceforge.net/

<comment><USER2> Quite outdated, pre-googlecode: 2006.

From [http://goog-ajaxslt.sourceforge.net/README](http://goog- ajaxslt.sourceforge.net/README)

        BROWSER COMPATIBILITY

         The library works in these browsers:
         - Firefox/1.0
         - Internet Explorer/6.0
         - Safari/1.2, Safari/1.3, Safari/2.0
         - Opera/7.5, Opera/8.0
         - Omniweb TODO(mesch): verify this.

As conorgil145 said, use Saxon-CE if you are interested in using XSLT 2.0 in the browser together with AJAX.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to work a lot with XML/XSLT/Schematron and I had never heard of this project before. Interesting.

If anyone is interested in using XSLT 2.0 in the browser, take a look at Saxon-CE, which is "Saxonica's implementation of XSLT 2.0 for use on web browsers."

[http://www.saxonica.com/ce/index.xml](http://www.saxonica.com/ce/index.xml)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for site caching? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious what people here use for page caching in particular. Not just for static assets but also dynamic pages.
I realize that most put their site behind a CDN but that doesn't always get you proper page caching.
Do you think about page caching at all?
What kind of setup do you have?
Do you correlate fast pages (low TTFB) with SEO / SERP?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Caching is a massive topic that covered a multitude of different points along your chain from page creation through to the browser. I'm going to give a very brief overview of a few different solutions:

* Cache frequent database requests with an in-memory database, key/value store. There's two big players in this field, memcached and Redis. Personally I prefer the latter.

* Cache static content. This would be a CDN and can run either as a separate domain or between the browser and your servers.

* Cache partial page assets (eg half pages on dynamic sites). There's a multitude of ways you can do this including using a key/value store. This reduces the amount of content that needs to be dynamically generated even if some of the page still has to be.

* Cache the entire page. This can be done via solutions like varnish or via a CDN. CDNs that support this level of caching can be configured either via their management portal or by setting caching headers in your your HTTP response. Usually it will different caching headers to the ones your browser will take notice of, but this is often configurable.

* Browser caching. This is one that I've found developers et al often overlook. It's also the level of caching that can cause the most headaches. But it's the cheapest to implement and cheapest to run so it's definitely worth getting browser caching right first.

[edit]

I forgot to add:

* Full page caching with a Javascript API model. This is something a lot of popular dynamic sites do. Basically the entire HTML page served is a template and the Javascript library draws the dynamic content on top of it. This way all of your assets can be cached and a lot of needless dynamic text rendering is distributed amongst the clients instead of handled on the server. The downside to this is it's more complicated to build with more places to break (users running weird browsers, disabling JS, attackers, etc). But the gains can also be significant.

<comment><USER3> Will there ever be an easier way to do all these kinds of caching? As in, do nothing at all?

<comment><USER2> That depends on the popularity of your site and how the content is generated. If it's a relatively static site (eg the pages are generated into flat HTML files before uploading) and/or you only get a few visitors a day then you can probably get away without any server side caching.

However if you're running a relatively heavy site for content that doesn't change regularly (eg many CMS solutions like WordPress) then you'd want to do caching to lesson the burden on your web servers. And if you run a popular site then caching will reduce your bandwidth and thus allow you to serve more traffic on existing (virtual) hardware. Both those reason will reduce your hosting costs in the long run plus make the site feel snappier (thus improving its user experience)

However browser caching is something I'd recommend even on quiet and static sites because that will have a direct impact on the speed the site loads and can also potentially save your visitors bandwidth (this really matters if you're targeting people from less privileged backgrounds or where internet costs are extortionate).

Personally I view caching as important part of the web development and infrastructure design process as writing the code and building the web servers.

<comment><USER3> > you'd want to do caching

That's not what I meant. I understand caching helps.

What I meant is will there ever be a way for caching to happen automatically behind the scenes without _me_ ever having to do anything at all to make all this happen.

For example, the OS caches files, but I don't have to configure the OS file cache by hand. The OS takes care of it.

<comment><USER2> Your example is pretty bad for a number of reasons:

1) If you're building a high availability file server then you would expect the sysadmin to configure the way the OS caches files rather than run with the defaults. Likewise, if you're building a busy site then you'd need to configure caching to fit your specific application.

2) The OS file cache can run with pretty basic defaults because file system files are static (yes they can change, but you have to go through the kernel ABIs anyway so easy to track changes). Website content cannot be guessed upon because even static content can and often is dynamically generated. No assumptions can be accurately made. This is also why there's so many different levels of caching that happen on busy web sites.

