Curiosity Mount Sharp Photo - <AUTHOR> http://spaceindustrynews.com/curiosity-mount-sharp-photo/1015/

<comment><USER2> Maybe after the main objectives are completed, NASA could recover some of the money by drawing people/companies' names/logos on the ground, then taking pictures and sharing them online :-)

<comment><USER3> "Click here to promote your status update on the surface of Mars ($100000)"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Color corrected? I think they mean "colorized". Hazcams don't have multiple color filters, just a red bandpass centered around 650 nm. Any color here is basically manufactured.

</comment><comment><USER5> They colorized the wheels and sky, too, rather than separating them for more realism. I like mine better[0] ;), but a lot of people dislike that I used Earth's sky color instead of the more boring Martian reddish brown.

[0] [http://nitrogen.posterous.com/curiositys-view-of-mars-in- pse...](http://nitrogen.posterous.com/curiositys-view-of-mars-in- pseudocolor-3d)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how much data costs per kilobyte from Mars?

<comment><USER7> Since there's probably nobody else using the line - nothing.

Or more accurately: The fixed cost for getting the dataline installed is extremely high, but once it's there and has no other use than sending data back to earth it's almost free to use. The only cost is the electricity used, and since it's on a nuclear battery that will run for many years you can discount that.

In other words: Send as much data back as you possibly can. Prioritise it and send the most important first of course, but don't ever let the line sit idle.

<comment><USER8> On the Earth side there may be contention since AFAIK the Deep Space Network is shared by multiple missions.

<comment><USER9> <http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Network>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know the bandwidth of the connection to Curiosity? Closest thing I was able to was the Spirit rover with 258 kbit/s.

<comment><USER11> I've read that when the MSL Rover Relays through the MRO (which seems to be the LIDAR communications) the link is about 2Mb/s, but a constant direct link to Earth over UHF is only 500 bits/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I noticed the robot got its finger over the camera in the upper right corner. :-) Nice shot though.

</comment><comment><USER13> Instagram should have done the colour corrected version with a filter. PR opportunity: MISSED.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Viking photos taken on Mars in the late 70's are pretty cool too.

</comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know what picture compression format they are using?

<comment><USER8> Maybe one of these: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICER> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCSDS_122.0-B-1></comment></comment>


Death claims singular "them" (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005176.html

<comment><USER2> > the usefulness of they (and its forms them, their, and themselves) in > situations where the sex of a singular referent is not determinable, known, > or relevant

I think most would use "themself" in this situation.</comment>


Why Apple and Qualcomm made peace now: A 5G iPhone in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90335958/why-apple-and-qualcomm-just-made-peace-a-5g-iphone-in-2020 <comment><USER2> On a strange note Intel who has been supplying modems to Apple has declared that it is exiting 5G modem space to focus on 5G infrastructure.</comment>


Ageing whales: Scars reveal social secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30993208

<comment><USER2> well, short story: individual Cetaceans are, and were, identified with its body marks. Nothing new here.

Is good to remember that Ziphiidae are not "whales", at least not the animal what everybody imagine when thinking in a whale. Those are beaked whales, a totally different kind of carnivore creature. To ilustrate the differences, if whales where kangaroos, then the beaked whales will be tasmanian tigers. To discover a long term relationship between social carnivores is very interesting, but not so striking as the article says.</comment>


Darpa: US Geek Shortage Is National Security Risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/darpa-us-geek-shortage-is-a-national-security-risk/ <comment><USER2> I think this really comes down to basic economics. Talking about a "shortage" of something is equivalent to saying the market isn't clearing: that there's more demand than supply. And having more demand than supply is equivalent to the price being too low. Salaries for developers, inflation-adjusted, have remained essentially the same since the dot-com boom. Meanwhile, salaries for bankers and consultants and lawyers have exploded. The results of this should be obvious.

You guys want people to major in computer science? Pay them to. I'm sure that the DoD and Google and Microsoft would all like to hire top people for $50,000 a year. But that isn't the way markets work. If I want a Ferrari, I can't refuse to pay more than $10,000, and then complain about a "Ferrari shortage" because no one will sell me one at that price.

<comment><USER3> There's an implicit "smart & passionate" qualifier on the title of the article. There's a shortage of smart and passionate geeks. It's not about cramming more people into the Computer Science pipeline. That will make absolutely no impact on the actual problem.

<comment><USER2> The principles of supply and demand apply just as much to the market for "smart and passionate labor" as "all labor". If demand exceeds supply, the price is too low.

Even if you assumed that the ability to program was purely the result of some genetic mutation, so that there were X programmers in the world and there could never ever be any more, there _still_ wouldn't be a shortage if prices rose enough - because there would be less demand. If each programmer had to be paid twice as much, companies would hire fewer programmers, and there wouldn't be a shortage.

<comment><USER3> I was mainly responding to the, "Pay people to go to college for CS" statement.

My point: Disqus has been hiring for QUITE a while, very vigorously. I know for certain they are getting a ton of applications. I'm really quite sure they're offering market value for the kind of talent they're looking for. So, what's the problem?

I'd wager they're having trouble finding people talented enough and who make a good culture fit.

Then again, when I think programming I don't think cubicle-wage-slave cranking out Java or something. I guess you could quadruple the number of code monkeys in the world to fill all THOSE positions. I wouldn't want to work with the people who came out of that factory, though.

<comment><USER4> Aren't they _by definition_ not offering market value if they're having a hard time finding people?

<comment><USER3> No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> German, Romanian, Vietnamese-American (1st generation immigrant), Chinese- American (1st generation immigrant), Spanish, Iranian, French, Australian, South African, Indian, British, Russian. What's that? The nationalities of the people who sit in my hallway in the computer security department of one of the biggest software companies in the United States. OK, admittedly there also four or five true red-blooded Americans in the hallway but they are definitely a small minority.

