Developing When Your Computer is too Fast - <AUTHOR> http://dustin.github.com/2010/11/12/labrea.html

<comment><USER2> I don't believe I communicated clearly enough in the creation of this project.

This is not ``Yay, I don't ever have to worry about any other computer because I can simulate anything.''

This is me sitting next to my QA guy (who really understands what I did better than I do so far) and having him say, ``Why don't you just make it fast for the first ten minutes, then slow down socket operations briefly, then switch a pattern of speedup and slowdown on disk reads?''

I want to do more fault injection stuff. I'm being asked to do stuff like manipulate the data (sometimes), or lie about the results of certain operations.

<comment><USER3> I understand your motivations better now. Being able to run these ad hoc tests in a repeatable manner isn't the same as firing up IE6 on a Pentium 4 box with 256MB of RAM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fun, but the good thing about slow computers is that they're also the cheapest; it's far more economical to just buy an old box for a couple hundred dollars (or even cheaper).

<comment><USER2> Sure, but then I have to carry around another computer or two when I want to work within a particular assumption.

Now, I can say, ``What if this box were really slow to respond to network requests 10% of the time?'' and just do it.

<comment><USER4> Carry around, repair, keep patched, etc. It's only cheap if your time is cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been programming since the late 80's and one thing I learned early was to always develop (or at least extensively test) on older hardware. My primary work machine is usually a generation or two old. At present I code on a T42 Thinkpad and there is a new T60 waiting to take over in a couple months. If you're forced to develop in a "slow" environment you learn to optimize your code from the get go, all the time. You automatically rely on faster techniques as the norm vs. going back and fixing later. As a result now I frequently see my applications running at client's offices and think to myself "holy crap, that's fast". Another side benefit is that it keeps all my "fun" applications over on another more current machine and separate from work.

<comment><USER6> I also started programming in late 80's, and I use that technique too. Currently, my netbook is more powerful than my primary laptop. :-)

My laptop is also able to variate CPU clock speed from 2GHz to 200MHz. It makes me easy to execute CPU-bound benchmarks of my programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The point he's missing is that you don't have to develop software on the same computer you test it on. The best solution is to have a separate test computer that's appropriately slow. In fact, most people probably already have an old one lying around that they could use.

And regardless of speed, it's good to test your software on a variety of systems.

<comment><USER2> I certainly do test on many different systems, but not all of them.

This doesn't take the place of real-world testing. It takes the place of setting up a network and putting a modem between my client and server then attaching a tape drive to my server to see what happens.

So far, it's been quite useful, but I've got a ways to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another site that rips off the HN comments verbatim?

Hi everybody, I'm doctor copyright-infringement!

<comment><USER9> That's Disqus (YC S07). Its "reactions" piece pulls in comments from sites like HN, Reddit, and Digg into the comments widget it puts on a given blog post.

<comment><USER8> I see. Does HN say somewhere that "anything you submit can be used for commercial purposes by YC startups"?

<comment><USER10> Interesting point, I googled for 'who owns copyright blog comments' and found this (Google cache, the site itself is down):

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6GfoIFr...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6GfoIFrkhikJ:www.reasonableman.com/archive/2005/02/who_owns_blog_c.html+who+owns+copyright+blog+comments&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

I'd like to hear if anyone else agrees or disagrees with this article (it seems to be a bit of a grey area).

<comment><USER11> I think it was when talking to Jonathan from Plagiarism Today (<http://www.plagiarismtoday.com>) that I was told that forum posts should be regarded as the authors' own, legal copyright property. I may have some old notes on this around that I can dig up.

Some forums (and sites like YouTube) write some Terms of Use/EULAs to waive their content rights to the site owners (not for any nefarious reasons), although I doubt that these "agreements" hold up.

If I had any comments or forum posts that were copied verbatim in a manner that upset me, I would definitely pursue it legally. But I'm a fanatic like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recommend doing the same thing for web development.

There is a nice Firefox plugin (Firefox Throttle) that lets you throttle uploads and downloads with a single button click. If, like most web developers, you do development on localhost using the plugin lets you see how your user's experience uploading large files or downloading image rich pages with network latency.

Unfortunately its been pulled from the addons library search but you can download it directly (for now) using the ftp url in the comments here:

[http://support.mozilla.com/en- US/questions/755876#answer-107...](http://support.mozilla.com/en- US/questions/755876#answer-107035)

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice work. But be careful about relying entirely on something like this. There are more than just seek time differences between hard disks and SSDs: they have different internal cache behavior, different latency variances, queuing differences (depending on how the devices are configured and how you're using them) etc.

This seems like it'll get you 80% of what you want. But it'd be useful to have an actual disk to test on as well.

<comment><USER14> To further this.

I think this is a great idea, but having worked on benchmarking database structures in the past, I'd be weary of using them for any type of real benchmark.

For one, trying to model a real disk would get very complicated very fast. Say, the access time of the disk will be a function of the position on disk, so it would be unrealistic to get random delays when scanning a large chunk of contiguous data or by just having a few delays in a random-access heavy load would also be extremely unfair.

In short, trying to model complicated disk latencies is pretty hard, and usually if you are programming with some model of disk in mind, building a disk latency simulator under that same model may end up giving you a false sense of security.

For what it's worth, I'd favor getting a cheap hard disk and trying the load there instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I actually have a dev box that's an older Athlon XP with 1 GB of RAM that is surprisingly useful for finding performance issues. Things that don't show up on my monster desktop show up -really- fast on the clunker.

I'm a firm believer that developers should have old hardware to test on. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't all this depend on your target customers? If your target customer is big business that have fast computers you are okay.

If your customers are average joes, then yes I would say you should have a test environment in place that closely represents those customers.

Even after all that the question I have is which set of customers brings in the most money for you? Lets say you have a mix of big business that run fast machines, and average joes that run slow machines. If 90% of your money comes from big business, why bother trying to make software for the slow machines? Just slap on a system requirement and it should cover them, so-to-speak.

<comment><USER16> Incidentally, as a webdev who targets big businesses, they in fact usually have -slow- computers. Javascript in IE 6 is pokey, and typical use-cases of Outlook and Excel don't need much firepower.

A joe-blow at home on the other hand is either at least at the "corporate" level, or even higher for gaming or media-centering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great work, but I think a library to do the opposite would be more useful.

<comment><USER18> ... to make your computer go faster than it really is?

That WOULD be pretty useful.

Or are you merely talking about libraries that do optimization for you?

<comment><USER17> The former!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I appreciate this sort of software, since our development and production hardware has vastly different performance profiles.

Development is on fast intel single or dual core machines with slow disks and production is slow many core sparc machines with fast disks.

</comment><comment><USER20> I can see this work, but honestly wouldn't it make more sense not to use an older computer? They are typically cheap and you don't have to suffer when you don't develop speed critical code.

<comment><USER21> You wouldn't want to be compiling on an old machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What about developing or testing in a virtual machine?

<comment><USER2> VMs running on my box might not get a lot of CPU time, but will still get good IO performance.

It's going a bit beyond just simple performance, too. For example, I can add logging of reads on client network file descriptors like this:

[https://github.com/dustin/labrea/blob/master/examples/lognet...](https://github.com/dustin/labrea/blob/master/examples/lognetworkreads.lua)</comment></comment>


My 10-Year Odyssey Through America's Housing Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-10-year-odyssey-through-americas-housing-crisis-1516981725 <comment><USER3> I bought my first very similar house in 2005 and experienced this exact thing. Fresh out of college, moved to South for a promising job, and bought something small I could easily afford. I even wrote about the potential of a housing crash in Oct 2005 ( [http://chir.ag/200510301225](http://chir.ag/200510301225) ). I lived there through the housing bubble, saw my 145k house go up to 200k and then down to 75k, rented it out after I got married and moved away, and kept losing thousands each year for 5-6 years.

Last week someone offered to buy it for just a bit over my mortgage pay off balance. I will lose a few thousand but at least I will be out of the landlording business. I have my fingers crossed that the inspection goes well but I'm not holding my breath.

> From the original purchase in 2005 to last year's sale, I lost $25,500. My > losses as a landlord? At least $35,000. Whatever the sum, it no longer > mattered. I was free.

