I will pay you if you build an iLisp. - <AUTHOR>

I want to make iPhone apps in a succinct language. <comment><USER2> Would iLisp have access to the entire set of functionality in iOS 6?

The idea might not fly - I think Apple have a thing against anything that creates apps that don't use the iOS SDK and tools. Perhaps somebody with more knowledge of this matter could elaborate.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://call-cc.org/>

[http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/~gambit/wiki/index.php/Main_P...](http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/~gambit/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

</comment><comment><USER4> You could use phone gap, and compile you lisp to JavaScript with something like <http://common-lisp.net/project/parenscript/></comment>


Why did Intel kill off their modem program? - <AUTHOR> https://semiaccurate.com/2019/04/18/why-did-intel-kill-of-their-modem-program/ <comment><USER2> Apparently Intel's cable modem SoCs (Puma 6) are garbage as well, demonstrating ridiculous jitter level.

[https://www.badmodems.com/](https://www.badmodems.com/)

I'm also an unfortunate owner of an Arris box. If only the person who showed me this website could have done it a few years ago...

<comment><USER3> Some Arris boxes are affected, not all. I have a SB8200 which uses the Broadcom chip. Also the SB6183 is fine. The one you want to avoid is the SB6190.

<comment> X-Istence I've been using the SB6190, and I haven't had any issues with latency or jitters. Even all of the testing didn't show any issues.

Mine is a hardware version 3 though.

<comment><USER4> The issue will absolutely show up. Just download pingplotter and set the interval to 0.3 seconds. The latest firmware simply mitigates the problem a bit, all Puma 6 chips are affected.

It's most noticeable in online games, for regular usage, you probably won't see much of a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The analysis that Intel's lower peak throughput makes the iPhone 30% less efficient with spectrum stands on very shaky grounds. The effect needs to be coupled with the probability that 1gb rate is actually allocatable to a phone: which requires exceedingly favorable conditions and is therefore rare in common usage. Secondly even when peak rate is available but not utilized the impact to spectrum efficiency tends to be minimal as the unused capacity can be allocated to other users (a complete analysis is complicated as it depends on the figure of merit that carriers use). There's no way carriers would even accept a 10% reduction in bandwidth efficiency, even from Apple.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone explain or point to a resource for why is was so difficult for Intel to make a competitive modem?

Is it technical, IP-related, or both?

<comment><USER7> My guess is that it's mostly IP-related. You can't use any of Qualcomm's patents when designing a modem, and they have a _ton_ of modem-related patents, including lots of the "common sense" solutions anyone would discover while developing a modem. Hence, you have to develop a modem with two arms tied behind your back which is quite difficult.

<comment><USER8> Could Intel talk publicly about this if they wanted to? Is the fear of lawsuits so great that they just don't want to talk about it?

Living in the information age is great! I just wish I had more information.

<comment><USER9> Saying publicly "our modems are bad because..." is probably not a great way to sell more modems.

Once they're out of the business, they have no incentive to say why, they just focus on other things.

Since Intel has not always played fair against AMD, they don't really want to talk about anticompetitive business practices in a market they're exiting anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When Intel announced they were closing the division immediately after Apple's settlement, I just assumed the whole point of Intel being in the market was to give Apple some leverage over Qualcomm. Possibly in return for delaying the Mac switchover to ARM a few years.

</comment><comment><USER11> I know, like, and respect Qualcomm engineers so it pains me to say I have qualms about ownership of IPR so fundamental to RF comms like this.

I'm seriously unconvinced it's serving a wider public interest. LTE is a standard. It should be RAND to implement good FPGA for it.

</comment><comment><USER12> > so each phone shipped with about $100K of slush funds wrapped around it. I > have the phone, I would have preferred a house.

> Update April 18, 2019 @ 8:18am: My math is off, it is closer to $10K/phone, > $8750 to be exact. I will still take the cash option.

yikes!!

</comment><comment><USER13> "On top of this the Intel modems consumed vastly more energy to do their slower work than Qualcomm, a trend that SemiAccurate has personally measured in the labs across multiple generations of Intel modems but is not at liberty to disclose exact figures on, sorry."

Why not? Presumably they would be opening themselves up to some liability?

<comment><USER14> A guess -- they do market intelligence on contract, and the customer that paid for the work (competitors, large investors trying to figure out bets on qualcomm, etc) didn't agree to have the data shared.

<comment><USER15> Phrased differently: paid through the nose for the exclusive rights to the results of the investigation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As soon as I loaded the page and glanced that "lookie here it's real!" tone of the photos I resolved to Photoshop some goofy something onto an Intel chip as a joke. IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when the article turned out to feature photo fakery!

</comment><comment><USER17> Echoes of Risc & VLIW: i432AX, i80860, i80960, Itanic… Intel killed its good non-x86 products, coincidentally all grown out of itself: DEC Alpha, the StrongARM. SSD quality is a joke. The Register must be having a field day too.

</comment><comment><USER18> Besides Qualcomm who else is left producing 4G/5G modems?

<comment><USER19> Huawei, Samsung, Mediatek, Unisoc ( Spreadtrum ), Intel and Apple in the future.

If you exclude Unisoc and Intel, the other could represent a total of up to 70% Smartphone Market. That is assuming Mediatek continues to dominate the lower end, and the top 3 vendor, Samsung, Huawei, Apple's market share are stable.

There are quite a few other players focusing on M2M LTE solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hiding shit behind AT-commands not disclosed to the public is one thing that sucked with Intel modems.

</comment><comment><USER20> Having NDAs (you still find the information) on AT-commands is one reason why they sucked. But Qualcomm is not any better.

</comment><comment><USER21> Intel laid off most of their CPU designers 5 years ago. That's when their CPUs became frozen in time and it's when the marketing morons took over the executive boardroom. It is well known that they are mostly a semiconductor physics shop and don't have a clue about how to design circuits or software. The challenge of making a good modem is mostly in the handoff software (most calls are in some sort of handoff most of the time) and software is the Intel Achilles Heel.

<comment><USER22> That's a lot of big claims with nary a citation in sight. Their software might not be consistently amazing (you might want to demonstrate that you understand how many different things they work on) but it's not clueless and I'd especially want to see support for the idea that they don't know how to design circuits. I mean, AMD is competitive now but they sure seem to be working hard at it – are they clueless too?</comment></comment>


Mozilla terminates its deal with Yahoo and makes Google the default in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/mozilla-terminates-its-deal-with-yahoo-and-makes-google-the-default-in-firefox-again/ <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15695114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15695114)

</comment><comment><USER3> > As Recode reported last year, there was a clause in the Mozilla deal that > would have the potential Yahoo acquirer pay $375 million per year through > 2019 if Mozilla didn't want to work with the buyer. This clause also allowed > Mozilla to walk away at its sole discretion. We don't know if Mozilla > invoked this clause to terminate the agreement, but it seems likely.

Am I understanding this correctly? Mozilla will get paid $374M by invoking a clause at their own discretion. Sounds like a horrible deal to ratify. Was Yahoo that desperate?

<comment><USER4> In 2014, Yahoo looked to be in much better shape than it it is today. Sweeten the deal with a scenario that you don't think will happen and at the same time drop off a poison pill to defend against takeovers. Only problem was that Yahoo had to be better than Google at search. I'd say it was hubris, not desperation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > (Disclaimer: TechCrunch is part of Oath, Verizon's roll-up of AOL and Yahoo, > though nobody at TechCrunch that I know has ever willingly used Yahoo > Search).

Just awesome :D

<comment><USER6> I guess it speaks well of Oath that TechCrunch writers feel so safe dissing other branches of their conglomerate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Firefox forwards people to Google, Google guides people to installing Chrome. Hmm...

It's not like Mozilla had a choice but its still pretty funny when you think about it.

<comment><USER8> Mozilla is also trying to stand for privacy on the web and making Google the default search provider is a pretty bad idea for their brand.

<comment><USER9> You can't stand up for anything if you don't survive in the marketplace. Mozilla needs a revenue stream. I donated last month. When was the last time that you did?

Not trying to shame you, but developers need to put food on the table and there's nothing wrong with finding a reliable revenue source.

I'm _very privacy aware_ , I don't publish pictures of my son on Facebook, the minimum I tolerate for serious chats is WhatsApp due to having E2E encryption and wishing for Signal or better, I disabled location tracking and ads personalization in Google, I encrypt my backups, I keep my passwords in 1Password, I have a sticker on my laptop's camera, I vote and publicly argue against privacy invading laws.