We are absolutely feeling the lack of US geeks. They are rare enough in software development but even rarer in computer security. We have several open positions but it's mostly non-Americans who apply. We are basically excited about every application from a US citizen we get. This makes hiring much easier and we do not have to wait until October 1st when the new H-1B visa period kicks in.

Now, I have speculated that maybe the company I work for is just unpopular with US citizens but then I recently interviewed with a Bay Area company with a much sexier public image and it's even worse there. I talked to members of a team of 12 people. 11 of them were not Americans.

In fact, we spent the lunch interview speculating about the causes of this situation. In the end we considered it most likely that the title of engineer is simply not sexy in the United States. In other parts of the world like some countries in Europe and especially Asia the job title of engineer carries a good amount of social respect and commands a respectable salary. That is not the case in the United States (well, the salary is actually good, but not the reputation) where the reputation ladder is topped by jobs like doctor or lawyer. It is not surprising that the smartest students would rather get into those jobs.

Anyway, in the light of all this I keep being amused that the US three-letter agencies are advertising their computer security positions so aggressively. With the current US talent I am seeing in the wild there is no way they will be able to fill these positions in any way that can compete with, say, the Chinese hacker legions. Rather, I foresee national interest waiver greencards for people like those in my hallway.

<comment><USER6> > That is not the case in the United States ... where the reputation ladder is > topped by jobs like doctor or lawyer

That would be a sample of environments where higher education is strongly pushed. In the area I grew up in, the amount parents spent pushing their kids to excel in athletics above anything else is stupid. I know a 6th-grade teacher who complains about kids not having any time for homework because they participate in non-school sports.

<comment><USER7> Are you saying that engineering does not require higher education in the US? It sure does in Europe...

<comment><USER8> It requires education, but not necessarily schooling.

My friend's father worked on some later Apollo missions and ended up leading a Titan engineering group with no college degree. He was a damned good engineer, though. If it were possible to earn mathematics degrees by test taking, he'd easily have had a graduate degree.

In the beginning he was a technician (which didn't require a degree), and once during crunch time he literally fixed a buggy electrical component an engineer was showing to his boss in front of his eyes. In his words after that one lucky break, he never looked back and just kept working his way up, excelling and proving himself in each position. After a point, the fact that he had no degree made his managers take _more_ notice of him. Clearly a man who had to work his way up through several levels he wasn't supposed to be eligible for had something unique.

It's difficult, especially in the defense industry, but sometimes talent wins out over credentials.

<comment><USER7> Funny. That is totally different in Europe. Engineering very much requires higher education, which definitely includes at least a basic understanding of business, economics, law etc. and of course good knowledge of physics, mathematics and deep insight in some engineering field. This is usually taught as a bachelor's degree. (Bachelor of Engineering)

That said, there are some able men and women who carry out engineering jobs without a degree (even though IIRC they can not call themselves engineers)

<comment><USER8> I think maybe you misread my comment. He had an _excellent_ education, across the board. It wasn't attained through formal schooling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the things that made the US so strong in the last century was the influx of great scientists from Europe during the world wars. I know many brilliant people from other countries today who would love to become US citizens but in some cases it is difficult for them to even secure visas. Our academic culture might still be preferable to that in many other countries but if we continue to let it decay this won't be the case for long. I think that it would help solve the problem the article addresses and carry countless other benefits if we made citizenship very easy to obtain for people with intelligence that is far above average. Even some rule like any foreign national who graduated from college in the US in the top 5% of their class automatic gets the option of US citizenship would have a profoundly positive impact. It's just baffling to me that we close our borders to people who would clearly improve our country.

<comment><USER10> Our academic system, especially in the research universities, is just fine. Nearly all the world's best research universities are in the US. Why? After WWII the US War Department concluded that math, science, and engineering were crucial for US national security, Since then Congress, via the NSF and NIH, fund the research universities well enough to make them lead the world. There's no problem with our research universities.

The supply of labor for software is a very different issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I suggest working to deprecate the glorification of sports stars, actors, rock musicians, and other careers that don't contribute to the advancement of humanity.

Demonstrate the wonders of STEM fields, and do so in a non-hokey manner (I've _seen_ the government ads and the ACM ads, they are terrible).

Instead of bubble-heads on the evening news, work to have thoughtful people providing the voice of the country. Work to have authorities in those fields providing discussion and commentary.

Work to raise the national mind past football, movies and booze and towards deeper understanding and discussion of real issues.

I believe that with an increase in the average thought level, we will suddenly find more geeks in our midst.

<comment><USER12> "I suggest working to deprecate the glorification of sports stars, actors, rock musicians, and other careers that don't contribute to the advancement of humanity."

Programming and computer science are important, but there's no need to belittle other professions. All the careers you listed require skill and dedication and contribute to the advancement of humanity in their own ways. I agree it's always good to raise the general level of thought and knowledge, but there are plenty of intelligent people who enjoy football, movies, music, and even _gasp_ booze.

<comment><USER13> The point being that kids are growing up in a culture that puts _more_ importance on becoming a celebrity in the entertainment business than on the task of increasing the breadth and depth of human knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think there's three reasons that there's a shortage of U.S. CS graduates:

1) Dot-com bust: Lots of people jumped into CS when it looked like being a programmer was a easy way to become a millionaire. When it became obvious that wasn't going to happen for most CS graduates and there was a glut of talent in the market, people switched to something else.

2) Outsourcing: Right on top of the dot-com bust was the trend towards outsourcing. There was lots of scary noise about how programmers were the next factory workers: gone overseas and never coming back.