It's scary how similar even his figures are to mine. I bought a much more modest house than I could have bought in a prime location, I fought hard to get a great deal on my mortgage, I paid bills on time and kept up with maintenance, and I've kept up with the market trends so as not to miss my chance to refinance/sell.

Time and again I asked myself what I did wrong to lose 60k+ of my hard earned money over a decade. But after an investor friend of mine discussed his plans to buy numerous distressed properties to fix and rent them, I realized what had happened. The Great Recession had turned affordable residential real- estate into a zero sum game. I, along with millions of others had to lose 10k each per year to make it worth it for him to be a residential real-estate investor. My piggy bank investment was competing in the same arena has his tooth-and-nails livelihood.

The big lesson is that market manipulation can convert a non-zero sum activity into a zero-sum activity. It used to be that your small family home was a safe, gradually appreciating asset. Most everyone won, few lost.

> In 1944, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proved that any non-zero-sum > game for n players is equivalent to a zero-sum game with n + 1 players; the > (n + 1)th player representing the global profit or loss. > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero- > sum_game#Extensions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game#Extensions)

Just need one new player to turn the game around. Enter my friend and a few thousand others like him with resources to buy out every third upside-down house in the neighborhood with cash, upgrade bath and kitchen, and then rent them out long-term with a team of property managers. It's a sellers market but very few homeowners are bidding up sub-200k houses. Instead it's the cash investors low-balling the price until owners such as myself and the author just break down and say 'Screw it! At least the 60k loss will save me some taxes next year.'

<comment><USER4> I don't think the reality here is nearly as sinister as you make it out to be. If an investor is making an appealing return at the price you're selling it to him at then either you're making a poor financial decision by selling or he's playing the game better. I think it's the latter in this case, and I'll explain why.

As background: My father was a handyman turned landlord. I've worked on rental houses since 1st grade. A large number of landlords have a similar background. It's not a coincidence. They make money off properties in the price range you describe in a very particular way - they do nearly everything themselves. It is an arbitrage on the cost of maintenance. Think about it this way - if an electrician/plumber/contractor is going to charge $100/hour to do work on the house and rental prices have this cost baked into them, then you can effectively earn $100/hour by doing the work yourself. Enough people do this that the equilibrium price drops below the cost of having professionals do all of the work. Since that is probably the situation you're in, of course you're going to lose money. You seem to have said you have external management on top of that. That in itself would pretty much wipe out the expected yield. The cashflows from <$200,000 houses are WAY too low to have someone else managing it for you.

So your game theoretic analysis is somewhat correct, but it's more of a feature than a bug. There is an army of people willing to do unglamorous work with their nights and weekends, and as a result they are not only able to do well by themselves but also systematically lower the cost of housing.

You also made a dangerous statement about historical returns on real estate. Historically, across a wide span of markets, real estate tracks wage growth. The recent shift since the mass financialization that started in the 80s being a complete aberration. The alternative is that the real cost of living would grow exponentially. Even with the excess credit of the last 15 years that hasn't happened for most of those outside of SF.

If you want to buy a house to live in, I suggest you view it as a consumption good and not an investment. Your money will almost certainly do better in equities.

<comment><USER5> You've been to exposed to a great life experience. How much of your father's work/investment remains today-- did he manage to create a nest in time for retirement and for your estate?

Retail investing, and especially trading, in equities isn't necessarily a better proposition. It's concerning that you recommended this instead. I hope that your family's hard work paid off.

I have been solo-preneuring a project that will help those like your family to realize their dream. It's been a long journey.

<comment><USER6> OP was giving advice to someone without handyman skills. That person's money would do better in equities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have lived in the Bay Area for 6+ years. Could have bought a house, but the prices seemed crazy in 2014 and look a lot more crazier now. And the prices keep on creeping up higher!

All my friends have bought houses. Some of them have bought houses worth 2.4M in Cupertino. Most of them are Indians on H1B visa and not Green Card in sight!

Are Bay Area prices sustainable? Am I being unnecessarily paranoid?

<comment><USER8> I own and am not sure. Could have bought in San Francisco in 2001 and decided to buy on the peninsula instead. Cupertino still had starter homes < 500,000 at that time but I didn't want to live there, either. For a while there it looked like a mistake to not live in the city then the market turned insane and the peninsula housing market is almost as hot as the city. Part of me wants to take the profit and run but to where?

<comment><USER9> Midwest? Buy 10-15 rent houses in a college town and retire.

My neighbor owns 15 houses and lives in Europe most the year. I'm working on the same path (may buy their homes in the next year or two, we're in discussions).

<comment><USER8> Does this plan mean living in the town and doing the property management or is it more self sustaining remote?

<comment><USER9> You can do it either way. The risk threshold from my perspective is how much you charge in rent, with how large your deposit is, along with how often you inspect your properties.

Also, you have to be prepared to sue, file liens, and use sheriff evictions.

Everything is easier if you're local. If your investment is large enough, flying in to deal with your properties is a reasonable business expense (I wouldn't do it outside setting up a company and having general liability in addition to your normal house insurance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://archive.is/GPTMc](http://archive.is/GPTMc)

</comment><comment><USER11> Bought a house in 2007 in Colorado Springs and had to move out of state in 2012 for work - the crash meant I was underwater on my mortgage, but not by much.

So, I decided to hire a property manager (Lesson 1: Never be a landlord if you're not going to be present to manage the property yourself - PMs take their 10% cut of the rent and do absolutely nothing in return) to rent the place out and sell in a few years after the market had recovered - <USER2> didn't happen in Colorado Springs until recently.

Last summer I gave my tenant her 60 day notice, found a listing agent, and my wife flew out to Colorado Springs to help prep the house for sale...

Turns out the tenant had totally trashed the place. In fact, she had been operating a rabbit breeding operation in the house (there were rabbit cages stacked floor-to-ceiling in some places, and a large outdoor hutch had been constructed in the back yard). Carpets ruined, feces smeared on walls, and a general unholy smell throughout the entire house. Hell, large amounts of rabbit bedding and feces had been dumped into the crawlspace.

This is the tenant I had cut a lot of slack to over the years with late payments, etc (Lesson 2: Never cut a tenant any slack - if you do they'll walk all over you).

What should have easily been a $40k profit (had the house sold at market rate) turned into a $5k loss (at least I didn't end up owing any capital gain tax, pfft). I will burn a house to the ground before I become a landlord ever again.

Also, Zillow keeps sending me updates on the property value (which magically keeps going up), despite my attempts to make it stop (I don't want to know, really) :(

<comment><USER12> That's unfortunate, and something that keeps me only managing my own properties locally. I know it won't scale so much, but I feel like I have too much skin the game for the property to lose value on my own fault.

It sounds like a very bad experience with a management company. Was this your first PM company?

<comment><USER11> Yes, first and last time being a landlord. When I was growing up, my parents had a similarly bad experience renting a home they couldn't afford to sell after moving out-of-state. Theirs included an unscrupulous (rather than just incompetent/lazy) PM who charged them for unnecessary and expensive repairs, and tenants who paid their deposit and never paid again (the PM talked them into renting to Section 8ers). The situation ultimately ended in foreclosure for my parents (they were depending on rental income to make the mortgage payments).

If I ever find myself upside-down on a mortgage again, I'm going to short- sale, walk away, or find a reputable local arsonist to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> it's sad, how much the author suffered for bad behavior on behalf of the banks.

They got bailed out, the author didn't. He should have foreclosed.

The banks lent money they didn't have. I don't see why the author paid it off. I respect his integrity, but he should have declared bankruptcy.

<comment><USER14> > The banks lent money they didn't have.

I don't get this. Banks must always do this, they exist because everyone else wants to lend short term or borrow long term. Anyone who acts as the counterparty to that is automatically a bank or bank-like.

I guess what you mean is that when the banks borrowed short term (as they must), they did it using home loans as collateral, and that more of those loans defaulted than was expected.

How does that justify defaulting?

