Show HN: Linux sysadmin skills for anyone - a new online course - <AUTHOR> Kicked my course off today - grep101.com - with lessons starting Monday. I think I've got the pricing right to attract a good class of keen learners for this first run through... <comment><USER2> I'm considering signing a couple of my employees up, but I'm reading the description:

 _you'll be expected to learn and use grep, ssh, apt-get, tail and man_

I also see that restarting services is in there.. however I don't see anything that tells me any details about what the course actually covers.

You also don't mention what flavor of Linux you're using for teaching.

Also, launching this, and then starting the lessons only 1-2 business days later? You either don't want a lot of people to sign up... or I can't think of another reason to do that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. Using this first course to iron out the bugs in the process. Please go to the site now - its switched to taking registrations of interest, and "I'm considering signing a couple of my employees up..." tells me you're exactly the the sort of person that we need to continue the conversation with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really like the concept, but...

\- big no-no - which flavor you will be using? RHEL? Ubuntu? FreeBSD? Let's say I sign-up and it turns around that there will be RHEL tooling. Well - money wasted if I standardize on Ubuntu.

>> use grep, ssh, apt-get, tail and man to administer, monitor and extend your server.

\- lack of proper course description - the above is not enough. How about setting properly iptables and kernel config (to ensure network security)? how about properly hardening web server? Install from ports won't cut it. How about proper partinioning to ensure no executable bits? etc etc etc

\- who are you and how I can be sure that what you teach is best practices and not some oldish shmaboodle fairy tales?

Would the above be addressed positively - I would pay more... and more... and more...

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://grep101.com> for lazy (or mobile) people

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like the idea. I think receiving a curated list of links[1] to web resources (docs, tutorials and howtos) would be sufficient to learn common sysadmin tasks.

The initial learning curve might be hard for some people though. What is bash? What are commands? How do you cd,mv,cp etc. What is /? What is /etc? etc...

Be sure to let us know how it goes.

____________

[1]: My collection of links for common UNIX commands: [http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/anatomy/doku.php?do=index&idx...](http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/anatomy/doku.php?do=index&idx=commands)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm currently between two jobs and have a lot of free time. While not really in need for that sort of courses, I might consider giving it a try but I'm unable to find any information on the stuff taught.

What are the highlights?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. It's dark where I am, so sleep is called for, but when I wake I'll add in some extra detail to the launch page.

To give you an idea, here's some headers for the days:

1 Accessing your New Server 2 Basic navigation, cd, pwd etc 4 Installing software, exploring the file structure 5 more, less, nano, tab completion, history and "dot files" 9 cron, contab, /etc/cron.daily anacran and "at" 19 Automation - using logrotate

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The site has now switched to taking registrations of interest for our upcoming courses in the new year - please sign up to that if you're interested at all in this approach.

Like a lot of startups have found, it's hard to know exactly what you've got until it's already underway - and your input will drive the direction this goes.

To answer a couple of points that have come up: (a) Participants on this first course will be using Ubuntu Server LTS, but the course material is based around them having _two_ servers one Debian-flavoured, one RHEL-flavoured. At this level its more about getting them familiar with Linux as a whole, assuming that they may need to support multiple versions. (b) In my day job I act as sysadmin for 20-odd production systems, ranging from PC104 systems running Slackware, to RHEL 6 systems, (c) I've run many technical training courses in the past.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is very good for people to learn how to use specific tools like grep, ssh, tail and the command line interface in general. That said, together with a course like this, one should, really, _really_ find a real world website/group to support.

I have yet to find a shortage of friends, family and hobby groups around me who want someone who can take care of their website/hosting/and so on. Its like learning to cook; there are always someone who want free food. By taking responsibility for a website, one is very much more invested to "get it to work", and learn around 85% of what syadmin really is about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. At least in this case participants do have a working remote server of their own for their duration - a big step up from either a server "just in class" or a Gnome box on their desk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great idea, and interesting model for a course. This is really an ability that many good developers lack. The downside on your marketing approach for me is having to pay $20 for something without having any idea about how the classes are. A cool model is letting the first user try one class first, before signing up :)

Besides that, as I said, its a very cool idea, and I wish you good luck with your project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I see that, but these daily "bites' really are just that. For example, the first simply gets you pointed toward PuTTY, provides some reading on SSH, and asks to to logon and use passwd to change your password.

And yes, there will be monitoring and chasing up of anyone who isn't doing their tasks :-)

(the original concept was to report on you to your SO!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do you plan to include more fun stuff (postfix, bind, etc...) in the future? That's something I'd definitely pay $20 for..

</comment><comment><USER10> As a web person looking to get "closer to the metal", this is the kind of course I'm looking for.

I also like the idea of daily bite-sized tasks assigned via email and the private mailing list for users sounds nice.

In addition to these, will there be any other feedback mechanisms in the course?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, each day's task will have you leave evidence that you've completed it (a directory created, application installed, etc) so that "we" can judge progress.

The "daily tasks have some general tips and a series of link to online resources that should make them easy to complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I signed up to 'keep myself honest' on my commitment to migrate my websites from my Bluehost account to my 3 month old Linode. I'm somewhat comfortable with CLI, but need to fill in some holes and get the practice.

</comment><comment><USER12> That font needs to be bigger and red is too low contrast on white background - at least after sitting in front of a monitor for 12 hours.

<comment><AUTHOR> Opps, now that you mention it, that's a bizzare colour choice - I'm one of the "7 to 10%" (according to Wikipedia), so didn't even notice! Now fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd be interested in this if it were proven, but you should do a month free so people see what they're getting before they pay.

<comment><USER14> Agreed, 20 up front without a decent course layout is a bit of a gamble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I took a leap of faith and signed up without seeing anything beforehand. I hope it'll be worth it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool idea, good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, if you check out <http://grep101.blogspot.com/> you'll see that its very much pared down from some of the wild ideas I had!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> nice idea! curious, where and how are you providing the server access with root access?

</comment><comment><USER18> Sysadmin skills isn't about using tools, it is about understanding how they work and why it is so.

Sysadmin's understanding isn't about memorizing apt-get or yum install, is mostly about _./configure --help_ ,)

After you will be able to build from the sources full LAMP stack, understand dependencies and cross-references, realizing the amount of crap^Wcode apache+php uses - this will be something to start with (integrating Informix or Oracle support is a bonus,)

The next step is to understand and internalize what is the difference between mod_php and fastcgi configurations - why they are different, how to enable caching, how it works, what are persistent connections to DB, etc.

The next level - be able to visualize in your mind the flows of data, and follow requests through all the layers - OS, http-server, fast-cgi transport, scripting engine, database-connection, table storage (realization that MyISAM engine or MongoDB are using table-level locking is a sign that you're on the right way).

Then, you must be able to separate the flows, partition the data, at least understand that /var/log and /var/db/mysql on the same disk slice is a sign of stupidity.

Then comes access patterns - how often the data are accessed, when changes occur, how often they are synced, etc (here comes caching and replications, then sharding).

This ability, to understand, trace and see patterns makes one sysadmin.

After that you might say that you kind of sysadmin.) Learning ssh is nothing. Googling is enough.

<comment><USER19> Thank you for your valuable input! /s

For a Windows server admin like myself, this course sounds ideal, the things you mention are important no doubt but how important are they for a person just starting out?

<comment><USER20> I agree with this statement, you have to start somewhere and many a Windows admin don't use command-line now. So essentially a beginner's course in command-line tools, i.e. beginning system administration, not only is good for Linux but can strengthen a Windows admin by helping them not be afraid of cmd.exe.

<comment><USER21> The course description sounds essentially the same as just following HOWTOs (which is how I taught myself the basic tools involved in sysadmin-ing many years ago). Just follow these old tutorials and save $20.

<http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/categories.html>

<comment><USER11> There are certainly tons of free resources out there, but I'm busy enough that $1/day for 20 days of emails with directed tutorials is more than worth it. Those howto's look like a great resource for more detailed (and varied) info, but I just need someone to guide me (and gently prod me) through the basics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What an excellent idea. I wish this was around when I was learning on Red Hat 5.1.

I may still check this out though. I still have lots to learn.</comment>


Britain has millions of coronavirus antibody tests, but they don't work - <AUTHOR> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/britain-has-millions-of-coronavirus-antibody-tests-but-they-don-t-work-j7kb55g89 <comment><USER2> De-paywalled: [https://archive.is/53b25](https://archive.is/53b25)</comment>


Ask HN: Material Design web app in the wild? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone come across any web apps (not mobile) that use Material Design principles (ie. non-Google)? Not looking for templates, have seen many of those but they are too generic to take inspiration from. Looking more for a proper use of the design principles than the UI elements, but anything that is well executed would be nice to know about! <comment><USER2> [https://wav.hya.io](https://wav.hya.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for this.</comment></comment>


Fabrication Trick Offers Fivefold Leap in Hard-Disk Capacity - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507481/fabrication-trick-offers-fivefold-leap-in-hard-disk-capacity/ <comment><USER2> What about read-write times?

At some stage, storage density is not per-se the only issue. Speed, energy efficiency, error rates etc. are now to the fore in alot of places.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't read-write on a hard drive generally scale with linear density? Twice as fast to read, half as fast to read the entire disk.

<comment><USER2> All things being equal. But that's the question -- is there something we are missing?

I was surprised this would not be mentioned as a feature, for example, if it were true. But there is only this remark at the end:

 _"One challenge is to achieve long-range order using copolymers without defects over large areas," he says. With millions of data-storing dots on a disk's platter, error rates must be very low to avoid significant numbers of them being positioned incorrectly._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can this also be applied to CPU assembly?

