Ask YC/HN: How do you help your job-hunting friends out? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
So I may not have a problem with jobs, but many of my friends do, especially a few talented ones that I know would perform fantastically almost anywhere.  I tell these friends I will help them out, but I'm still not sure the best way to help them.
If they know the company they want to work for, that's easy.  But what about people who just want a job in a specific industry (i.e. consulting, start-ups)?  Do you message a group of friends?  Share it via social media?  Figure out where they would fit in and call your friends at those places?
I'd like to know so I can be helpful to these really talented friends.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I have them send me a resume and then I personally contact a handful of folks that I think would benefit from hiring someone like them, and that would be a good fit for them.

If they are visible online, I'll be sure to email that along, pass it along via IM, etc

I don't really do anything special, and if I happen to be in the right place at the right time to hook two people up in a mutually beneficial way, I do that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just keep an eye out for your friends telling you that they have so and so position available. Then let them know you have someone good who'd be a good fit. Also if you know a good recruiter pass their resume on.

But only do it, if you are 100% sure it won't come to bite you in the ass later.

3 stories:

1-Guy went into an interview. Told me he knew a language, when he didn't. I got a friend to get him an interview at his company...turned out he couldn't write a simple select statement. He knew the theory, but he didn't practice writing the actual code.

2-Guy went into an interview, got tired of interviewing after 4 different people, and walked out. And on the way out he called his last interviewer a bitch under his breath...which she heard.

3-Guy went into an interview...got an offer. Accepted it. Then 1 week later got fired for incompetence. Apparently he was a very slow coder.

In each case, the person I asked to help out got in trouble. And I got an earful for putting them in hot water.

<comment><USER4> how slow is slow? Its one thing to be slow implementing a precise spec where the algorithms are sketched (ie problemeatic), its another thing (ie reasonable) to be slow cooking up a nicely designed tool with good / nontrivial algorithimics and interface

<comment><USER3> I don't really know the details, but he got fired after something like 1 week, so I doubt it was in regards to something complicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I ask what their ultimate work situation would be (environment, tools, etc.) and what environment they would avoid like the the plague. Then I keep an eye out for them, offer support/assistance, and refer them to others that can help.

</comment><comment><USER6> Linked In is a great place to start.

Ask a question on Linked In about who has jobs and send it to all of your contacts. That way you can funnel the right jobs to the right people.

Not only will it help your friends but also if you land any successful candidates the person who hired will probably be pretty happy too.

I set up a number of people I know with jobs this way.

The other thing I did was have a party. It was purely co-incidental, but given my circle of friends maybe 5 people were hiring and there were about the same who wanted a new job. I'm not sure if anyone has been hired because of it, but I'm sure it didn't hurt. Just make sure you don't invite someone because they are hiring. That's kinda lame and inconsiderate to them as a person.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm good at writing resumes. But lousy at interviewing - which I discovered the hard way while running for office this past November.

At the moment, only one friend is looking for something (more stable than his current gig), so when I see something, I let him know. This guy writes better resumes than I do, and he is extremely good at interviewing. He's been a contractor for the past 25 years.

If you're going to help out your friends, then you need lots of contacts in the industry. Effectively, you'll become a recruiter/headhunter/go-between yourself.

 _Figure out where they would fit in and call your friends at those places?_ Yes. Exactly that.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have the same problem as the original poster but I also have the opposite problem: I have several perpetually unemployed or underemployed friends. They are old. They are opinionated. They should be looking at retirement with pensions by now. They don't fit with any team I have been on. Whenever I post to various forums we all frequent with open positions they send in their resumes. But I can't hire them for the same reason nobody else can hire them. It's awkward when I have to ignore their resume or tell them they just wouldn't be a good fit.

<comment><USER9> I was young and opinionated once. I´m old and opinionated now. The only difference is, now I'm right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the best thing to do is to introduce them to as many people as possible so that they can meet face-to-face. Obviously, it has to be a match for skill set, personality type, role, etc.

People simply relate better to direct meetings. They can put a face to a name and have a much better understanding of the person who is looking for a job.

Also, it is simply a lot harder to tell someone no to their face :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm sending their resumes to some recruiters I know...or, if I hear about a job somewhere I send them the link to apply.

</comment><comment><USER12> would one more of these friends be open to getting together to do a startup (atleast those interested in startups)?

</comment><comment><USER13> This post is a great step, tell us more.</comment>


Ask HN: Updated recurring payment recommendations? - <AUTHOR>

I'm researching recurring payment options and read through some excellent past HN posts and polls on this topic (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2201363, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=918700).  Based on the comments from those posts and some additional research, I'm leaning towards Spreedly + PayPal Website Payments Pro.  However, since those posts are a bit dated, does anyone have any updated suggestions or advice?
I also noticed that Spreedly's blog and Twitter feeds have been very quiet these past few months and I'm hoping that is not indicative of problems -- just that they are busy improving the service :).
Note: This is for a relatively new service, so BrainTree or [Authorize.net + Recurly / Chargify] are a bit too expensive at the moment. <comment><USER2> <https://stripe.com/> makes accepting CC and recurring payments extremely easy, and works as a merchant account as well. However it's in private beta. Some founders hang around HN, perhaps you can get an invite.

</comment><comment><USER3> Braintree is about $130 per month at near-zero transaction volume. Is that _really_ too expensive? Payments are pretty fundamental and not an easy thing to swap out later. Don't be penny wise and pound foolish. Go with something good from the start.

</comment><comment><USER4> You might take a look at SaaSy, which has zero monthly, setup, or chargeback costs irrespective of how small you may be, and your store can be designed and setup for no added cost.

<comment><USER5> +1 for Saasy.com. I recommend for a bootstrapped startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We reviewed a bunch of these and finally settled on Amazon's Simple Payments Subscription service. Easy to integrate and decent rates: [https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business/asp/subscript...](https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business/asp/subscriptions)</comment>


Deprecated Linux networking commands and their replacements - <AUTHOR> https://dougvitale.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/deprecated-linux-networking-commands-and-their-replacements/ <comment><USER2> The first thing I do on any Linux machine is set up an `ifconfig` alias in my shell. That's a command that I've been using for a lot longer than some of these distributions have been around.

From the man page documentation for ifconfig:

> This program is obsolete! For replacement check ip addr and ip link. For > statistics use ip -s link.

and

> Ifconfig uses obsolete kernel interface. It uses the ioctl access method to > get the full address information, which limits hardware addresses to 8 > bytes. Since an Infiniband address is 20 bytes, only the first 8 bytes of > Infiniband address are displayed.

I don't understand why ifconfig couldn't be upgraded to use whatever the new IOCTL that is compatible with 20b+ addresses instead of being deprecated for favor of a new command entirely.

Fortunately, my FreeBSD servers all take ifconfig out-of-the-box... and even my Linux shell under Windows does, too.

<comment><USER3> On which Linux distribution did you find the "This program is obsolete!" note in `man ifconfig`?

I have Debian 9 and I don't see it in my `man ifconfig`!

<comment><USER4> Fedora 26.

        $ sudo dnf provides /usr/sbin/ifconfig
        net-tools-2.0-0.42.20160912git.fc26.x86_64 : Basic networking tools
        Repo        : @System

<comment><USER5> [https://git.centos.org/raw/rpms/net- tools.git/c7/SOURCES!net...](https://git.centos.org/raw/rpms/net- tools.git/c7/SOURCES!net-tools-man.patch)

I believe this patch originates from Fedora, but I don't know how to get Fedora source for this RPM. :-\

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This[1] page covers a lot more commands. I didn't even know it was possible to do some of those in linux without installing more packages. It is very long so I would just bookmark it.

[1]:[http://baturin.org/docs/iproute2/](http://baturin.org/docs/iproute2/)

</comment><comment><USER7> The post is from 2011 and it's been awhile since I started using 'ip' instead of 'ifconfig', but everybody, myself included, seem to continue using 'netstat' and not 'ss'.

<comment><USER8> I like most if the new tools, but the 'ss' command produces output that's hard to skim. When outputting to a terminal it tries to justify the columns, hiding some information on the next line. When you pipe it through cat (so it can't detect a tty), the columns don't even line up.

<comment><USER9> > _When you pipe it through cat (so it can 't detect a tty), the columns don't > even line up._

Weird. At first I thought it might be due to tabs, but it appears to be using spaces.

<comment><USER10> Honestly, why people don't use tabs in terminals is beyond me. It's easier to parse in nearly every case that doesn't involve a text editor of some sort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _iw_ is not quite a complete replacement for _iwconfig_ and _iwlist_. Former don't support some network card drivers, such as [1]. So if you happen to have one of those, you have to use latter two, deprecated or not.

[1] [https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8188eu/](https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8188eu/)

</comment><comment><USER12> My fingers still type ifconfig, netstat, and route, and then I correct myself usually before hitting enter (though that took at least a couple of years). The new commands are more consistent, and more logically laid out so I can't argue against switching...but, my muscle memory doesn't know them yet (despite having started switching years ago).