<comment><USER15> > I guess what you mean is that when the banks borrowed short term (as they > must), they did it using home loans as collateral

But that's not really what happened. Banks made a lot of poor quality loans, then packaged them up and sold them on, taking a spread in the process. Some banks (e.g. Bear Stearns and Lehman) kept some of that risk on their books, but others (Goldman) didn't.

This wasn't a case of banks using their mortgage book as collateral, it was banks originating and actively marketing a dangerous product. It's also worth noting that some banks _knew_ that the products they were selling were low- quality and likely to default.

Then the US government stepped in and propped up the instigators of the crisis. People who made poor borrowing decisions had a part to play in the crisis too, but I think it's fair to argue that the pain could have been distributed more evenly.

Under the circumstances, I can see why it might seem fair to walk away from an obligation like the author's mortgage.

<comment><USER16> Neither Bear, Lehman nor Goldman 'make' loans. They created CDOs,CDSs,MBSs and sold them to other credited investors.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, fine - that's a simplification. They bought third parties' loan books and securitised them. But it was that flow of money that encouraged the bad lending practices. If you know you can make a crappy loan and sell it on to Goldman for a profit, you'll make the loan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What I don't see anybody talking about what's going on with car loans. The next time we have a recession it's going to be a lot worse as people will lose both their houses and their cars. I know a waitress who can barely afford an apartment, with no family support or co-signer, who financed a brand new Jeep. This is not sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why don't more people just live in RVs/vans? Taking out a mortgage is a huge risk over 30 years - what happens if you lose your job and cannot find another one at the same pay? Or you get sick and cannot work?

I guess you could sell and take the equity out of the house but you lose so much money and time to the banks.

</comment><comment><USER19> My god, the author of this story made all the wrong choices. Wouldn't walk away from the property, liquidated his 401k to obtain sole possession of the dwelling from his ex, wouldn't commit to missing payments to get a workout commitment from his lender.

Had he walked away from the property, he'd still have his 401k (protected from creditors by federal law; he could've lived in the house for _years_ while it went through foreclosure and put his mortgage payments in his 401k) and if the lender absolutely decided to pursue the deficiency judgment (rare), he could've settled for pennies on the dollar or declared bankruptcy and still been hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead.

Just sad. My advice to those who read this: never get emotionally invested. It's just business. Look at the numbers, and throw out any sense of morality of the debt repayment. That is how the system is built; act like a rational actor within it (losses are built into the mortgage interest rate). Your future self will thank you.

<comment><USER20> >My god, the author of this story made all the wrong choices.

Did he? He kept his job, didn't get drunk or hooked on pain pills, bailed out what sounded like a very uncooperative ex-wife, and all through it kept his house clean and even took care of the neighbor's dog. If anything, I'd say the story comes dangerously close to being a humble brag.

Whatever money difference there was be between him and pretty much any of the others, including the couple who skipped town with pizza on the counter...I'd gladly pay it twice over to have neighbors like this guy.

<comment><USER9> My first wife tried this uncooperative shit with our home (I bought before we were married). I told her I'd sell it for exactly what we owe if she didn't take my fair offer.

Probably should have just gone ahead and done that but I didn't want to move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Any link to this article without paywall?

<comment><USER22> [https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/10-year-odyssey- americas...](https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/10-year-odyssey-americas- housing-crisis/)</comment></comment>


Video from office during Arcata earthquake: dog sensing it before anyone else - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/v/lG5w7oo-vak

<comment><USER2> It says Arcata (that would be California) right in the corner and the date is January 9, 2010.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops! You're totally right. I had just assumed it was from Haiti. Changed the title to reflect this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am pretty sure I saw this video before the Haitian earthquake. None the less, it's still an interesting video.</comment>


America's DIY Phone Farmers - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3naek/how-to-make-a-phone-farm <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589870).</comment>


LED circuits, theory, applications and tips - <AUTHOR> http://lednique.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks a bit like SEO spam. All of the articles barely have any content and are only accessible via key words.

<comment><USER3> > and are only accessible via key words

There's a list of all the articles at the right side of the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am interested but know nothing, where should I start?

<comment><USER5> Start with single LEDs and understanding the voltage across them, and that you need a current limiting resistor and how to work out those values.

[http://lednique.com/electrical-theory-basics/power- calculati...](http://lednique.com/electrical-theory-basics/power- calculations/)

[http://lednique.com/electrical-theory-basics/ohms-law-and- re...](http://lednique.com/electrical-theory-basics/ohms-law-and-resistor- calculation/)

Buy a breadboard[1] and some components and build some flasher circuits. This 555 circuit is a nice first circuit. [http://www.555-timer- circuits.com/flashing-led.html](http://www.555-timer-circuits.com/flashing- led.html)

Change the resistors R1 and R2 to different values (or use potentiometers) to see how they affect the flashing - you should see one changes the on time and the other changes the off time (the mark:space ratio). You need to see this because it helps understand "multiplexing" \-- you strobe the LEDs because it saves power.

Then look at 7 segment displays. I'm not sure this page is particularly clear for beginners: [http://lednique.com/display-technology/7-segment-display- bas...](http://lednique.com/display-technology/7-segment-display-basics/)

This page walks you through using the 4511 to create a Binary Coded Decimal to 7 segment display: [http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/Articles/4511-BCD- to...](http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/Articles/4511-BCD-to-7-segment- display-decoder-circuit.php)

If you're the kind of person who can learn from books _The Art of Electronics_ and the _Student Manual_ are great. I haven't read the new editions. The editions I have are good but have some stuff that's out of date.

For Youtube Kris Cochrane talks about hobbyist level (cheap) tools and kits: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh8JiW2G9yR2v7TwUm04m_g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh8JiW2G9yR2v7TwUm04m_g)

And Big Clive does teardowns showing that sometimes the cheap tools can be scary for some uses: [https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom](https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom)

[1] This is what I mean by "breadboard": [https://uk.farnell.com/multicomp/mcbb400/breadboard- solderle...](https://uk.farnell.com/multicomp/mcbb400/breadboard- solderless-300v-abs/dp/2395961?MER=bn_browse_1TP_MostPopular_3)

<comment><USER6> Do you have some good tutorials on pro setups? I've got clients asking for pretty complicated lighting setups and we typically have to hire an AV partner who do a great job, but it's like a whole second system next to ours instead of being tightly integrated. These hobbyist setups are nifty, but I've got clients willing pay for quality. We're slowing muddling our way through DMX and PWM.

<comment><USER5> I don't, sorry.

I'm sure someone else on HN will know people who can do complex lighting setups with things like DMX and PWM, especially if there's reasonable money involved.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Service to remind me to ping people? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone use a service to remind them to contact people?<p>I have lots of contacts that I'd like to keep in contact with at different frequencies. I'd like to have a service where I can fill out a name and a frequency (every 2 weeks, every 45 days) with an offset and have it remind me. <comment><USER2> I think you'd find this site useful: [http://contactually.com](http://contactually.com)

Side note: I had this same idea years ago and launched a prototype but never got enough traction. Then Contactually came along and took the market by storm. Just goes to show you that it's all about the execution and not only the idea, so kudos to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! (and good luck on your next thing!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One, at [http://www.hassleme.co.uk](http://www.hassleme.co.uk) has a free, simple and painless email reminder system - "we'll nag you via email at semi- unpredictable intervals" (of N days, plus or minus a few).</comment>


A laptop with a wired detachable touch screen - <AUTHOR> http://www.oded.us/2012/05/laptop-wired-detachable-touch-screen.html

<comment><USER2> I like this in principle. You are right that the "working part" of a tablet could be a bit lighter with this approach.

However, one of the great benefits of tablets is how easy they are to start working on: with my iPad, if it's in my briefcase and I have to add a calendar item, I can pick it up, start it, add a calendar item, and put it back in mere seconds.

Having it attached to a keyboard and having to mess with the wire would slow this process down a bit, I would think. Also, I can't pick up the whole package and run to a meeting quite as easily.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that it will be less mobile than a conventional tablet, but some people will be glad to lose a bit of mobility for desktop horse power and price

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I don't like the wired approach. It reminds me of our first VCR as a kid that had a wired remote. lol

I'm sure others are doing it too but I think that Asus has it right with the Transformer line. You have a tablet that is self contained. But you can easily attach the keyboard which then turns it into a laptop. The keyboard has some additional I/O and another battery. I wonder if it would be possible to take that one step further and have additional cpu/gpu power in the keyboard so that as a laptop it is even more powerful.