<comment><USER5> I doubt it. The article makes this sound pretty specific to producing the magnetic disks used in hard drives. I don't see any reason why this would also work for silicon processes.</comment></comment>


Standard Cognition (YCS17) Attempt at Shoplifting in a Store Without Cashiers - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608765/i-tried-shoplifting-in-a-store-without-cashiers-and-heres-what-happened/?utm_campaign=add_this&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post <comment><USER2> I want less data collecting in my life, not more. Things like this make me fear a feature where every move we make and thing we speak are analyzed and scrutinized to better manipulate us via advertising. 1984 was meant to be a warning, not a guide book.

<comment><USER3> Co-founder of Standard here. I agree. Our goal is to use this technology to streamline our lives, not to invade privacy. We don't do any biometrics or facial recognition, and we don't send video to the cloud for central storage. We have a fully on-prem solution. The only need for Internet is to push out updates to the local system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What about bagging your goods? Does this actually speed much up checkout given that you still have to serially process the stuff in your cart at the exit?

<comment><USER5> You can walk out with the bag you came in with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> correct 98% of the time will not be good for some stores as grocery tends to have a very low profit margin.

<comment><USER5> Co-founder of Standard Cognition here. Help us increase the accuracy, we're hiring :-)

[https://angel.co/standard-cognition/jobs](https://angel.co/standard- cognition/jobs)</comment></comment>


Spammers started to hit GitHub? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/quartzjer/TeleHash/issues/5 <comment><USER2> The amount of time and energy and cpu cycles wasted on spammers is truly a crime against humanity.

I still do not understand how it makes them money, I think it's just an endless chain of people falsely thinking others are successful with it so they try to do it too and the cycle continues.

<comment><USER3> >I still do not understand how it makes them money

When I saw this post the page had 404d. However, the page was still active in the Google cache[1]

It is not just Github being targeted, a lot of other large websites with user generated content are also being spammed with this content[2][3]

The spammers are linking the content to blogspot blogs so that they can: 1\. hide the referrer from their affiliate program (to prevent getting banned for spamming) 2\. to utilize the temp increase in search engine rankings 3\. save money on domains for one-off usage

Since the "live stream" is just a one-off game that will only be popular/trending for 1-3 days in which period the spammers will use a lot of macro scripts/bots to spam these websites. Believe it or not, even a "nofollow" link can give you an advantage in search rankings. They spam them to death in the "popular period" and then bank money from the affiliate program[4]

[1][http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fquartzjer%2FTeleHash%2Fissues%2F5) [2][http://shine.yahoo.com/author-blog-posts/watch-38-enjoy- flor...](http://shine.yahoo.com/author-blog-posts/watch-38-enjoy-florida-st- vs-maryland-live-081500525.html) [3][http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.f...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.funnyordie.com%2Flists%2F58f182726b%2Fwatch- ncaa-florida-state-vs-maryland-live-stream-college-football-week-12-online- satellite-tv%3Frel%3Dby_user) [4][http://www.officialtvstream.com.es/passport/signup.php?price...](http://www.officialtvstream.com.es/passport/signup.php?price_group=-478&product_id=80&hide_paysys=ccbill)

<comment><USER4> _They spam them to death in the "popular period" and then bank money from the affiliate program_

If you had to speculate: How much money?

(I know, it all depends, etc. But I was just hoping to get a rough idea of the order of magnitude here.)

<comment><USER3> Full disclosure: I frequent private "blackhat" forums and although I do not participate in these activities, I blog about them anonymously. Furthermore, I know a few people (online) who do stuff similar to this with CPA content lockers, so I'll try and give you an educated guess. In general the average conversion rate in the TV show/live content is around 0.5-3% depending on the quality of traffic.

Now, as you can see from Google Trends[1] some of these get very popular and trend once pretty much every year. In the second comparison, I've compared the search terms with a term I know is definitely popular to get relative popularity of the terms [2]. Comparing these two terms I can get an idea of the amount of traffic these website would get in the time period. I would estimate that the "big spammers" would easily get around 250k-500k uniques from multiple sources (spamming, mass advertising, social media, botnets etc).

Assuming they get paid $2 every signup, and have a conversion rate of 1.5% with 300k uniques, it would bank them around $9k, of course I'm only talking about the big guys here who have done this for a long time.

In general, I would say that the following is correct:

Upper quartile average: $1-3k per day for a few days

Lower quartile average: $50-60 per day for a few days

Quick edit: It should also be noted that for these live games over 95% of the traffic will be from the USA hence the large profits.

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

[1][http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Iowa%20vs%20Michigan%...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Iowa%20vs%20Michigan%2C%20Seminoles%20vs%20Terrapins%2C%20Rutgers%20vs%20Cincinnati%2C%20Florida%20St%20vs%20Maryland&cmpt=q)

[2][http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Iowa%20vs%20Michigan%...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Iowa%20vs%20Michigan%2C%20Seminoles%20vs%20Terrapins%2C%20Rutgers%20vs%20Cincinnati%2C%20Florida%20St%20vs%20Maryland%2C%20anonymous%20hack&cmpt=q)

</comment><comment><USER5> We're aware of the problem. Just like any service like ours, we see a fair amount of spam repos, issues/comments, and, of course, Gists. We already expend a good bit of energy on handling it as it is, but we're always working on new ways to handle it. :)

<comment><USER6> It'd be nice if gists had a link to report them as spam. Also, links in gists should be nofollow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is nothing new. If you watch the [new gist feed][1], for instance, you'll see plenty of it roll by.

[1]: <https://gist.github.com/gists>

<comment><USER6> What's especially interesting is that gists are allowed by github's robot.txt and none of the links are nofollow. That means every gist spammers create with links are helping their ranking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> All large sites get hammered by automatic/semi-automatic spam, and occasionally some leaks through. Is this surprising?

<comment><USER9> _All_ sites get hammered by automatic spam. If it gets indexed by google, or if anybody links to it, the spam bots will find it eventually.

It is not practical to operate any kind of website that allows users to post things without some form of spam protection. For small sites, email verification or text classification will do the job by itself. Traditional captchas are fairly ineffective, but written questions like "what color rhymes with true?" seem to work pretty well for smaller sites.

Bigger sites dealing with a larger volume of traffic almost always require regular human intervention, curated IP block lists, stealth banning and the like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reported the blogspot link as a spam blog. Not sure about Google's response time on these things.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand spammers that target tech sites - especially the ones that add nofollows, techies know spam and don't click the shit. Waste of time, effort and money for the spamlords to be honest

<comment><USER12> As others have said, nofollows do give you help in search results, although not as much as otherwise. They're looking to rise in search results more than for legitimate clicks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 404 error.

<comment><USER14> Every time I mention this on HN, at least 15 people upvote it - which means they didn't know about it. So I feel obliged to repeat it again and again _(as I usually use this method a few times every week and it's tremendously useful for me)_ :

If you want to get Google's cached version of a webpage, just type

        cache:[url]
        e.g.: cache:https://github.com/quartzjer/TeleHash/issues/5

in the search bar and press return.

<comment><USER15> *in Chrome's search bar.

I know, it's a petty technicality. Safari says it can't open the specified address, and Firefox doesn't understand the URL. I'm even more certain IE will explode if I was to try, but I can't at the moment. From what I remember, IE can't even parse a raw IP address without explicitly putting <http://> in front of it.

<comment><USER14> You're right. But you can do a `cache:<http://...`> in google.com's search bar, which is how I do it. And unless I'm mistaken, Chrome's built-in search bar is called OmniBar, so my wording was (incidentally) correct! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This must have been a problem for some time, considering how popular GitHub is. There is no way around spam when running a popular service where the users can create their own content.

<comment><USER17> What about old-good CAPTCHA? There are many ways, but all are annoying for normal users.

<comment><USER18> Even the best captcha methods can be circumvented by farming them out to poorer countries for only pennies.

<comment><USER19> There's an even cheaper way - host a porn gallery, and require a captcha to access it. Present the captcha you're trying to solve to the horny user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I noticed some spammers a couple of weeks ago, they occasionally create repositories too.

I'm not sure if there is a way to report them, there is nothing no the GH contact form.

<comment><USER21> I'm quite confident a story on top of HN is a good way to reach them :D

<comment><USER22> I suppose it is... it's not like it's some security hole that everyone is going to exploit. I'm sure they're already working on spam filtering and reporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Proper etiquette would be to let the github people know for a few days before you alert the whole world.

Have you notified them before posting this?

<comment><USER24> This isn't a security flaw, it's just mundane crap that every web app goes through. They'll delete this today and tweak their filtering, and tomorrow the spammer will try again (or in twenty minutes, who am I kidding?).

I'm not sure why you say prior notification is proper etiquette in this circumstance. It's equivalent to pointing out a grammar mistake in a blog post. Not particularly interesting, but not malicious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like git needs the equivalent of a downvote: Something like % git nuke <https://github.com/quartzjer>

<comment><USER26> git != github

<comment><USER25> git = communication with github, but more importantly, many of the github clones are going to have the same problem.</comment></comment></comment>


The next big thing in artificial intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140929/TECHNOLOGY/140929888/the-next-big-thing-in-artificial-intelligence

<comment><USER2> If someone can't link me to the actual scientific publications, or at least patent applications, involved in this latest claim to have built a commercialized AGI, I have to call bullshit.</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I learn more about SaaS user subscription business logic - <AUTHOR> I am building a SaaS application, I want to learn more about the business logic options available and things I need to build into the application for a good subscription experience.
For example: * What happens when credit card is declined * What happens when they downgrade the subscription * How long should the data be retained in a suspended account
What are the general things that one should be aware of when building a SaaS application? Where can I learn more? <comment><USER2> Ooof, this is a deep topic and people bleed all over it when running a SaaS company. I used Pin Payments (nee Spreedly Subscriptions) for Appointment Reminder. You will probably end up using Stripe's subscription feature, which has some (but not all) of this logic baked in.