It seems pretty clear unlearning the old and learning the new is more work than learning it for the first time, which may be why so many old-timers are so disagreeable to changes like this, even if the new is clearly superior (and for the average user, these may not be clearly superior enough to justify extra effort). Hell, I caught myself typing an ipchains command a week or so ago (while I'm busy learning about nftables which replaces iptables/ip6tables!), and I haven't had a system that had ipchains in more than a decade.

<comment><USER13> is nftables production ready ? or is everyone still at iptables/ipchains ?

<comment><USER12> You're fine sticking with iptables for now, if you don't experience any pain from it. ipchains has been compltely dead for well over a decade (which is why it's so ridiculous that I'd start typing an ipchains command); iptables arrived in 2001 and was on everything by the mid-2000s. The difference with that transition was that you _couldn 't_ keep using ipchains, because it was replaced by iptables. nftables co-exists with iptables.

nftables works well and has been available in mainline Linux for a few years, but there's little support for it at the distribution and tools and documentation level. AFAIK, things like firewalld and other firewall management tools don't support it yet (though firewalld will support it transparently when it does arrive, so if you use firewalld to manage your iptables firewalls, it'll probably Just Work when switching to nftables). We don't yet support it in our products (while we do support firewalld, iptables, and some third party firewall management tools like CSF have modules for Webmin).

iptables continues to be supported at all levels, so there is no urgency to switching, though nftables is clearly superior in nearly every way. It's an awesome tool, but adoption has been very, very slow. I think that's unfortunate, as it's an area where I'd be willing to learn new things. nft has really clean syntax with super powerful abstractions and hooks into the kernel.

So, if you manage a lot of Linux firewalls, or a few very complex ones, maybe you want to switch already...I would, if I were in that situation. But, I just use firewalld, because my firewall needs are minimal these days.

<comment><USER13> do you see a python 2 -> python 3 situation happening with nftables ? because that is a shame.

I personally cant wait for pfsense quality products to come on Linux.

<comment><USER12> I think Linux is just such a big ecosystem now, with such a huge variety of dependent parties, that nothing can change fast anymore, and nothing can ever die. So many products are built around iptables, so many docs assume iptables, etc. It's just cheaper for people to keep using iptables. Doing an ipchains->iptables style conversion where the next version of Linux just completely removed the old thing, wouldn't be feasible today. Linux is orders of magnitude bigger than it was from the transition 2.2 to 2.4 (I think that was when the iptables switch happened).

It's "only" been four years since nftables made it to mainline kernel, so we're not quite into Python 3 territory, but I wouldn't be surprised if we're still having this conversation in five more years. There's just no movement toward nftables, at all, that I perceive. I think it's partly because firewalls matter less today than they once did. So much is in the cloud now, where the firewall is somebody else's problem. It might even end up being a Perl 5->6 situation, but we won't know for a few more years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> ifconfig is far superior to ip, depending on the use case. Mostly I want to see the current IP, MAC, amount of traffic transfered. Sometimes MTU. Can't do that with one command in ip.

<comment><USER6>
      ip -s a

If you want human readable byte/packet numbers

      ip -s -h a

`ip` is actually really cool once you get to know all the features. I missed seeing ifconfig's familiar output but got over it rather (suprisingly) quickly.

<comment><USER14> but how is that better then ifconfig? with this I see bytes/packets. But not IP, for that I have to use a different command...

<comment><USER6> Have you actually tried using the command in my comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hmm. Problem is, ifconfig and netstat are available on OS X too, while ip and ss are not...

</comment><comment><USER16> Good to know that ifconfig is supposed to he phased out. I'm not a sysadmin, so I've never heard about it.

<comment><USER17> Your comment doesn't make sense. Why is it good to know that a command that you haven't even heard about is phased out?

Fwiw you don't need to be a sysadmin to have known of ifconfig. Hell how is it possible to have set up networking on Linux distributions without knowing this command?

<comment><USER18> I think he means he hadn't heard about it being phased out.

<comment><USER19> Mmm. I had no idea either. I was surprised to see how old the linked article is!

I'm not a sysadmin, but I use Linux every day. Just can't keep up anymore...

<comment><USER20> I'm a sysadmin and I hadn't heard this until last year. It explains why only root can do an ifconfig on SLES, but anyone can run 'ip a'

<comment><USER16> In Debian both of them sit in /sbin so it boils down to whether /sbin is in the PATH by default. I think it better should be, rather than not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From a casual net commands user POV, I like that 'ip' plus a sub-command has taken over a good part of this. It's nice to look in one man page, and discover other things ip does, without having to be aware (or ignorant!) of other commands.

</comment><comment><USER22> cant recommand ss enough.

        ss -4tanpioe state established

<comment><USER23> lsof -i -n -P | grep ESTABLISHED

<comment><USER22> ss is a lot faster IIRC

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> ip is a great tool, the only thing I am still not used to is that, ip's output is more like for machines instead of human to digest, at least for me. I feel a sugar wrapper is needed for more enjoyable reading on the terminal.

this post is very useful, hope the author can make a github page for it...

<comment><USER18> -h

<comment><USER24> correct, I do use that, still not as good IMHO

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My favorite feature of ip(8) is its ability to load kernel modules [https://twitter.com/lucabruno/status/902934379835662336](https://twitter.com/lucabruno/status/902934379835662336)

<comment><USER26> Favorite in the serious sense, or the WTF sense?

Like i didn't dislike it enough already. Would not surprise me if it had the Poettering stamp of approval...

<comment><USER25> > Favorite in the serious sense, or the WTF sense?

The WTF sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> so I see "not apparent" in many replacement columns... which means the original is not deprecated at all, but still the only show in town.

<comment><USER28> No, it means the author didn't find it in their research time. Which seems crazy, one of them is "iptunnel -v" and version is the first flag covered in the ip man page

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Flame bait title. I know some of these but not all. All the supposedly deprecated commands still work six years after posting.

<comment><USER30> 'Deprecated' means "stop using this", not "this doesn't work anymore", albeit the former usually implies the latter, especially over time.

The Linux kernel's promise not to break userspace means lots of ancient shit still works even though maybe it shouldn't...

<comment><AUTHOR> Also ifconfig doesn't work at all in some cases. Virtual IP on a vlan on a bond, liks most trading systems use? Won't show up.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A comparison of websocket servers in multiple languages/frameworks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hashrocket/websocket-shootout <comment><AUTHOR> There is a companion blog post here [https://hashrocket.com/blog/posts/websocket- shootout](https://hashrocket.com/blog/posts/websocket-shootout)</comment>


Weekly Machine Learning Opensource Roundup – Sep. 13, 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pocketcluster.io/2018/09/13/weekly-machine-learning-opensource-roundup-sep-13-2018/ <comment><USER2> Very cool! Is there a way to subscribe to this weekly roundup?</comment>


TELL HN: My side project - SaaS Interviews - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
I'm starting a podcast/mixergy-like show where I'd interview successful SaaS(software-as-a-service) like Balsamiq/Wufoo/Basecamp/OneHub, basically I'd interview a lot of them so that you could find out about them and to show you what went well with them and how it could help your saas.
What do you think about this idea? .. I've had it for a while now and think you'd love it! <comment><USER2> Interesting... try to find a differentiating factor though (compared to similar interviews online).</comment>


Battery Status API being Removed from Firefox due to Privacy Concerns - <AUTHOR> http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/battery-status-api-being-removed-from-firefox-due-to-privacy-concerns/ <comment><USER2> There probably is not much of a difference for a website if user is low in power than if it is low in memory. There should be then just one flag/event really: low resources (catch-all for: battery, memory, CPU time, storage etc.). But browser could just emit please-save event and give a second or so to complete. Then decrease timer intervals significantly.

Alternative (only for power) could be the levels of concern in power usage: low concern (desktop or mobile that is charging), concern (mobile), high concern (mobile on low battery). Then we could streamline it more, because websites know when you are on mobile already and give single flag: low power. But approach from first paragraph is probably more sensible.

<comment><USER3> How about websites just don't use more resources than they have to? If I'm 100% charged, it doesn't mean I'm willing to give 85% of it to some site that wants to show some useless flair.

<comment><USER2> They will take whatever you give them. There are sensible and useful web- sites/applications out there, but they are 1:100 (or Sturgeon's law's 10:90).

You can limit everything for everyone and maybe give option to enable softer limits for certain sites. I just hope that it would not hurt legitimate sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wasn't there also a thread a while back about how Uber was allegedly using battery levels to manipulate surge pricing at the individual level?

So if your phone was dying you were more likely to accept it because you wanted to book the ride before it died?

Unscrupulous websites could theoretically manipulate your experience in similar ways using battery level knowledge, I would think..

<comment><USER5> It was only a study. Users were willing to accept higher prices, but no company was caught red-handed yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Completely removing the feature seems overkill. Presumably there are good reasons to have it (full-screen kiosk style apps perhaps?) so would it not be better to leave the feature there but add a permissions gate as seen with location information and full-screen use ("This site wants to see power management information about your device, should we allow this? yes/no/always- for-this-site/never-for-this-site").

<comment><USER7> Permissions probably aren't that great UX-wise, but couldn't the API have been simplified instead, only allowing web sites to query remaining battery time? To me, it sounds like the API is vastly overengineered.