However DuckDuckGo and Bing are simply unusable for me — it is true that in many cases in order to get the results that you want, you simply have to modify your query, however I discovered that many times it doesn't work. The situation is improving, they keep patching local searches to be barely usable and if you're not feeling pain when doing local searches, then you're probably not living in Europe. But besides local searches, the software development related searches are poor as well.

Not trying to disregard the fine work that DuckDuckGo is doing, I'm glad that it exists, but I could not tolerate it for more than a week, every time I tried, including only a month ago.

Mozilla switching to Yahoo was actually shooting themselves in the foot, because as a matter of fact people want to use Google's search engine because it is superior to everything else.

Firefox is also the best browser if you want to use multiple search engines at the same time. On mobile as well. It's just a freaking default, you can always change it.

<comment><USER10> I bit the bullet and I'm using DuckDuckGo as default.

Every time the results will be poor I add _!g_ to the search and DuckDuckGo sends me to google. (or _!guk_ for google uk, _!so_ for stackoverflow, _!wes_ for spanish wikipedia, _!amde_ for german amazon, and so on)

It's easy to do, and I enjoy the privacy for all the other searches.

<comment><USER11> DuckDuckGo is ok, I don't know if it's me but I feel like it's getting worse, for a period there I was hardly resorting to use "bags".

It's kind of interesting that no one can seem to build a really great privacy focused search engine. I'd pay for a product like Google but that respected my privacy. In fact, I'd gladly pay for it over some of the other subscriptions I pay for.

Maybe a hole in the market?

<comment><USER12> Give Searx a look, for example at [https://searx.me](https://searx.me) , but there's many other public instances running, because -- unlike DDG -- it's fully free software, [https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/](https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/)

Of course the level of privacy is determined by whoever is hosting it, but at least there's a _choice_ there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apparently this caught Verizon by surprise:

> "Yahoo and Mozilla have enjoyed a productive relationship together since > 2014," said Charles Stewart, a spokesman for Verizon's digital advertising > business, Oath. "We are surprised that Mozilla has decided to take another > path and we are in discussions with them regarding the terms of our > agreement."

(Source: [https://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-OZF67R6VDKHT...](https://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-OZF67R6VDKHT01-3Q1EL6333OH9NTHGDT8LPKMRI9))

<comment><USER14> That sounds a lot like "we are going to try not to pay".

<comment><USER15> Never mind "try not to pay", that's table stakes. Likelier than not, they'll seek some form of reparation.

<comment><USER16> Sounds like having to pay even if Mozilla terminated it was built in.

<comment><USER15> Wow. Whoever managed to get that clause in there must be pretty happy right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Who needs Google when thee is DuckDuckGo anyway? Switched to DuckDuckGo (after getting mad of Google demanding me to solve captchas all the time) about a year ago... 100% satisfied.

<comment><USER18> Are you using a proxy or tor? I have never been asked a CAPTCHA on Google even with auto-deleting cookies and no javascript.

<comment><USER19> Not OP, but captchas pop up when I use proxies and tor. If you're not logged into a google account, you usually need to solve more than one captcha and it gets frustrating quickly. Luckily DDG does not treat tor and proxy traffic suspiciously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Historically, search engine royalties have been the main revenue driver for > Mozilla. Back in 2014, the last year of the Google deal, that agreement > brought in $323 million of the foundation's $330 million in total revenue.

So basically Google was/is funding Firefox? Seems weird given the battle with Chrome for market share.

<comment><USER4> I see it as a Pepsi vs Coke or BMW vs Audi relationship. The head-to-head competition style gives the illusion that they're the only choices (thus removing Safari/IE from the conversation), and at the same time, both choices are under your influence.

<comment><USER21> But Coke doesn't give Pepsi money and Audi doesn't give BMW money. I'd compare it to Microsoft once lending Apple [https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-to- invest-150-million-in...](https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-to- invest-150-million-in-apple/) to make sure it (Apple) survives.

<comment><USER22> They do have joint ventures for electric car infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Related to this - I've always wondered why Mozilla doesn't just build-in an ad-blocker directly into the browser. The speed/security bump is significant.

Probably because they want/need the deals with the search engine companies?

<comment><USER24> They are so big on net neutrality and whatever, they can't do that.

<comment><USER25> Well, besides their strong affiliation for net neutrality, implementing an ad- blocker in the browser seems like a hostile move.

<comment><USER24> Safari got away with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm in Japan since 2 months now, and I see most of the people using in the metro/street using Yahoo than Google. Is Yahoo doing a better search in Japanese than Google? Or are they just better in marketing?

Also, seeing lot of people (also many over 30!) browsing Twitter. What surprised me, I rarely saw it in other countries I've been.

<comment><USER27> Yahoo Japan is a different beast from the rest of Yahoo: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Japan)

<comment><USER8> And they have a bunch of useful local services and since ebay does not exist in Japanese the next big thing in Japan is Yahoo auctions which is pretty, pretty big.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Somewhat important to note that its only the default in the US, India and a few other countries - presumably not the EU because of the whole Internet Explorer setting Bing as the default debacle a couple of years ago

<comment><USER29> > _Somewhat important to note ..._

Yep, important enough that they noted it twice in TFA, including in the first paragraph:

> _"... at least if you live in the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan."_

<comment><USER30> How and when they decide whether I'm in US etc. or not?

<comment><USER31> When you download an en-US localisation of the browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You can't stand for privacy and promote Google at the same time. That's disingenuous and the 'explanations' are transparently self serving.

If Mozilla needs that money from Google then they should own up to it and get off the privacy bandwagon rather than trivialize it.

</comment><comment><USER29> A bit of related discussion a day or two ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15696915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15696915)

</comment><comment><USER33> One thing Mozilla should consider is shifting to a non-commercial operational model entirely. Assume a Patreon-like campaign that attracts 500k patrons paying $10 / month each. That results in a $60M annual revenue, enough to sustain a meaningful company.

It's still only 10% of their current annual revenue (which is closer to half a billion USD), but I would argue that becoming completely independent from any commercial incentives might be worth this sacrifice.

<comment><USER34> That is... a very ambitious assumption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I do believe money means influence, so I think this will mean a whole slew of new bad decisions by Mozilla. Very worrysome. It's 73% of used browsers under the control of Google. Also the best alternative to Google Chrome under their control.

</comment><comment><USER36> I liked the idea of Mozilla not being paid by Google. Sad, but not surprising when looking at Yahoos "success" in the last years :/

</comment><comment><USER37> What happened with Bing? They weren't interested?

</comment><comment><USER38> Headline: Mozilla terminate$ its deal with Yahoo...

if we had a functioning government a company with 70+% market share would not be able to buy even more market-share. Monopoly and all...

</comment><comment><USER39> Seems to be the result of a competitiveness between Mayer and Google. This was very visible during Yahoo selloff so shouldn't be a surprise given Mozilla rely on income from search engines....and this is an easy payout...

[https://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer- deal-...](https://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer-deal-mozilla- yahoo-payment)

<comment><USER40> Marissa Mayer resigned in July.</comment></comment>


So I created this Twitter image aggregator. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://twittypic.com/

<comment><USER2> Into Google Reader it goes. In the "misc" folder with the lolcats...

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd suggest working on improving the UI to make it a little more friendly. I also was very interested in the raw feed but it gets little attention (sidebar love) on your homepage.

</comment><comment><USER4> great idea, but the design feels a little cluttered at first. make the raw feed sidebar a different background color? also, maybe a link to a page with just the raw feed?</comment>


Near Miss: The Solar Superstorm of July 2012 (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/ <comment><USER2> PhD student working on geomagnetic storms- these storms would cause changes in the earth's magnetic fields of hundreds of nanoTeslas, and cause electric fields of a few (<10) volts per km. Only reason why power networks are affected is because they span hundreds of Kms.

The geomagnetic storms are generally over long periods- low frequencies. From a quick glance at Wikipedia, this is unlike an EMP.

I really doubt they'd affect equipment like HDDs.

<comment><USER3> Solar storms can be extremely damaging to the power grid (and by extension, to electronics that is plugged directly into that grid). But, as you note, the distances required to produce a strong current are just too great for any home electronics to be affected.

There's a lot of mythology surrounding this, largely because valid information on nuclear EMP is conflated with EM effects accompanying CME (coronal mass ejections). There is some overlap between the two, but the differences are far bigger.