> What happens when credit card is declined

You retry the card on three consecutive days (many declines are due to network or balance issues) then start emailing the customer about it. After a few emails you escalate to phone calls. Except, you don't do this -- you use Churnbuster to do this, because for a pittance they will make you thousands of dollars a month at scale. (Churnbuster assumes you're going to be using Stripe... but you should use Stripe.)

> What happens when they downgrade the subscription

Judgment call here: do you want to do a pro-rated refund or a pro-rated account credit? e.g. If someone changes from a $100 plan to a $25 plan halfway through the month, we observe that they've consumed $50 worth of services and have $50 remaining, which we could either a) send them back on their CC and bill them normally from here out or b) give them an account credit for $50, which will cover their next two months of service, then bill them normally.

The case for the account credit is largely "it optimizes for your cash-flow management as opposed to their cash-flow management." (This can be important in corner cases like e.g. switching from $5.5k for 12 months to $1k per month in month 2. Which, by the way, annual to monthly pro-ration logic is something you're going to probably have to write.)

> How long should the data be retained in a suspended account

Judgment call; I default to "indefinitely unless legally required otherwise or requested otherwise." Many customers will come back to you a year later and _expect_ that you still have their account on file. Customers who are more privacy conscious will tell you; you can delete their account then. (Note that deleting an account is largely a feel-good measure for the customer and accomplishes epsilon from the privacy perspective. There are probably 1+ people reading this who disagree with this assertion, so riddle me this: what happens to our last 2 years of backups when I delete an account? Do I re- hydrate all of them, run the delete SQL, then re-backup and blow away the old version? Nope. Do I toss 2 years of backups because a $29 account churned? Umm, nope. We have your data at least as long as our data recovery window _and it is probably recoverable for longer than that_ , and us deleting an account does not change that.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't worry about any of this. Just workout how to get paying customers and leave problems like this for later. To use an Olympic analogy you are worrying if you should put you head down at the finish line of the 100m final. Yes it might be a good idea, but you need to make the finals first.

</comment><comment><USER4> For building a SaaS company I think several of Patrick 'patio11' McKenzie's podcasts might be worth listening to. The RSS feed is here: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed/)

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER5> >> Don't worry about any of this. Just workout how to get paying customers and leave problems like this for later.

This is good advice.

When you're sure it's time to dig into this topic, Stripe's implementation docs are a great resource (even if you don't use Stripe).</comment>


Google+ stream on Facebook feed - <AUTHOR>

I was thinking of ways to display G+ stream on your facebook wall for fun. One way is to auto-forward all emails from gmail to your facebook email. However, facebook APIs don't seem to support IMAP/POP. Any other ways of reading facebook emails (with authentication) within a facebook app? <comment><USER2> here [http://www.triple9.co.vu/2011/07/how-to-post-from-google- to-...](http://www.triple9.co.vu/2011/07/how-to-post-from-google-to- facebook.html)</comment>


The Forever War in 3D by Ridley Scott  - <AUTHOR> http://www.slashfilm.com/ridley-scotts-forever-war-to-be-in-avatar-inspired-3d/

<comment><USER2> If this is true, it will be awesome (minus the 3d part).

"The Forever War" is a must-read for any diehard sci-fan. Relativistic space travel is not approached by many writers due to the inherent limitations (faster-than-light is a cop-out IMO, most of the time).</comment>


RIP Steve Jobs. RIP Apple. - <AUTHOR> http://postdesk.com/blog/rip-steve-jobs-rip-apple

<comment><USER2> I shouldn't think we'll see changes in the next couple of years really other than in the the manner of PR/presentation (as we already have with Tim Cooks frankly lackluster performance) - Steve will have had oversight of everything coming out in the next 2 years or so but obviously not the final polish - again it's a debating point

Also there's the fact that has he left some of his 'DNA' with Apple - has he set the company up in a good position to succeed after he is gone, or is this simply not something Steves can truly do? Was Apple too personal to Steve? Is it even possible to define what made Steve Jobs the person he is and in turn what really made Apple a success?

<comment><USER3> Tim Cook must have known that Steve's death was imminent, it would've been hard to present a keynote which Steve would normally do in a situation like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reads like misinformed linkbait. Just the right amount of empathy to get you to the naysaying, and then ignorance of what Tim Cook did for the company in the last 14 years.

<comment><USER3> I agree, it's written as if the iPhone 4S was developed since Steve left, when in reality he would have been a major cog in the device. Tim Cook has done so much, he was CEO of Apple while steve was away before and the company was fine. Releasing some of their best products with some of the best sales. He changed the supply chain which is one reason the iPad has been so successful as they can build a high quality product at a price the competition can't beat.

Jonny Ive especially shows how important each member of the team was at Apple, steve jobs helped put in place this vision with Tim Cook will instill for years to come.

I find it slightly disrespectful to him that they would post this hours after his death was announced.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lets face it Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs when it comes to presenting. How do you explain Apple's dip between 1986 to 1996 which coincided with Steve absence?

<comment><USER3> That's a bad example, they had a bad leader and didn't believe in Steve so completely changed Apple's model, structure and vision. This time it's totally different, Tim Cook has been at the forefront in the last few years, without him the iPad especially (Looks like it could be their most popular product ever, eventually) was all thanks to his deals.

Steve put an amazing team around him like Jonny Ive, it's a very different situation not to then. The company was already on the rocks then, today it's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...a clear sign that Apple was Steve and Steve was Apple"???

</comment><comment><USER6> great article to Jobs</comment>


Ask HN: Getting a 4 day workweek? - <AUTHOR> I've been on a job search with the goal of negotiating for a 4 day work week. I went through a platform and ended up getting 4 offers, but none of them went for my counteroffer of 4 days a week with less salary.
What does it take to find a company willing to do this? I'm a very competent engineer (got promoted to team lead at my current gig), and to me it seems like an opportunity for companies to get a good engineer on the cheap. Obviously they don't see it that way.
Where should I look for companies that might be willing to do 4 days?
PS. If any commenters are hiring, leave your email and I'll send you my resume. <comment><USER2> This is interesting to me because I see a lot of need for better work/life balance and people trying many different ways to achieve that. But I think personally the reason you'd have a hard time finding a company willing to take that compromise (lower salary, fewer days per week) is because it's _just you_ which makes you kind of stand out a bit compared to everyone else there. It also opens a can of worms for the employer who will have to make case-by-case decisions about every other person in the company who sees you getting 4 days and 4/5 the pay, and suddenly all run to ask HR for a similar deal. It's just going to be a big logistics headache for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> My career was mostly a 4 day 32 hour a week job with the US government. For them it was a way to spread limited resources across many different efforts. You might look for a 32 hour apportionment with the feds. Perhaps there is some way to take advantage of limited resources in a private enterprise. I don't know how you'd go about it though.</comment>


Why You Should Switch to the Dvorak Keyboard Layout - <AUTHOR> http://workawesome.com/productivity/dvorak-keyboard-layout <comment> j-g-faustus Why you shouldn't switch:

        This reminds me of when I tried to switch to a Dvorak
        keyboard. The trouble was, I don't use one computer. I
        use all kinds of computers. I use other people's
        computers. I use three computers fairly regularly at
        home and three at work. I use computers in the test lab
        at work. The trouble with customizing your environment
        is that it just doesn't propagate, so it's not even
        worth the trouble.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000059....](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000059.html)

Which is my experience too. Dvorak would need to be at least 2-3 times faster than Qwerty to outweigh the disadvantages, a "possibly 10% faster" doesn't cut it.

<comment><USER2> I hear this so often as an anti-Dvorak argument, and I cannot understand it. It seems like a complete non-objection to me.

If I need to use an unfamiliar computer, I can revert to hunt-and-peck Qwerty.

If I use that computer so often that hunt-and-peck significantly slows me down, I can afford to spend two minutes to switch the keymap to Dvorak.

[FWIW: I use Dvorak to prevent repetitive strain injury. "Time saving" is hardly an issue.]

<comment><USER3>
      I use Dvorak to prevent repetitive strain injury.

Do you have any evidence that it helps? ("I don't have RSI" does not count. I don't have it either, and I don't use dvorak).

<comment><USER2> I don't know any links to hard data, but from what I recall there are a few studies. If it's useful to you, then my personal experience is as follows:

      * I used to have RSI badly.
      * I read stuff on the internet about RSI.
      * One of the suggestions was to use Dvorak.
      * I started using Dvorak.
      * I took some other mitigating actions like getting a
        different chair, tilting my keyboard back
        and taking more
        typing breaks.
      * I noted that touch typing Dvorak was much more
        comfortable than touch tying Qwerty.
      * I haven't had RSI for ten years.

The cause and effect is not directly obvious, but I'm certain that Dvorak helped me to some extent. The downside is: three weeks of frustration whilst trying to learn it, and occasionally having to switch keymap on an unfamiliar computer.

<comment><USER4> I actually had a similar reason for switching to das, a layout optimized for the finnish language. I was starting to get wrist pain while typing, started to take notice of my posture and switched to typing with das.

Typing feels more natural and I can notice a huge difference to typing with qwerty (which I can still almost touch type).

Again, I can't really say anything definite about the cause and effect but I can recommend giving a better keyboard layout a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I switched to Dvorak about ten years ago. My experiences don't line up with a lot of the speculation I see in this thread.