<comment><USER8> That still leaks a number, let's say it's 0-5h and resolution is 1 minute, that's 60*5 == 300, so roughly 8 bits of entropy.

A `onBatteryLow` callback might do the trick?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good move by Mozilla, and sets good precedent of deprecating/removing features that hamper privacy. Safari is following on too.

A minimal boolean API (onPower/onBattery) would be sufficient for most application uses.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand: couldn't they just make the results less accurate (say, ten possible values) so that it can still be used to tell if the battery is going down but not to identify users?

<comment><USER11> Agree, this seems overkill, privacy is good, but removing a feature because some use to spy on users seems to be a quick fix. I mean will they also remove cookies because some adds networks use them to track users? Probably not.

And the problem probably won't go away by just killing one feature. As far as I know such user fingerprinting techniques work because values from lots of APIs get taken into account, so just killing one API won't solve the problem completly.

What bothers me most, is that this is a step back for webapps developers, the web app loose a feature the native apps can still use, it's just sad.

I guess the mozilla team has put some thought into this!? I would really like to know what their pros and cons where. I wonder what other solutions they considered and why those where all dismissed until finally deciding in favor of such a drastic move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _[...] the Battery Status API, a feature that allows websites to detect the > status of the user 's battery level, and use this information to save > critical website data to disk before the device shuts down._

If that was the primary use-case, why not add a new feature that explicitly handles this?

You could imagine an "emergency shutdown imminent" callback that the browser invokes if there is a high likelihood of an emergency shutdown (because of battery level or other indicators). This would also give the browsers more leeway in evolving this feature and experimenting with different indicators, without breaking compatibility.

<comment><USER13> I like this idea. And then if the browser can tie back to the OS, specifically Windows with its update restarts but really any of them where browser open + reboot/shutdown, it's an enhancement for site developers without actually needing to do anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone ever seen a website that uses this for anything at all _other than_ user tracking? Has anyone ever built a website that adapts its power consumption based on this value?

<comment><USER15> It's funny how many people here are advocating adding _more_ functionality and UX to a feature that is hardly used (that I've seen, at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To be fair, the article doesn't say Google is removing it. Just Mozilla and Apple.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but Google Chrome uses Webkit. If it's removed from that, Google will have to maintain that functionality on its own. Might not be worth it.

<comment><USER17> Chrome uses Blink which was forked from WebKit long ago, see [https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/google-forks-webkit-and- la...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/google-forks-webkit-and-launches- blink-its-own-rendering-engine-that-will-soon-power-chrome-and-chromeos/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Couldn't a new API be added where web apps can subscribe to critical battery level warning events? Would be a lot less useful for tracking, but still serve the purpose intended for the original API.

Probably already on the way.

</comment><comment> yoz-y Hum, I hope this API will stay there at least in Electron as we need it for our application.

<comment><USER3> I haven't seen a convincing use case for the feature yet, any chance you can share what you "need" it for?

<comment> yoz-y Our application connects to a device that has very low tolerance for electrical interference, which means that the computer it is connected to must be on battery power. If we detect that the power supply is connected we disable the application. Also, we disable the application when the power is low, so the computer does not shut down in the middle of a session. Of course if anything happens to the API it is not that hard to bring it back via a native Electron plugin, I would just prefer not to have to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For what it's worth, in case you did a double take as I did, it's "(removing a feature) to protect consumers' privacy" (that is, a good move), not "removing (a feature to protect consumers' privacy)" (a bad move).

I'm not sure why we're keeping the clickbait title; the feature is the battery status API, which a study ([http://lukaszolejnik.com/battery](http://lukaszolejnik.com/battery)) showed might open up privacy issues. EDIT: Neither complaint applies to the new title. Thanks to the editors for changing it!

<comment><USER20> I joke about their headline clichés, but the NYT solved this a while ago. Their standard headline format is _[motivation, action]_. So it would probably be "To protect consumers' privacy, web companies remove a feature"

(Actually it would probably be "In web browsers, a feature finds an unexpected use" or some such)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They are removing battery status API because it was used to track users by ads networks and alike.

</comment><comment><USER22> The article does't exactly explain how the API and its exploit works, but my first thought was: can we at least have a simplified version, with not so accurate status? 10% thresholds should be just enough for the intended use, I believe.

</comment><comment><USER23> Note that you can turn this off yourself by setting "dom.battery.enabled" to "false".

</comment><comment><USER24> Title should be corrected, Mozilla is removing it, Apple is considering removing it, but nothing about any movement on Chrome. Maybe the poster made the Blink vs Webkit mistake?

EDIT: It's been fixed now, thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: GitLab Continuous Integration - <AUTHOR> We use GitLab at my job (goread.com) and I've been taking a look at its continuous integration feature. I wanted to see if we could automate our deployments, specially to our staging environment.
Today, we use git feature branches and handle deployment to both staging and production using python's fabric.
By default, GitLab's CI runs on every feature branch push, which I dislike, since you can push a feature branch that isn't ready for testing, for backup purposes. Although, it can be configured to automatically deploy only to staging, while having production deployment manually triggered. It can also run only on specific branches, like staging and master.
I was after a way to integrate deployment with task status updates, so once we updated a task status to Staging, for example, it would trigger a job to merge that task's feature branches to staging and deploy it. Once it gets tested and approved, we would update the task status to Approved, which would trigger a master merge and a push to production. To me, this would be the perfect solution.
Unfortunately, that's not how it works. It might be achievable through GitLab's web hooks and api, but i don't think it has a way to add a custom field to a task to store the related git branches and it only has an open / close status. We could use labels instead and parse the task description to extract the branch info.
What I've done in the past and worked great is use git hooks for deployment. Basically, we would add the fabric tasks functionality to the post_receive git hook, so once we push the staging or master branch, it would automatically trigger deployment. That would handle deployment's heavy lift, but I'd still like to automate branch merging, by linking it to task status.
In short, what I'd like to achieve is deployment based on task status updates.
Has anyone done that? Is it a good idea? Are there any caveats?
Any tips or ideas would be highly appeciated. Thanks! <comment><USER2> If you could extract branch information from fabric tasks, and then merge the branch with associated deployment handled by GitLab CI, the workflow would be the simplest one. For that reason maybe you could investigate more on your idea of parsing the task description, it could be a single point that solves the matter.

As a side note, if you want to disable CI for a specific commit you can just use [skip ci] or [ci skip] in the commit message and no pipeline is created for that specific case.</comment>


The Real Spectre - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-real-spectre <comment><USER2> > In 2010, Nicola Gratteri and other anti-mafia prosecutors arrested and > convicted the syndicate's "boss of bosses", 80-year-old Domenico Oppedisano, > who was unknown to police before the start of their investigation and led an > outwardly blameless life as a market gardener.

I think this was my favorite part of the article. How do you make it to 80 years old as not only an undetected mob boss but as an undetected super-mob- boss? Smuggling tons of cocaine and whacking hundreds of people aren't exactly easily anonymizable crimes.

</comment><comment><USER3> If there's ever a fifth Uncharted game, I think I know who the villains will be.</comment>


Inactive Account Manager - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/settings/account/inactive

<comment><USER2> _You are trying to access Inactive Account Manager from a Google Apps Account. Inactive Account Manager is only available for Google Accounts._

Google UI at its finest.

<comment><USER3> Try having 4 emails from clients that insist you use their domain email (hosted on GApps) and switching to them or your personal email to check out your google analytics.

It's a total and absolute -sham-. I still don't understand how they can screw up such basic functionality. Hell, even YouTube has -basic things- completely wrong. For example, I leave a comment on a video. I want to see my comment three months down the line and see if I have any replies and what score it has. I can't find that - anywhere. Where can I easily find my comments? Christ.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, handling multiple accounts I would imagine is pretty hard. And then coordinating that across all of Googles suite of servies would only add to the complexity.

I'm not aware of any other provider or site that lets you be logged in with two accounts at once.

<comment><USER5> What is odd to me is that it used to work pefectly fine. Around two or three years ago, however, I believe the changed the way their login system worked and it suddenly had trouble keeping more than one account logged in. I was super happy with Gmail when I had my @gmail.com, @personaldomain1.com, etc. accounts all open at once.

My solution to that problem has been to largely ignore my other inboxes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea when this was announced, if at all. I just came across this "Inactivity Account Manager" and thought of it as a "Dead man's switch" solution.

Under the "Add Trusted Contact" section, you can write a personal "atonement" email to whoever will receive your data. At least that's how the message to my wife is turning out :|

<comment><USER6> It came out a little more than a year ago. Pretty quiet launch, but they blogged about it:

[http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2013/04/plan-your- dig...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2013/04/plan-your-digital- afterlife-with.html)

I think Wired and some other folks picked it up then too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry I didn't see this earlier. A fantastic tool, even if it's filling me with existential dread having to write these messages to my loved ones.

A really elegant solution to the "Dead man switch". I'm glad Google thought to do this. It may be a small thing, but it did really matter to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> The first time I navigated to that page (by accident, I was exploring my Google account settings) I sat there looking at the screen puzzled. It took me almost 5 minutes to realize that this nebulous description actually meant the passing of the account owner.