<comment><AUTHOR> >"take that one step further and have additional cpu/gpu power in the keyboard"

that's an even better idea, but OS wise will probably cause problems. The original idea is simple enough to implement 5 years ago, I can actually take my old x61t and probably hack it myself...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it's been clear for a while that hardware is not the issue here. The issue is the operating system. What OS will this run?

<comment><AUTHOR> Win8, if M$ can pull it off... or maybe an Intel version of android with an i7 CPU, 16 gigs of ram and a 500gb hard drive :-)</comment></comment>


How a 100% remote team feels about screenshot software - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hubstaff.com/employee-monitoring-software-from-employee-perspective/

<comment><USER2> I would never work for a company like this, for any reason. I'd change careers (i.e., flip frozen cow parts for a living) before submitting to something like this. What a horrible product, and a horrible CxO for implementing/allowing it.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Is that legal?

I hope not.</comment>


Can't upgrade percona-toolkit when percona-server installed - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Homebrew/legacy-homebrew/issues/35995#issuecomment-238808382 <comment><AUTHOR> Whenever a discussion about workstation software comes up, homebrew comes up.

This issue, just closed without a solution is evidence of the terrible dependency management system homebrew is built on.

<comment><USER2> This is actually very opaque problem to somebody who doesn't use Homebrew. Why did `brew' want to install mysql package? Maybe it's percona-toolkit's maintainer who fscked up the job and put a non-alternative dependency on "mysql"?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an acknowledged problem with binary distributed packages: [https://github.com/Homebrew/legacy- homebrew/pull/41595#issue...](https://github.com/Homebrew/legacy- homebrew/pull/41595#issuecomment-120614907)

Homebrew is more like home made bread that's taken out half way, because it's half-baked and basically terrible.

First they rely on end user compilation for everything, then they support distributing binaries in a way that's as smart as a brick.

<comment><USER2> Well, being _too_ smart about binary packages after supporting source packages also could give similar results. Gentoo's emerge used heuristics and heavy magic when used with tbz2s, and that failed every now and then.

From package managers I like most how aptitude allows to browse resolutions and allows to choose one and modify it, but this is very far from being trivial to implement.

<comment><AUTHOR> The source packages simply state that they depend on another package, or one of multiple packages.

The problem is that their half baked binary distribution model doesn't then follow the same dependency rules.

Terrible tool, terrible results.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Problem With Free Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.reizbombardement.de/archives/the-problem-with-free-apps

<comment><USER2> Surprised there is no mention of the 'free or pay' option. Wonder what would happen if Facebook etc gave the option to pay a set fee per year to remove all ads / sponsored posts from your timeline</comment>


Bejeweled, Candy Crush and Other Match-Three Games Are (NP-)Hard (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.5830 <comment><USER2> So the next step is to crowd source solving NP hard problems by turning them into game problems and let people solve it in many different ways.

It's worth knowing how to reduce a problem (say traveling salesman) into bejeweled and then let a trucking company get results within a few minutes to an hour for their problem.

:-)

<comment><USER3> And instead of paying even the low Amazon Turk wages, players would pay you to let them play!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems the authors were beaten to the punch? [http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.1911](http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.1911)</comment>


Effective Vim - <AUTHOR> http://www.swaroopch.com/archives/2007/11/16/effective-vim/ <comment><USER2> Everyone should swap Control and Caps Lock. Caps Lock is a useless key taking up prime real estate.</comment>


Telemetry Data on All Satellites Orbiting Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/

<comment><AUTHOR> Found this data set from reading SpaceX's public rebuttal to Intelsat's FCC investigation. [https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=164950&x=](https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=164950&x=).

</comment><comment><USER2> Travis Goodspeed had a nice hack using Celestrak data [http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.co.uk/](http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is interesting to you, you might also find the SatNOGS Project [0] of interest.

[0]: [https://satnogs.org/](https://satnogs.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This headline "Telemetry Data on All Satellites Orbiting Earth" is a little misleading -- they are orbital elements. I looked for actual metric of satellites that is remotely obtained (thus, "telemetry") like voltage, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the correction, Orbiting elements would have been a more appropriate title.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Just Get Me Food - <AUTHOR> https://www.justgetmefood.com <comment><USER2> This is a pretty neat hackathon idea, but as an actual business, I'm afraid it falls into the vanishingly large set of services aimed entirely at well-paid young urbanites who haven't matured into basic life skills yet.

We've probably seen enough startups aimed at people who don't want to cook, do laundry, shop for clothes, manage their budgets, go grocery shopping, or other life skills that everyone has to learn after you leave home.

It's a nice alternative interface to Yelp. As a business, though, I'd look for a bigger problem to solve.

<comment><USER3> Specialization and comparative advantage are fundamental to human progress.

Not that long ago, most ppl on Earth grew their own food. Now, only a few percent farm and the rest buy it from them.

Why is it better for 100 people to each do their own laundry, vs paying a shop that does it efficiently, in bulk?

> well-paid young urbanites who haven't matured into basic life skills yet

> life skills that everyone has to learn after you leave home

This is condescending. People make different choices with their time and money and that's fine.

> It's a nice alternative interface to Yelp. As a business, though, I'd look > for a bigger problem to solve.

This is the Middlebrow Dismissal, my least favorite pattern on HN.

Local search is a totally reasonable challenge, and Just Get Me Food is a nice prototype. What bigger problem are you solving?

<comment><USER4> I disagree with your premise that specialization is much more efficient. In many cases, it is, but in the sort of services that have historically been in- sourced to the domestic sphere, it isn't. Once you account for capital investment, labor, overhead, profit margin, taxes paid by the customer, and taxes paid by the business, services such as these are priced high enough to be luxuries. If they were efficient, the price would be so low that they would be considered commodities, and they would be the default choice for most families just from a pragmatic perspective.

Keeping a cow for milk is not usually economical, and that is why most people dont do that. Doing your own laundry, cooking, and cleaning are economical. Some things are more marginal- tasks such as doing your own car maintenance and taxes require enough investment of tools and skills that many people should not do them themselves, but many people should, too.

The special case where it is in your best interest to outsource everything other than your own career best applies to people that have a high income, are very busy, and can easily adjust their working hours per week. These folks are relatively rare.

Cost is king.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Everyone! Thanks for the overwhelming interest -- I've hit all my daily API limits. I'll try to get those raised, and JustGetMeFood should be up and running for you tomorrow :)

Please follow [https://twitter.com/_justgetmefood](https://twitter.com/_justgetmefood) for updates.

<comment><USER5> Congratulations! I'm looking forward to trying it out tomorrow

<comment><AUTHOR> API limits are reset -- up again! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While this is a lovely idea, obviously the dataset is limited to not include things near me -- there are four open bars within 20 minutes walking distance.

While the minimalism is lovely, a link which provided a little more information, particularly on where the data is coming from, would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! There is a "Read more on Yelp" link under the pictures for any restaurant, over to the right. I can make it more apparent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The name of the app implies a more impulsive decision, which means less friction on the search filtering would be ideal. Removing the distance filter and showing results which include the walking distance would take me directly to results.

There's a cafe about two blocks away that I go to on the weekends and I swear it doesn't feel like a six minute walk, but the fact that I didn't see this location show up on the results for three minutes was disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could default to "Hangry" mode and just show you a map of places to get food inside X minutes, including average wait time once there. No buttons.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Something went wrong!

Stockholm, Sweden. I guess nothing outside SF works? :P

<comment><AUTHOR> It uses Yelp's API under the hood. Is Yelp active in Stockholm? I'll go through the error messages and see what's up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Brilliant. Simply brilliant. Next time my girlfriend goes into "I don't know what I want, no not that, or that, or that"-mode, I can just hand her this app and let her sort it out herself.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like the idea, except that you can't override the location selection. It determined my location to be 80km away from where I really am, basically geoip. No idea what my browser based that on, but there seems no way to override this in your website (and I always prefer to override it, even if it would have worked, because it probably triggers sending WiFi MAC addresses to google).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a little tricky. I don't use GeoIP, but request a location from your browser.