3) H1-Bs: They hurt the supply of U.S. CS students by making wages lower which makes CS a less attractive major. (For the record, I'm pro immigration, but anti-H1-B. H1-B workers have very little ability to negotiate salary and companies like Tata abuse the H1-B system).

Issues #1 and #2 have more or less worked themselves out, so you'd expect that the current shortage will end as people start seeing CS as a good option again.

<comment><USER15> _H1-Bs: They hurt the supply of U.S. CS students by making wages lower which makes CS a less attractive major. (For the record, I'm pro immigration, but anti-H1-B. H1-B workers have very little ability to negotiate salary and companies like Tata abuse the H1-B system)._

I won't take any government blather about the lack of native-born engineers seriously until this is addressed. What kid in his right mind is going to go into a field in which the government undermines his ability to get a raise?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Question: Who wants to work for a government that locks up its citizens for using TrueCrypt or exploring around, as the hackers they have now grew up? It seems to me that they have cut off their "user base" from the very thing it requires to exist.

<comment><USER11> That is true. But without knowledgable people in their midst, who will educate them about the electronic frontier?

This is why the EFF came into being in the early 90s.

Here's a link to Sterling's book, the Hacker Crackdown[1]. He talks about the early, early EFF. It really reminds me of today.

[1] <http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They are operating on obsolete data. CS enrollment has been on an upswing since 2009.

This topic reveals a bit of confusion within the industry. On one hand there's a commonly held belief that anyone outside of the top 1% of developers is next to worthless as an employee. Yet when articles like this come out suggesting a huge shortage of home-grown nerds, everyone agrees that "something must be done" and kids must be guided towards math and CS classes...

<comment><USER18> It's government employees trying to pad their resume by spearheading programs along with industry types trying to get labor as cheaply as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is no geek shortage. there's a shortage of people who are willing to let the FBI tap their phones, work on computers not connected to the internet, or take frequent random drug tests.

Fed jobs suck.

<comment><USER20> Fed interviews suck too. Drug tests, polygraph tests (which we know is bogus science), months and months of waiting, just to be turned down.

I think Google's the only company with a worst interview process.. "Come interview for a job, which we'll offer you 5 months down the road. No, we can't tell you what you'll work on until after you've started working for us."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The amount of skill, devotion and intelligence it takes to be a geek is far higher than the rewards, especially when you take into account stuff like prestige. Even well paid geeks like Zuckerberg are treated in a condescending way.

Without a lot of intrinsic motivation, first worlders don't become geeks. There are major issues with prestige, image, lifestyle, pay, hours, lack of professional associations, lack of government influence, lack of sex appeal.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Interest in Computer Science has grown in resent years"

[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/06/11/technology/11...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/06/11/technology/11computing- graph/11computing-graph-articleInline-v2.jpg)

from

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/technology/11computing.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/technology/11computing.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&ref=collegesanduniversities)

</comment><comment><USER23> It really is simple economic at work here. When lawyers, doctors, investment bankers, or managers got paid much higher than engineers, why would smart native born Americans want to be engineers? Engineers are populated with smart people who don't have verbal fluency in English, i.e. smart first generation immigrants or smart foreigners.

<comment><USER24> If these people really thought about it, they would see that the market is flooded with lawyers and screaming for quality engineers of all kinds. I know this because my wife is in law school and the law schools are admitting and churning out more lawyers than ever despite many law jobs dissolving into thin air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article reports, "The agency doesn't offer specifics on what kinds of activities might boost computing's appeal to teens, but they want programs to include career days, mentoring, lab tours and counseling."

Career days, mentoring, lab tours, and counseling are all surely good ideas. But building up desire to become a computer geek among teens will only go so far unless the teens have enough background coming out of high school to learn the actual skills of a computer geek.

Currently, the ACT college admission testing organization estimates that three-fourths of the young men and women entering colleges "were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses."

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230407010457639...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070104576399532217616502.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)

There are varying amounts of mathematical background strictly necessary for working in various kinds of programming jobs. It would be a rare programming job that wouldn't require at least as much solid skill in mathematics as implied by completing a second year of secondary school algebra. But a lot of high school graduates don't reach that level of math skill, even if they have taken an algebra II course.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/requiring- alg...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/requiring-algebra-ii- in-high-school-gains-momentum-nationwide/2011/04/01/AF7FBWXC_story.html)

[http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/cccr10/pdf/Conditio...](http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/cccr10/pdf/ConditionofCollegeandCareerReadiness2010.pdf)

I've given more citations to studies of United States mathematics education in another HN post,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2562743>

so I won't belabor that point here. I'll simply point out that with students who have decent math skills in shortage already, moving math-able students into computer science or computer engineering but from physics or medicine or other forms of engineering still leaves the United States with a potential national security problem.

</comment><comment><USER26> As a college student, I think the best way to get people my age motivated to become geeks and get into computer programming is to show them how cool it can be as well as how it can result in being successful. Students need to see how cool it is to be involved in the tech startup community. The Social Network movie did a great job of showcasing this, but I think it needs to be taken further. Essentially we need to work on turning tech companies and their founders into celebrities in the same way that sports teams and their players are.

Also I think we need to change how people are exposed to programming. For many people, the phrase "I'll explain how this works later" is highly discouraging. As such when the first language they are exposed to is a C variant, they tend to be immediately turned off. Languages like Python should be the base of programming education as they provide the ease of use that can excite new users, while still providing the foundations necessary to learn more complex languages. Also, when learning a language students should really be shown what they can do with the tools they are learning. For example I was in an introductory class and the teacher taught what a class was, but not how we could use it for anything.