Couldn't they label it more clearly?

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that was a surreal, emotionally moving experience. I recommend everyone to go through it even if you don't want to enable it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does this include chrome's history?

<comment><USER11> No, its awesome and deletes your browser history when you die.

<comment><USER12> Relevant: [http://www.snotr.com/video/3806/Porn_Buddies](http://www.snotr.com/video/3806/Porn_Buddies)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 34 words; _Inactive Account Manager_ is used 4 times.

Representing 35% of the message.

<comment><USER14> HN title: 4 words (including appended domain). _Inactive Account Manager_ is used 1 time.

Representing 75% of the message.

The more you write, the lower that percentage that should drop to. 35% of 34 words is fair.</comment></comment>


Beej's Guide to C Programming - <AUTHOR> http://beej.us/guide/bgc/

<comment><USER2> I love his writing style so fun yet he tells you everything.</comment>


Ask HN: Do companies care more about your pedigree or raw skill? - <AUTHOR> Specifically for new grad jobs at top companies, what is more important? I would define top company as in the set of unicorn startups that you hear about all the time on HN. There seems to be a pattern among them. <comment><USER2> In general, it's not about what you know; It's not about who you know; It's about who trusts you to solve their problems.

People try to assess skill, but that is hard and sometimes they rely on pedigree as a way of establishing that they can trust you to solve problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a new grad, your pedigree is the biggest factor in getting your foot through the front door. If you don't have an impressive resume, you might not even get past the first screen.

Lacking that, you can try to get a warm open if you know someone working at the company who can vouch for you.

After that, it's all about your interview chops. Pretty much all SF unicorn startups have the same Google style interview.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it comes down to "how likely is this person to do the job and do it well at our company".

afarrell has good advice. If you have worked with people before (or if the CEO is your uncle), they are more likely to think of you as someone who will do a good job.

If you're going in with a blank slate, your communication skills and appearance will matter a lot too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Raw skill. Pedigree is a positive indicator but not defining criteria.

</comment><comment><USER6> Depends on the company.</comment>


Smoked foods are tastier, less harmful with a tip from the auto industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180320084409.htm <comment><USER3> > the researchers smoked tomato flakes, coconut oil and water using either > filtered or unfiltered smoke. Then, they added the smoked tomato flakes to > cream cheese and used the water to brine some chicken

Not that this disqualifies the results, but what an odd choice of tests.

<comment><USER4> > Not that this disqualifies the results, but what an odd choice of tests.

I would disagree: grilled tomatoes are a mainstay of a simple taste profile - very easy to distinguish acrid or "extra" flavors.

Coconut oil has a very high smoke point, and thus should pick up any flavor from the smoke without bringing anything to the plate itself - very easy to test flavors.

Water, well, if you've not had a cocktail with smoked ice, I'm afraid I can't help you :)

The point is that these choices provided more neutral mediums for the collection of smoke, as opposed to, say, trying to smoke meat or cheese, where the base ingredients may have just a little bit of different flavor.

as an aside, I have a chicken in the smoker right now, with a load of cherry wood, but would love to eliminate a few of those carcinogens.

<comment><USER5> I would experiment with liquid smoke in marinades and long, 'wet' cooking times (rotisserie if possible). But I'm a vegan now, so I just get to put the liquid smoke directly into my seitan ;)

Definitely buy the most liquid smoke you can reasonably store and use. A gallon or a quart has been maybe 10% the cost of similar volumes purchased in smaller bottles.

Also, I'm considering deleting my comment thanks to the downvotes. I'm guessing it's because I revealed I'm a vegan, despite the fact that I made valid cooking suggestions for meat. Nothing about anything I said was judgemental.

<comment><USER4> I didn't downvote you, nor do I have any issue with you being a vegan, but will just point out that I personally don't care for liquid smoke - <USER2> because I find it boring compared to the woods I would normally use to smoke food with.

<comment><USER5> Yes still trying to figure that one out. It's pretty complex. I'm thinking browning/burning the edges and an extra Smokey sauce.

<comment><USER6> Have you tried smoking some mushrooms and using them as a smoked base? I've had smoked portobellos and the flavor profile was pleasingly meaty. You can also dry mushrooms and make them into a powder too add an almost msg-esque kick to food. I like to get some extra firm tofu, lightly salt it and put it on a rack with some paper toweling and a plate on top for a pan hour or to to drain and get even more firm. Then poach in oil at a lower temp. While it's still hot, dredge in seasoned panko that you add mushroom powder to, and fry at high temp to crisp it up.

It's awesome!

<comment><USER7> That's what I do, and for a more specific recommendation, powder dried shiitake and porcinis in equal weight in a spice mill or coffee grinder, then store in a medium-hole shaker. Add at the end of dishes for a savory boost.

Good on risotto, phillies, dusted over seasoned vegetables and sauces, on toast with butter, and pretty much anywhere else.

You've captured my interest with the smoked mushrooms, and I'm very curious to see how they can be used and processed.

<comment><USER5> I've not done the smoked mushroom thing yet but definitely plan to do so. Same with the tofu thing!

I add mushroom powder to my vegan "carne adovada" and liquid smoke as two very dark magic umami cheats. Mushroom powder is just crazy awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is well known in the BBQ world that not all smoke is good smoke. In fact, one of the secrets/talents a great pit master must have is the ability to manage a fire to minimize or eliminate the plume of white smoke - that's the stuff that tastes like ashes. The thin blue smoke from a properly tended hardwood fire is more flavorful and contains fewer carcinogens - it's a big key to great Q.

It'd be a huge advancement to casual/home BBQ if these filters have a similar effect- although I'm sure many popular styles of smoker would need to be completely redesigned to support the addition of a filter...

<comment><USER9> _The thin blue smoke from a properly tended hardwood fire is more flavorful and contains fewer carcinogens_

Do you have any references for that? In the automotive world, blue smoke is worse than white smoke.

<comment><USER10> Seems unrelated. White smoke is usually antifreeze (head gasket blowout) and blue smoke is burning oil (more serious engine damage).

<comment><USER11> Burning coolant generally signals a worse problem that burning oil.

A cracked head gasket is a _bad_ thing to have, it get a lot worse quite quickly.

Burning oil is fairly normal for an older car, it generally means your piston rings are getting a bit worn, perfectly normal for a 20+ year old car. The solution is generally to use a heavier oil.

<comment><USER10> Not my experience. Replacing head gaskets isn't cheap, but it's cheaper than a rebore and new rings. Thicker oil is a very short term band aid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome! I wonder if anyone sells liquid smoke made using zeolite filters. I would buy it and use it in foods like sous vide brisket.

[https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/08/food-lab-complete- guide-...](https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/08/food-lab-complete-guide-sous- vide-barbecue-smoked-bbq-brisket.html)

<comment><USER13> Isn't liquid smoke already much safer? The carcinogens aren't water soluble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So why don't industry cigarettes contain zeolite filters? Same question for activated charcoal filters. And don't say 'false sense of security', harm reduction is harm reduction is harm reduction.

<comment><USER3> Cigarettes are already expensive, that would make them a luxury item.

<comment><USER15> They're only expensive because they're so heavily taxed. Putting some of that money to consumer health in the form of more advanced filters would be great harm reduction.

<comment><USER16> That's not the right behavior to be encouraging at the macro public health level, though. The goal of the taxes is to discourage use, by making the cost outrageous, and while you can make them safer, ultimately you want to be discouraging their use entirely.

<comment><USER17> > _That 's not the right behavior to be encouraging at the macro public health > level, though. The goal of the taxes is to discourage use, by making the > cost outrageous_

And why's that the government's business exactly?

In a country that they actually offer free public healthcare, I'd understand it (sick people incur costs), but in the US and other such places, it's mostly the state playing nanny (even more so than the tax money).

<comment><USER18> Because people vote for it?

Smoking culture has a lot of knock on effects for third parties who aren't in a position to fix things themselves, children especially. I know; I grew up in a house with two smokers. Now I can scarcely handle visiting my parents' appartments.

<comment><USER17> > _Because people vote for it?_

Really, like you ever got asked to vote "for it"?

First, it's usually a wholesale vote: you only like this 1-2 things about the party's/candidate's platform?

Sorry, you're getting those 200 other things too. And there's just 2 parties, so pick wisely, lest you get the one you really don't want.

Not to mention that even for the things people explicitly vote for, they don't get. Empty promises is the name of the game...

> _Smoking culture has a lot of knock on effects for third parties who aren 't > in a position to fix things themselves, children especially. I know; I grew > up in a house with two smokers._

So, like almost everybody pre-90s? They seem to have come out alright...

<comment><USER3> > The cancer death rate for men and women combined fell 25% from its peak in > 1991 to 2014

Attributed mainly to reduction in smoking.

Also, the biparty system is peculiar to the US. Other countries have more fine-grained political platforms, and mostly end up with similar policies. Public health is, well, a public matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, who will be the first here to attach the closest available tailpipe/muffler to their smoker? I'd honestly be surprised if this hasn't been thought of or done before.