Location selection on mobile is generally pretty good, but it's very spotty from desktops. If the website can't get your location at all (i.e. if your browser refuses to share it), then you get to input it manually. Maybe I'll add a subtle option to always be able to access that dialog, to override the default geolocation.

<comment><USER11> Oh I didn't think denying would work, since it kept 'loading' (waiting for me) instead of showing an alternative right away. For most sites, that means it won't work. Perhaps show the alternative input at the same time as requesting it from the browser? Something like:

            Requesting location from your browser...
            <hr color=grey margin-top,bottom=50px>
            Or input your location manually:
            [               ] [OK]

If the user hits deny, the form text could change to what it says now.

Anyway, cool site :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This finds 4 restaurants at $ within 20 miles of Chicago and Austin in Chicago; the circle with that radius covers almost the entire city of Chicago. I'm guessing this is optimized for SFBA; I'd recommend telling people it's not ready in other places yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a 20 minute walking distance (i.e. about a mile), not a 20 mile distance.

<comment><USER12> Yikes, I stand corrected. But it's also missing basically every restaurant on North Avenue and most of Oak Park.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Yelp's data under the hood, so that's surprising. Please confirm that those restaurants are currently open -- it's possible that I need to expand my queries.

<comment><USER13> I think it's user error. The app's first recommendation for "I don't care, just give me cheap food" was a place I had no idea existed. It happens to be on North Avenue. [https://www.yelp.com/biz/forastero-restaurant- chicago?adjust...](https://www.yelp.com/biz/forastero-restaurant- chicago?adjust_creative=G1EQySgLTrqgtywHmyI1mQ&utm_campaign=yelp_api_v3&utm_medium=api_v3_business_lookup&utm_source=G1EQySgLTrqgtywHmyI1mQ)

This is an awesome app. I suspect there are a lot of happy users, but no one's saying anything because we're too busy visiting all the great places your app helped us discover. :)

<comment><USER12> I wonder if it's a location API thing; I can't tell where it thinks I am (and it's down now so I can't repeat the experiment.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> USEFUL (!!!). Will definitely use the next time I can't decide on where to eat

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks like 500 errors on posts to [https://justgetmefood.com/api/get- suggestions](https://justgetmefood.com/api/get-suggestions), may have hit Yelp API limits already?

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be working now -- there was a hanging database transaction. I've had to do a bit of live debugging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Also see 9forks - [https://9forks.com](https://9forks.com) (Austin, Houston, Portland, Seattle). Just a quick side project, but maybe we'll pick it up again someday.

</comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately, it didn't work for my city.

The idea reminds me of "WHERE THE FUCK SHOULD I GO TO EAT?"( [https://wtfsigte.com/](https://wtfsigte.com/))

</comment><comment><USER18> Doesn't work in a Sacramento suburb. Tried cafes and restaurants.

</comment><comment><USER19> Cool idea. I've seen more than a few things work based on the questions they ask and how well they present the results. Consider using design thinking for this space.

</comment><comment><USER20> Had no idea San Francisco was in walking distance from my location. Guess I'm the Flash (I'm literally on the opposite side of the country)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is just a proxy for yelp API, same thing can be accomplished by opening their app and selecting the first thing you see. My friend and I made almost identical app with their api at CalHacks and it had the same options and app flow and returned one restaurant at random. You could also say no and it would give you another random restaurant.

Quite low useability in the long run considering there's no unique dataset here and the app is trivial to build in a day.

<comment><USER22> This is a pretty low quality comment.

What's wrong with someone experimenting with something? Many projects start small and after some iterations become much more useful.

But instead let's harp on how simple/basic it is and how easy it is to make. \s

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Something went wrong?

</comment><comment><USER24> Works in Sydney. Ty will try it for real soon

</comment><comment><USER25> How do you plan to compete with my mom?

</comment><comment><USER26> "Something went wrong!"

</comment><comment><USER27> "Something went wrong!"</comment>


Why Has the U.S.-Owned Auto Industry Failed in North America? - <AUTHOR> http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay09/bigthree05-09.html

<comment><USER2> I recently (say 4 months ago) bought a brand new Chrysler vehicle. A week ago I got a customer satisfaction survey.

From the survey I got pretty strong impression that the important thing is not the value of the car, not it's quality, but the fact that the car is made in North America and it's made by "THE CHRYSLER". I bought a piece of American Automotive industry's history and I should be happy with that.

<comment><USER3> As a person that only buys American made cars. The "Made in America" reliance had allowed the industry to escape improving the quality of their products for some time. Fortunately for the automakers the NASCAR viewership will always buy American as most drive American trucks which are superior over the competition.

The issue is now even though the quality has improved, it is hard to get the higher paid individual and foreign born consumers (which their are lots) to buy a US cars.

<comment><USER4> Why do you only buy American cars? Do you only buy clothes made in America, too?

<comment><USER3> Not even sure where my clothes are made. Probably not in America.

There are several reasons for buying American:

1.) For the price point I buy at (low to middle < 30k) the American cars have the same quality as I can get in a foreign car.

2.) Given equal price and quality, keeping the money in the US keeps more Americans working.

There are lots of foreign products and services where the price to value ratio isn't even and for those purchases I am more than happy to buy from anywhere.

It is kind of why I typically support local businesses in my town rather than go with large franchises if the price/value relationship is equal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing missed here is [http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/gms-problems- are-50-y...](http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/gms-problems-are-50-years- in-making.html) which is pretty convincing. A very good book on the auto industry is Halbestram's "The Reckoning".

</comment><comment><USER6> Lots of ancesotes, tired cliches, and no insight or inside info. I felt the article was a waste of your time so don't bother.

I'll counter with this ancedote: my 1997 Ford Exbition has 175,000 miles including over 20,000 towing a double axle steel car trailer with a car on it and I haven't had a major repair yet - only the cd player and regular maitrnance. If they can build trucksso well why did the gov force them to make the cars they were bad at making via cafe laws?

<comment><USER7> Every time the failure of US car makers come up, somebody blames the CAFE Act, environmental laws, having to deal with government regulation, etc. It turns into a veritable blamestorm.

The problem is that consumer preferences lead to lots of small (and fuel efficient) cars being bought every year; most of them just happen to be made by non-US companies. The profit margin on smaller cars is smaller, as well (luxury cars have the largest profit margin), but I don't believe that Toyota or Honda are losing money on every Corolla or Civic sold. They also seem to be doing OK in meeting fuel economy laws.

The real question is why US automakers don't make competitive small cars. One answer is the cost of labor in the US, but the other answer is that US automakers don't have a compelling process in place that continuously refines a small car until it does what the market wants. Look at the aforementioned Civic, for instance. Its original form came on the market in 1973, and its current larger form in 1996. Even the 70s version had a high build quality and was renowned for its reliability, but every subsequent iteration has, arguably, been refined and worked on to make it more and more palatable to the American market (the European Civics are different, FWIW).

Now look at US car makers. Which small US car has been marketed under the same name since the early 70s and refined every few years, meeting market demand and giving consumers what they want? US auto makers seem obsessed with re- badging and re-marketing their cars every few years, often to cover up memories of unsuccessful or embarrassing prior launches. The worst example is perhaps the Ford Taurus, which sold bucketloads in the full-size sedan segment in the 80s and 90s. So of course Ford took the Taurus out of their segment in '04 and replaced it with a smaller AND a larger sedan (the Fusion and the 500). Imagine Honda discontinuing the Accord next year and replacing it with a larger AND a smaller sedan (rather than making the Accord a bit larger, which they did last year... and five years ago). To nobody's surprise, the 500 flopped and was hastily renamed back to 'Taurus' for the '09/'10 year (there were some technical reasons, too).

Similarly, there are car production plants on US soil that make perfectly good cars, using non-unionized American workers. If you've ever been to, say, Louisville, KY, everybody seems to be driving a Camry.

<comment><USER8> So is blamestorm a noun or a verb?

<comment><USER9> A joke metal band. Well, it should be one, anyway.