<comment><USER22> Also as a college student, I think that the hole "geek" stuff should be dropped. We need to aspire to be engineers, scientists, businessman, artists, makers... not "geeks".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think that part of the problem is in how geeks are trained and what they work on. For example, think of all the software people go go to school, learn java, and then build big ugly enterprise bank, insurance, whatever software inside some megacorp that nobody cares about. Most end users of said software don't like it and have zero appreciation for the people who made it.

Outside of Silicon Valley being a geek isn't cool, being a geek just means that you're seen as tech support to friends and family. They appreciate it, but it's not like you're a doctor or a lawyer or pro athlete or something.

Also, not only do a lot of the jobs for developers kind of suck, the things we expect from geeks is horribly standardized. For example, outside of the startup community you have 3 primary camps - PHP, Java, and .NET. I think most jobs I've seen want developers who are stuck in one of those three camps and have lots of experience there so that they build more standard software on standard platforms.

Even PG wrote about that very phenomenon when he talked about how you didn't have to worry about a competitor whose job listings wanted Oracle. I see more job listings for PHP/JavaEE/.NET coders in a week than I've seen for Rails/Python/Lisp/Scala/Clojure in a year.

If we are turning developers into PHP/.NET/JavaEE glue coders I kind of doubt that young geeks would look up to us either. It's hard to be a uber geek when all you know is Java from college CS course and Java EE in your full time job. It's hard to make other people want to turn into uber geeks when they see their parents or friends' parents having boring corporate tech jobs they don't enjoy any more than the accountants or secretaries or managers do.

If as geeks we want more geeks, we have to do more super cool geeky stuff instead of being so dreadfully boring.

We need to do more things that are "magic" like iPhone, Facebook, Kinect, and StumbleUpon(which has become bizarrely popular on college campuses I've noticed) and less things that are super lame like building horrid software that people loathe using - Lotus Notes, SAP, etc...

Since when does programming have to feel like double entry accounting? Since when should the hiring process and the training process feel much the same as accounting or banking?

Geeks have gone from being seen as wizards to being seen as technical bean counters and paper pushers.

<comment><USER28> _For example, think of all the software people go go to school, learn java, and then build big ugly enterprise bank, insurance, whatever software inside some megacorp that nobody cares about._

For what it's worth, nothing requires Enterprise software to be big, ugly, boring, hard to use, etc. Maybe I'm biased, since I'm working on an Enterprise Software startup, but I think this stuff can be damn interesting. Then again, I'm in the "Enterprise 2.0" space, and am working with interesting stuff like social network analysis, activity streams, machine learning, text mining, semantic web tech, etc. Maybe writing accounting software _is_ boring, but the stuff we're doing has a lot of interesting aspects to it, IMHO.

<comment><USER29> This definitely seems interesting. Are you guys hiring?

<comment><USER28> Not in the sense of looking for "employees", no. Looking for (a) co- founder(s), yes. A co-founder would need to be (or be able/willing to re- locate to) somewhere pretty close to Raleigh/Durham, NC. If you're interested, shoot me an email.

Note that this is still in self-funded, bootstrap", "nights and weekends" mode. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Franky, I don't believe there is a shortage of engineers.

A true shortage in the market (relative to demand) is accompanied by a rise in salaries. In certain niche markets we _are_ seeing that [google's big raises, etc] but I don't believe that market has much in common with the market that DARPA cares about i.e. making new and better ways to <strike>kill people</strike> defend the country.

Are the DeathTech and Skynets of the world start offering much higher salaries during this "shortage"?

</comment><comment><USER31> Obviously, finding good people to hire is not easy. Many US government agencies and contracting companies need "cleared" US citizens. Waiting several months for the clearance process is sometimes not an option. I know one employer right now who is offering $1000 to employees for every person they bring in to interview. The interview candidates must have an active US government security clearance.

</comment><comment><USER32> My impression is that there are already way too many people working for the military industrial complex.

It would be much better if the US would scale down their oversized military and then it also might consider working on goods that advance the life of people and which might actually be interesting to others so they can be sold.

The military jobs is actually one reason the US lacks competitiveness in some areas (see the huge trade deficit). This works so: getting rich is very important.So young people go to finance and other gambling like activities. The more engineer interested people find jobs in the military. There they work on extremely costly projects like nuclear aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, nuclear weapons, drones, fighter planes, etc. These projects come with a huge price tag. The technologies used, the specifications used, the processes used are mostly incompatible with what a civil market needs. So the military engineers are naturally trained in the wrong direction. For example a vehicle constructed for the military is heavy, provides protection, has a huge payload, is robust, has infrastructure for certain types of equipment, etc.. Think of a tank or a hummer. Most of these requirements don't fit into what is needed for, say, automobiles. There we need to look at design, comfort, fuel efficiency, etc. But the US cars mostly (not all) are oversized, bulky, fuel inefficient, ugly. Why? Because the engineer culture constantly has an influx of different values coming from military engineering. For them it is more important to drive securely through the streets of Bagdad, and not through some large US city.

Now, I think there is a need to work on topics like cyber security, but it may help at the same time to reduce other projects like the large spying agencies and much of the military. Currently these are expanding in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER33> As a counter argument, consider DARPA. They do important R&D that no one else do. (As far as we know; it is a relatively open process).

You could make quite a good argument that military, academic and industrial research are partly orthogonal; they complement each others.

But I can agree that to waste money and really _build_ the military equipment is mostly a waste of money. :-)

<comment><USER32> The D in DARPA is for 'Defense'. For some time it was just ARPA. They added the D so that nobody makes the mistake to misunderstand the nature of their research: advanced research for military. Automated warfare, weapons of the future, soldier of the future, robot drones, ...