<comment><USER20> The Grand Tour did it: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/on- demand/2018/02/16/grand-tour-...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/on- demand/2018/02/16/grand-tour-season-two-episode-11-recap-gang-get-stuck-mud- inmozambique/)

<comment><USER21> Coal rolled kippers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does this concern Lapsang Souchong (tea) as well?

</comment><comment><USER23> I can see this being a real marketing thing for smoked salmon, makes me want to try it out in my smoker.

</comment><comment><USER24> It looks like a smoked food company hired a researcher to investigate the health effects of smoked food. Surprise -- smoked food is tastier and less harmful than you thought!

Unfortunately, the actual research can't be examined during the PR campaign.

<comment><USER25> Did you even read the link? It's about how smoked food _is_ carcinogenic, and that a specific new technique (that isn't widely used yet) can reduce that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A delicious avenue of science!</comment>


Show HN: Circuit-tree – Create Complex embedded hardware designs in a minute - <AUTHOR> http://www.circuit-tree.com <comment><AUTHOR> To start using the the back-end application you can enter any garbage values during signups. Please share any feedback/criticism about the prototype/idea.</comment>


Twitter shut down my startup. - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/7/3071152/twitter-shuts-down-thunderclap

<comment><USER2> BTW, we're using heroku and ironmq for all the backend heavy lifting. Perhaps twitter got spooked by the volume of API calls. A testament to seamless cloud scalability. And of course we soon hope to get the twitter issue addressed so we can be operational and help causes spread their word.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's cute the way The Verge is targeting HN with their spam rewrite of Betabeat's article:

[http://betabeat.com/2012/06/twitter-shuts-crowdspeaking- app-...](http://betabeat.com/2012/06/twitter-shuts-crowdspeaking-app- thunderclap-down-one-day-after-it-launched/)

<comment><USER4> The Verge is a news site. You can't copyright news. It's not like my local paper says, Hey you should check out this article in the Times, it's great.

<comment><USER3> The Verge is a news site like Demand Media is Wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hopefully Twitter will embrace this form of user communication in the long run. Although, if someone started using their API for this purpose out of the blue I can see them shutting it down as a first course of action. Definitely try to get in contact with someone on the inside and see what changes need to be made for them to allow it.

My political junkie side loves the idea as an attempt to improve democracy. I could see it expanding into snail mail and phone (twilio).

</comment><comment><USER6> No, Twitter shut down your spam engine.</comment>


Subnetcube – An anonymous minimal discussion board for individual subnets - <AUTHOR> http://subnetcube.com <comment><AUTHOR> okay people, that was awesome to see it on the home page !

so far I got several great ideas from you for the to-be v2, including:

> easy menu for switching subnets at the nav bar, including to wider subnet > classes.

> showing how many users are online for subnets (including the widers ones)

> a quick link to see top posts in wider subnets, without having to change > your default subnet.

> HTTPs (mainly useful when accessing wider subnets)

> Open source (once time takes care of showing any obvious problems in the > current code).

> Show post dates on comments (like its already done in threads).

> Rick roll script kiddies posting all those XSS posts :D (or atleast prevent > those from showing up)

I'll let you know when its ready !

On another notice, the number of people trying to exploit the site is too damn high ! (nothing seems to be successful so far, I was expecting this in advance and did my best when doing the database queries).

<comment><USER2> Give the attackers a special discussion board :)

<comment><AUTHOR> :D

yeah, maybe some easter egg to redirect them to the rick roll video or something.

This is an example of what the "attackers" are trying to do since the morning: [http://i.imgur.com/8UoCrqZ.png](http://i.imgur.com/8UoCrqZ.png)

<comment><USER3> can someone please check out

[http://i.somethingawful.com/cliff/ihateyou/page-267/image-01...](http://i.somethingawful.com/cliff/ihateyou/page-267/image-01.jpg)

and report back. i'm curious but afraid.

<comment><USER4> It's funny, but not ha-ha funny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree seeing the /16 and /8 would be very interesting. Perhaps just list those posts inline, with a smaller/greyer font.

How hard is it to reliably extract an area code from an IP address? Now _that_ would be nice. Kind of like craigslist, but invisibly partitioned by area code.

<comment><USER6> The problem with IP geolocation is that at the city and ZIP code level, it's just imprecise enough to be kind of annoying for something like this. It's very possible 2 people in the same ZIP code may be geolocated to neighboring but different ZIP codes.

At US state (and often international province/region) level you generally get nearly 100% accuracy, but that's probably too broad for something like this. Unfortunately I'm not sure there's really anything in between that you could use.

<comment><USER7> Less than that. Maxmind only even claims 90% accuracy for US states. Zipcode would be well below that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I didn't understand that "greetings citizens of A.B.C.X !" was actually a post until I posted my own.

It had +1 likes. Did anyone like it, or is the default post +1ed by default?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a default post with a default +1 like added when a user visits from a subnet for the first time.

I was not sure how to indicate that you can have threads, likes and comments etc for first-time users, so I thought to have this default post just to get people doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Broke it, tapped new thread, then instead of entering anything, just tapped board. Not sure if it was that or just coincidence, but here's the error :

iisnode encountered an error when processing the request.

HRESULT: 0x6d HTTP status: 500 HTTP subStatus: 1013 HTTP reason: Internal Server Error You are receiving this HTTP 200 response because system.webServer/iisnode/@devErrorsEnabled configuration setting is 'true'.

In addition to the log of stdout and stderr of the node.exe process, consider using debugging and ETW traces to further diagnose the problem.

The node.exe process has not written any information to stderr or iisnode was unable to capture this information. Frequent reason is that the iisnode module is unable to create a log file to capture stdout and stderr output from node.exe. Please check that the identity of the IIS application pool running the node.js application has read and write access permissions to the directory on the server where the node.js application is located. Alternatively you can disable logging by setting system.webServer/iisnode/@loggingEnabled element of web.config to 'false'.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this must have been some one-time glitch. I find the error message strange tho because I disabled this logging setting before publishing today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Something like this needs people on it all the time to work. One way to achieve that would be to increase the size of the subnet depending on activity. If no one is in the /24, expand up to the next layer, etc. And then maybe add an extra color and if someone shares a smaller subnet with you than just the size of the room you are in.

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm

I am not so sure about this. I imagined it originally for small office/company cases, not sure how it would fare if I make the allocation dynamic.

Tho yeah, I think making the subnet larger should be an easier process. I think one way of doing this maybe is having the subnets right on the top navigation bar as /0 /16 /24 etc with the selected one as a color and a (+X) next to each subnet based on the number of users in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it would be interesting to be able to travel up the subnet nodes to bigger boards.

eg, with subnet A.B.C.D, being able to visit A.B.C.X, A.B.X.X, and A.X.X.X.

Additionally, subnets are a bit opaque. what does each one correspond to? if you wanted to extend this out even more, It would be nice to have a map showing how big, and where your current subnet is.

<comment><USER12> Where is this data about which area correspond to each subnet? I can't find it. I don't know what to look for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very cute! Will you open the source?

<comment><AUTHOR> sure. Its nothing fancy, mostly its in pure node.js with only selected few libraries for the database etc. I'll do it once I have enough confidence that everything is alright after some usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It'd be interesting to add some sort of source IP filtering as well. I'm behind a VPN, so I'm on a private subnet. I'd rather chat with others on the same subnet within my company than anyone who happens to be in the same private subnet, worldwide.

<comment><AUTHOR> if you mean the same exact IP address, you can do that if you click the pi icon at the bottom of every page then click change subnet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome hack/idea! I wonder if hiding things in a "public" message board like this has been written up in some cyberpunk literature yet. After all you must come from the right network to see it.

</comment><comment><USER16> For usability sake I would also allow for a way to tag a subnet with a friendly moniker. If this takes off, it could be crowdfunded functionality.

By the way. Very neat twist on discussion boards. :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I appreciate the minimal interface, but a little CSS could go a long way to making this look a lot nicer.

Sans serif fonts and some margins and spacing would help.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have any specific suggestions please tell me and I'll do it :)

I have little CSS knowledge and I wanted to keep a strict minimalistic look and feel to avoid confusing people.

<comment><USER12> I'm against the CSS. Don't let this awesome simple thing get the air of a new "bootstrapped" startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Cool localization idea, but major cold start barrier. How to advertise the board to people on the same subnet?

<comment><AUTHOR> (I am the author of the website)

No idea really. I wanted it mainly because in my office we have very high email volume, that it repels people automatically (Outlook "threading" sucks too).

That and, a lot of people feel shy replying/talking about things knowing it would be liked to them (eg higher-up devs).

Not sure how well it will fare in the real-world tho. If I find no one is using it will just pull the plug and keep it local for my office only.

<comment><USER18> It would be neat if the change subnet allowed you to jump up a little further. Having a board for the class C pretty much gets me... my office. Having a separate board for the /16 or even /8 would allow users a little more granularity on how their message is spread (local users, my ISP's users/regional users).

<comment><AUTHOR> It was in my original plan, but then I thought most users may find it confusing. Looking at it now, I guess I'll do it (I already have a change subnet option if you click on the Pi icon).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why not a simple sequence of messages, like a chat room, instead of threads? It would be friendlier.