[http://www.futurescience.com/emp/E1-E2-E3.html](http://www.futurescience.com/emp/E1-E2-E3.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The video is fascinating, if a bit frightening.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukQhycKOFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukQhycKOFw)

</comment><comment><USER5> Stupid question, but would such a storm wipe my HDDs that hold all my private data? If so, what would be a safe storage with similar capacities?

<comment><USER6> This may interest you:

[https://superuser.com/questions/1014071/how-to-protect-my- di...](https://superuser.com/questions/1014071/how-to-protect-my-digital-data- from-solar-flares)

Standard advice: the best thing you can do for protecting data is have an offsite backup. This could be as simple as Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, etc.

<comment><USER7> Why wouldn't the storm wipe out Dropbox / Amazon's HDDs too?

<comment><USER6> There are several factors:

1\. Cloud storage is likely to have a more resilient backup strategy;

2\. Magnetic storms tend to be localized so you want to spread geographically. So if for example you copy data to hard drives and store them at home and work you're still in danger to a localized storm; and

3\. And this is the big one. A single physical location exposes you to far more likely risks than solar storms such as fire, flooding and theft.

<comment><USER8> About #2, solar storms are world-wide.

<comment><USER9> The upside at least there, is that there is some warning; you could stick everything you care about into a Faraday cage. Power lines... not so much.

<comment><USER8> No need. Just unplug them from the power lines and you are good.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Living Code. Show off your code in a fancy way. - <AUTHOR>

Need to build a reduced demonstration of your latest creation?
Living Code is great for that, it's a clean and fancy way to show off your code in an old fashioned ASCII terminal emulator. Living Code it's part of JS1k demo, that means it has less than 1024 bytes.
http://js1k.com/2013-spring/demo/1387#.UVLAsFETayc.twitter
Submission [1387] JS1k. <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://js1k.com/2013-spring/demo/1387#.UVLAsFETayc.twitter>

Love the blur effect following the cursor, well done :)

</comment><comment><USER3> very cool</comment>


Nodejitsu to join the GoDaddy team - <AUTHOR> https://garage.godaddy.com/godaddy/nodejitsu-join-godaddy-team/

<comment><USER2> > Antonio is currently leading a major tech stack transition at GoDaddy using > NodeJS and NoSQL.

Kudos to GoDaddy for recognizing talent and embracing change. Congrats the Nodejitsu team!

</comment><comment><USER3> Time to cancel my nodejitsu subscription. GoDaddy lost me as a customer when they started supporting SOPA. This news is a big loss for me.

<comment><USER4> Nodejitsu services are closing down anyway.

[http://blog.nodejitsu.com/nodejitsu-joins- godaddy/](http://blog.nodejitsu.com/nodejitsu-joins-godaddy/)

<comment><USER5> "If you are a Nodejitsu Platform-as-a-Service or Iris Couch customer, we don't have a definitive answer for you yet. We are currently vetting other PaaS and DBaaS companies to find the most seamless transition for you. We will communicate the next step in your process towards the end of March once we have completed the vetting."

Chalk another one up for: [http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

At least there is some vague promise of migrating to another service.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does Hacker News's website look like shit? - <AUTHOR> Why does Hacker News's website look like shit? <comment><USER2> Because every suggested redesign has been gorgeous as anything, and not as functional or practical. People do this all the time - "Here! Look! I've redesigned HN" \- and it's never as practical.

Content over form, every time.

</comment><comment><USER3> The important thing is the content, not the style.

</comment><comment><USER4> HN is behind the times, but the Boreal app has made it functional on a smartphone by having a responsive design and some other cool features.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why do you believe that Hacker News' website looks like shit? What, specifically, do you object to?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It especially looks like shit on my phone.

<comment><USER6> It looks awesome on my phone</comment></comment>


San Francisco Patrol Special Police – Qualifications - <AUTHOR> http://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/fieldoperations.html <comment><USER2> Tax cuts -> cannot afford police on patrol -> outsource basic policing to private company -> police on patrol are only available to those who can afford it.

And how long before it then becomes "wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to your store..."

Ah the wonders of low-tax, small government.

<comment><USER3> I guess you missed the part where it says this program has been around since 1847. [http://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/history.html](http://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/history.html)

<comment><USER2> You're right, I did miss that part.

That being said, I just find it bizarre that an essential police service is basically outsourced with officers who

"are compensated by neighborhood merchants, residents, and associations or groups who contract for services and who can also join to share in the cost"

Is it really that hard to just increase taxes/rates slightly in order to be able to provide this service across the board?

<comment><USER4> These special patrols are _on top of_ regular police patrols. You can think of this program more as a rent-a-cop-as-a-security-guard program. Part of the services provided are additional patrols of the exterior _and_ interior of a building.

Frankly, I would be _really_ weirded out if SF made a habit of running patrol officers regularly through _every_ building in the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my experience this sort of situation is helpful for business owners who want some sort of enhanced police presence, building owners looking to solve traffic problems with their garages and event runners who want some (really) enhanced security.

These are all things that even well funded police departments would not really consider.

The nice thing about these arrangements is that the person or organization paying for the off duty cops can exercise some control over them.

</comment><comment><USER6> They are mandated 24 hours of instruction per year.

As a foster parent in Ohio, I was required to attend 40 hours of continuing education per year. 24 doesn't seem like much.

<comment><USER4> This is training _on top of_ the regular police training, mind.

<comment><USER6> I'm talking about their continuing education requirement:

> Patrol Officers are trained in the classroom and on the Police Department > range. Officers attend 24 hours of instruction each year, according to > standards and on topics set by the Police Chief.

There is no part of that which implies there is anything more.

<comment><USER4> Read this: [http://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/employment.html](http://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/employment.html)

Make sure to read about "832 P.C. course" :)

Edit: Hell, I'll link to the relevant info: [https://www.post.ca.gov/pc-832-arrest-and-firearms- course.as...](https://www.post.ca.gov/pc-832-arrest-and-firearms-course.aspx) ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Currently linked to the "Field Operations and Fees" page. I assume the link should be [http://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/qualifications.html](http://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/qualifications.html)

<comment><USER4> The Field Operations and Fees page tells _me_ far more about the officers in the program than the qualifications page. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every startup tycoon should be able to afford one or two.

</comment><comment><USER9> San Francisco is no longer allowing new patrol specialists.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm an actor. I need an SaaS idea that allows me to act full-time - <AUTHOR>

I'm not looking for the "next big thing" idea. This is purely me getting sick of waiting tables and having to clock in, having a fixed work schedule, etc. and wanting to utilize my coding skills to build a passive income engine. I'm an aspiring actor and need all the free time I can get to attend auditions and be on the film set on shooting days.
I started and still run a daily deal platform (basically Shopify for Groupon clone sites) that made me sufficient passive income (~$1.5k/mo) for a number of years, and I had a blast just travelling, chilling, playing video games, hosting parties, etc. from 2012-2014 while my bills get paid. Unfortunately, I'm really unwilling to work on the idea anymore, and the market is shrinking I believe, and revenue is suffering now. I'm not sure if I'm disinterested because it's not growing anymore, or it's not growing anymore because I'm disinterested. Either way, it's just a whole big mess of code right now that I'd rather not work on anymore.
I need a new idea that:
1) Can be coded up and iterated a number of times in 3 months;
2) Makes $2,000/mo in recurring revenue;
3) Can preferably be sold to small businesses who don't have high expectations (or any arbitrage-like market where small effort is disproportionately rewarded; sometimes waiting tables is also like that -- we occasionally get big tips for almost negligible work); and
4) Can be maintained on 10-20 hours a week of work (i.e. fixing bugs, adding features, customer service).
Anyone has any idea? <comment><USER2> Is that .. serious?

I'm assuming this is a joke. Quite some parts ("it was great just playing video games", "market without high expectations, disproportional rewards") are so much over the top. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Use your strength, which should be acting lessons as a service (can be broader, like how to host, roles, group behavior, etc). Basically online courses to a small audience, over hangouts or your own platform. A 3 month course with 1-2 sessions a week. $150 each month, with only 15 participants, you will net $2250/month, probably less than 20 hours a week.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you know anything worth teaching, you could easily make $2000 a month on Udemy.com especially with your acting / presentation skills. I make $500 a month and I now spend 0 hours a month on my courses. My initial work that I put in was about 10-15 hours per month.

</comment><comment><USER5> This sounds sort of unrealistic but here's a shot at an idea for yourself:

\- A SaaS that markets to restaurants or hourly jobs where there is an abundance of aspiring actors

\- App will allow owner/manager of restaurant to schedule people's hours allowing them time for auditions

\- App will allow employees to swap shifts on short notice, adjust requested time off, etc. without having to clear things with manager - they have too much other stuff to worry about with a restaurant.