3) File caching on the OS only needs to happen at one place (as touched on in previous point). However websites are built from a plethora of different frameworks which are literally far too numerous to name.

That all said, there will be some specific web frameworks which will ship with caching defaults (more typically in the case of browser caching) and some web applications will ship with recommended plugins for enhanced caching (eg Redis / memcached). However pragmatically I think if a web developer is smart enough to write code then they should be smart enough to implement caching. In the days of frequent website attacks, the unpredictability of which sites go viral nor when, and the ease of which anyone can build and host a website; I really do think some web developers need to up their game rather than blaming the complexity of the tools nor the lack of sane defaults. Yeah the current web model is a mess of edge cases and hidden traps, but if you're a developer then there's no excuse not to properly learn the tools you've been given regardless (or maybe especially because) of how poor those tools are at protecting you from sawing your own hand off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Varnish.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Dave

Do you deploy Varnish on your own server(s)?</comment></comment>


Show HN: MASV 3 – Send Massive Files At 1 Gbps Speeds Using Just the Browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.massive.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hello Hacker News,

So you're sitting there in LA with a 400 gigabyte raw video file and you need to send it to a video editor in London the same day (For the techies: 1 Gbps in both locations). What are your options?

You could use Dropbox but it would take around 18 hours to upload and download your files. You could ship a hard drive but that would take 1 day and cost $160 just to overnight it there. Or you could use MASV and it will cost you $100 and get it there in just over 2 hrs.

MASV is the fastest and most reliable way for video and creative professionals to transfer time-critical, massive files.

Today we are very excited to launch our newest version, rebuilt from the ground up, we call it MASV 3.0.

With MASV you can send your largest files or project folders as fast as your internet connection can handle, to most places in the world, using only your browser (no plugins or software). It's billed with a simple pay-as-you-go model, at $0.25 per gigabyte, that makes it easy to charge back your customers for their deliveries.

This upgrade includes: \- A material design interface that's mobile friendly \- Expansion to 160 servers globally \- Improved security features \- and it's all built on top of a robust API we will use to integrate with the services you love but you could use to script it to behave in any way you please.

Even for those of you with smaller files we will help you maximize your transfer speeds.

We are very excited to hear what you think of MASV 3.0 and are offering a free trial that's either 3 days or up to 100 gigabytes of data downloaded (whichever happens first).

Sign up for our service and let us know your thoughts or suggestions!</comment>


CodingDictionary – A place to search coding terms - <AUTHOR> https://codingdictionary.com/ <comment><USER2> I tried searching 'overload', 'cast', and 'mutation'. None of these were in the dictionary.</comment>


Show HN: Outdoors.io, AirBnB for outdoor gear - <AUTHOR> https://www.outdoors.io/

<comment><USER2> This is brilliant, I hope this spreads like wildfire!</comment>


Play Minecraft with Your Friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.friendsforminecraft.com

<comment><USER2> I wish there other aspects to social than shouting out your status "Just mining away in my tunnel! I love the smell of bedrock in the morning =]". In general I like tasks you need to complete together or something different. The whole share your status thing is old.

<comment><USER3> A friend and I used to try to make the grandest structures possible together, on servers that had monsters/death (ie, not creative mode), including a hardcore pvp server (12 hour ban on death) where we were the only ones to attempt to build beautiful things.

With fear of death, and materials running, and the needed exploration to get some things it became extremely more fun than playing alone. We'd also discuss and argue about building dimensions, often resorting to meeting in person and doing some things over on graph paper.

Surprisingly, on the hardcore pvp server, everyone either left us alone or protected us after a short while. I had to die maybe 20 times for everyone to more or less agree that we was nonviolent and had little worth taking, and that the thing we were building was pleasing. Some people even donated materials.

I wish I took more pictures. Here's the start of Sophia[1] and the start of a library on the Hardcore server[2]

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/NYFSi.jpg>

[2] <http://i.imgur.com/fMdcx.jpg>

<comment><USER4> Wow, Sophia is stunning! Especially with your texture pack.

I seem to get stuck in a functional mode. I rarely build anything more than a box to keep me safe.

Surely you had to do a lot of planning for Sophia... Did you just use graph paper (which seems particularly suited to minecraft) or is there some software to help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If the creator is reading this, a word of warning: Although I know of no instance where Mojang have pursued anyone for it, the Minecraft brand guidelines state:

        We are less relaxed about commercial things. You may not
        therefore use the Minecraft Name in or as the main name
        or title of commercial things.

You may wish to reconsider your name choice, although it's unlikely that anything will come of it they are in a position where you're violating their requirements.