* Most speed gains come from hunt-and-peck QWERTY typists learning true touch typing for the first time. If your first formal typing classes were in, say, high school, you never really un-learned your wretched habits. (On typists who were trained correctly from day one, QWERTY has always been just as fast as alternative layouts, hence its market success.)

* I find Dvorak really is vastly more comfortable. I have RSI problems. The working day is a constant battle against pain and fatigue. I can type longer without fatigue using Dvorak than QWERTY.

* The "switching" problem is real. It only took me about three days to learn Dvorak well enough to regain my original QWERTY typing speed. It took almost two years to be able to switch between Dvorak and QWERTY at will, without resorting to hunt and peck. These days, I can could easily switch mid-sentence.

* The keyboard shortcuts problem is pretty much bullshit. I found that my muscle memory moved with the letters. One-handed ctrl X/C/V only mattered when I was typing with the wrong hand. (e.g. typing on the left side of the keyboard with my right hand.) I can even use keyboard shortcuts correctly when switching between QWERTY/Dvorak.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why I'm not switching ...

1\. It is not a standard ... I work on lots of workstations, including machines I do not own. Context switching between Dvorak and Qwerty is hard for me

2\. It is optimized for English ... I also do lots of typing in my native language too, and there is a Dvorak layout optimized for my native language, but it has differences ... and context-switching is even harder because of the similarities.

In contrast, the Qwerty layout for my native language just replaces 5 symbol keys near Enter/Backspace with the needed diacritics. All other keys stay the same ... i.e. it's just an extension of the US layout.

3\. Qwerty gives me plenty of confort. I'm only doing something like 80 WPM ... I don't need more than that and it's a confortable speed for my hands (if I'm going to get RSI from that, then Dvorak wouldn't be much of an improvement)

<comment><USER2> I completely agree with points 2. and 3., but 1. is a myth. It's an absolute non-problem and it pains me to see it repeated again and again.

Any (remotely modern) workstation supports Dvorak. If you type for any substatial length of time, switching from Qwerty and back again when you're done will not be a time sink.

NB: This is not a reason _to_ use Dvorak. It's just a counter to your argument that 1. is a reason _not_ to use Dvorak!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> once I was in a conversation with two friends of mine, one of them had recently switched to dvorak and was explaining us how he was using some software to improve his typing speed.

The other replied "you are a programmer, you're supposed to spend 90% of the time thinking about what you do, why do you try to slightly improve the 10% spent writing it"?

Do dvorak users out there find themselves much more productive at the end of the day because of their typing speed?

<comment><USER8> I don't spend a lot of time typing out my programs but I do spend a log of time thinking them through. I have slight pain in my right wrist that comes and goes.

I narrowed it down to 2 causes:

1: My car has a manual transmission, and all that gear changing in my commute irritates the nerves.

2: Mousing. I spend a lot of time using the mouse to move all those damned windows around. I switched to using my left hand for the mouse. Now the only times my right wrist hurts are driving for extended periods in slow traffic, or using the touchpad on my laptop a lot (I still use my right hand by habit).

Switching to Dvorak might be the most _obvious_ way to reduce RSI, but I don't think it is the one best thing you can do.

Another thing I'm doing to combat #2 above is trying to get as much of my programming done in Emacs as possible. I also have, "learn a decent window manager" on my list of things to do.

Once I can do all programming & code browsing/navigation in Emacs, and also use the keyboard to manage my windows... maybe Dvorak would help me.

<comment><USER9> Interesting you said that programming in Emacs helps reducing RSI.

When I was a heavy Emacs user, my left hand outer-side wrist is in constant pain because of always reaching the Control button.

<comment><USER8> I always remap Caps Lock to be a Ctrl key. Using the lower-left Ctrl key would just be... weird :).

With Caps Lock as control, and using the Alt key closest to the spacebar as Meta, the key-chords in Emacs are comfortable for me (I just spread out my left hand a little over home-row and I can reach them all w/o moving my hand).

I was a vim user long ago (I learned to program in vim) and constantly hitting esc bothered me more than Emacs Ctrl key gymnastics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I switched to Colemak after getting my arm in a cast and having my typing speed slowed anyway for three weeks. I've been using it for over a year now. I can't start touch-typing qwerty instantly any more, but I can still type comfortably on a qwerty keyboard as long as I can look at the keyboard, so occasional stints on a non-Colemak workstation aren't a problem. I had been touch-typing on qwerty for close to a fifteen years before this, and the switch was surprisingly problem-free. Getting to a nice speed on Colemak took about a month.

I haven't seen significant increase in typing speed, but there could be ergonomic benefit from having to twist my hands less to hit the awkwardly placed keys.

</comment><comment><USER11> Upon hearing that I use dvorak, people occasionally ask me if they should switch, to which I usually shrug. I'm happy with dvorak, but almost everyone else is happy with qwerty. I switched at a time where switching was cheap and am now "victim" to a similar kind of lock-in that most qwerty users are.

Despite being happy with dvorak, I see no real reason to evangelize a keyboard layout. It's simply not that big a deal.

</comment><comment><USER12> Articles about this never talk about the impact of moving your common keyboard shortcuts. Being physically unable to use Ctrl-S,Z,C,V with my left hand while using the mouse with my right would be difficult to retrain around.

<comment><USER13> I've found that using X11's highlight + middle-click paste has drastically reduced just about all of my reliance on using shortcuts for copy/paste, at least in any application that requires me to keep my hand on the mouse (like a browser) rather than keeping both hands on the keyboard (like Vim).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought it is proven that dvorak is not superior :

<http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/18/210216>

Is there something wrong with that article/research?

<comment><USER2> You should be aware the the Dvorak vs Qwerty debate is politically charged. If it turned out that Dvorak were superior, this would be evidence for market failure.

A lot of people want to demonstrate that market failure [edit: does or] does not exist, hence there are many more attempts to show the inferiority [edit: or superiority] of Dvorak than you would expect to see in a politically neutral context.

<comment><USER15> Also:

You should be aware the the Dvorak vs Qwerty debate is politically charged. If it turned out that Dvorak were superior, this would be evidence for market failure.

A lot of people want to demonstrate that market failure does exist, hence there are many more attempts to show the superiority of Dvorak than you would expect to see in a politically neutral context.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely right. I edited my original post to take this into account. My aim was to advise people to take Dvorak studies with a pinch of salt and understand the context in which they are published.

Disclaimer: I'm very happy with Dvorak, since it feels more comfortable to me than Qwerty and I have no doubt it helped me recover from repetitive strain injury. Other than that, I have no horse in this race.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a big fan of Colemak (<http://colemak.com/>). It took me about a month to learn it. I don't type significantly faster but my fingers move less. It feels worth it, at least.

</comment><comment><USER15> I switched to Dvorak for 3 years and became proficient at it. I put up with a lot of annoyances, waiting for it to be worthwhile; it never was.

Luckily, I am blessed with self-doubt, and was able to say to myself "Hey, self, stop being an idiot!", and switched back to QWERTY.

<comment><USER13> The benefits to me are all based around comfort. If using Dvorak isn't more comfortable for you in everyday usage, then there's no reason IMO to stick with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have switched to a Dvorak keyboard now for over a year after 20 years as a QWERTY typist.

To answer some of the questions in the comments

1) My peak speed for the Dvorak was at 100wpm compared to around 70wpm in QWERTY (I am intentionally slowing my typing speed now)

2) It took me 4 months to convert and get back to the speed I got using QWERTY. During that period, I switched between QWERTY and DVORAK a lot. The program DVAssist made it easy to switch it using a simple function key

3) For those who have problems using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, you can use Ctrl-Ins and Shift-Ins respectively. I find it much easier

4) If you need to use Dvorak on another computer, I have created an on the fly javascript program to do that on <http://www.electronizer.com/dvorak.html> (Note : It only works on IE)

I personally find the Dvorak keyboard more comfortable to type with. I have an RSI problem which I thought was due to the QWERTY, however, after getting to my peak speed in Dvorak, the problem started coming back, thus I am actually trying to slow my speed (I am contemplating being a 2 finger typist instead).

I reckon the problem with RSI and keyboard is not due to the keyboard layout, but more in the positioning of the keyboard when typing. To elaborate, I noticed people tend to centre their keyboards and align it to their body, this has the problem where the right hand has to over extend to type because of the numeric keypad placed on the right side of the keyboard. Couple this with the fact that the mouse is on the right hand side on most people's keyboard, this makes the right hand move more. An observation I noted was that people tend to move the wrist and not the entire hand.

To combat RSI, I have adopted the following

1) Align the keyboard "G" to align with the centre of my body (or the centreline as Wing Chun practitioner calls it). This enables both hands to extend to the same length.

2) Move the elbow and less of the wrist (whole forearm movement, another of Wing Chun's principle of using the whole arm)

3) Use the mouse with the left hand (easier done for me as I am a left hander) and the number pad with the right hand

My motivation for switching to Dvorak was to combat RSI and to prove that I can change a habit of 20 years.

If you are a 2 finger typist, I don't recommend switching to Dvorak. If you are switching for RSI, my experience is that it doesn't work. If you switch to Dvorak, you might miss out on a cool technology for mobile phones called Swype. Unless of course they have Dvorak support in the future.

</comment><comment><USER18> On the iPad/iPhone, you can't get an on-screen Dvorak keyboard. People petitioned for it years ago and it's just not happening.

<comment><USER19> Actually you can. At least in iOS 4

<comment><USER3> Looks like it is for hardware keyboard only, no? For on-screen you can choose between qwerty, azerty and qwertz

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Colemak is better for 3 reasons:

1\. It changes fewer keys so it's fas easier to learn. I picked it up in a few hours.