<comment><USER8> File under: blamecore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> this sentence struck me as particularly shocking: "Most of the profits generated by the Big Three in North America came not from manufacturing vehicles but from financing the sale of those vehicles." how could anyone think that was responsible business?

<comment><USER11> What's irresponsible about it? Loans are how banks make money, late fees are how video stores make money, maintenance fees are how software companies make money, why should selling cars just be about the selling price?

Learn to be creative in your business models if you want to be successful in business!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't it a bit deceptive to talk about Toyota etc. being made by American workers? The parts are designed and largely made overseas. The American workers are putting prefab parts together. Fact is, the US industrial base is largely gutted and Asia is where it moved.

p.s. there is some good design done in the US but I'm talking high level here.

<comment><USER8> Don't US companies source a lot of parts from overseas? Ford even has plants in Mexico. US and Japanese companies often share designs. The boundary between foreign and domestic is a lot blurrier than it used to be. This point here is mostly about the management of these various companies, not so much their location or operations.

Also, the article mentions specifically that Toyota and Honda use a lot of American-made parts, which are of higher quality than whatever Ford/GM/Chrysler are using (doesn't say where they are getting parts from) and that is a major contributor to the difference.

<comment><USER12> I think that moving the parts factories here is a political decision. The core operations are still essentially Japanese and most of the hardcore expertise for Toyota, say, is in Toyota City, Japan. Its not because we Americans are less capable or something - its just a typical industry cluster.

Anyway if I had my say, I wish the car industry was less Madison Avenue, and more Silicon Valley. Why aren't car prices decreasing? Why can't I easily swap out parts myself? There needs to be a rethink and it can't occur as long as .gov is propping up the existing edifice.</comment></comment></comment>


How my Chase Account was Hacked and Money was sent in minutes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@wkasel/how-my-chase-was-hacked-and-money-was-withdrawn-in-minutes-3855c4368c9b

<comment><USER2> This is not accurate.

Ones bank account is not FDIC insured against theft, but from your bank going bankrupt. I would love an update. It will all depend on just how good of a business account you have and just how much viral this goes.

For reference. Go here and read under the area called "What is not insured" [https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/information/fdiciorn...](https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/information/fdiciorn.html)

<comment><USER3> While it may not be covered under FDIC, Federal Regulation E might come into play here, according to this research paper:

Is Everything We Know About Password-Stealing Wrong? [http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/161829/EverythingWeKnow.p...](http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/161829/EverythingWeKnow.pdf)

"Federal Reserve Regulation E guarantees that US consumers are made whole when their bank passwords are stolen. The implications lead us to several interesting conclusions. First, emptying accounts is extremely hard: transferring money in a way that is irreversible can generally only be done in a way that cannot later be repudiated. Since password-enabled transfers can always be repudiated this explains the importance of mules, who accept bad transfers and initiate good ones. This suggests that it is the mule accounts rather than those of victims that are pillaged. We argue that passwords are not the bottle-neck, and are but one, and by no means the most important, ingredient in the cybercrime value chain. We show that, in spite of appearances, password-stealing is a bad business proposition."

<comment><USER2> It appears that doesn't cover business accounts.

[http://www.bankersonline.com/technology/gurus_tech080403b.ht...](http://www.bankersonline.com/technology/gurus_tech080403b.html)

But that is really good protection for the consumer! I was not aware of that protection. I have heard of people being told by banks that their were no protections.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is all very interesting. Chase is planning on covering the money to my knowledge, however, I'm more curious how it happened.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ready to play prototype Multi-player Go inspired game on Tabletopia - <AUTHOR> https://tabletopia.com/games/mitropia <comment><USER2> Would be great to see how a current 2 player alphago does in a straight out game vs 3 reasonable human go players. Would be even more fun if everyone was in a room !

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes definitely. First we're building a physical board game for fun (and simulator is just so we can get the rules right) but.. if people like it we plan to make an online version and give it a bot interface so people can write their own.

Challenge AlphaGo!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> a blog post about the release: [https://mitropia.com/2017/12/01/play-mitropia- live-on-line-a...](https://mitropia.com/2017/12/01/play-mitropia-live-on-line- at-tabletopia/)</comment>


Ask HN: What Do You Recommend for a Minimal Viable Launch for a SaaS? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I recently launched a cryptocurrency trading platform that offers ai based forecasts:

I would recommend building sharing into the platform and the process in contextual locations (when you signup/save/finish or go to do something else in the app as a popup for example), we also built a referral program into our MVP so users can earn real bitcoin if someone they refer becomes a subscriber to [https://BitBank.nz](https://BitBank.nz)

The referral program helped build links and we should have leveraged adding contextual hints to share and earn because for me the marketing has been a difficult process even harder than building the product and creating machine learning systems...

The ability for people to easily share and a strategy for building links is essential really to spread your product, there is often an initial spike of media attention and press and if your not properly prepared to capitalize on that then your out of luck when the traffic and hype tapers off as it does with the press, one risky thing about releasing an MVP really... although i think releasing an mvp is the way to go.

<comment><AUTHOR> good tips. I wonder if there is Referral Plugin for Stripe..

<comment><AUTHOR> boom. [https://stripe.com/works-with/category/referral- marketing](https://stripe.com/works-with/category/referral-marketing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you can do it by hand, launch it. Automate it once you have proven the commercial need, or when the manual pain point becomes too much.

Do the marketing first. Build it and they will come is bullshit.

That should let you ship early, fail early and not waste a bunch of time. If that doesn't happen, you know you're on to something and it's a fantastic problem to have!</comment>


Museum of Forgery and Deception – Salerno, Italy - <AUTHOR> http://www.falseum.it/ <comment><AUTHOR> Professor Salvatore Casillo... is the mastermind behind the Museo del Falso, an institution studying and exhibiting fakes and counterfeit objects that are part of daily life. The museum was opened [in 1991] with funds from the city, the University of Salerno and a local savings bank, and since then has featured exhibitions on counterfeit silver, detergents and, most recently, food.

A professor of industrial sociology who focused on entrepreneurship, Casillo came across hundreds of examples of entrepreneurs who went into illegal business, sometimes with brilliant ideas "that made you wonder what they could accomplish in legitimate business," he said.

Together with colleagues who are psychologists, anthropologists and legal experts — all of whom had come across the trend in their own research — he founded a study center and the museum, which was formerly a depot for the city sanitation department.</comment>


San Francisco's Ambitious Plan to Tackle School Segregation Made It Worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/san-francisco-school-segregation.html <comment><USER2> This is like everything that touches SF politics: total dysfunction.

<comment><USER3> Lived in SF for 10 years.

The strong liberal politics are turning me conservative on many issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who's not in the US, can someone enlighten me why there's such a difference in school level in san francisco in the first place? If the schools have a similar budget shouldn't they be pretty much the same?

<comment><USER5> It is an inevitable consequence of the algorithm run by parents who raise academically successful children: each year, move to the school with the highest proportion of other academically successful children. (Not to say this is _responsible_ for success but it's definitely correlated).

Start with a perfectly even distribution of family characteristics between schools. Make a few random swaps. Now some schools have just _slightly_ more academic-success density than others, but this is enough to attract some other successful families.

Run that out for a few cycles, and the differences quickly become extreme and permanent.

Even if SF could attain that even distribution, it's inherently unstable.

<comment><USER6> Why are the schools allowed to select students based on test scores? Rejecting students just means another school will have to pick them up so what is the gain to the overall education system in doing this? If this was removed then the system would be much fairer.

<comment><USER7> > Why are the schools allowed to select students based on test scores? > Rejecting students just means another school will have to pick them up so > what is the gain to the overall education system in doing this? If this was > removed then the system would be much fairer.

Putting children with similar learning abilities in the same class-room is better for everyone. Placing an advanced child with a challenged one can hold both students back.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Soywiki: a wiki built on top of Vim and Git.  - <AUTHOR> http://danielchoi.com/software/soywiki.html

<comment><USER2> That's really overkill for a vim-powered wiki. All you need to do is to add: map gf :tabnew to your .vimrc.

see also: <http://idoh.com/post/2365733587/personal-wiki-using-vim>

</comment><comment><USER3> There is also GitHub's gollum [1] . It's also uses git as storage. Gollum supports a lot of formats for page content and some of these formats have a good support in Vim.