</comment><comment><USER19> Might work well in cafes.

</comment><comment><USER20> It should be "Denizen", not "Citizen".

<comment><USER21> How about Subnetizen?</comment></comment>


The Troubling Legacy of Martin Luther King - <AUTHOR> https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/june-2019/the-troubling-legacy-of-martin-luther-king/ <comment><AUTHOR> Wow... I suspect this may be out of the range of criteria for submission but it is a astonishing read.

If it's not appropriate here I apologize for submitting it.</comment>


Ask pg: I know the HN algo is secret, but can you explain something to me? - <AUTHOR>

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3909868
This story I submitted hit the front page, was starting to blossom into an interesting discussion, and suddenly dropped to #1204 (yes, I went down several pages to find it).
What gives? <comment><USER2> It probably got flagged. The penalty for a flag is greater than the boost from an upvote — it seems like even a 1:4 flag rate is enough to sink a story like a rock. Possible reasons for flagging include:

• Deepak Chopra is widely considered to be a quack, but the article talks semi-approvingly of him

• Although the general topic of the article is kind of interesting, the article itself says very little (sans quotes, it's seven very short and not particularly info-dense paragraphs)

• The article seems a bit afield from the general focus of Hacker News, so people might have just thought it was OT clutter

<comment><USER3> > Deepak Chopra is widely considered to be a quack

Can you explain this a bit more? I'm just curious as I've come across his stuff before but never opposing views.

<comment><USER2> Well, his teachings are sort of a weird mix of medicine, psychology and pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo, apparently borrowing and adapting liberally from anything that suits him. For example, he has repeatedly tried to tie his ideas into quantum mechanics, to the chagrin of physicists everywhere: [http://www.skepticblog.org/2009/11/16/deepak-chopra- mangles-...](http://www.skepticblog.org/2009/11/16/deepak-chopra-mangles- quantum-mechanics-again/)

Needless to say, there are a lot of people to whom this does not signal credibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW the HN algorithm isn't a secret[1] it's:

(p-1)/(t+2)^1.5

Where votes are divided by age factor

P = points from users T = time from submission in hours

[1] [http://www.seomoz.org/blog/reddit-stumbleupon-delicious- and-...](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/reddit-stumbleupon-delicious-and-hacker- news-algorithms-exposed)

</comment><comment><USER5> Based on my experience, and measurements I've made over the years, I would say that one or both of two things happened:

1) You triggered the voting ring detection code, and/or

2) You got several downvotes.

I do feel that there is a sizeable collection of people here on HN who, for whatever reason, don't like discussions about philosophy of consciousness and similar. If you get 10 or so downvotes and only 10 or so upvotes, your item will sink to the 1000s. I have seen it happen. (based on surmise about flags - they are not explicitly visible.)

This discussion happened recently: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890565>

The item was flagged dead, but the discussion is still there.

HN remains a remarkably civil forum, and perhaps the occasional apparently draconian measures are part of the price to pay.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe the algorithm detected a voting ring. Did you ask your friends to vote up the link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, in fact I don't think many people even know I have an HN account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the moderators have greater control over content than the ranking algorithm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Then why have a voting system at all?

<comment><USER8> Because it allows us to have _some_ control over the site's content, rather than _none at all_.

I agree with the commenter you're replying to: The moderators are really the ones in control here. And that's the way it should be. If this site was managed as a strict democracy, it would have been overrun with trolls and spam years ago, and we would have all moved on to something better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Probably got flagged</comment>


Homeland Security's 'Pre-Crime' Screening Will Never Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/homeland-securitys-pre-crime-screening-will-never-work/255971/ <comment><USER2> So the obvious problem with the movie _Minority Report_ was the false dichotomy between (a) imperfectly predicting crimes and then punishing people before they commit them and (b) not predicting crimes. The obvious third choice, which has been in use since time immemorial, is (c) imperfectly predicting crime and then applying normal crime-prevention measures to increase the chance of catching the perpetrator and/or reduce the chance that the crime is committed at all, while simultaneously using less resources. In any sane world, the technology of _Minority Report_ would still be used to reduce murders through direct intervention and the deterrent of more effective enforcement, without taking people off to pre-crime prison.

The author's implication that FAST is an implementation of the obviously-bad idea of punishing people for crimes they haven't yet committed is just one of the many bad and misleading aspects of this article.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I read FAST as a sort of olive-branch in security theatre. It seems that it, or something like it, will be used to remove porno-scanners and grope-checks from standard security. If 70% of people are passing through security without being hassled, their PR problems nosedive.

And frankly, though it's likely to be error prone and leave airport security still largely ineffective, at least it's move toward trying to _intelligently_ identify risks. Rather that simply sending every single person through ineffective security. And lessening the load on the scanners and gropers can only raise their effectiveness.

<comment><USER4> _...will be used to remove porno-scanners and grope-checks from standard security._

Has this ever happened? Has the TSA ever given up on a security screening practice that had become a widespread routine?

 _If 70% of people are passing through security without being hassled, their PR problems nosedive._

If 70% of passengers walk through the screening point without removing their shoes, without walking through a metal detector, without having their bags x-rayed, etc., and the other 30% are singled out for special treatment, won't that 30% feel extra persecuted? The TSA's PR problems are mainly related to rarer-that-30% outrages like selecting comely young women for pornoscanning, interfering with uncommon medical equipment, etc.

<comment><USER3> > _"Has this ever happened?"_

No, but I don't think the current state of things is sustainable. There isn't a demographic that's free of TSA horror stories anymore.

And we all know a new vector will be chosen that will defeat these measures. Thus, without a way out, the TSA will have to come up with an _even-more- invasive_ screening method. And I can't see how that's at all feasible.

Drastically reducing the number of people who have to be subject to "advanced" security measures through technology is a face-saving and politically-feasible way for the TSA to back off. It's, frankly, their only way out.

As to the 30% feeling persecuted: yeah, probably. Particularly if a given population consistently gets selected for 'advanced' security. [1] And hopefully that's an avenue that can be leveraged to take further steps toward sane security that doesn't infringe our liberties.

I'm not suggesting this is acceptable as a _solution_. Just as a step. Provided it is, indeed, a step away from running every single person through the current gauntlet of invasive TSA security theatre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a good article marred by, I think, a poor story angle. FAST sounds like a terrible idea, but not because it's Orwellian.

Homeland Security is not primarily a law enforcement agency. Here are it's departments; departments with a principle law enforcement focus are starred:

        Immigration Services
        (+) ICE
        (+) Customs
        (+) TSA
        Coast Guard
        (+) Secret Service
        FEMA
        Homeland Security Advisory
        National Infrastructure Advisory
        Homeland Security Science/Technology
        Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory
        Interagency Coordinating Council on Emergency Preparedness
        Task Force on New Americans
        Domestic Nuclear Detection Office
        Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
        National Protection and Programs Directorate
        (+) Federal Protective Service
        National Communications System
        Directorate for Science and Technology
        Directorate for Management
        Offices of Policy; Immigration Statistics; Health Affairs
        Offices of Intelligence and Analysis; Operations Coordination
        Office of the Secretary
        National Cyber Security Center

(Yes, DHS is a monster, everyone knows that; we should definitely slay it).

People who have worked on the intrusion detection problem in computer systems are well familiar with the Base Rate Fallacy (what this article appears to be talking about when it mentions the "false positive fallacy"). To anyone who has actually monitored a deployed IDS, the base rate problem is a killer. _Most of the events generated by systems like this are mathematically certain to be bogus_.

So it's great to see an Atlantic article trying to tackle the numeracy issue here: DHS policymakers looking for research funding are bragging about a terrorist detection system with a 70% accuracy rate, and 70% sounds great when you leave out the base rate of terrorism.

On the other hand: of the LEO functions of DHS, most of them fall into one of two categories:

* Departments that already have total discretion to ignore civil liberties, like Customs: it's hard to imagine any new program making Customs more intrusive, because Customs operates under the border search rule (since at least 1976, Customs can set up any search program it wants to protect the integrity of the US border).

* Departments that operate under administrative search regimes, like TSA, where "behavioral monitoring" is if anything _less_ Orwellian than the systems already in place.

DHS research projects do not automatically imply that local and state police will be deploying "behavioral" technology to "pre-crime" people. Again the theme: when you argue against something, you need to be both right _and correct_. "Pre-crime" is an inaccurate framing device.

</comment><comment><USER6> From the article:

"Nature reported that the first round of field tests had a 70 percent accuracy rate. From the available material it is difficult to determine exactly what this number means. There are a couple of ways to interpret this, since both the write-up and the DHS documentation (all pdfs) are unclear."

I'm glad he pointed this out.

"This might mean that the current iteration of FAST correctly classifies 70 percent of people it observes -- which would produce false positives at an abysmal rate, given the rarity of terrorists in the population."

But maybe this isn't so bad if it means that 70% of people aren't molested in the airport, at the cost of missing 30% of terrorists we would otherwise catch. I'm very okay with this: I see this as (1.73 * 0.7)-million happier citizens per day [1] and (0 * 0.3) additional terrorist incidents [2].