The other stuff like material, sensors, etc. is just basic research needed for weapons.

I would propose to shift the research money to projects like cleaning up nuclear weapon production sites, energy efficiency, cleaning the old coal power plants and more. Probably more people are endangered by the emissions of the aging coal power plants than from enemies in foreign countries...

<comment><USER33> My point was, the research money for DARPA are well spent -- and probably increase human science and technology in better ways than most any other use of that money. Including e.g. emergency health care.

If you have that much trouble with weapon research I'm sorry, but don't throw out the advanced prosthetics with the water.

(Sorry for coming in late.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> We can't rely in gov't funding to spur interest in geekdom, <http://m.cnbc.com/id/43499606> Firms Have Record $800 Billion Of Cash But Still Won't Hire

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't think you could pay me enough to work for the government. As a geek, I am of the opinion that geeks care very little for bureaucracy which the government is by definition. Not that this article is about working for the government but rather "geekifying" the employees of tomorrow. What they can do is create programs to whet the appetite of impressionable young minds from every background. Those that take to it will persevere. Others will not. Let's not forget that this is not Soviet Russia where people became what they were told to become.

</comment><comment><USER36> I got a BA in Computer Science (with mediocre grades) in college because I wasn't mature enough to apply myself in the difficult mathematics courses. I'm not sure if I can manage to do interesting/valuable things without going back to school.

My entire career has consisted of making and maintaining more or less the same applications for 10 years. I know I could just self-teach it all, but I do much better with a peer group and a little structure.

Sad, but I don't see a way out of it.

</comment><comment><USER37> The English speaking countries of the world need a 'free movement of labour' agreement, like the EU.

IE, UK, US, CA, AU, NZ

</comment><comment><USER38> How I'd approach this problem:

1) Decriminalize & culturally normalize exploratory activities 2) Reform intellectual property law 3) Create a strong co-op/apprenticeship market that engages students from legal working age through college

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder, is this shortage they see only an issue for CS-type work, or geeks in general? They have many other fields of development besides security, algorithms and the like.

</comment><comment><USER40> Perhaps the 43 percent enrollment drop was partly due to the "geeks" leaving college and scoring funding for their startup.

Perhaps the "without college graduates with the ability to understand and innovate cutting edge technologies in the decades to come" is due to the problem that colleges are usually several years behind in teaching the newest software. Are you going to hire somebody who learned how to do AJAX calls to PHP in school or somebody who is running websockets to Node.js?

Perhaps "...appeal to teens, but they want programs to include career days, mentoring, lab tours and counseling." is exactly what turns off a hacker. Solving problems is engaging, getting lectured at by some mentor or counselor is not.

The real shortage will be from pushing all the hackers into lulzsec and anonymous, not from the imploding academia.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you go into computer science, you will:

* Work with a lot of socially underdeveloped people. Hey, they spend their time fighting compilers, not reaching consensus. Soft skills are largely irrelevant.

* Probably work in one of a very few technology hubs around the world. This is all the more painful when you realize how little interaction you actually need with your team, and you could be doing your job from a shack on a Thai beach.

* Never have your job understood by anyone. Unless your S.O. is also a geek, he/she will have no deep understanding and appreciation of your work, beyond the decent salary. Random strangers will have no idea what "software engineer" or "researcher" means.

* Spend your life in front of a computer. If you are in a certain percentage of the population (which you won't know), you may suffer debilitating physical pain from this which curbs or ends your career.

* Experience a significant uptick in ageism around your mid-thirties. Just when you're gaining some wisdom to go along with your sponge-like learning ability, you'll suddenly find yourself devalued for no objective reason.

You can go into finance and become a millionaire, or at least hob-nob with a few. You can become a doctor, lawyer, or (to a lesser extent) a CPA, probably make better money, and get significantly more respect. You can become a teacher, cop, or join the military and make less, but be labeled 'hero'. Why would you want to be a professional geek?

My advice to young people is to pursue your interest in CS, but major in something else. Being in a non-CS field with outstanding computer skills makes you very special. Those same computer skills are merely so-so in tech centers, and you have no additional versatility.

<comment><USER41> Social interactions are trivial compared to computer science. Truly smart people have no difficulty talking to others, because their knowledge propelled them to understand how little sense it makes to be impolite in face of all that is to know. I would wager that it's others who have difficulty talking to us programmers in a clear, calm and efficient way, not the other way around.

If you care about how others perceive your job, then you have underlying character problems that should be solved by measures other than acquiring an illustrious job.

Almost everyone spends their life in front of a computer nowadays, and this percentage is only going to grow.

If I may presume as much: We are in computer science / engineering because we want to stop having to deal with bullshit. Every fabric of life seems to be pervaded with it. Have you actually talked to graduates from other courses? They retain little to nothing of what they learnt. Their knowledge is useless trivia. Doctors know nothing of how their medications _actually_ work.They are glorified nurses.Lawyers deal with abstract, hilariously overcomplicated laws and loopholes. Computer science is about the last bastion of sanity in this world.

<comment><USER42> "Doctors know nothing of how their medications actually work. They are glorified nurses."

My wife is a doctor, still in residency, so I know the kind of training doctors go through. She has taken in an inhuman amount of information during her training. No, she hasn't retained it all, but that's impossible.

Geeks understand that we're working with a very deep stack, and for nearly all of us, there are parts of the stack we don't understand. Say you're making a web app. Complete understanding would include include psychology and user interaction theory, color theory and screen resolutions and graphic design, the inner workings of browsers, markup, CSS and Javascript, the whole networking stack from electrical pulses up to HTTP, public/private key encryption, the many nuances of well-factored code, compilers and interpreters, databases, operating systems, memory managent, and chip logic down to the logical gates and the low-level physics of electricity. What parts can go wrong and how? What security risks exist in this stack?