\- App could be linked to number of tickets/hour to help manager adjust staff level to be appropriate for customer flow

This could work for people going to college as well - although they have a more set schedule that just changes every 3-6 months.

There are probably apps out there that do this, figure out what pain points they aren't solving.

<comment><USER6> The problem is getting people to take shifts. We had this at a restaurant I worked at in high school, but the only shifts that people would pick up were shifts where the tips were good and those were generally on weekend nights. Not many audition times there. Most of the time, servers only got day time shifts picked up if they paid another server $25-$75. It was a little different for hourly workers. Generally those shifts were much easier to offload.

On top of this, I doubt a restaurant manager really wants to deal with scheduling around auditions when there's really no upside. Its not like there is a labor shortage for serving jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You might want to look into doing infoproducts instead of SAAS. Given you're an actor, you presumably have presentation skills - explaining something in front of a camera is something you'll be able to outperform most people at, and in my experience (having done both) infoproducts are a lot easier to get to market than SAAS.

Also, do check the passive income posts here on HN: they're great.

Bear in mind that your primary problem, whether you're doing SAAS or infoproduct, will be marketing. You need to know you can market whatever you're making - that's probably the most important element of what you're considering.

This is completely doable, btw. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> It's kind of hard to tell if this is satire or not. If it's not, and you're serious: I'd recommend browsing through website-sales sites like Flippa. See what's selling right now, and what their stated income figures look like.

But, as others have noted: Your best chance at success is to focus on what people already pay you to do (act), and to build a service that automates and scales that up in some way. No idea what that would look like exactly, but maybe there's a way.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well executed troll. Would read again. A+++

</comment><comment><USER10> You might find the passive income posts helpful [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844083)

edit: posted newer passive income post, 2015

</comment><comment><USER11> Build some random workflow tool. Find a repetitive thing that a lot of software people do, and build a plugin of some kind to automate it for them. Sell it for a reasonable price, and build another one. Offering a suite of useful workflow tools for reasonable prices would be a pretty cool company. Also this helps everyone out, and makes the work that you yourself do faster (by building tools that solve problems you also encounter.)

</comment><comment> martin-adams Talk to small businesses and find the pain points that they would pay money to solve. Once you do that, the _idea_ part builds itself.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't know that there's much left in the small business SAAS space (in general) that isn't already well filled, or complicated to implement. So all you can really do is implement something that already exists but charge less (half) for it, but that becomes a race to the bottom.

I'd suggest finding a niche.

</comment><comment><USER13> How about Aaas, Acting as a Service?

</comment><comment><USER14> I too would like to make $2k/mo on 10-20 hours a week. I think everyone would.

<comment><USER15> Really? Plenty of software devs in the US making six figures, which is a lot better than $2k a month for 20 hours a week, especially considering that it comes with a lot of other benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not to discourage you, but in my experience building a lifestyle project that can low maintenance is just as hard as building a $100 million startup. Why not aim for the latter and have a bigger payout?

</comment><comment><USER17> Check out [https://betterific.com/](https://betterific.com/) for some ideas (crazy, good and the bad!)

</comment><comment><USER18> Join 30x500 or TheFoundation. They'll teach you how to find plenty of ideas. And also how to get them off the ground without a VC.

</comment><comment> ape-box Hi im interested in you actual platform, would you mind to share the link ?

</comment><comment><USER19> well build something for yourself and aspiring actors like you, that help scheduling auditions on film sets easier.</comment>


A solar eclipse that takes place every 500000 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.svalbard2015.no/pages/eclipse.html

<comment><USER2> Not directly related to the article, but this is a good opportunity to alert US HN readers that in a little more than two years time a total solar eclipse will cut across the entire conterminous United States on August 21st, 2017.

Major cities in the path of totality include: Salem OR, Idaho Falls ID, Casper WY, Lincoln NE, Kansas City MO, Nashville TN, & Charleston SC.

This will definitely be the most accessible total eclipse for the majority of the US population in my lifetime.

A few links with maps/details: [http://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/nation/](http://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/nation/) [http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/SEgoogle2001/SE2017Aug...](http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/SEgoogle2001/SE2017Aug21Tgoogle.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a huge difference between 90% (or even 99%) and a 100% eclipsed Sun. People in Norway should really travel to the Faroe Islands to experience totality :)</comment>


Show HN: Serverless CI – Hyper.sh Plugin for Jenkins - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hyper.sh/serverless-ci-with-hyper-and-jenkins.html <comment><USER2> This is really interesting, I've seen people using jenkins not for CI but just as a simple job scheduler, as it's a pretty well known thing with jobs/timing/pipelines/etc along with emails and all that added.

Adding an extremely elastic cluster onto that sounds _nice_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey IanCal,

I'm from Hyper.sh.

We've seen a few people on Hyper.sh using Apache Airflow for job scheduling but I agree that Jenkins would do a good job of it too, especially if the headache of maintaining a VM cluster would go away.

If you do try the plugin out we'd love to get your feedback. We've have some vocal early users of the plugin, but we could always use more!</comment></comment>


Building CLI Apps in Go with Docli - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/celicoo/docli <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, creator of Docli ([https://docli.dev](https://docli.dev)) here.

3 months ago I've posted on Hacker News about Docli, a new library to help you build CLI Apps in Go.

After the feedback I received about the lack of support for nested commands (aka subcommands), I decided to dedicate my free time to add this feature, you can read more about it at [https://github.com/celicoo/docli/issues/10](https://github.com/celicoo/docli/issues/10)

Three months have passed, and I'm proud to announce that this feature has been merged!

If you feel up to it, please follow the tutorial ([https://docli.dev/docs/tutorial](https://docli.dev/docs/tutorial)), it will help you understand the Docli concepts.</comment>


Support for better symlink handling in Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/12/02/symlinks-windows-10/ <comment><USER3> I worked at Microsoft during the development of this - and I'm so very happy it finally shipped.

We started working on this about a year ago after chatting with npm, git, Ember, and various other command line tools that were substantially slower (or straight up broken) on Windows. I casually mentioned how big of a performance impact we could have to Satya's Assistant and found myself in a meeting with all required groups (filesystems, security, etc), making my case for non- elevated symlink support, within a few days.

Windows still is a massive tanker, but I'm so excited for the Microsoft that is able to make sensible changes quickly.

<comment><USER4> Can you (or anyone else) explain the rationale behind having to specify a new flag SYMBOLIC_LINK_FLAG_ALLOW_UNPRIVILEGED_CREATE? What's wrong with simply just not removing SeCreateSymboliclinkPrivilege from the restricted token, and by default including it from unprivileged users?

<comment><USER5> The primary motivation for adding the SYMBOLIC_LINK_FLAG_ALLOW_UNPRIVILEGED_CREATE flag is to not disrupt the behavior of existing code.

Because of pre-existing behavior, existing apps are likely to be built to assume that symlinks cannot be created when the app is running without admin rights. If the behavior changed such that the app could now create symlinks but not have admin rights, the app and/or its dependent scripts etc. will likely misbehave.

Therefore, we added a new flag - <USER2> - which allows developers to expressly indicate that their code is specifically built to handle the ability to create symlinks should their code be running on a supporting platform (i.e. Win10 Creators Update, or later) even if the app does not have admin rights.

HTH.

<comment><USER5> Oh, and just so we're all clear, if there are any problems uncovered in this implementation, we can all blame @felixrieseberg ;) :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vic-traill > Now in Windows 10 Creators Update, a user (with admin rights) can first > enable Developer Mode, and then any user on the machine can run the mklink > command without elevating a command-line console.

So an Administrator-equiv account still needs to be in the chain of events to make this useful on a per machine basis?

If this is the case I'm not sure how this makes symbolic links more useful to me in a Windows environment... ?

By default access to remote (network) symbolic links is disabled . You can enable it with fsutil [0].

Between the need for admin-equiv for mklink and the per-computer requirement to fsutil-enable sym links on network shares, symbolic links are unusable in a Windows environment.

I don't see how this feature changes that.

[0][https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/junfeng/2012/05/07/the- symb...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/junfeng/2012/05/07/the-symbolic- link-cannot-be-followed-because-its-type-is-disabled/)

[edit: fixed typo on 'fsutil', 'sym' and 'symbolic links'. The curse of posting on a mobile device]

<comment><USER6> If you're provisioning lots of Windows machines, why not just make these two commands part of that process?