[1] <https://github.com/github/gollum>

</comment><comment><USER4> I too support the idea that "CamelCase WikiLinks rule", Ward is my hero. However I "slightly" extended the definition of what a wiki word is to accomodate: #categories, firstname.lastname@example.com and @jhr twitter names.

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems that the vim guys are getting jealous of Emacs org-mode :)

<comment><USER6> This seems to be a straightforward wiki, however, wiki-orgmode and VimOrganizer strive for something closer to org-mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool project. Wiki for Vim (running in the console), written in Ruby. Will keep an eye on it.

</comment><comment><USER8> (Sorry to potentially hijack)

Incidentally, I just built a web-based wiki because I wanted one that was fast, wasn't hinged on git(hub), and could be modified easily to my tastes.

I'd like to know if there's any interest in a stripped down and fast alternative to MediaWiki as using it for a friend's project recently was killing me.

<comment><USER9> Yes, there is. Would you provide us with a link or some more information?

<comment><USER4> Well, if that one interests you, mine may also :) <http://simpliwiki.com> \-- it's nodejs & open source.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: direnv shell extension - <AUTHOR> http://direnv.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm interested in positive and negative feedback on the project. This is something that I use every day and I suppose it can be useful to other people.

Does it seem useful to you ? Is the project explained well enough or is it confusing ?</comment>


Connecting SLIME to a remote Clojure Repl - <AUTHOR> http://asymmetrical-view.com/2009/08/20/emacs-slime-remote-repl.html

<comment><USER2> I use this approach myself to remotely modify my clojure app bytecode at runtime. So if, for instance, I need to add a new function at runtime to my personal clojure blog app, all I do is connect to my remote REPL, write the function and refresh my browser. Thats extremely powerful I'd say.

Technically what this does in the case of my blog is modify the proxied Java Servlet bytecode at runtime.

<comment><USER3> Do you use source control? I think this stuff is very cool but I have misgivings about my production code not being in a VCS.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I do use a VCS. This is not something I'd recommend performing in prod on mission critical type system for obvious reasons. I quite often use the approach to apply patches, which at runtime modifies the bytecode in my remote running JVM. (So I apply a patch to my blog without needing to restart the proxied servlet, just hit refresh in browser. Something old Java guys like myself are not used to :-))</comment></comment></comment>


Fight your friends in our RTS-action game, Castle Raid - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7g_9YWraMw

<comment><USER2> I got to say it looks very promising. Nice trailer!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Glad you liked it! Make sure to grab a friend and try it out :)</comment></comment>


I made a timelapse of me coding a UI similar to the Overwatch main menu - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJjhQO3x94&list=LLhPhURUFUy34m8jh9nTWCrg&index=2&t=0s <comment><AUTHOR> Let me know what you think of this style of video! I've been thinking of doing a video series like this where I recreate the UI's of a bunch of popular things. Like Google search or the smash bros character selection screen.

<comment><USER2> Very cool! I'd like to see more like this. I liked it and subscribed to your YouTube channel

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I really appreciate it!! I'll definitely make another video like this soon.</comment></comment></comment>


Making Sense of AngelList #1: Investors - <AUTHOR> http://soleun.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/making-sense-of-angellist-1-investors/

<comment><USER2> Two things to note:

1\. Co-investment is a poor way of measuring a connection between two investors. Just because you have invested in the same company as another investor does not indicate you have ever spoken to the other investor. In fact, the greater # of "connections" you have (companies you invest in), the less likely it is that you actually play an active role in the company. This is especially true for investors/funds that invest in hundreds of companies.

2\. Since the data comes from AngelList, the data is particularly skewed towards 1) angel investors, and 2) people on AngelList. It under-estimates the influence of people who have networks beyond just angel investing (Andreessen), and completely leaves out others (Ron Conway).

<comment><USER3> David Lee, for all intents, is Ronco on this, I'd wager.

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/ron-conway-makes-it- clear-t...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/ron-conway-makes-it-clear-that- sv-angel-is-david-lees-fund-and-it-might-be-raising-another-400m/)

<comment><USER2> Sure. I'm well aware of the SV Angel/David Lee/Ron Conway dynamic. But I guess that also proves my point that the graph is misleading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow I love that investor connection graph, especially the colored/labeled one. Any way you could release a super-high res version that would let me zoom in and actually read all of the names?

<comment><USER5> I will create one and share.

<comment><USER6> And for this one too: <http://soleun.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/brad_holden.png>

<comment><USER5> This is a seadragon export [https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5085657/1_investors/angellist_1_inv...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5085657/1_investors/angellist_1_investor.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't quite get it, what can be seen in those graphs?</comment>


Ask HN: How to stay focused during micro-breaks? - <AUTHOR> I work with code and data and I'm having hard times staying focused due to tens or hundreds of micro-breaks that chop my day. When I publish a new code, or run a query, I need to wait - sometimes a couple of seconds, sometimes a couple of minutes. My mind instantly drifts away and I lose my flow. I quickly check HN or email and the break gets even longer.<p>How do you deal with this? <comment> g-b-r It's probably much better to detach for a while (at most drinking, thinking, taking a walk/bathroom) rather than checking things (and to instead check mail etc. at pre-determined times).

Either moving for a while or resting (depending on how you feel), even taking a quick ("alarmed") nap if you're lucky enough to be allowed to do it, is actually a very good idea, in all likelihood; you might think that that would mean losing your focus but you'll get back to it much quicker (often instantaneously), and probably even a little refreshed, if you don't start another activity.

It's only tangentially related, but if you're worried about focus you should probably give a try to the Pomodoro technique, if you never heard of it before.

And if you can postpone some "intermitting" activity, and maybe group a batch of them half-an-hour from now and now instead carry on your coding or whatever you're focused on for a little longer, it's probably beneficial

</comment><comment><USER2> Have a second task which you always switch to. Set up your web browser to block hn.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are not many tasks you can complete during such a short break, especially if you don't know if the break will last 20 seconds or 2 minutes.

<comment><USER2> Have a physical book that you read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pomodoro technique.</comment>


China officially scraps term limits on presidency - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-approves-plan-to-abolish-presidential-term-limits-clearing-way-for-xi-to-stay-on/2018/03/11/973c7ab2-24f0-11e8-a589-763893265565_story.html <comment><USER2> This is marked as a dupe, but I can't find any other stories on this topic that are more active / higher-voted. Can someone provide a link if they have it?

<comment><USER3> The best way to answer such a question is HN Search, which is linked at the bottom of every HN page:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=term%20limit&dateRange=all&typ...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=term%20limit&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&sort=byPopularity)

In this case there are a lot of them:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16457998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16457998)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16465426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16465426)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16530555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16530555)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16563352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16563352)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Sorry if I misunderstood the guidelines, but these are not the same stories. The proposal to scrap the term limits was announced two weeks ago, which is what those stories talk about. This new story is about the proposal having been approved by the parliament (a couple hours ago). Though I suppose there was little chance of it not passing, I did think it's a historic vote, so I thought I'd post this as well.

<comment><USER3> They're not technically the same story, but the new information isn't enough to alter the topic (abolishing term limits of presidency in China), so the discussion is guaranteed to be the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How did China manage to maintain a rotating system of supreme leaders for as long as it did? It's a fairly rare achievement.

<comment><USER5> China doesn't have a "Supreme leader". To conflate North Korea and China in such a way is terribly ignorant. Just say "head of state" if you're in doubt on such matters.

And the issue of title leads to something of an answer: China is (used to be) run more by committee than a single leader with cult-of-personality authority. This is reflected in the official title: General Secretary of the Communist Party (who is also the President, but that role used to be mostly ceremonial). That, plus a healthy dose of racism, is why you'll find it hard to name any two former Chinese politicians by name (cue "Who?" Joke).

That system probably remained stable in much the same way western democracies remain stable: there were certain rules that, by custom, convenience, or well- engineered competition between centers of power happened to remain mostly respected. Even among undemokratic governments, there are huge differences in how they actually work. China (and also the Sowjet Union after Stalin) have/had something not entirely unlike a resemblance of rule-of-law with regards to the political process within each country's communist parties.