There is too much for one person to know it all, and that's in __a system that people designed __, where there __are __specialists who can fully understand at least part of it. Doctors have an even deeper stack, from chemistry and DNA and cell biology up to organs and systems and disease processes, all the way up to the psychology of patient interactions. __Nobody __understands the parts of this stack. People spend their whole lives studying things like cellular metabolic processes and immune system biochemical cascades and don't fully understand them. How can a doctor know more than all the specialists combined?

Clearly there are good doctors and bad ones. But it's ludicrous to say that they "retain little to nothing of what they learned" or "their knowledge is useless trivia." It's arrogance.

If someone tells you their monitor doesn't work and they think it's because they have a computer virus, you could hardly begin to tell them how wrongly they understand their computer. You would not appreciate having your objections dismissed by this person who does not know your field at all. Please don't do the same to people who are experts in other highly complex fields.

<comment><USER41> Thank you, I didn't think of it this way. You are right.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pash: PowerShell open source reimplementation for Linux, Mac, & Solaris - <AUTHOR> http://pash.sourceforge.net/ <comment><USER2> I've built something along these lines, Object Shell: <http://geophile.com/osh>, (GPL license). Object Shell provides for piping of python objects between commands. For example,

        bash-3.2$ osh ls -f ^ select 'f: f.size > 20000' $
        ('./.DS_Store',)
        ('./.psql_history',)
        ('./backup.log',)
        ('./loljack.jpg',)

osh invokes the interpreter. ls is osh's ls command. The -f flag restricts the ls command to files. ^ is the osh pipe character, so the list of files in the current directory is piped to the next command. select filters out objects that don't pass the predicate, in this case, that file.size > 20000\. $ renders output (using python's str()).

osh also does database access, e.g.

        osh sql "select * from my_table" $

and remote access. E.g., to run the same query on every node of a cluster named foobar:

        osh @foobar [ sql "select count(*) from my_table" ] $

Piping python tuples between commands and then operating on them from the command line is really handy.

Object Shell also has a python API, e.g.

        #!/usr/bin/python

        from osh.api import *

        osh(remote('foobar',
                   sql("select count(*) from my_table")),
            out())

<comment><USER3> that looks really nice. Is there an interactive version, like ipython but with pipelining? Also is there any way to use pipe for pipelining rather than carat (a bit sad but Im used to reading pipe as pipe after twenty years of Unix and DOS).

<comment><USER2> No, there isn't an interactive version, but I once tried the API from inside iPython, and that worked.

Pipe is interpreted by the shell and separates the commands on either side, so I don't see how that could work. The very first version of osh actually did run separate commands, connected by a Unix pipe, but the pickling and unpickling costs were extremely high, so I opted for running the whole command in one process.

<comment><USER3> If you felt like making a full shell replacement I'd help with Python cmdlets. I have a lot of experience reimplementing shell stuff in pythonic Apis.

<comment><USER2> I'll contact you by email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really hope I'm wrong about this, but I think this was all but abandoned in 2008ish, and is missing a lot of what's in PS.

(check date of newest files <http://sourceforge.net/projects/pash/files/>)

It's really too bad, as there are some interesting tools written in Powershell-only/first mode. I was on the hunt for something like this a little while back when I had some cool VMware tools that were only in Powershell, but wanted to run them from Linux.

Would love to hear I'm wrong about this, or that there's another ps implementation for those on Linux/ Mac.

Here is a more recent thread pining for cross-platform Powershell.

<http://go-mono.com/forums/#nabble-td1573385>

<comment><USER5> Looks like you are right. I wish it would be possible to un-upvote a Hacker News submission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are the benefits of using pash(powershell) over bash?

<comment><USER7> Nothing that a decent scripting language with a REPL and some decent libs can't provide you because that is essentially what this is.

I, for one, am quite glad that my shell does not pipe objects. Text-based transports have the wonderful property that they are suspend-able (i.e. save output to a file, transfer them to another machine load them from the file; something you can't do with objects without serialization) and consistently represented on the console and for the receiving process.

Processes on my machine send and receive arbitrary byte streams. I have specialized tools for communicating with servers with specialized protocols. If you really want a shell AND a scripting language all at once, use something like IPython: <http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/>

<comment><USER8> There are multiple serialization options for powershell though. And since it can be made to work fairly seamlessly with other commandline tools, it isn't usually that hard in practice

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does it implement a sucky Windows-style Console?</comment>


Single Writer Principle - <AUTHOR> http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html <comment><USER2> Interesting read.

BTW, Java seems rather poor choice for a blog post about threading performance issues. It goes to great length trying to optimize stuff but it seems to me that switching programming language would be much more efficient and less time consuming.

<comment><USER3> The same issues with locking and memory barriers while multithreading will appear regardless of language.

That said, I agree that it is strange to see that they keep using Java for the main loop if they don't allow for garbage collection during operation. If they had used C for the main loop, the worker threads for the business logic could have been restarted on the fly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Buried the lead. Read the last paragraph first.</comment>


Millions of Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Emails and Passwords Being Traded Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.techtimes.com/articles/156107/20160505/millions-of-gmail-hotmail-and-yahoo-emails-and-passwords-being-traded-online-as-part-of-huge-data-breach.htm <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/major-security- breaches-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/major-security-breaches- found-in-google-and-yahoo-email- services_us_5729f450e4b016f378942950?ir=Technology&section=us_technology&utm_hp_ref=technology)</comment>


Brave Rewards Update - <AUTHOR> https://brave.com/rewards-update/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's great to see the team move quickly to resolve the UI / UX issues that Tom Scott was rightly upset about.