<comment> vic-traill I'll take some a kick at provisioning this via GPO on Monday.

I suppose the issue at hand here is that - at minimum - it appears that use of symbolic links requires a Group Policy that specifies both support for mklink and fsutil to be configured, the former requiring admin-equivilency to enable symbolic links to work for a non-admin user.

As someone who grew up using 'ln -s' in userspace to create symbolic links, this seems to be a rather high barrier to use of a very convenient user function - "Want to use symbolic links for convenience? Have your admin create GPOS to facilitate this" seems a half-assed answer....

<comment><USER7> In my opinion the magnitude of these problems is massively increased by locked down environments where playing with something has time costs for multiple people. The time for someone to play on their machine vs the time fire b that someone to work with an administrator to request, create and test.

<comment> vic-traill I absolutely agree.

How much upstream effort must occur to facilitate downstream userspace day-to- day function(s)?

[edit]

I'll perform whatever action is required to enable user functionality. That's what I'm here for.

But I don't agree/understand why the user-use of something as basic as symbolic links is dependent on an Admin having a clue.

<comment><USER7> I agree with you, it shouldn't require admin intervention. But I think the reason it annoys you, other sysadmins and developers alike is because the security model is broken in terms of UX, velocity and innovation.

From strictly a security perspective we need to lock down machines and remove admin rights because clients are a serious threat to our internal networks. But we pay out the nose in terms of productivity, employee happiness, innovation, etc. Even if Microsoft fixes all of these little things that currently require careful thought by a sysadmin before deploying that's just Microsoft. There's still plenty of poorly written software out there that requires admin rights. And that's new software, not legacy. Requiring sysadmin intervention every time someone wants to try something, especially just on a local machine is a huge drag on everyone involved.

Right now the idea is still young and as far as I know hasn't been productized yet but it looks a lot like Google's Beyond Corp[0] system of shrinking the perimeter to exclude clients, treat them as potentially hostile by default and have access to resources based on a dynamic threat assesment seems like the best way forward. Users have flexibility and freedom and the company is protected. But I think it's still out of reach for most companies. It will take projects and products to make it feasible and even then a lot of companies are still struggling to do basic "hard outside squishy interior" properly.

[0] [http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43231.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43231.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Regarding the "interest over time" graph, it's fantastic to see people designing graphs that are just as meaningful for the colour-blind as they are for those of us with normal colour vision.

<comment><USER9> Because it's a direct screen capture from Google Trends, and for me, it's pretty clear which are they: CVS, SVN, Hg, Git. Here, I've re-created it for you: [https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F05vq...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F05vqwg,%2Fm%2F012ct9,%2Fm%2F08441_,%2Fm%2F09d6g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great; I love how Microsoft have become so responsive to community demands and wishes.

Personally, I've used mklink /d for quite some time, in particular to manage game installs. This became necessary once they started hitting the 30-50GB mark; suddenly those 500GB SSDs / NVMEs didn't feel so big anymore! (Not that I have much if any time to play anymore..)

<comment><USER11> Do you know why you have to do it as Administrator? It seems like mklink shouldn't need special privileges.

<comment><USER12> The worry was Time Of Check To Time Of Use attacks, but I guess they've decided the balance has changed.

Also you've always been able to make junction points without admin.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately I cannot find the link now, but recently I have found a funny article related to these vulnurabilities:

If you set up VPN on Windows 10 Mobile for some reason MS has decided to remove the option to resolve DNS at the far end of the VPN. (AFAIK this was present on WP 8.1)

I have found a guide how to enable it: Create a symlink on an NTFS sd card pointing to a specific location (an ini file which is hidden in Windows 10 Mobile from you), insert the card, open the file in file browser with an editor, and change a setting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be nice if they added this to Powershell. Last time I tried, mklink was only valid in cmd.exe.

Tbh I don't see the point of this policy change anyway. Developer Mode means it can't be used in Production, so what are we saving exactly? The 0.000001 seconds it takes to launch a console in admin mode, assuming you didn't already disable UAC like most devs do...?

<comment><USER15> Two options:

        cmd /c mklink ...
        New-Item -Type SymbolicLink -Path symlink -Target target

As for me, I rarely need to symlink files, so directory junctions work just fine, which don't need administrator privileges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow. As a side note, this will also enable real symlinks in cygwin. There is already a setting CYGWIN=winsymlinks:native, but this doesn't work because you needed the rights to create native symlinks, and you usually don't run cygwin elevated.

(Actually, the situation was pretty messed up. There was a group policy that allowed regular (non-admin) users to create symlinks, but this never really worked, since UAC made processed drop a bunch of rights including symlink creation. So you needed a) either an admin account or a regular account, with the policy set, on Win Pro, and b) you needed to request elevation (which is subtly different from Run As Administrator) or disable UAC (which is dangerous and borks Metro apps in Windows >= 8).)

I'm so so glad they fixed this. Next step: Proper GUI for this in Explorer (and also for extended attributes, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER17> To be fair, the symlink functionality is present in NTFS since XP (though MS never provided a tool to make use of them) and there is a filter driver (Open Source, both 32 bit and 64 bit) by Masatoshi Kimura, see here (search on the page for "driver"):

[http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextensi...](http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html)

that provides symlinks on XP and possibly Server 2003 (additionally without any issues with UAC, which is simply not there).

<comment><USER18> +1 Link Shell Extension is extremely useful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The problem before was that the symlink creation privilege gets removed by UAC. So, if you gave the privilege to a non-admin user they could use it, but an admin user would always require UAC elevation to create symlinks. [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15320550/why-is- secreate...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15320550/why-is- secreatesymboliclinkprivilege-ignored-on-windows-8)

</comment><comment><USER20> Sounds positive, but the article skirts over whether there are any downsides. Surely there must be lots of ways this could get abused? (presumably that's why it sits behind Developer mode rather than being default)

<comment><USER21> Symlink vulnerabilities are pretty well understood. Though, people still make mistakes now and then.

Simple answer about one of the most common/dangerous: A symlink could be made to point to a system file. If a program running with elevated privileges could then be convinced to manipulate the contents of the file pointed to by the symlink, whoever could use that program on the symlink could cause it to modify the system file.

There have been real world vulnerabilities like this (I've shipped a few), but they're not super common and they're often limited in their capability to cause damage...they require an elevated privilege app, that is poorly written, that has untrusted users that can poke at it. It probably requires some kind of shell access, or some sort of local account (email account, maybe), in addition to the poorly written program that has elevated privileges.

[https://www.exploit-db.com/papers/13199/](https://www.exploit- db.com/papers/13199/)

<comment><USER22> There's an easy fix for that: allow unprivileged applications to create symbolic links, but by default, only allow applications to access/follow symbolic links owned by 1) the same user that owns the target file, 2) the user the current process runs as, or 3) an administrator. Since people currently can't usefully use symlinks at all except as an adminstrator, that should not introduce any compatibility issues.

Linux has a similar protection mechanism (/proc/sys/fs/protected_symlinks), though it only applies to sticky world-writable directories like /tmp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I applaud them for trying, but decades into it, Windows scripting still makes me want to cry : ( Habits aside (I typically enjoy working with unfamiliar languages), with a decent shell you feel like a superhuman flying at lightspeed. In cmd.exe and even Powershell (and sometimes even Cygwin) you feel like you are talking to a 3-year-old, having to switch to "simple English" and grimacing to get a very simple point across...

<comment><USER7> Have you tried the new cli and Linux compatibility in Windows 10?

<comment><USER23> I've not... does it also require mklink in "developer mode", or can you just do ln -sf? ...

<comment><USER24> I just successfully ran `ln -s /mnt/c/Windows/System .` in my home directory in bash.

It didn't pop up any dialogues, but I'm a local admin on my machine so it may be different otherwise. I can create a non-admin account and test it, but it's late and I need to go to bed :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, this is cool. Kudos to the folks that made this happen.

It was always a tragedy that the Windows Shell team insisted on creating their own "Shortcut" mechanism and not shaping the existing FS team symlinks to give a unified mechanism. It used to be a big ask to get teams to work with each other.

Could this be ye oldest piece of functionality to arrive in Windows yet? We also had ANSI sequences at the cmd prompt this year. And native ISO mounting in 2011. But non-admin symlinks go back way further. Cool.

<comment><USER26> I think the original shortcuts come from pretty early windows systems (.lnk files may have been around 95, but .pif files seem basically equivalent and existed by 3, but probably earlier).