<https://minecraft.net/brand>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. Monjang is fully aware of this product and has given a thumbs up on both the branding and commercial approach.

<comment><USER5> That's awesome! I've signed up to the launch list, I can forward it to our content team (I manage minecraftforum.net) at launch and they may be able to do an article on it.

<comment><USER6> Way to name drop, squiddles.

<comment><USER5> I was being nice :( Saying "I can forward it to our content team" and not explaining why that has any value to him is silly

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries squid... happy to chat... will reach out to you soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pardon my ignorance with Minecraft but a family members plays it constantly with friends. Their birthday is coming up and I wondered if Minecraft sells things within the game I could buy them for as a gift?

I am aware its a MMORPG, but don't know too much more about it.

<comment><USER5> There are individual servers that sell things, but Minecraft as a game has no purchasable content.

Have you considered Minecraft merchandise? There's a ton: <http://www.jinx.com/shop/coll/minecraft/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check your fonts on Windows. With Chrome the rendering is terrible, and with Firefox the wrong font is used (looks like Times New Roman).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ugh.... Thanks for pointing this out. Very much appreciated. Will fix ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks neat.

Any chance you could add optional X, Y, Z co-ordinates?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment Dan... Yes, X,Y,Z coordinates are a key part of establishing cool places and finding nearby friends, images, etc. Love to hear of any specific ideas you care to share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are at least 3 prominent buttons rigged up to the "WE ARE SORRY!" modal. If all you can actually do on the site is leave an email, make that more clear and try to be less deceiving.

Furthermore, in its current state, this product is not considered a beta; rather an alpha.

Nevertheless, I wish you all the best and indeed hope you are successful; especially given Mojang's complete lack of interest to fill these voids :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken... Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


Big Tobacco puts countries on trial as concerns over TTIP deals mount (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/big-tobacco-puts-countries-on-trial-as-concerns-over-ttip-deals-mount-9807478.html

<comment><USER3> You know what. It is one thing to inform people of the risk of cigarettes and to encourage them never to start and to help them quit (and for God's sake make the tobacco companies publish their ingredients already!) -- but it is entirely another thing to legislate them into what is effectively prohibition. Man has been smoking tobacco for thousands of years, and along comes the modern nanny state that is going to tell you exactly what you can and cannot do in every little corner of your life. It is getting way out of control.

Note, I say this irrespective of the TTIP, which I am pretty sure I would oppose (if I knew what it entailed) for the very same reasons.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is it that amounts to effective prohibition? I did not find it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Noam Chomsky write in "Deterring Democracy" that Thailand once banned tobacco imports to protect the health of its people, but was forced to back down because the US Federal Government - not a tobacco company - <USER2> Thailand with trade sanctions.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www1.american.edu/ted/cigar.htm](http://www1.american.edu/ted/cigar.htm)</comment></comment>


Google Consumer Survey - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home <comment><USER2> Don't use this if you are going to spend money based on the outcome (or do anything else important with it).

People do not have a vested interest in completing the questions honestly or on the outcome. Their motivation is to get to the premium content, and although there will be some that are honest, most people are trying to get "free" content and have the most motivation towards not giving value (money or answers that betray their privacy/thoughts) back.

My day job is primarily based on analysing survey results, and I can tell you that the only way to get decent usable results from "paying" people is to make sure that they have a vested interest in the results of the survey and that the payment is a (nice) side-effect of completing the survey and not the goal.

Edit: Of course, this type of survey can be useful if you need to "validate" something that otherwise you can't (i.e. to falsify results). Simply choose multiple choice questions and stack the answers in the right order (people usually click in certain pattern when doing it at "random"). Keep repeating or extending your survey until you have the right ratio of participants in favour of your preposition, then call it a day and publish!

<comment><USER3> Can you give me an example of how people having a vested interest in the results of a survey would improve the results?

I always thought that if you have a question (like "should the government fund more particle physics") and you ask people with a vested interest (particle physicists) you'll get an answer aligned with their interest ("absolutely, extremely important") in which case why do a survey at all when you know what answers they're going to give?

<comment><USER2> You do indeed get an answer aligned with their interest, which is often useful (not perhaps in your example), as that is generally the point of the survey (to find out what your respondents think).

You need to pick your respondent cohort carefully if you are trying to ask a question of opinion (particularly more so than when asking a question of fact) to eliminate bias in your cohort. So in your example, rather than surveying particle physicists, you would look for another group of interested parties (e.g. a range of tax payers or non-specialist funding bodies) who have a vested interest (in this case in how their money is spent).