2\. It changes fewer keys so I switch between Colemak and Qwerty regularly.

3\. It was designed after computers were invented. It keeps programming code in mind. It also used computers to design the optimal layout to maximize "finger-rolls" (really fast typing).

<comment><USER21> It depends, I won't argue with 1, but I change between Dvorak and Qwerty constantly (I sometimes run a different layout for my IDE and one for my laptop).

And I doubt there is a better layout for programming than programmers dvorak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I tried the Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts. The day I had to launch Vim again I realized Qwerty was the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been thinking about switching to Colemak but the fact that I use Vim daily has kept me from seriously considering it.

While I certainly can remap some keys in Vim, I'm not sure if that's such a good idea in the long run. Some keys, such as h,j,k and l are no-brainers - those should be remapped. But what about w, b and e? When I'm using those keys it's all muscle memory, but should I really change w to y (word to yank)?

Do I want to spend my time learning a new keyboard layout AND relearning how to use Vim? Ultimately I've decided that Qwerty is good enough for me. I don't have RSI and I can type at a max speed of over 90 wpm (I probably average in the 70s for "real world" typing).

<comment><USER24> I use Vim every day and don't remap.

 _Some keys, such as h,j,k and l are no-brainers - those should be remapped._

Not really. J and K remain side-by-side if you switch. H and L is also largely the same: instead of reaching over for H on QWERTY, you reach up for L on Dvorak; the left-to-right order of H and L is still correct, too. It even unintentionally falls into the Dvorak Way, since up/down is under the left hand, while left/right is under the right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I switched to dvorak with a <http://typematrix.com> keyboard about 10 months ago and not looking back, only drawback is that i cant type on the laptop anymore. Having the enter and backspace keys in the middle of the keyboard is truly the biggest benefit for me, hitting enter with a "strong" finger really makes a difference.

The main reason i switched to dvorak was that i wanted a typematrix keyboard and if i was relearning where the enter key etc is, i could as well switch to dvorak.

It took about three months to be as fast as qwerty.

</comment><comment><USER26> Regardless of whether Dvorak is better on physical keyboards, it is definitely worse when it comes to soft keyboards, which are on the rise. I wrote about it here: <http://macrael.com/blog/qwerty_rides_again.html> but the gist is that since Dvorak puts frequently used characters next to one another, it makes it more difficult to recognize different words' patterns (think swype) which is what makes the autocorrect so good on today's phones.

<comment><USER27> Surely it's only a matter of time before someone takes the concept of the iPhone keyboard or Swype and figures out a way to get improved input or error- correction rates by throwing out the legacy QWERTY layout.

It's only with the introduction of the iPad that you can even type with all your fingers anyway, and even then only in perfect conditions. Dvorak makes as little sense as Qwerty for one finger pecking on a tiny phone, it's just that people are used to using Qwerty in situations when it's non-optimal (i.e. anything but mechanical typewriters that are susceptible to bar jams if two nearby keys are hit quickly in succession).

Where's the one handed Dvorak keyboard for Android, or a chording keyboard that uses multitouch? I don't want Dvorak, I want the same kind of ingenuity and applied science as Dvorak used to create new solutions.

<comment><USER28> Personally, I think touchscreen layouts should start making more commonly-used keys bigger in accordance with <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts_law>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The other problem is that your control/alt/command + keystrokes become a problem with Dvorak. So if your using VIM/EMac or another like editor you going to not want to switch.

<comment><USER30> I switched to Colemak last year, and I haven't had a problem with Emacs. But then, to call 'forward-char, I think "C-f", not "Control-left hand index finger home row". Having that extra layer of indirection in my head allowed me to make the switch easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I had a wrist health scare in I guess early 2006 now; tendonitis instead of carpal tunnel but the same sort of shooting pains. I changed a lot of things-- keyboard I typed on, wearing wrist braces, posture, but among other things I switched to Dvorak. I think it is a important part of why I can type today without pain; whenever I am forced to do QWERTY at length (which is admittedly usually on poor keyboards) the pain starts to return.

</comment><comment><USER32> This article says they were able to find a copy of the original Navy study:

<http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html>

Was anyone able to find an online copy of the studies from Western Electric or Oregon State University that the article referenced?

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder: would a system like Apple's automatic corrections for iOS work worse with Dvorak?

If Dvorak really makes travel time for your fingers shorter, wouldn't that also make it harder for a predictive systems to cope with human's error?

(This is not a rhetorical or provocative question, but a serious question.)

<comment><USER34> The only issue I can imagine is that your mistakes might be more likely to form real words. The way dvorak is set up so that the vowels are concentrated means accidentally going one character to the left will probably result in something intelligible looking, if not a real word ("beg"->"bag"), whereas in qwerty you're likely to type gibberish ("beg"->"bwg"). Obviously it's easier for auto-correct to notice gibberish than wrong words.

I see no reason that shorter travel time would impact it though.

<comment><USER33> Yes, that's what I meant by short travel time. It would make it a lot harder for auto-correct to understand what you were trying to type.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Let's say for arguments sake I have been using qwerty for the last 23 years or so, 15 or so touch typing. How much more efficient across my lifespan can trying to teach myself a completely different layout really be? It could be years before I clean out all the errors.

</comment><comment><USER36> I use too many disparate keyboards (Dell, Apple, on-screen mobile keyboards, physical keyboards, iPad keyboards) to even begin to bother. Also, I'm pleased with my current typing speed, thank you.

To each their own, though.

</comment><comment><USER37> The biggest question has unanswered in this article

"What's the avg. switch time?"

When can I get back to my speed of QWERTY, 3 days, 1 month?

<comment><USER2> I touched typed on Qwerty before learning Dvorak. It took me about 3 weeks to get up to speed. It was extremely frustrating initially, but I'm delighted with the results (ten years down the line).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I almost died when I had to use a Mac & all I got there was some unexpected home key behaviour and the squiggle button.

</comment><comment><USER39> For those of us that are left-handed, dvorak is very cumbersome to use. It _strongly_ prefers the right hand for typing, and if your dominant hand is the other--dvorak feels really weird to type with.

Give me a dvorak, but favored for left-handed typers, and I could see it improving my speed. Until then, I can break easily 120wpm in qwerty--I'm not too concerned.</comment>


How I develop Clojure with Vim - <AUTHOR> http://writequit.org/blog/?p=386

<comment><USER2> Using screen to get a REPL alongside vim is pretty clunky. Conque is much easier, in my opinion: <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2771>

I really hope that a real shell gets implemented inside vim at some point, it's almost enough to make one switch to Emacs.

<comment><USER3> You can compile one in, but that isn't a great solution - you have to recompile vim on every computer you use it on.

The patch is here: <http://www.wana.at/vimshell/>

<comment><USER2> Vim-shell isn't bad, but the version on the site is outdated. You have to scour their mailing list to find a working link to a patch that works with vim 7.2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's the value in rainbow parentheses? I have coded Lisp for years, and have never wondered where I need to add parens; it's intrinsic in the structure of the code. Braces are the same way -- you know when you have the right number. No need for gaudy colors just because nested parentheses are new to you...

<comment><USER5> You don't _need_ them, but I do find them extremely useful for _at a glance_ parentheses matching, especially if the expressions span multiple lines.

So, the value is as a visual aid - just like any syntax highlighting, highlighting matching parentheses when the cursor is over them, line numbers etc. Non of these things are strictly needed, but they help us comprehend code more easily and quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just started using Clojure this weekend with Vim. I am not sure why the author of this post didn't use VimClojure with Nailgun, but it works seamlessly and lets you have rich-SLIME like interaction with a REPL.

The only thing I wish I had was a paredit like mode, but you can't have everything!

<comment><USER7> If you know about vim text objects and f/t motion, there isn't much that paredit mode can do that vim text objects don't. E.g f) is the equivalent to paredit-forward while ci( is 'replace contents of s-expr' and da[ would be 'delete vector'.

I use AutoClose.vim and Surround.vim to deal with most pairwise operations. The only major tweak I make is to rebind s to work as 'surround':

        ""s/S is pretty useless. :help text-objects
        nmap s      <Nop>
        nmap sw     viwS
        nmap sW     viWS
        nmap ss     visS
        nmap sp     vipS
        nmap s[     vi[S
        nmap s]     vi]S
        nmap s(     vi(S
        nmap s)     vi)S
        nmap s{     vi{S
        nmap s}     vi}S
        nmap s<     vi<S
        nmap s>     vi>S
        nmap st     vitS
        nmap s'     vi'S
        nmap s"     vi"S
        nmap s`     vi`S

        nmap S      <Nop>
        nmap Sw     vawS
        nmap SW     vaWS
        nmap Ss     vasS
        nmap Sp     vapS
        nmap S[     va[S
        nmap S]     va]S
        nmap S(     va(S
        nmap S)     va)S
        nmap S{     va{S
        nmap S}     va}S
        nmap S<     va<S
        nmap S>     va>S
        nmap St     vatS
        nmap S'     va'S
        nmap S"     va"S
        nmap S`     va`S

This allows you to do things like wrap the current s-expr in another using S))a.

I also rebind all the vimclojure keys because I hate the defaults (e.g. I use \e to eval, K to lookup docs, and ctrl-] to jump to definition).

<comment><USER8> Dude! Thank you so much. I was trying to figure out what magic incantation I needed to find the docs for "inner", etc. :help text-objects did the trick and I would have never considered remapping the s/S keys, which are agreeably pretty useless.

EDIT: I created slightly different bindings. These are a bit longer, but have the same power, flexibility, and use of the documented text-object motions.