I've switched from Firefox to Brave due to their stronger stance against Surveillance Capitalism, and as someone who's been in the deep, dark depths of ad-tech appreciate the attempt to discover a new funding model for the web.

Much of the discussion recently on HN and Twitter was incorrect, but at the discussion's heart was a truth the previous UI incorporated what could be considered dark patterns.

It is interesting though to see the rise of bad-faith criticisms, as having read Eich's detailed responses online, and looking at the team, including Yan Zhu (bcrypt) and advisers like Zooko it is clear to me there is a highly technical, principled team motivated to make a positive, significant impact on how we fund content on the web.

When you consider a leading voice on GDPR - Dr Johnny Ryan - decided to join Brave and they are now engaged in significant actions in support of GDPR and against entities like Google I suppose it should be no surprise that ferocious and uninformed criticism of them will arise from many quarters.

This feels like a move into the 'and then they fight you' phase of the new browser wars.</comment>


Ask HN: Keeping track of support requests/emails/tickets - <AUTHOR>

The last discussion on applications to keep track of support requests seems to be around 2 years ago.  I wonder if there have been any new companies or applications that have sprung up since then.
I'm looking for a clean application to keep track of issues and support requests with good reporting capabilities.
What are you using for this? <comment><USER2> My startup is currently developing a new ticket tracking system named Tracker, and it might be exactly what you're looking for. Tracker's focus is helping you do email support for external customers, but it also works well for internal company support.

Tracker is lightweight, fast, and has exceptional search and email integration. The web interface is quite quick and has some nice features, but you can also perform most functions (replying to customers, creating tickets, commenting) straight from your mail client.

We're currently in private beta, but if you're interested you can email me at dave AT madwombat DOT com, and I'll set you up with an account.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've had <http://tenderapp.com/> recommended to me - anyone with experience with this app?

<comment><USER3> We are on tender.app hooked up with lighthouse.app It works great. Your support tickets can be flagged to the lighthouse issue tracker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've heard of people using a shared Gmail account for support tickets and handling ownership with labels.

<comment><USER5> We do the same thing, with a simple label system ("Follow Up", "Request for Feature X", "Request for Feature Y") to give us a little more overview visibility.

I'd certainly recommend this approach, especially if your workflow is well defined (we answer, then archive - Follow Up and start a ticket in Lighthouse if it needs to fixed. Unread == unanswered).

Have looked at ZenDesk and Tender, but we feel like they force people to jump through too many hoops in order to ask a question. For a logged-in user, it should really just be a "what do you want to ask us?" field, and for a logged out user just email/question. In my humble opinion, of course. ;)

<comment><USER6> That's something we definitely need to market better in Tender then or talk with user about. I hope that's not the under understand most people have. One of our main focuses was to allow for anonymous submissions of issues and implement a straight forward email option so people do not have to register for accounts. Implementing a Single Sign On system was our very first priority to avoid all need when coming from another web applications, so you can go straight to the form and ask what you need to without any hassle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been using Zendesk at the company I work at for about a month and at first I didn't like it, but after getting used to it, it's not that bad. We don't use the public forums however, so I can't speak to that. But reply via email, iPhone app, and the macros are all nice touches.

<comment><USER8> Switched over to Zendesk a few months back. Our support people love it, and their API is a pleasure to work with. Best integration I've done in a long time.

<comment><USER9> Haven't used it myself, but a company I interviewed with mentioned using Zendesk too. It's gaining quiet a following!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://getsatisfaction.com/> or <http://lighthouseapp.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment.

I'm talking more about when users register an issue about your startup/site/service that you need to track and resolve. Lighthouse seems to be more about internal project management, and I'm confused about how Getsatisfaction relates to this?

<comment><USER6> GetSat and Lighthouse are two totally different things. While Lighthouse has been used for support in the past, it's a privatized ticket tracker and not a support system.

We built Tender out of what we learned from dealing with Lighthouse support, which is why we added some pretty cool Lighthouse integration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Trellis Helpdesk - <http://www.accord5.com/trellis> at the moment it does not have a good reporting, but v2 is going to be released soon (aplha available now at <http://www.accord5.com/trellis_desk_v2_alpha_1.zip>)</comment>


Building a Basic Interpreter, '80s Style, Part 2 - <AUTHOR> https://able.bio/kerrishotts/building-a-basic-interpreter-80s-style-part-2--e91250f1 <comment><USER2> Here are some other interpreters if you're curious how this design compares.

Microsoft 8080 BASIC interpreter [0] is a commented disassembly. An improved version is at [1]. The book Programmers at Work also has notes on the design.

[2] is a z80 BBC BASIC interpreter.

[0] [http://altairbasic.org/](http://altairbasic.org/)

[1] [https://github.com/option8/Altair- BASIC](https://github.com/option8/Altair-BASIC)

[2] [https://github.com/jblang/bbcbasic-z80](https://github.com/jblang/bbcbasic-z80)

<comment><USER3> Any suggestions for CBM BASIC?

<comment><USER4> Commodore licensed BASIC from Microsoft in 1977.

You have the original ASM disassembled, ROM, kernal and comments at [https://www.pagetable.com/c64ref/c64disasm/](https://www.pagetable.com/c64ref/c64disasm/)

<comment><USER5> That's a neat site. Does that mean there are no public/surviving original comments of the C64 BASIC and kernal?

<comment><USER4> The dissembled ROM and mappings has been documented since the 80s. (Vic20, PET, 64 and 128).

My references (35 years) ago were some books published by Data Becker GmbH.

Note also that there were basic extensions to address the limitations of CBM basic like the Simon basic cartridge.