My work, for instance, revolves around surveying doctors on their experiences of medical training and career needs/aspirations. The vested interest of our participants is hopefully clear (influence on their training/career/work environment). We ask a wide range of factual and opinion based questions, eliminate biases (or segment responses on biases) due to various factors (e.g. location, age, gender etc.) and report our findings in the context of our cohort, i.e. "these are the experiences and opinions of doctors".

In short, you are right, you need to consider the makeup of your cohort and also how you report your findings in respect of that. Having a vested interest doesn't necessarily mean being biased, and sometimes that bias is what the survey aims to report on. In a survey like the google ones, that bias is money/free content, and thats all you will discover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> the thing is with tools nobody knows about is, that google regularly kills them. i.e.: <http://trends.google.com/websites?q=> google trends for websites

this was the unbelievable useful tool to get competitive data (traffic, queries) about other websites. it was not perfect, the data was sometimes months late. but it was good enough to compare websites with each other.

now it's gone. probably it didn't fit into google strategy. probably someone at google decided that "we are not in the business of providing competitive intelligence data of websites" (i guess that, as the google adplanner was stripped of lots of website data in the same timeframe )

the same thing with the product mentioned above. it will be killed. maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but sure as hell sometime.

<comment><USER5> Instead of "Trends for Websites", you can use "Google Ad Planner " <https://www.google.com/adplanner> which has more detailed traffic statistics.

<comment><USER4> nope, not anymore (as mentioned above) i.e.: [https://www.google.com/adplanner/#siteSearch?uid=twitter.com...](https://www.google.com/adplanner/#siteSearch?uid=twitter.com&geo=US&lp=false) killed the product (for most websites on the web), too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mansoor-s I've seen these kinds of things in the past. I can say first hand that I for one do not read the questions... type gibberish in text fields and select random choices in multiple choice answers. I am sure others will do the same.

I don't see how this can work. The only time I see it some-what-working is while gathering a massive (really massive) amount of submissions for a decision involving only two options. Maybe then... but even then it wouldn't be possible to determine the actual percentage of users suggesting one or the other option.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can email Paul McDonald to get a free voucher to try this out (see [http://www.quora.com/Google/What-is-it-like-to-use-Google- Co...](http://www.quora.com/Google/What-is-it-like-to-use-Google-Consumer- Surveys))

I used it to ask how much people were willing to pay to collect video customer reviews and a _lot_ of the responses were 11111111, 1000000 or 12345 dollars per month though.

<comment><USER7> Never, ever make a free entry question. You'll wind up with "balls", "suck it", etc. all the time. Predefine 3-4 set ranges, and let them perform a single click to answer the question. Much more accurate results.

<comment><USER8> more accurate results, or more plausible-looking random results?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used this once and was really happy with the results. I think there's a little bit of an opportunity bias which good statisticians would have issues with, but for some useful imperfect numbers I think it's a good solution.

Also, this is a pretty new tool.

</comment><comment><USER10> This type of market research was previously only accessible to companies that could drop 10k or more on these surveys. This tool will help entrepreneurs validate ideas they were unable to test because it was cost prohibitive.

<comment><USER11> I spent a couple of years working for a company in a market research space. It's an interesting business of which I knew very little before I worked there. But the answer is that you could do a survey for a fraction of that cost. SurveyMonkey has the same product and so do a few others.

As an aside, google launched this about 6 months ago and pretty much has everyone in that business scared. Ultimately it all boils down to having profiles on a lot of users and selling access to them. Google's user base (and what they know about them) dwarfs what everyone else has combined. If they wanted to, with a bit of effort they could own that market in 6-12 months.

<comment><USER10> I hear you on that - but that survey monkey panel is going to cost $3-$8 a response depending on the audience you want to reach (i.e. 50 year old working men tend to be expensive), and the results just aren't that pretty looking like googles. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook comes out with a similar product - they seem to be in a better position to give users rewards to perform MR activities, and have more data on users for additional cross tabs;' Google only has approximate age, gender, location.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So for $110 I could run my own presidential election poll?

Hmmmmm.

No, wait. Targeting is 50 cents a person, not 10. So it would be about $550. Still, though.

<comment><USER13> I did, a week ago:

[http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/view?survey=b...](http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/view?survey=b67pd74kkvau4&question=4&filter&rw=1)

<comment><USER12> Very interesting, thank you for sharing that!

The patterns in subpopulations seem to match general expectations. Very cool.

Almost no responses in the $100k+ incomes. I wonder if that's a general problem with the method?