"The other way of interpreting this reported result is that FAST will call a terrorist a terrorist 70 percent of the time. This second option tells us nothing about the rate of false positives, but it would likely be quite high. In either case, it is likely that the false-positive paradox would be in full force for FAST, ensuring that any real terrorists identified are lost in a sea of falsely accused innocents."

The author is too smart for his own good here. The second interpretation _should_ be "FAST will call a terrorist a terrorist 70 percent of the time. What's a false positive?"

Those unfamiliar with statistics may incorrectly see it this way. Seventy percent of terrorists will be caught, so that means we'll be more than 3 times safer than we already are! Such statistical incompetence is also strongly correlated to politicians. I can't back that up, though, due to my statistical incompetence.

[1] [http://www.quora.com/How-many-people-fly-domestically-in- the...](http://www.quora.com/How-many-people-fly-domestically-in-the-United- States-each-day)

[2] [http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978...](http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978709836)

</comment><comment><USER7> Assuming honest research can achieve any of this in the foreseeable future, does anyone expect DHS to conduct or oversee research honestly and competently?</comment>


Flipkart's valuation markdown - <AUTHOR> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/flipkarts-valuation-markdown-billions-gone-in-a-flash/articleshow/51182907.cms <comment><USER2> Flipkart losses are growing fast [http://www.livemint.com/Companies/UQAIOMlml7iM6oVufedjOJ/Fli...](http://www.livemint.com/Companies/UQAIOMlml7iM6oVufedjOJ/Flipkart- reports-a-loss-of-Rs2000-crore-in-FY15.html) I do not think their business model is unique. They are taking investor's money and giving as discount to customers. Important thing to note here is unlike Amazon in US which was genuine innovation for local customers as delivery to home for millions of product who would hate to go out and shop. In India home delivery by local businesses for as little as 2 dollar worth of goods is common for decades before E-commerce boom. Even banks send in some one for paperwork, opening account or just deliver cash at home. So once delivery part is out of equation and heavy discounts are forced out by investors, I am not sure what will be their value proposition.

<comment><USER3> > I am not sure what will be their (Flipkart's) value proposition.

You are missing out on the whole forest. If you think Amazon was an innovation, solving for 'hate to go out for shopping' scenario, then ecommerce in India is 100X of that innovation.

It for simple reason that for vast majority of Indians (non-urban, big and small towns, villages etc.) there is simply no alternative if they want to buy a mobile or a SD card for mobile, or a particular book, or that latest Levis, sneakers, and so on… Heck even in big cities it is a struggle to find things.

The local business that you are mentioning who do home delivery is for day to day things, doesn't extend beyond ordinary grocery items.

Now why Flipkart still has an advantage? It is simply because it had first mover's advantage. Its brand is well settled in the mind of people, particularly if you consider non urban towns and villages. Those people have simple mind, once a brand settles in their life it is very difficult for another one to replace it. Amazon et al will need to work 10X hard to replace Flipkart from their habits.

Another angle is - mobile.

At the afore mentioned places, the primary device for online shopping is mobile. Now if an app has entered into their device and they have gotten used to it (mind you these folks are not as tech savvy, smart yes but not tech savvy as they never owned a PC before), it becomes very difficult for another online retailer's app to replace the app that they are used to.

Flipkart still has lot of advantage over Amazon, Snapdeal due to its brand recall (still today if you walk out of city area, online shopping means Flipkart to majority of Indians - almost same as what Xerox is to Photocopy).

That is their value proposition (to investors).

<comment><USER2> > Those people have simple mind, once a brand settles in their life it is very > difficult for another one to replace it.

This sounds offensive and it is obviously not true in my first hand experience. The main issue is cost effectiveness once merchandise is not heavily discounted. One good example is telecom. There is no brand loyalty even in remote areas as people keep changing already cheap prepaid plans for something cheaper. See this: [http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1963915](http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1963915)

> At US$40, the ARPU in India is among the lowest in the world and about one- > third of that of China

Much less talked advantage in India is extremely cheap labor who deliver merchandise to homes, and that is available to any new competitor. Flipkart/Snapdeal etc are not much different from Indian IT industry which talked a lot about innovation. However it was(is?) mainly about 1/3rd or less cost comparable to west. But for E-comm it is going to be worse as all/most of their customers are in India.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Flipkart is still a market leader by a considerable margin. Its main stay has been electronics and fashion retailing. It is excelling at both, and shows no signs of slowing down. It has managed to attract top-tier engineering talent in the Country (India), by offering generous wages and generally because it has some very tough problems to solve.

Amazon has been making in-roads, capturing a size-able market share, but dare I say they're imitating Flipkart to an extent, and that's a testament to innovativeness with which Flipkart has worked all along.

Despite the picture the article is trying to portray, Flipkart is well and truly an established business at this point. Sure they're making losses, but retailing is a tough-nut. In order to capture a rapidly growing internet-base, Flipkart and others need to take those hits-- they need to trade growth with profit, unless their end-game is to get acquired.

It is pretty natural trajectory an e-commerce company to take, IMO. These firms doing a re-valuation of their investments does look scary, and probably they did so having looked at the financials and the potential-- but the correction in the valuation is just a blip. Retailing is hard-- customers want discounts, VCs want growth, Markets want profit... you have to choose two and ignore the rest, I guess.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate on your comment that Amazon is imitating Flipkart to an extent? Are there specific examples where Amazon is doing this? Is it possible to learn from the Indian market and bring those ideas to a more global audience?

<comment><USER6> Was Cash on Delivery introduced by Flipkart before Amazon in India? If so, I think amazon is 'imitating' flipkart in this area. I see COD on UPS, Fedex in USA but not as popular as COD in India.

<comment><USER7> eBay.in offered cash on delivery waaay before flipkart (as a matter of fact, the original site Baazee.com which got merged into eBay did it very successfully too)

<comment><USER8> There were some catalogs, which offered in the earlier days, I remember in 80s and even earlier than that. Its been around long before Interwebs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anecdotal evidence: within my circle of friends, Flipkart use has dropped considerably over the last couple of years. Personally, I haven't made a single purchase off Flipkart in 3+ years. Their prices are now usually higher than Amazon and they don't have the "long tail" of products I want.

Myntra, which Flipkart bought, is still my go-to source for buying clothes. It helps that Myntra has really the best user experience of all the other apps. Their delivery is incredibly fast too - I ordered a shirt last night and received it today morning!

</comment><comment><USER10> For much of Amazon's history, it was lucky to get a 1 to 1 sales to valuation ratio. Amazon's early participation in the dotcom bubble, the money they raised then, funded its ability to survive the drought years afterward. Their stock was net flat for nearly a decade. The market weakness in 2008 for example, pushed their market value below where it was at times in 1998. Between 1998 and 2008 their sales went from $20 million to $20 billion and their valuation didn't change much.

What are Flipkart's sales today? You can expect it won't be worth dramatically more than its recent peak, years from now - and that's the good outcome. It's the routine outcome of extremely high valuations; to the extent they're too high, is the extent to which they pull future returns forward.

</comment><comment><USER11> Flipkart's valuation increased more then 1000x, then went down 27%. There's nothing catastrophic about that.

Are journalists really this myopic or just eager for clicks?

<comment><USER10> It's about expectation and projection. You say 27% today. Tomorrow it's going to be 50%. The valuation adjustment problems in tech aren't over, they've only just begun.

When the Shanghai Composite Index started falling over after China created a market bubble there, people said: it's up 150% in under a year, and now it's only down 20%, no need to worry. Well, now it's down 50% from that high - below where it was five years ago - and those people are no longer talking about it. It was never the initial drop that mattered, it was all about what was coming next, not what happened the day before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think these are extremely useful corrections. Investors are really worried about an implosion and are basically scrambling to defuse the ticking bomb. If they'll show enough maturity and they'll be willing to let greed subside for a couple of years, maybe we'll end up having a better, more realistic, high-tech scene pretty soon without any bubble having to burst.

Or it won't be enough and they're all screwed nonetheless. Who knows!

<comment><USER13> If only there were a way to automatically mark down poorly performing companies based on incoming market data on a daily, nay!, hourly basis...

<comment><USER12> I don't think it could work. Computers with specifically designed algorithms and extremely fast connection could exploit such a real time market and outperform human traders. Nobody in his right mind would let that happen!

<comment><USER13> So true.

No, it's best to just stick to what we know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A swath of private companies are getting huge public markdowns because they took capital from investors who are subsidiaries of publicly traded company companies. This is going to make is much more difficult for this class of investor to access these markets in the future, or they're going to have to pay a premium to do so.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most Indians don't want credit cards because they don't want to fall prey to them. Those who have them use them only when it's absolutely necessary. They buy what they need and pay by cash. Credit cards are addictive.

<comment><USER16> Credit cards are just one way to manage payments. Whether they're addictive or not depends on the person. Some people even move money out of their savings accounts into some other bank account in a deposit they cannot easily access because having "cash at hand" is a problem for them. That doesn't make bank accounts addictive or problematic overall.