        " Remap s/S to surround operations
        " :help text-objects
        nmap s      <Nop>
        nmap S      <Nop>
        " Surround inner (si)
        nmap siw     viws
        nmap siW     viWs
        nmap siss    viss
        nmap sip     vips
        nmap si[     vi[s
        nmap si]     vi]s
        nmap si(     vi(s
        nmap si)     vi)s
        nmap si{     vi{s
        nmap si}     vi}s
        nmap si<     vi<s
        nmap si>     vi>s
        nmap sit     vits
        nmap si'     vi's
        nmap si"     vi"s
        nmap si`     vi`s
        " Surround inner on new lines (Si)
        nmap Siw     viwS
        nmap SiW     viWS
        nmap Siss    visS
        nmap Sip     vipS
        nmap Si[     vi[S
        nmap Si]     vi]S
        nmap Si(     vi(S
        nmap Si)     vi)S
        nmap Si{     vi{S
        nmap Si}     vi}S
        nmap Si<     vi<S
        nmap Si>     vi>S
        nmap Sit     vitS
        nmap Si'     vi'S
        nmap Si"     vi"S
        nmap Si`     vi`S
        " Surround an object on same lines (sa)
        nmap saw     vaws
        nmap saW     vaWs
        nmap sas     vass
        nmap sap     vaps
        nmap sa[     va[s
        nmap sa]     va]s
        nmap sa(     va(s
        nmap sa)     va)s
        nmap sa{     va{s
        nmap sa}     va}s
        nmap sa<     va<s
        nmap sa>     va>s
        nmap sat     vats
        nmap sa'     va's
        nmap sa"     va"s
        nmap sa`     va`s
        " Surround an object on new lines (Sa)
        nmap Saw     vawS
        nmap SaW     vaWS
        nmap Sas     vasS
        nmap Sap     vapS
        nmap Sa[     va[S
        nmap Sa]     va]S
        nmap Sa(     va(S
        nmap Sa)     va)S
        nmap Sa{     va{S
        nmap Sa}     va}S
        nmap Sa<     va<S
        nmap Sa>     va>S
        nmap Sat     vatS
        nmap Sa'     va'S
        nmap Sa"     va"S
        nmap Sa`     va`S

<comment><USER9> Those mappings aren't doing what you expect, because s and S in visual mode do the same thing. And instead of mapping all the text objects like that and using visual mode, you should just do this instead:

        nmap s ys
        nmap S yS

<comment><USER8> I tested a number of the mapping, they seem to be working. I'm using surround.vim [1] which changes the behavior of s/S in visual mode.

[1] <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1697>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Contrary to popular belief (and my own personal preference ;), you can hack Clojure from Vim, Intellij, Eclipse, and Netbeans (the most full-featured at the moment besides Emacs).

Don't let Emacs stop you. Happy hacking.

<comment><USER10> For those on Macs, there's a TextMate bundle here:

[http://nullstyle.com/2008/11/09/ann-clojure-textmate- bundle-...](http://nullstyle.com/2008/11/09/ann-clojure-textmate-bundle-01/)

Works well, though it contains its own clojure install, which may not be ideal. It looks fairly hackable though.

If you do install it, you have to edit a project (folder) in TextMate, otherwise starting the repl will fail. Minor wrinkle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Development by nullstyle on that stopped in 2008. Clojure wasn't even 1.0 at the time. However looking here, <http://github.com/nullstyle/clojure- tmbundle/network>, shows that development is alive and kicking, hopefully one of these becomes the new official release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Upvoted for rainbow parentheses, which I just added to my .emacs =D

<comment><USER12> Do you mind showing us how? I googled everywhere and only came up with a highlight-parentheses minor mode hack which only highlights the parentheses at the cursor.

<comment><USER12> Found it... <http://dishevelled.net/elisp/rainbow-parens.el>

update: Argh! My eyes!

<comment><USER13> If you're interested in taking things in the opposite direction, try reducing the prominence of parentheses via ParenFace (<http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs- en/ParenFace>). I use a very light gray face for parentheses, which is barely visible on a white background.

<comment><USER12> highlight-parentheses minor mode hack which is found here

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2413047/can-emacs- color-d...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2413047/can-emacs-color- different-levels-of-matching-parentheses-with-a-rainbow-of-differ)

seems to me like the best solution so far. It only applies "rainbow parens" to the parentheses and parents parentheses of the s-expressions at the cursor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was wondering, and please forgive my ignorance, how do you debug with vi(m) or emacs? They are just text editors, right? Or am I missing something here...

<comment><USER15>
      M-x gdb

Screenshot: <http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gdb.png>

If you want to debug a Lisp, you can't do better than Slime. Not sure what the state of the art is on Clojure debuggers.

<comment><USER16> M-x slime

For a development paltform that's neither brittle nor toy.</comment></comment></comment>


As of January 21, 2014, LogMeIn Free is no longer available. - <AUTHOR> http://help.logmein.com/SelfServiceHome?product=lmifree

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a feeling that lots of people are going to be sad after reading this... I am.</comment>


Toward Better Master Passwords - <AUTHOR> http://blog.agilebits.com/2011/06/toward-better-master-passwords/ <comment><USER2> I use diceware as the article recommends. I suggest using 10 random words. Each word has about 13 bits of entropy, so a 10-word passphrase will have about 130 bits. Write the passphrase down and keep it in a very secure place. After using the passphrase a few times, you'll remember it surprisingly easily.</comment>


Project Mortar: Mozilla to kill non-core projects - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.planning/j834iDIG3yY/V84Rzw0cEAAJ <comment><USER2> [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mortar_Project](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mortar_Project)

> The core of the Windows sandbox is Google's chromium sandbox.

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox#Windows_2](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox#Windows_2)

Any more components that are coming directly from Chromium?

This is an interesting move if it allows Mozilla to focus on Servo and the new Rust components. At least I hope that's what they are doing, after the recent Firefox OS news.</comment>


3D Printed Camera - <AUTHOR> http://amosdudley.com/weblog/SLO-Camera <comment><USER2> _I started by hand at 400 grit and went up to 12000 grit by increments of 200 and a set of micro-mesh polishing pads. This process took about 5-6 hours per lens and a lot of elbow grease._ Not really sure that qualifies as 3d printing.

However, I like the fact this was not one of those 3D print a case, insert bit's that do all the work. Well beyond film.

<comment><USER3> But those remarks are just the lens. The lens came out out the 3D printer with a frosty surface. Of course that needs polishing. No 3D printer is going to crank out working optics.

What is surprising here is that the object has the _internal_ clarity, so that all it needs is a surface polish. I imagine it must be relatively free of voids and inclusions.

<comment><USER4> This was a big surprise for me as well. OK, he used a different printer, but the fact that the 3D-printed lens seems optically OK is very impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He almost lost me at "I wanted to find out if there was a more authentic photo at the intersection of ..." Um, no, there isn't. Technology is irrelevant to authenticity. And if he is suggesting that filters make things inauthentic, I think he's full of himself. I despise the reduce-contrast-so-the-picture- looks-like-a-bad-pollution-day filter that's popular everywhere, but it's not inauthentic. No more than upping the saturation on landscape photos is inauthentic. Even Ansel Adams applied a lot of post-processing to his (analog) prints, as I found out when I read "The Print."

The actual 3D printing project is pretty interesting, though.

</comment><comment><USER6> Props for making the files available. Too often I see these types of projects and the author refuses, which I find silly.

</comment><comment><USER7>
      The photos

       > A plugin is needed to display this content.

wat

<comment><USER8> ...and no scroll bars in Chrome or Safari?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those interested in DIY camera should also check this project:

[http://www.focalcamera.com](http://www.focalcamera.com)

The Focal Camera is an open-source modular camera prototyping system.

 _By offering these designs free for non-commercial use by anyone we strive to improve the ability of making handmade cameras for everyone. It allows for complex cameras that might seem daunting at first, such as SLRs, stereo or panoramic cameras and countless others, including even custom lens design._

</comment><comment><USER10> WRT Convex lenses: he could flip the lens upside down to allow gravity to pull the pools of resin off the lens.

Also, he may be able to spin it on a surface, like what is done for coating silicon in order to spread the resin evenly across the surface.

[http://webnemo.uniroma2.it/new/img/spincoating.gif](http://webnemo.uniroma2.it/new/img/spincoating.gif)

</comment><comment><USER11> It would be interesting to test the camera with normal glass lens, and test the printed lens with a normal camera. This project has two completely separate challenges (make the camera and make the optics), and these challenges are very interesting by themselves.

<comment><USER12> The camera has a micro 4/3 mount at the moment. The tricky part is that the flange focal distance on the SLO is not to Micro 4/3 spec (or any standard spec), because of the fairly large depth needed for the printed shutter.

It would be very easy to make a lens mount for commercial glass if lens had a larger FFD than the SLO, which is ~41mm.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> this is super cool! I'm especially impressed he built his own lens too. it would have been really easy to justify using an existing lens

<comment><USER14> That starts to turn into something akin to:

 _Man 3D prints computer_

 _" Ok, first I 3D printed this case. Now we install the MSI motherboard, Intel processor, G.Skill RAM, and other components. Viola, a 3D printed computer!"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Someone should 3D print a 3D printer that 3D prints 3D printers :D

<comment><USER16> That is literally one of the first goals, the most famous solution being the RepRap.

[http://reprap.org/](http://reprap.org/)

<comment><USER2> Which of course only printed the case for a 3D printer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if it is possible, for small lenses, to laser-cut a piece of acrylic to get the convexity in one dimension then flip it 90 degrees and cut a second time to finish the job. That would still be in the DIY spirit, albeit no longer a 3D-printed solution.