<comment><USER6> I think the question is, how did it end up like that in the first place?

And as far as I can tell, the answer is that the party leadership was sufficiently spooked by the craziness of Mao and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution that they decided to spread out power rather than vesting it entirely in a single person.

<comment><USER5> The answer might actually be "communism". Central to that ideology was a democratic element, where certain groups (workers of one factory, say) would elect delegations to similar groups one level up, in a sort of pyramid. This would repeat all the way to the general committee of the party. "General Secretary" is a title that pretty clearly denotes a certain lack of power: compare the UN, where the top post is named the same, very deliberately indicating their rather beaurocratic leadership function, clearly subordinate to the Presidents and Prime Ministers selecting them.

Now, obviously no communist country ever came close to actual communism. But still: if you spend an inordinate amount of the state's resources on indoctrination, you will at some point raise a new generation of leaders that cannot completely shake these stories they were told (and forced to repeat) during their rise through the ranks. In such a way, lip service becomes service. These leaders have also risen through the ranks of hundreds such committees with their endless late-night cigar-smoking and scheming. Anyone too daring, or too easily bored, will drop out of the competition long before they get to the actual levers of power. That's why you get uninspiring beaurocrats, and the colorful cool dictators like Qaddafi or Saddam Hussein only ever get to power in their respective "lesser banana republics"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There were several discussions earlier this week about it. That would be my guess.

</comment><comment><USER8> Strap yourselves in for 200+ replies. The chinese sock puppet forum sliding is about to begin!

<comment><USER3> This comment violates the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Lots of previous explanation at [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=by...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0) if anyone wants it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the norm for China, and it has worked (for its large part of world domination history), so nothing to hold your breath for. In that aspect, Deng Xiaoping was rather an anomaly (although his large part is still the norm). China produces anomalies every now and then. For anomalies to become the norm is atypical.

<comment><USER10> If it's the norm, why would China ever put terms limits in in the first place?

<comment><USER9> Deng did it, not China. In fact, China do not care about constitution that much. The leaders do care, as always.

<comment><USER11> Term limits came in during the 80s when china when power was much more distributed among the eight elders.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Software visibility is the key to innovation - <AUTHOR> https://www.sumologic.com/blog/software-visibility/ <comment><USER2> I like the explanation about the importance of troubleshooting in today's world.</comment>


20 years from now non-graph databases will be niche and legacy applications - <AUTHOR> https://terminusdb.com/blog/2020/03/02/why-graph-will-win/ <comment><USER2> Postgresql has a graph like plugin, I plan to try that out before any custom / nacent graphdb. Postgres is solid all around and I expect it to still be the primary go-to for a long time for first DB to use. SQL is here to stay for sure, as one of the most popular languages, with extensive usage outside of the dev community.

The main problem I have with this article is that I takes a POV around schema modelling, claims other DBs aren't good at this so graph will win(?), and yet overlooks the very specific, tuned, and appropriate use cases of these alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, as I say, we tried postgres as a DB running a graph layer and found it impossibly slow for network oriented queries (shortest path etc.).

The article is certainly taking a strong position, but I think it can boil down to the new base line for workhorse transactional DBs will be graph and other databases, while being valuable in special cases, will be niche.

<comment><USER2> My understanding is the FB took MariaDB, hacked on it, and that's how they do their graph like queries. In most end user applications, it's unlikely for there to be many hops.

With Postgres, did you use the Graph extension (plugin?) or use the näive method of 1±N queries / joins?

Claiming Graph DBs will replace everything else because of domain modelling and scheme definitions, I don't see this logical jump.

If you are interested in my take and view on where domain modelling / schema def is going, take a look at our [https://github.com/hofstadter- io/hof](https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof) and [https://cuelang.org](https://cuelang.org)

In short, there will be a single source of truth to designs and they will be written outside of all tech that needs to make use of them. Largely because the design from business is a larger set and each piece of the stack needs a slightly different subset.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is interesting, thanks. As you can probably imagine, I fall in the build business logic into data with constraints at the schema layer.

Yes, I understand that FB have a bunch of MySQL instances with a hacked graph layer - same in other places. Makes the case for native solutions and I think that is why Dgraph exist.

Graph will become the base, because it does everything an RDBMS can do and some more.

<comment><USER3> When you state "Graph will become the base, because it does everything an RDBMS can do and some more.", you show that you fail to understand what an RDBMS is and that there is NO commercially available RDBMS around. There are significant differences between SQL DBMS's and RDBMS.

The other thing you have also forgotten, is that you can rewrite your statement as "RDBMS will become the base, because it does everything a Graph can do and some more." The last part of this "and some more" makes both statements equally false. Or if you view it in another way, equally true.

These things are tools that we have available to us so that we can solve the various problems laid before us.

<comment><USER2> I thought lunch was free :[

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There was a Dgraph blog about why you should build your next app on a graph database on HN yesterday ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23783923#23784866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23783923#23784866)). I think it made a number of very valid points, but it was imho harshly criticized by SQL fundamentalists.

At TerminusDB, we share their perspective about the future of graph and wrote this slightly hyperbolic blog about the future of databases and 'why graph will win'. It won't be to everybody's taste, and we might be accused of fanning the flames; however, we genuinely think that graph DBs are a better way to store and query data. We tried to implement our solution as a layer on postgres and the performance for the types of queries we wanted to run was poor. If RDBMS were sufficient, there would be no TerminusDB, just a data quality layer on a postgres.

The strongest point in the Dgraph article is 'Graph databases let you model in a more natural way than relational databases.' As one HN comment said 'I get tired of building code to work around my database and it's oddities rather than my data just fitting nicely into the code.' We couldn't agree more.

It is a polemic contribution to a debate - a debate we should be having. Graph has come of age and fresh eyes are needed.

<comment><USER3> As happens, each generation thinks that what they have developed will supersede what has happened in the past. This involves a failure to understand the lessons of the past. As far as database technologies are concerned, no one technological model will fill every area to the exclusion of all the others. Graph based databases are not an exception here. They are a rehash of network databases from the past. They have their uses, but it is not universal by any means.

What too many people have failed to understand is that SQL databases are not relational databases (though you can build a relational database on a SQL DBMS). There are certain problem domains for which different underlying DBMS's are a far better fit. It depends very much on what you are trying to achieve.

No one technology will "win" as there are always problems that are better solved using a different tool. There is an old saying that is oft forgotten and that is: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

We are supposed to have a large number of tools in our toolbox to solve the various problems that come before us. Let's be Master Craftsmen and use the whole range of tools available to us. This is applicable in the choice of database technology as it is in the choice of language or the choice of programming style or any other tool choice we may use.</comment></comment>


UK smartphone money transfer service - Barclays Pingit - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/feb/16/barclays-pingit-money-sending-smartphone <comment><USER2> This appears to be free for consumers at least. Some businesses may be charged. Amounts are for £1-£300 and there is a maximum of £5000 a day. You do not actually need a uk mobile to receive just a uk bank account, so people abroad could take payments relatively easily.

<comment><AUTHOR> Small clarification on limits - you can send a maximum of £300 a day, and receive a maximum of £5000 a day

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Are there any uk banks that have a decent API so you could see these transfers and associate it with a client automatically?</comment>


Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html?mod=googlenews_wsj <comment><USER2> Dupe - HN discussion here - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=403287></comment>


First product to implement Google's SPDY protocol for faster http traffic - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20071043-264/spdy-takes-a-step-beyond-googles-walls/

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently the SDPY spec is not finalized yet, so if anyone has an expertise to contribute, see here:

[http://groups.google.com/group/spdy- dev/browse_thread/thread...](http://groups.google.com/group/spdy- dev/browse_thread/thread/8bb49d57c9eb53bd)

<http://mbelshe.github.com/SPDY-Specification/></comment>


FREE Medical Marijuana Icon Kit – Includes 50 Vector Icons - <AUTHOR> http://www.fyresite.com/freebies/medical-marijuana-icon-kit/

<comment><USER2> Weed icons! These are pretty sexy</comment>