<comment><USER27> Windows has multiple forms of shortcut. .PIF is for running DOS applications with a particularly configured environment. .LNK is for shortcuts to files, folders, and applications. .URL is for links to websites or other URLs (Steam uses this, interestingly).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> MS is doing good in my book. They should keep it up. Eventually people will start giving them a chance again.

<comment><USER29> The problem is that MS has such an amazing record of strategic underhandedness, it would take many years of consistently good behavior for me to trust their intentions.

By the way, exactly _which_ of their patents do they claim Linux violates, and exactly what data are they collecting from Windows 10 boxes?

<comment><USER28> Yep very true. I'm a little dogmatic about too. I haven't even installed VS Code even though I know it's supposed to be pretty good. Burned too hard plus looking at what they did to others before me makes a pattern that is hard to ignore.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, VSCode is open source so you could go look if you were interested: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Finally. This was strange to request admin privileges. I wish they find a solution around the path length issues as well.

<comment><USER31> Is this solution not fitting your needs ?

[https://mspoweruser.com/ntfs-260-character- windows-10/](https://mspoweruser.com/ntfs-260-character-windows-10/)

<comment><USER32> I tried that in the AU: let's just say this is better than nothing. Well. Hm. Well, actually I'm not even sure about that;

First not only programs must opt-in (through a manifest) -- and that is quite natural given the way some existing Win32 functions are modified, but that won't be taken into effect unless the computer is also opt'ed in. That second condition both makes little sense, and is improperly documented (the doc tells us: a manifested app _or_ the GPO option; while in reality this is: _AND_ )

Then a single example so that you can understand the new "quality" of what MS is shipping: SetCurrentDirectory() [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/aa3...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/aa365530\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

Once you've manifested your program correctly (mainly by extracting what is interesting from powershell.exe, like usual because MSDN is shitty and does not describe the procedure to create the manifest with enough details) and configured your install with the good GPO (home edition users: go to hell) you happily starts to try the good old SetCurrentDirectory without the 260 chars limit.

It fails.

2 hours latter you understand that it fails because the MAX_PATH LIMIT IS STILL THERE IF lpPathName DOES NOT END WITH A BACKSLASH 'ß'¬ð'€¬ð€þ¬ð€

You then take a look at CreateProcess and understand that there is just no way to bypass the MAX_PATH limit with it on some of its params.

So you stop trying to use that half-backed and poorly documented "feature". The MAX_PATH (=260) limit in Windows is not gone. Maybe it's 5% gone, but that insufficient as hell.

<comment><USER5> As I am sure you can imagine, untangling the long-path limitation throughout the OS code, throughout RTL libraries, 3rd party libraries, .NET Framework & CLR, Windows Shell, etc. is a detailed, time-consuming process.

This was never going to be "oh, just change this flag and ... BINGO".

Rest assured we've several teams throughout the company (including mine) currently digging into this long-path effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How far till windows ships with a whole linux's kernel down there?

<comment><USER34> Considering that NT kernel is a much better design, I'd rather get Linux Mint (with UI) on top of NT.

<comment><USER35> Could you provide some link to read about this? First time I've heard about it.

<comment><USER36> My respect for NT grew tremendously after reading one of the early editions of Mark Russinovich and David Solomon's "Windows Internals". I haven't seen more recent editions but I'd suspect they just as informative.

The Wikipedia article on NT architecture is decent enough ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT)), and some quick searching brought up this slide-deck from 2008 that's pretty good too: [http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~zwang/files/cop4610/Fall2016/windows....](http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~zwang/files/cop4610/Fall2016/windows.pdf)

I'm most impressed w/ the kernel object manager and the pluggable user-mode "personalities". I've always dreamed of an NT "distribution" that didn't have Win32 but, instead, shipped with the Interix (aka Service for Unix) POSIX personality.

<comment><USER5> For those who are interested, the next version of Windows Internals is available for pre-order from Amazon :)

[https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Part- architecture-m...](https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Part-architecture- management/dp/0735684189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481322597&sr=8-1&keywords=windows+internals)

Oh, and @EvanAnderson - you might want to take a look at the Windows Sybsystem for Linux (WSL) - which allows you to run unmodified ELF64 Linux binaries directly on Windows:

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/06/02/lear...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/06/02/learn- more-about-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows-and-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I never thought I'd see the day. Now, if only they'd get * in filenames right, I'd be able to check out all of my git repos on a Windows system.

</comment><comment><USER37> mklink FFS? Even tho cmd.exe is not default shell any more.

I can't understand such a big failure! What ? This thing was hard to do ? [https://learn-powershell.net/2013/07/16/creating-a- symbolic-...](https://learn-powershell.net/2013/07/16/creating-a-symbolic- link-using-powershell/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Please tell me this is going to make my Vagrant issues go away...

</comment><comment><USER39> ln -s

a generation ... goes by ... and we get

mklink

but still no hard links and no use-counted file system. Haven't the Bell Labs patents expired by now?

<comment><USER40> huh? [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/aa3...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/aa365006\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

<comment><USER13> isn't this documentation a bit dated?

AFAIK as of Win10 hard and soft links exist, and also junctions, which are a third, similar but different concept.

<comment><USER15> Isn't that exactly what the documentation says? I mentions directory junctions, hard links and symlinks.

Mind you, hard links and directory junctions have existed for quite a while (going back at least to Windows 2000). Symlinks have been added in Vista.

<comment><USER17> Not really, they were added to NTFS in XP times, see my previous post.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13095172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13095172)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Merging a Hasselblad 500C/M and a FujiFilm Instax 9 - <AUTHOR> http://www.isaacblankensmith.com/#/hasselbladinstax/ <comment><USER2> That's a very neat project. If you ever need to mate something light sealed consider using a clay mold (using a thin plastic bag so you don't foul up your positive, in this case the camera), sculpt to your liking after the first imprint and then fill with resin for a very nice result.

There is also rubber that you can cast. Be careful, most of these resins/hardener compounds are highly exo-thermic while they cure, make sure you keep things cool or spontaneous combustion or deformation are possible.

<comment><USER3> Why not just make the seal ribbed, with complimentary ribbing on the other side? <comment>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That film is still made? Wow. That's descended from Kodak's instant camera film. Kodak was found to be infringing Polaroid's patents and was given 30 days to exit the instant photo business. They even had to buy back all the cameras. But Fuji and Polaroid cut a deal for the Japanese market, and when the patents expired Fuji could go worldwide.

<comment><USER5> In fact, the Instax line has been quite profitable for Fuji--it's very popular with kids and hipsters. But, as noted above, all the peel-apart films are gone now. You might find some old stock at high prices, but it's not being made any more.

<comment><USER6> I'm shooting my last pack of FP-100c in my Mamiya RB-67 at the moment. I emailed the Polaroid Originals crew about reviving pack film but they said this:

Thank you for contacting Polaroid Originals. Unfortunately, that film is no longer in production. Polaroid ceased production of this film type years ago, and we are unable produce new film packs as we do not have the production machinery.

<comment><USER5> I sold my Polaroid 405 backs when Fuji made their cuts, figuring it would be the last chance to get any money for them. Not surprising that new Polaroid can't do it, unless they want to buy Fuji's production line. (tangentially, I had an RB-67 for a while too. They're great, but I ended up trading it for a Hasselblad, because it's half the size)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice project. There are a lot of cool modifications of Instax cameras out there, including those which add large format lenses for full shutter and aperture control. What's special about this project is the manual feed. I haven't seen it anywhere else. Presumably it allows a pack of film to be inserted and used just like the automatic feeder.

I've toyed with the idea of putting the individual sheets into a sheet film holder for use in a Mamiya 23 camera. But it requires working in the dark and then repacking each sheet of film and running them through the camera to process with the rollers. For the same effort, I could be shooting regular film. Theirs is a much better solution.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh wow, I've been wanting to do this exact project for the longest time. Are you able to share anything more on the custom manufactured bits and pieces, how you interfaced with the chemical roller mechanism, etc?

<comment><USER9> This but with a Mamiya 645. The size of Instax frames is almost a perfect match!

<comment><USER10> Me and a friend of mine made a prototype for one, using the internals of an impossible project phone 'printer'. It takes standard 600 film. I had no idea that it would be the kind of thing hacker news would be interested in though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The caption about discharging the flash capacitor is a good one, but even with an non-conductive handle tool you need to be careful. I once did it and the discharge was sufficient to fling the screwdriver out of my hand and embed it in a 2x4 6 feet away.