<comment><USER18> Challenge is the narrow focus range of the laser beam, and the slanted sides due to divergent beam outside this range. But could work for small lenses, worth a test!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really cool!

How much would something like this cost to print in one of those printing sites?

<comment><USER20> Until now, none of the service bureaus (Shapeways et al) have the proven capability to print a lens with this clarity and quality. This is one of the first posts I've seen that details how to do it.

You might be able to find someone with a Formlabs printer on 3D Hubs, but they would have to follow this guide to achieve the result. Resin is not cheap either. Overall cost including man-hours of manual testing might cost over $300 if you really wanted it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cool project, but the pictures look like you walked down the street randomly pressing the shutter. Would be interesting to see some photos that had some thought put into them.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cool project!</comment>


'Angry Birds' Maker May Hold IPO in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-13/-angry-birds-may-see-2012-ipo-as-flock-of-fans-grows-mighty-eagle-says.html

<comment><USER2> That seems nuts from the outside, I wonder how they plan on maintaining Angry Birds popularity (and revenue) for 20 years. The article references Nintendo's 26-year Mario brand, but it's not like that was their only schtick.</comment>


Homeless Former Programmer Charges $2000/mo for 'Applied Homelessness Course' - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/12/02/Homeless-Man-Charges-2000-For-Course-In-Applied-Homelessness

<comment><USER2> In other news, Andrew Breitbart is still dead.</comment>


Ramen May Lead to Chronic Illness Study Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.mainstreet.com/article/lifestyle/food-drink/ramen-noodles-may-lead-chronic-illness?puc=outbrain&cm_ven=outbrain&obref=obnetwork

<comment><USER2> My boss, on my first job, whenever presented with any "study" of this nature would mumble:

 _"If you feed a rat a boxcar of anything, it'll get cancer"_.

Too damn right.

<comment><USER3> I think the cancer bit was just in there for shock value, the main point is that there is zero nutritional value to these foods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Junk food may be "the cheapest option," but if you insist on eating a meal that actually provide the nutrients that the body needs, you'd have to spend a lot more money eating junk food than just cooking yourself.

Saying you just don't have enough time to cook for yourself is almost never true.

Just one meal example: Pressure cook for 6 minutes (plus ~5 getting up to pressure) a large volume of potatoes, carrots, onions, some ginger and chili pepper for flavor. Drop in some canned tomato and canned fish, and you can easily end up paying less than $1 for a totally balanced delicious meal, and you have produced in one swoop enough food to feed an adult for two full days.

<comment><USER5> And because food is what makes your body work, you better decide it is worth its money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ramen Noodles (when eaten all the time instead of a variety of fruits and vegetables) may lead to chronic illness.

The title is slightly misleading in that regard. It should be common knowledge now that too much of any one thing will kill you.

<comment><USER7> _It should be common knowledge now that too much of any one thing will kill you_

Not potatoes. You can live on nothing but potatoes and water and you'll be healthy. You'll likely get very bored of the diet, but you won't be missing anything essential.

This is true of very few foods.

(This is something that I learned when my wife was studying for general physiology.)

<comment><USER8> Your comment seemed interesting and made me look it up.

According to the straight dope, not quite, but almost:

[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i- surviv...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-survive-on- nothing-but-potatoes-and-milk)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That anyone would be shocked that packaged crap like Ramen has health risks is sad. This is not food. Of course it's going to kill you.

I always hope that when startups say "eating ramen" that they mean it symbolically, in that they are being frugal. Eating crap like this is just dumb.

<comment><USER10> Some of us put vegetables and eggs in our ramen.

Ramen in its true form is not just the noodles.

<comment><USER11> Right, but frying the noodles into a brick with palm kernel oil doesn't help.

On the other hand, udon noodles are quite good. You need to refrigerate them, though - there's actually something left to spoil. Try them with egg, miso, green onion, and shredded carrots.

<comment><USER10> Spoilage has nothing to do with what's "left to spoil." Cooked ramen noodles will spoil just as readily as udon.

Bacteria need moisture to grow. Udon is sometimes sold fresh (wet), and that will spoil. Dry udon does not spoil.

As for palm oil... udon is also made with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Ramen profitable" should be "oatmeal profitable." Whole grains ftw.

<comment><USER13> pg actually mentioned that "Ramen profitable" is not to be mentioned literally. I don't have the link of the top of my head, but he even included a beans & rice recipe.

<comment><USER14> <http://paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We should not call these rubbish instant noodles ramen.

What the Japanese call ramen is something very different. Fresh noodles, rich soup filled with vegetables, pork, bamboo shoots, ginger... Still, you wouldn't want to live on just one thing, that would be dumb.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this ramen that is usually served in Japanese restaurant, or instant noodle? I think they are very different.

<comment><USER17> I assume they mean packaged ramen, which is extra-confusing because the described study was done in Australia, where nobody calls those "ramen" at all. They're called "two-minute noodles".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've never posted any comments here before but I feel compelled to do so for this link. It is lamenting the fact that people who eat ramen frequently aren't buying fruits and vegetables instead. I've basically lived on ramen for the better part of a year and the truth is that if I could eat healthier I would without a moments hesitation. But a ramen packet costs 15¢ each. So I can be reasonably full for around 30¢ a day. What kind of fruit can I buy for 30¢? A single apple? One banana? The author of this article needs to get off his high horse and try to live off the diet he's saying is such a bad choice.

<comment><USER9> The true cost of eating nothing but packaged "ramen", at 30¢ a day, is seriously the value of your own life. This crap will kill you. It is not food.

Garbage in, garbage out. You may not feel it yet, but it is costing you your life.

While I can't know what your financial situation is, you are posting to an internet forum, so it appears as though you're not working two double-shifts to survive until tomorrow. Quality food is an investment into your life. To put your budget in perspective, your suggesting to spend $110 per YEAR feeding yourself. Is that all your health is worth?

<comment><USER19> Agreed. The best health insurance policy is a good diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article's title is misleading. The study doesn't actually pinpoint ramen noodles as a cause of chronic illness, but rather nutritional deficits, which of course could result from eating nothing but ramen.

 _"Those who relied on instant noodles and other cheap food with little nutritional content were at greater risk of chronic diseases including cancer, diabetes and heart disease, the researchers found."_

The article title could just as easily have been Spaghetti May Lead... or McDonalds May Lead... Of course, it should be Poor Nutrition May Lead..., but then no one would care.

</comment><comment><USER21> [Eating practically nothing but] Ramen May Lead to Chronic Illness Study Says

</comment><comment><USER22> Correlation != causation. Despite the title submitted here, what the article actually says is that people are trying to subsist almost entirely on ramen, foregoing other nutrition that they need like fruits and veggies.

I eat ramen every once in a while, when I'm too busy or too tired to fix any better kind of meal for myself, but that doesn't put me at any kind of risk because I don't do it every day for every meal. If you live entirely on ANY one kind of food (ramen, hot pockets, tuna sandwiches, etc), you're going to have health problems because you're simply not getting the different kinds of nutrition your body needs.

</comment><comment><USER23> white flour, poor quality fat, sodium, and a massive wallop of MSG. practically no protein.

my partner was busy last night, so I fed the family. I cooked whole-wheat cous-cous, mixed it with fried peppers and onions, and steamed a package of frozen "Italian Vegetables" (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and more.) I put this into bowls, half of each of the kind of stuff, and flavored with a dash of salt, pepper and earth balance natural margarine.

i didn't want a lot of protein in that meal because we cooked a chicken last night and i've been eating mass quantities of whey protein powder.

<comment><USER24> Why choose protein powder instead of natural protein?

<comment> daniel-cussen Probably because he wants more than the natural amount of muscle.

<comment><USER23> I think of myself as Rocky Bilboa making a comeback.

I've got to go up against you punks and win, so I train hard and watch my diet.

And who's to say what's natural? The withering muscles of a pencil-necked geek who sits in front of a computer all day and into the night? Or the massive frame of my brother-in-law who works on a road crew?

<comment> daniel-cussen That's great. Just for context, I'm taking the same stuff: whey protein (with dextrose and creatine), vanilla flavor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "healthy but less-filling fruits and vegetables"

This is not true. Fruits and vegetables have more fiber which makes you feel full. Ramen noodles and other fast food products can be hunger-promoting.

</comment><comment><USER25> Completely anecdotal (not data) point: guy I know from one forum, young guy in his 20s, lived on ramen noodles for 18 months to 2 years. Got colon cancer, which usually hits people who are older.

(I am trying to learn enough good recipes to eat well at home instead of eating out, have bought a few decent cookbooks and surprisingly, have found it enjoyable though time consuming to cook from scratch.)

<comment><USER26> One more data point: My brother eats Ramen pretty much every day and has for the last 2-3 years (he's in college now). He hasn't been to the doctor in at least 5 years even for a physical. However, he eats the Ramen without cooking it and just putting the spices or flavoring on it and then crunching through it. To be honest, it makes me sick watching it, so maybe that counts?

<comment><USER27> That's really disgusting. Does he at least eat some veggies?

<comment><USER28> Does the teaspoon of dried ones in the cup count?

<comment><USER27> But really, there are many ways a diet like his may be harmful. Too much sodium (still high even w/out the spice package), lack of vitamins, protein, fiber, and the list goes on.