<comment><USER14> It could be a general problem. For collecting responses from high-income individuals the method faces the double-whammy of: (1) smaller number of potential respondents; (2) respondents are least willing to spend their time on such surveys (or the sites the survey-wall blocks).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is brand new, I saw it previewed on JLG Monday Note blog. The consumers are going to be incentivized to take them as a form of micropayment for access to articles behind a paywall...win-win for everybody I guess.

<comment><USER10> consumers are incentives to take the survey to see premium content - I didn't see anything about micro payments.

<comment><USER15> Google will charge the survey initiators, take its cut, pay premium content providers with the balance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Glad to see the interest in this new form of market research. YC S12 company Survata.com offers a similar service. We can run multiple questions at a time, so researchers enjoy the ability to cross-tab responses (an important ability you lose when you run only 1 question surveys on other services). We encourage you to check us out at Survata.com (we give all first time users a $10 coupon) and we welcome any feedback.

</comment><comment><USER17> Although this idea isn't new, I'm glad Google is getting into this space in order to make it more competitive and cheaper to perform these types of surveys.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is clearly not my domain, so I am sure I am missing something, but how is this different from creating, say, a Wufoo form to prompt users to enter information that you need? (WuFoo seems to be $0.05 per entry)

<comment><USER19> If I understand correctly, Google supplies the traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The term for this is "content-locking". The opposite side of this relationship (for publishers): <http://www.blamads.com/>

_disclaimer: friend owns that site_

</comment><comment><USER21> Won't this lead to pay-walls adopting this and eventually creation of pay-per- view non-news sites? If so, people will blindly click thgough and quality of data won't match expectations.

<comment><USER17> Survey pay-walls have been around for a long time and I would imagine a lot people already click through them blindly. I expect the price will eventually drop further so that you'll be able to afford enough responses to get past that margin of error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well the paywall thing is a huge deal-killer for me although I love the a response dashboard system they've built. For those of you conducting surveys, what are some good alternatives?

</comment><comment><USER23> Now you, too, can test 41 shades of blue.</comment>


Five countries hold 70% of world's last wildernesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/31/five-countries-hold-70-of-worlds-last-wildernesses-map-reveals <comment><AUTHOR> Prior to reading this, I'd assumed the US would be among the five (spoiler: it is). The map in the article doesn't seem to indicate any wilderness in the continental US, though (it's all Alaska). I'm surprised, since we have large swaths of land in the west that I'd consider wilderness. There are pockets in the densely populated northeast that I'd consider wilderness as well.

I wonder what their criteria are?</comment>


Show HN: How We Built an Extensible Tour System for Streak - <AUTHOR> http://blog.streak.com/2013/04/how-we-built-extensible-tour-system-for_22.html

<comment><USER2> We did something similar.

Configuration file with sections/selectors of the feature to highlight [1].

Model to determine if the user has unseen "tutorials" [2].

JavaScript to show an indicator that new features exist [3][4].

It looks like this, <http://imgur.com/a/ZWaHV>

[1] [https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/html/...](https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/html/assets/themes/fabrizio1.0/config/tutorial.ini)

[2] [https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/libra...](https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/libraries/models/Tutorial.php)

[3] [https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/html/...](https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/html/assets/themes/fabrizio1.0/javascripts/op/Tutorial.js)

[4] <https://github.com/usablica/intro.js>

</comment><comment><USER3> Why bother making this from scratch? There are tons of tour plugins and companies that have sprouted in the past few months.

<comment><USER4> Right now the landscape is split between startups providing the service and jquery/bootstrap plugins.

The startup offerings don't work for us since we're inside of Gmail which presents a unique technical challenge in regards to loading javascript, etc.

The libraries have the issue of things being "hard coded" meaning it becomes too difficult and annoying to make lots of tour variations, or do A/B testing.

<comment><USER3> Ahh. Great answer, makes sense now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just wanted to say, I LOVE your product - it's simple yet flexible...and it lives right where I need it. :)</comment>


CGI and other contractors testify about Obamacare website problems (live) - <AUTHOR> http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN/

<comment><AUTHOR> So far it has been "not our fault, it was another subcontractor's problem".

<comment><USER2> No blaming HHS's CMS (the integrator) or anyone else in the government above them?

That would be problematic, seeing as how they're paying the bills....</comment></comment>


The Gox Crater: Crowd Detectives Reveal Billion-Dollar Heist As Inside Job - <AUTHOR> http://falkvinge.net/2014/02/28/the-gox-crater-crowd-detectives-reveal-billion-dollar-heist-as-inside-job/ <comment><USER2> The article also notes that there may have been two suicides linked to Mt.Gox, thus far.</comment>