<comment><USER12> Holy shit, how many farad was that cap? I've heard of accidents with really big ones that show up in vintage arcade machines, but a camera?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a Rolleicord with a film back set aside for this very purpose. The biggest issue is actually film plane flatness and focus - those are hard to get right!

</comment><comment><USER14> This is so cool and has me wondering what I'm doing with my life! More relevantly, I have this Leica M6 but I don't want to take it apart :x</comment>


Show HN: Make a podcast using Telegram voice memos - <AUTHOR> http://telegram.me/telecast_robot <comment><USER2> Hi HN,

Today, I made a Telegram bot that turns your voice memos into a podcast RSS feed. Every voice memo you send to the bot (@telecast_robot) is added to your personal podcast RSS feed.

It also generates a simple webpage with all your memos:

[https://telecast-production.herokuapp.com/@marckohlbrugge](https://telecast- production.herokuapp.com/@marckohlbrugge)

Podcast RSS feed: [https://telecast- email@example.com...](https://telecast- email@example.com)

I often use Telegram voice memos to share with quick thoughts with friends. Thought it would be nice to easily share them publicly, so that's how Telecast (working name) was born. It's a very quick way to create a personal 'podcast' with short episodes.

</comment><comment><USER3> very clever, kudos :)</comment>


SAP must pay Oracle $1.3 billion - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101124/ap_on_hi_te/us_oracle_sap

<comment><USER2> 1\. The HP CEO, Mark Hurd was forced to resign by his board.

2\. Larry Ellison welcomes Hurd to join as co-CEO of Oracle.

3\. HP sues Hurd for supposedly breaking the time-limited non-compete clause in his severance deal.

4\. Ellison promises retribution.

5\. HP's new CEO becomes Leo Apotheker, former SAP CEO.

6\. Oracle's new target becomes SAP.

7\. SAP is saddled with a lawsuit, Ellison "estimates" damages to $5bn.

8\. SAP gets to pay $1.3bn.

So in conclusion: Ellison & Hurd didn't get their blood from HP, but are happy to settle for a cool billion from a third party.</comment>


VC Guide (founders 'reviews' of investors) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vcguide.co/ <comment><USER2> This is the exact sort of feedback shared privately among experienced entrepreneurs - it's just finally accessible to everyone. From my look at the reviews I'd say it's about 80% true to my experience.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's shocking - have a look before it gets taken down.

This seems like a great idea: Founders can share feedback about VC's with other founders, which can be great for finding the right fit, or calling out bad acting.

Unfortunately, it seems to be ridiculous pile of trashy gossip and innuendo. Positive reviews are gloating, negative reviews are almost childish, I'm really upset at the casual lack of professionalism here.

First, to speak publicly and poorly about someone is a 'very big thing to do'. These words can have a lot of impact, it's like 'filing a lawsuit' you and better be prepared to be very conscientious and _correct_ about it all if you think you're going to take a run at someone's career.

Second, it seems a lot of founders have little ability to contextualize for 'other people's positions'. Many of the negative reviews I think are sour grapes and excuses on 'we didn't get funding' and then misinterpreting or misrepresenting the positions of others.

"The VC's didn't even get back to us, they're obviously disorganized clowns" -> or maybe your company isn't worth their time?

"He told us he was investing in a similar company, but we couldn't find it" -> or maybe he was finding a polite way to say 'no'?

"We assumed this guy was kind of a hustler, and didn't know what he was doing, but it turned out he knew a few things" -> what position are you to make such an assessment, and why on earth would you say such things publicly about someone.

"We met XXX from top-tier VC and it was underwhelming. He didn't seem to be interested or ask very good questions" -> Maybe your company is boring, he knew it was a 'no' in the first five minutes, and was polite enough to entertain you with some questions?

Founders, as a non-VC I'm going to say you're going to have to be very, very careful about talking publicly especially negatively about others, VCs or not. Get past your petty emotional response and consider that other people will view your situation differently, and that nobody is obligated to like you, pay attention to you, or care one way or another about you.

If someone does something clearly nefarious, and is a problem for others, then possibly you could make a case for this, but otherwise, this exercise is pointless.

It does seem however there's also quite a lot of 'shifty' investors on some level which is not surprising, but it's going to take much more quality, professional feedback for this type of forum to be useful.</comment>


Show HN: Calculus — in 3 pages - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/s/ldpgqueihdpnckw/Calculus%20in%203%20pages.pdf?dl=0 <comment><AUTHOR> I was writing notes for a discrete math summer course and wondered if it was possible.

Are 36 months really the most efficient way to finish the calculus sequence at universities? I doubt it.

<comment><USER2> Excellent handwriting!</comment></comment>


iBackDoor: High-Risk Code Hits iOS Apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2015/11/ibackdoor_high-risk.html <comment><USER3> I'm sorry, but as an advertisement for their network protection services, they're going to have to prove maliciousness beyond what is currently possible by downloading any app from the App Store.

What they describe is a JavaScript to objc bridge in this library - <USER2> would be completely containerized by the embedding application. No, this bridge cannot be used to write outside of the apps container, nor steal keychain credentials outside of the ACLs provided by _this_ application.

If you're embedding a third party library, any of the above could be true. But your user will still be protected to the extent provided by the app security model.

So this is just annoying FUD.

<comment><USER3> I still maintain the FUD factor, but a more careful reading shows that they are aware that this third party library is restricted to the apps container.

But I don't see how this could be considered a back door since the app developer specifically embedded the library for the functionality it provides. It's more like inviting a vampire to dinner. It can't enter your house if not invited. (And vampires are too "proud" for the servents enter for.). Ok, as a metaphor, this needs work...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> As of November 4, we have identified 2,846 iOS apps containing the potentially backdoored versions of mobiSage SDK. Among these, we observed more than 900 attempts to contact an ad adSage server capable of delivering JavaScript code to control the backdoors. We notified Apple of the complete list of affected apps and technical details on October 21, 2015_

When will the list of apps be public?

</comment><comment><USER5> Why do they say 'potential' backdoor when it is so clearly a backdoor? I know it's good to hedge your bets but is there some kind of legal reason they say it like this? I'm curious because it is so common.

<comment><USER6> Because you never really know until you __really know__. I know there have been times in my life that I was 100% sure of something and never thought there was a way I could be wrong, but somehow new info came to my attention and turned everything upside down. What if there's some kinda stuff in a chinese document that FireEye hasn't read yet, stating that this is normal functionality of the SDK and the developer, who read the docs thoroughly, knows that it does this. Better to just present the facts and stick with "suspect" or "alleged" type verbage and only drop the bet-hedging when it is known without a shadow of a doubt. The fact Apple removed the apps does strongly indicate FireEye at least found _something suspicious_ and the readers of this article are probably mostly convinced at that point anyway without FireEye having to risk officially throwing around accusations.

Also, nowadays it's getting a bit too easy to blame hacking/spying on the Chinese & Russians so you don't want to accuse them until you're absolutely sure. If you're wrong, it's going to look extra bad.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for your wisdom. I think I vaguely grasped that but I let bias prevent me from fully thinking through the other possibilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That API looks a lot like Cordova.</comment>


DC Cancels Comic Where Jesus Learns from Superhero After Outcry - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/19/dc-cancels-comic-where-jesus-learns-from-superhero-after-outcry <comment><USER2> I'm not sure the comic was in good taste, but I don't like what amounts to pressure to self-censor. It seems like a slippery slope to the kind of extremist view that resulted in the shooting at Charlie Hebdo, and threats of violence to others.</comment>


Is Yahoo Getting Close to Selling Its Lucrative Yahoo Japan Shares? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/is-yahoo-getting-close-to-selling-its-lucrative-yahoo-japan-shares/ <comment><USER2> Aaron Wall had an amusing tweet the other day: Facebook should reverse merger w/ Yahoo, sell off the Asian assets for 100%+ of the price of Yahoo proper, and use what is left as a source of free traffic.

</comment><comment><USER3> _…find a way to best unlock the value of this asset._

That's the kind of phrase that makes me shudder.

</comment><comment><USER4> I won't be surprised if Yahoo is to sell its share in Yahoo one day :)

<comment><USER5> Do they even have any left? I mean, if they needed any kind of capital to buy something they probably had to sell a bunch of it.