More to your point, there are many in the cities who have credit cards and use them often because they're convenient. Carrying cash or using debit cards when more people are moving to credit cards is foolish and a way to subsidize the people using credit cards.

I have credit cards that I use wisely. Always pay fully on time (no interest), make the most of the credit period by timing purchases as much as possible, etc. I don't have to worry about carrying lots of cash and getting change (or worse, rounding things up while paying). Taking advantage of marketing related discount offers from credit card providers is also another positive. Overall, credit cards provide a lot of value for me, although the social benefit could be argued one way or the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It appears that Flipkart did all the heavy lifting of preparing the market and then Amazon showed up. This story might not have a happy ending for Flipkart.

</comment><comment><USER18> Flipkart is copying Amazon in every single way it can, just like Samsung with Apple.</comment>


Ask HN: Is IBM Watson speech to text API so bad - <AUTHOR> I am have a requirement for converting speech to text using a prerecorded audio file. I am planning to use IBM Watson API (I have license for unlimited api request) but results are very bad and is hardly accurate. Whereas the same file if I use google speech to text gets me almost accurate.
So I feel not using IBM Watson API.
Below is a test for Speech to Text using IBM watson https://speech-to-text-demo.mybluemix.net/
Google Speech to Text https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html
Any suggestions or experience around it?? <comment><USER2> I did some experimenting with Watson and Google using podcasts, and Watson came out pretty well in the mix - [https://dague.net/2017/06/12/comparing- speech-recognition-fo...](https://dague.net/2017/06/12/comparing-speech- recognition-for-transcripts/) and [https://dague.net/2017/06/13/visualizing- watson-speech-trans...](https://dague.net/2017/06/13/visualizing-watson- speech-transcripts/). I haven't done systematic analysis with a lot of data points yet.

You can get per word confidence levels back from the Watson API if you ask for it, which is useful to know what parts it is sure about and what parts it is not.

Disclaimer: I work at IBM. But feel free to reach out at firstname.lastname@example.com if you want some help debugging on the Watson STT side.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not use Google Speech API ?

<comment><USER4> I guess probably because OP has license for unlimited requests on Watson.</comment></comment>


Netflix CEO: 'We got overconfident' - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/06/technology/netflix/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2 <comment><USER3> I feel bad for netflix - but at the same time this loss of customers was a long time coming.

I had friends that had been paying for netflix for years, barely checking out a movie or two a year. What netflix did was stir the pot - their price hikes kind of jolted these people and reminded them of their subscriptions. Had netflix done things slowly, these same people would never have noticed and everything would be ok. The reason I am so harsh on netflix, is because surely they were aware that a large segment of their users were almost dorment - <USER2> it really not occur to anyone what would happen if they rocked the boat?

<comment><USER4> That comes pretty close to describing me. I had instant streaming + 2 discs + blu ray and I would usually only send back 1-2 discs per month, if that. One time I went 6 months without sending a disc back.

Then they hiked the price of my plan by over 25% without any consolation at all. I cancelled my entire plan. Loss of $23/mo from me alone.

I won't be signing back up, either. There's other options and Netflix has done nothing to win me back at all. They expect me as a loyal US customer to fund their expansion into Europe (which was the cause of the major content fee hikes that everyone was using to excuse the price hikes.) Uhh, no. I'm not an investor, I'm a customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everything I've seen from Netflix tells me they get it. They fucked up on a couple tactical moves, but they know where the future is and are positioning themselves to be there. Even the second stock offering makes sense in the long run: better to maintain market share and grow the market than to tighten the belt and focus on high-margin offerings at the cost of the platform, especially when competitors are making big investments.

Had I a few dollars to invest, Netflix at a 74% discount seems like a pretty sweet long-term deal. If they pull it out I make out like a thief, and if the stock drops much lower they become a very tempting acquisition target for Amazon/Apple, or possibly even Google.

<comment><USER6> > _Netflix at a 74% discount_

The missing piece of data is that Netflix was massively _overvalued_ before, and that now they've just jumped down to a very _normal_ price to earnings ratio. Just for comparison:

      NFLX P/E: 15.49
      AAPL P/E: 14.12
      MSFT P/E: 9.33
      GOOG P/E: 21.26
      AMZN P/E: 101.21

Amazon and Netflix were the two before which completely stratospheric prices, and now Netflix has come back down to earth. From what I've read, lots of hedge funds were shorting Netflix since they figured this had to happen eventually.

<comment><USER7> Visualized: [http://ycharts.com/companies/NFLX/pe_ratio#compCos=AAPL,MSFT...](http://ycharts.com/companies/NFLX/pe_ratio#compCos=AAPL,MSFT,AMZN,GOOG)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While nonetheless a total fiasco, it's worth observing that the recent Netflix debacle is a rare example of a major failure that stems from being too strategic and conscious of long-term trends (hyperopic vs. myopic).

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the current situation can resolve in one of two ways. I don't see Netflix, which is a tech company, being able to compete with the movie studios on the production side.

Either Netflix gives in to the movie studios' demands and enters licensing/pricing agreements on the studios' terms, or the movie studios will use a separate provider of streaming services and cut Netflix out entirely. The studios have been fighting web technology tooth and claw (usually in stupid ways), but the underlying motivation is that they want control of the price model. There is no technological reason why they won't be able to achieve this, even if their products will in the end be distributed through the web.

There are already startups working on portable and efficient streaming software which is specialized for licensing to content _producers_. If one of these companies can create a unified brand and payment portal while giving control to each individual studio, Netflix will be a second-class citizen in the media distribution world. I guess Netflix could take this role on its own, but it would go against its vested interests (ironically, exactly the same situation Blockbuster was in before it got crushed by Netflix).

There are probably some antitrust issues that will come into the light if this scenario plays out, which might mitigate things a bit. But to me this seems like a very large threat to Netflix's success. I am going to say the unpopular thing here: Netflix's best option for long-term survival is to allow each studio to set its own pricing/licensing terms.

<comment><USER10> _I don't see Netflix, which is a tech company, being able to compete with the movie studios on the production side._

Could you extrapolate as to why? I don't know anything about the industry, but it seems like the only reason the movie studios control production is because they own distribution. With Netflix controlling a massive distribution channel and having access to large amounts of capital, it seems that they could easily compete with the movie studios on production (and probably win because they're not encumbered by old business models and can offer better deals to top talent).

<comment><USER9> My point is that movies are the movie studios' core business. It's what they've specialized in for decades. The article specifically mentions HBO as a key competitor, and HBO is known for incredibly high-quality shows. I have a very hard time believing that Netflix will be able to make anything remotely as good and popular as Hollywood's movies and shows, unless Hollywood collectively does something very stupid to piss off its existing actors, writers and producers.

Netflix are great at distribution, but they need to have something to distribute. There is no use in distributing a product that no one wants. The movie studios' key product isn't distribution, it's the movies themselves. Things are different in the music industry, where many of the labels are simply an intermediary between the musicians and the customers. But the product and distribution are much more connected in the movie industry.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's an insurmountable challenge. It seems like over the past decade, a number of cable channels have started producing more HBO-like content with decent success. FX with Nip/Tuck, Justified, etc., AMC with Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, and even Starz with Boss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Overconfidence teaches you your limits, live and learn</comment>


Ask HN: Did HN go to a responsive design - <AUTHOR>

I would like to know the experience others are having. Today HN began adjusting to my iPhone.  Bizarrely the responsive design only seems to apply to the Homepage.<p>Screen Shots:
[1]https://www.dropbox.com/s/ijexnkr1xkfn8uv/Photo%20Jan%2009%2C%208%2046%2059%20PM.png
[2]https://www.dropbox.com/s/dylrvzlb8e4omku/Photo%20Jan%2009%2C%208%2047%2005%20PM.png?m=
[3]https://www.dropbox.com/s/f5fy683oz3dv65a/Photo%20Jan%2009%2C%208%2047%2018%20PM.png <comment><USER2> Sort of looks like Safari trying desperately to fit the page into viewport. Never seen that myself. On my iPhone I get the normal HN in both Safari and Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> It must have been safari as you suggest because it went back to normal today.</comment></comment>


Is "Google" generic? If only there were a way to search for the answer - <AUTHOR> https://www.stites.com/resources/trademarkology/is-google-generic-if-only-there-were-a-way-to-search-for-the-answer-on-the-internet <comment><USER2> People don't use the word "google" to mean "search the web"; they use it to mean "search the web using the Google search engine". If someone told me he googled something and sent me a link to Bing search results, his usage of the word would strike me as incorrect. I can't say for sure, but I think that a lot of people would have the same reaction.</comment>


Upload Filtering Mandate Would Shred European Copyright Safe Harbor - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/upload-filtering-mandate-would-shred-european-copyright-safe-harbor <comment><USER2> Does anyone have a summary of the current "safe harbor" rules effective in (different parts of?) the EU? To what extent am I responsible for user generated content if I host a forum, a blog, a link aggregation site or something like that? Do I have to weed out "racist" content as the Finns would like you to do? Would encryption affect my responsibilities? I.e. if the submission process encrypts the content on the client side and never sends the key to my server, would that have any effect?

Can copyright holders demand me to take links or content offline without a court order?</comment>