You won't feel the pain when you are young, but when you DO feel it (or your brother), the damage will be already done

=/

<comment><USER28> People don't realize how much fat are in the noodles, either. They're in that awesome shape because they're deep fried!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> <prepackaged food> may lead to chronic illness. Seems sane. The problem is that ramen isn't JUST crappy salty over-processed 100% artificially flavored desiccated food. In Japan, ramen is a real food.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yeah, but it's cheap. It's also not bad with some crackers. :)

<comment><USER31> I have a friend who uses the noodles and chucks the flavoring packet. He then adds veggies, some protein and a soy sauce based stock. It's pretty delicious and I imagine still decently cheap.

<comment><USER32> When you say he adds protein, do you mean he adds meat of some kind? Or something dairy?</comment></comment></comment>


Cross-signing and End-to-end Encryption by Default is HERE - <AUTHOR> https://matrix.org/blog/2020/05/06/cross-signing-and-end-to-end-encryption-by-default-is-here <comment><USER2> Have to give it to Matrix devs. Despite various roadblocks, they have finally delivered the holy trinity of messaging systems: Encryption, Federation and not-terrible design.

Great UX will take more contributors: both developers and designers. I hope more of us here adopt it ourselves first. The ability to have bridges to existing chat systems like IRC, Slack, Gitter etc sounds quite useful.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to go to find free images/icons to use on my project? - <AUTHOR>

Trying to improve my site and having a hard time with good and free images to use (icons for multiple actions, etc).<p>Where do you guys go when you need images?<p>*I would pay a designer, but at this stage, I need to save money.. <comment><USER2> What are you looking for? Just icons for actions? Check out [http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/the-best-icon-sets- for-m...](http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/the-best-icon-sets-for-minimal- style-web-design). I just pulled it off delicious, used some icons from it 10 minutes ago. If you're looking for images, try <http://sxc.hu>. Something else? What type of thing are you looking for?

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of people (including myself) are under the delusion that you need detailed, descriptive icons. Most of the time your design will benefit from a simple representative glyph.

That being said, the "Fugue" icon set would have to be the greatest icon set I have ever crossed paths with. With 2000+ beautifully designed, crisp icons, most of your needs will be met. The license is attribution or you can simply pay $49.95 for royalty free.

<http://pinvoke.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I always use Fam fam's icons. They're well designed and there are a lot of them. Best of all they're completely free :-)

<http://www.famfamfam.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> famfam or <http://iconfinder.net></comment>


Legislators consider bill requiring news outlets to update crime stories - <AUTHOR> https://www.concordmonitor.com/Legislators-consider-bill-requiring-news-outlets-to-update-crime-stories-32023821 <comment><USER2> The bill violates the 1st Amendment, as the critics say:

"Media groups pushed back against the bill, calling it an unconstitutional restriction of free speech riddled with logistical hurdles.

Scott Spradling, a lobbyist and former television reporter representing the New Hampshire Association of Broadcasters, said the bill would impinge on free speech rights of news outlets when it comes to running articles. And he said that by requiring news outlets to immediately change the articles upon request, it would force them to print information without getting verification from the courts."</comment>


The oldest song in the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180424-did-syria-create-the-worlds-first-song <comment><USER2> This is very cool. But calling it the "oldest song" is a bit of a stretch. Maybe one could call it the "oldest song in history", since it is the oldest song we have found written down, but certainly not the oldest song of all time.

At least according to a Netflix documentary on India, there are some brahmins outside Kerala that have been chanting the same song since before the invention of speech. The claim is that the chant makes no sense in any linguistic or even musical tradition and is more closely related to birdsong, indicating a pre-oral genesis.

I think this particular example is a bit far-fetched, but it's not outside the realm of possibility for an older, oral-tradition song to have survived, in some form, to the present day.

<comment><USER3> > At least according to a Netflix documentary on India, there are some > brahmins outside Kerala that have been chanting the same song since before > the invention of speech. The claim is that the chant makes no sense in any > linguistic or even musical tradition and is more closely related to > birdsong, indicating a pre-oral genesis.

That's Michael Wood's documentary about India if I recall correctly. However, the implication of that segment was not that it represents a pre-speech musical pattern, but rather that contains uninterpretable elements that might be onomanopaeic. The first modern humans to arrive in India arrived speaking languages as fully developed as any we have today, as they diverged from the same fully verbal Africans as everyone else in the world.

EDIT: Here is an answer from the series' website where Wood himself admits that they sacrificed clarity for drama's sake in their description: [http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/ask/answers_2.html#q3](http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/ask/answers_2.html#q3)

What makes the Kerala birdsong chanting unusual is that it is systematic despite having no obvious denotative meaning, unlike the rest of Vedic hymns which directly rendered in the Vedic language [1].

Also, it _only_ occurs in Kerala. Vedic recitation elsewhere in India does not include the birdsong element - rather it contains only the Vedic language hymns.

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

<comment><USER4> That's not completely true. There are wordless melodies associated with Samavedic recitation all over India. For instance my Guruji knew a particular set and we are Gujarati Brahmanas. However in Kerala they have a specific Shakha of the Sama Veda ("branch" i.e. school of recitation) which is unique.

The idea that any of this is "pre-speech" sacrifices clarity to the point of utter misinformation.

<comment><USER3> That's a fair point. After all many Vedic recitations are replete with syllables whose purpose is strictly musical/mystical and without concrete meaning, the most famous being of course "AUM", but also the sequence "shrim, hrim, klim, glaum, gam".

If you peruse the book that Michael Wood cites in that comment, you'll find many other Vedic examples of meaningless musical particles like "ha bu" and "bham bham".

Conversely, in the Indian pakhawaj drum composition recitation system (of much more recent vintage than Vedic chanting), there is a form called Paran where the opposite takes place: The semantically meaningless, but rhythmically sophisticated patterns of drum syllables are overlayed and interspersed with phonologically and rhythmically similar words drawn from Sanskrit, usually descriptions of a deity. The words in this case play second fiddle to the structure of the musical composition. Here is an example:

[https://youtu.be/hJg4NOCKTZI?t=443](https://youtu.be/hJg4NOCKTZI?t=443)

The Michael Wood documentary, while overall pretty decent, unnecessarily exoticizes it in the example of the Kerala Brahmins, but you see very similar phenomena (melodic meaningless syllables) in popular and folk music around the world today, from India to Motown. In fact, there's a vocal technique from Jazz called scat-singing, that exclusively uses meaningless syllables:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Human remains go back in Africa 300,000 years and they're suggesting the oldest song is around 3,400 years old?

Did I miss something? Are they suggesting the first song was also written? ... that there weren't songs before they started writing them?

I think they mean the oldest musical notation.

<comment><USER6> The title is terrible, and was probably changed by a clueless editor at BBC.

If you read the actual article though, 2 paragraphs in:

 _"Inscribed on it were lyrics, and underneath them is what researchers believe is the earliest example of musical notation anywhere in the world."_

<comment><USER7> Sometimes it feels like editors write headlines with an explicit goal of riling people up. Specifically riling _me_ up.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what they are doing. It's not even a secret or anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The song itself (rendered by a singer in the video on the page) reminds of a lot of non-western music, in particular the distinctive minor harmonic 7th that is so common from southern and Eastern Europe through the Middle East to South Asia. I've also heard Jewish cantors in synagogues using it.

Someone once described this very general style of modal music to me as "Alexandrian" music, because variations on it appear in many places where Alexander the Great's army went.

Of course, the musical style probably far predates Alexander, as Alexander was himself following routes established long before his time.

<comment><USER9> The tune in the first video at about 1:14 is indeed used in Jewish synogogues. Particularly those of Middle Eastern / North African Jewish communities.

As this video demonstrates: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lGh2hfk8NvY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lGh2hfk8NvY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How are they sure about the notes of the melody itself? The Greeks used Pythagorean tuning, which is based on mathematical fractions, allowing us to know the exact ratios of the notes to each other. How would they get similar precision from pre-Greek notations?

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpxN2VXPMLc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpxN2VXPMLc)

</comment><comment><USER12> ... or is it just a tribute?</comment>


Ask HN: What's the secret to getting people to honestly work for free? - <AUTHOR>

What's the secret to getting people to work for free that doesn't involve deception, trickery, or becoming a cult leader?<p>By work, I mean real, complex, and hard work. <comment><USER2> The whole "for free" thing is a fallacy. You can get all kinds of things back, even when you're not working for a paycheck. You get recognition, gratitude and respect. You get to learn new skills and improve yourself. You get enjoyment (if your work is fun).

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the work that you want doing? What is it other than money which motivates people?

Saying "please shovel all of my trash, because I'm too lazy" probably won't get many volunteers. Saying "our homes were devastated by a hurricane, please help us clean away our rubbish - we just can't cope" will (hopefully) attract more people.

Some will do it because it feels like the right thing to do - or they may be expecting some nebulous spiritual reward. Others will work for free if they can get something tangible out of it - like work experience to help them get a job.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hypnotism or lobotomies. Much better chances with the former. Also, pure violence and terror have worked for ages.

What are you? Evil? Just kidding. Nothing is for free.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think a better question is "Why do you need free work done"?

If it is for a greater good (curing a disease, helping your fellow man, fighting for something you believe in such as politics) and that person cares about those things then it may not be that hard. Look at all the campaign volunteers for the most recent election.

Your question is too vague.

</comment><comment><USER6> A common good.

If you can define the work you want done as contributing to a common good--the health, broadly defined, of your community--you can find people to work for free. If the good it contributes to is primarily your own wealth, then you had better expect to pay.

</comment><comment><USER7> wikipedia editors, non-profits and mentor - apprentice relationships come to mind. What makes that work? There's your answer.

</comment><comment><USER8> Make them a cofounder.

<comment><USER9> Offer them, heh, Equity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> mastery, autonomy, purpose</comment>