<comment><USER4> Let's hope they will sell flickr first.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Negotiating your employment contract with a corporation - <AUTHOR>

I've been running various boot-strapped small business/start-ups for over 10 years now and I'll be moving to work with a Big Company in California. Having never worked for a corporation before, what kinds of things can I ask for in my contract? For example: clause to work remotely rather than relocate, or relocation subsidy, housing subsidy, fixed-term employment contract (I think I could only handle a year or two being an employee), employment as a contractor rather than employee (I have no need for medical insurance/social security etc), performance bonus based on milestones (do these work?), and because they are subsuming my IP can I get them to agree that any patents that come directly from my work will be attributable to me in some way? I have a lot of questions about how to protect myself, especially in regards to giving this company all my knowledge that I've spent years dedicating my life too and have yet to fully express it in a business form - I'd hate to find myself in a position where I give everything away and have nothing left at the end of the day but I'm also excited for the opportunity to see Big Company taking steps in my field and to be part of the development team. <comment><USER2> Here are the short version of the rules: A) You can ask for anything B) They reserve the right not to give it to you

If working from home on Thursdays is a sticking point, ask to work from home on Thursdays and get that in your contract. It doesn't really matter if it's because you want to spend time with your family/cats or because you don't like going outside on days with a 'ur'.

If you REALLY want a pony, ask for a pony.

(you're not likely to get a pony)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, thanks. Yeah, there are just a lot of things I could ask for, and I have a great attorney to help make sure my contract is solid, I'm just not sure if I'm going to know how to ask for exactly what I need but from writing this post I think I covered it (worried about my knowledge being stuck in some NDA loop and losing ownership).</comment></comment>


Swiss kanton: pay taxes as late as possible, negative interest rates hurt us - the-dude http://uk.businessinsider.com/negative-interest-rates-switzerland-2016-1 <comment><AUTHOR> Canton begins with a 'C'.</comment>


US, UK and Canada claim Russia tried to hack coronavirus vaccine research - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53429506 <comment><AUTHOR> [PDF] Direct link to report: [https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/files/Advisory- APT29-targets-COVID-1...](https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/files/Advisory- APT29-targets-COVID-19-vaccine-development.pdf)</comment>


A Journey to the Disappointment Islands - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190319-a-journey-to-the-disappointment-islands <comment><USER2> Fascinating story -- and the author _really_ lucked out in that the technicians were there at the same time, because just showing up in places like this without making arrangements is not a good idea.

For comparison, some thoughts about the opposite end of the spectrum for Pacific travel:

[https://driftingclouds.net/2019/03/12/manufacturing-bula- mas...](https://driftingclouds.net/2019/03/12/manufacturing-bula-mass-tourism- in-fiji/)

<comment><USER3> While it's nice to read a negative review of a Fijian trip for a change, I wish you'd made it more obvious that your experience was limited to the most boilerplate tourist resort island (Denarau) and one other aussie-owned resort.

It's a bit like going to Disneyland and complaining about the manufactured happiness there.

There are 300 other islands in Fiji off the extremely well-beaten path you walked where your experience could have been very different. Or you could have just visited a village that isn't part of any pre-packaged travel tour to find that in fact most rural Fijians will be extremely welcoming, hospitable, and amazing with kids _without_ any expectation of payment.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, but it's worth pointing out that Denarau & the Mamanuca island resorts _are_ the "Fiji experience" for the vast majority of visitors to the island. I need to rewrite that last paragraph though...

<comment><USER3> > Denarau & the Mamanuca island resorts are the "Fiji experience"

Denarau is mostly multinational chain resorts (Accor, Sheraton, etc) so yes the experiences there are pretty boilerplate and "manufactured".

But there are numerous different resorts of all shapes and sizes in the Mamanuca and Yasawa Islands. There are resorts owned by foreigners like the one you went to, resorts owned by locals, resorts for backpackers, resorts run by their owners, and 5 star resorts. To assume you'll get the same there is like walking into McDonalds and saying that all restaurant food is crap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Despite the questionable tactic of forcing oneself uninvited upon the hospitality of a group who hasn't seen a visitor in 20 years, the writing was absolutely wonderful and it's the first long-form article I've found on HN that I read all the way through in one sitting, which is pretty high praise. I would like to read a book of similar stories at some point.

<comment><USER5> > questionable tactic

Keep in mind that this is what _all_ travel used to be like before tourism grew to where it is today. Done right, as in this story, it's a net positive for all involved.

I've done similar things a handful of times over the years, rocking up in remote places without any infrastructure to deal with tourists, hoping for a bit of luck in finding a place to sleep.

But here's the thing. It's not like you show up in these places like the stereotypical loud american demanding things and handing your wheelie duffel to the first local you see. It's more like the give and take you have when hitching a ride, essentially paying for your lift with fun conversation and wild stories, and by being an "interesting thing that happened" in this other person's life.

There's a little fishing village on the Pacific coast of Columbia with a river behind it containing fifty zillion perfect skipping rocks, accumulated over the millennia in front of a population who had never though to try skipping them. And now there's a batch of kids, teenagers now, who know how to do that thanks to that "English" couple who rocked up unannounced that one time, stayed at Linda's house, bought fish from the guys on the beach and sometimes spent their evenings sharing un-refrigerated beers with the locals in front of the depósito.

If you ever find yourself just about off the map someplace, I'd recommend making the effort to step over the edge once in a while to see what's there.

<comment><USER6> It sort of doesn't matter either how things used to be, or how polite you are.

He had the opportunity to make things easier on his hosts. He was even told to do so by the travel agent. He chose not to. Romantic as you may consider it, that makes him rude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I despise the attitude of this reporter. Showing up unannounced in this place without doing research, and not having enough supplies to survive. It seems arrogant that the community you impose yourself upon will take you in and support your gallivanting around their homes.

<comment><USER8> Agreed.

This person essentially behaved like a child who couldn't even be bothered to notify his implicit hosts beforehand of his arrival and extended stay.

Then he writes as if he's doing them a favor not wanting to inconvenience them. The reality is he's being a lazy selfish jerk.

They literally had to monitor his hydration for him and coddle him like an invalid.

<comment><USER9> He was irritating. I cringed on behalf of the people of that island. He also ignored another important thing, what will happen if the beetles kill off the coconut trees, that would be horrible for the people on the island.

<comment><USER10> > I cringed on behalf of the people of that island

From his (entirely believable account) they seemed pretty happy he was there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "In fact, Severo said that no-one could recall the last time a non-Polynesian had come to Tepoto – certainly not in their lifetimes."

I have a feeling this island is about to get quite a few visits from readers of the BBC...

<comment><USER4> I doubt it. The process of getting to the island sounded prohibitively difficult for all but the most motivated travelers.

<comment><USER12> And potable water is a challenge. When basic necessities require heroic engineering, tourists go elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tourism is one of the great tragedies of the commons, and really tough nut to crack too.

<comment><USER14> Yeah. I like to go where few people have gone before, but that's not something that works when everyone does it. Maybe artificial attractions (Disneyland and the like) can absorb a large part of tourism, deflecting tragedy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's nothing quite so colonialist as jotting down "ISLANDS OF DISAPPOINTMENT" on your map for generations of future travelers to see because the locals responded to your desire to pillage their food supply by threatening you with spears and chucking rocks at your party.

<comment><USER16> Hey look, if you threaten to kill me, and chase me off before I can ask you what the name of your island is, then on the maps for my own people, I get to name it whatever I want!

<comment><USER17> Wouldn't have mattered, anyway. Being a 18th century Brit and thus totally lacking any cultural sensitivities, Byron probably would have named the islands after the King's favorite fox hunting hound.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> what a wonderfully well written news story from an organization I don't normally expect to invest in long form writing. Andrew Evans is a rising prolific writing journalist.

<comment><USER19> I enjoyed it as well, and then it occurred to me that his buildup and the way he just dropped in on them and would be stuck for a period of time read like Ford Prefect researching for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I was left wondering if that was planned or something that crossed his mind during the trip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So will this be ruined within months?

The BBC has a program called The Travel Show, I'm guessing this might be an item in the next episode...

</comment><comment><USER21> Dude, I gotta go see that coconut tree...

<comment><USER19> I'll just leave this here...

[https://www.tahitiheritage.pf/cocotier-a-quatre-tetes-de- tep...](https://www.tahitiheritage.pf/cocotier-a-quatre-tetes-de-tepoto/)</comment></comment>


Sweden Has Become the World's Cautionary Tale - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com./2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> Infection rates are climbing everywhere because of increased testing, but most of the latest infections are of younger people. Thus many are symptom free or mild, and mortality rates have continued to fall since the peak in April. Look carefully at what the news reports say, and also consider the political agenda of the source. (The next POTUS election is four months from now.)</comment>