That Simon basic was a wonder in their own. Written by a gifted teenager and extending by mapping addresses in the ROM. It was possible to write sprites and graph in basic without pokes (no ASM needed).

<comment><USER5> Right but the disassembled commentaries are not written by the people who originally wrote the code, so if that site is to be believed the 'original' comments and source are not around for things like the kernal and other Commodore-specific bits. It seems like an odd thing not to have surfaced given that by this point we have things like OG Quickdraw and Karateka code.

Edit: I missed the comment downthread that says that some of that code was released a couple of years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can we fix the capitalization in the title? It's the programming language BASIC, which stands for Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

<comment><USER7> For the past few decades it has been common practice to treat language names as normal words independent of their origin. So FORTRAN, LISP, SNOBOL and BASIC have become Fortran, Lisp, Snobol and Basic. Unless the name doesn't look like a word, as in APL or PL/I.

I am just guessing here, but in the really old days many computers only had capital letters and languages with names that were words ended up spelled as FORTH and PASCAL when they shouldn't have been. When lower case characters became common this was corrected and it could be that the acronym based language names came along for the ride.

The only language name that really matters is Smalltalk. The name is actually used in expressions so if someone spells it as SmallTalk their program won't work.</comment></comment>


SXSW Cancelled Because of Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/03/06/813023174/the-show-will-not-go-on-sxsw-cancelled-because-of-coronavirus <comment><USER2> Speaking as an Austin resident, nearly the first thing I thought after reading about Covid-19 (on HN) about a month ago was, "well I guess I'm not going to any SXSW shows this year".

If Saudi Arabia can cancel/postpone the Umrah pilgrimage, I guess Austin can live without SXSW for a year.

But, I wonder, as we are both more interconnected and more able to realize what is happening when a virus like H1N1, SARS, MERS, Covid-19, etc. pops up, what percentage of the years will this happen? Not saying it was in any way a mistake, but I could imagine it might become a once or twice a decade event.</comment>


Show HN: PaaS with database and free backups - <AUTHOR> https://backery.io <comment><USER2> I love services like this, but I am super weary to adopt them, particularly after Now v1's deprecation. It's kind of difficult to run a stable production application when your Platform-as-a-Service provider announced major breaking changes-- aka killing docker, and forcing me to rewrite my application in serverless lambdas (which doesn't work for all use cases, like web sockets).

It killed the category in my mind, it isn't even your fault. I now feel far more comfortable running on bread-and-butter tools, like AWS/GCP/Azure with Kubernetes. The overhead sucks, but at least I can plan for things better than I can when hosting with fast-moving PaaS providers.

Hosting is too important of a problem to wholly outsource entirely to a PaaS platform if it's subject to shuffling at a rate I can't control (exception: personal projects with no real availability expectations). That's the double edged sword with platforms like these. They let you get your application online rapidly, but you could be subject to unforeseen technical debt at the hosting provider's will. I learned (the hard way) that I'm not a fan on managing risk under those terms.

<comment><USER3> Not quite. If your application architecture is flexible enough, in this case, if you could split endpoints into serverless endpoints, i believe you could combine them later to adapt other providers.

For websocket, you can move it to another "not-serverless" hosting as well.

Splitting then combine is far more easier than combine then splitting.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, but then you have to ditch Now for your websockets, and you significantly increase the complexity of your deployment by having your serverless code on Now and your containers on Kubernetes.

At that point, I'd rather just go fully in on Kubernetes and keep the benefits of containers, rather than using two cloud providers.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Honestly, there's a time to ask, "could I run this on a single server LAMP stack?" _If_ it matches what you're doing, it'll work for years-decades with a little care and feeding. Can be self-hosted, or if you host elsewhere is a common denominator of service.

<comment><USER2> That might require a little bit more security knowledge than I practically have, with respect to securing servers in cloud environments. That was one of the appeals of PaaS platforms, to me. At least with Kubernetes, you're based on things like Container OS, which to my knowledge are secure out of the box (zero config).

Me, setting that up from scratch on a single VPS, that might get hacked if I mess it up, and then my customer's availably is compromised? I wouldn't want to be in that situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I built this over a few weeks. If you have any feedback please let me know!

<comment><USER4> Congrats on shipping. Your pricing, very roughly, looks like about 1/2 that of Heroku.

One question: for the two lower cost plans with weekly backup: if there is a hardware failure and you need to restart all apps on a new server, how much time would this take? I am not asking for an estimate if the data center you use goes down, just asking about an estimate for spinning up apps on a new server.

I ask because I like to host small experiments. If apps are down occasionally for a half hour or an hour that is OK, but a few hours isn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

The time to spin a new server and set up the apps back on it is no more than a few minutes (depending if you had a DB and how large it is). You can see it in action when you scale an app up, it will spin a new server, import back the DB on it, build your app and switch DNS to the new location. Rarely takes more than 5 minutes.

I think tho if something happens at the hardware level and we lose our servers we would seriously consider switching providers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great project!

There's a typo in your docs, first line below "Source Code", it says "maneer" instead of "manner".

I'm curious how your projects are doing finally. Would you mind sharing? Maybe even via an open dashboard like Buffer and Ghost are doing?

I hope you're either doing good already or will do soon!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) And thanks for the typo.

If you're interested: for now I've only monetized two projects beside Backery (Nucleus and Harmony). Nucleus is doing right now around $200 / month (growing) and Harmony around $150 monthly, slowing decreasing with time. I like building too much but should focus more on selling, even tho it feels a bit counterintuitive to me. An open dashboard is a good idea, I love these. Can definitely put one in place once I have some more steady revenues :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think I'm a target audience for something like this. I created a web app that uses Postgres and hosted it with elastic beanstalk. It was about $50/month so I took it down. $3/month is much more reasonable for my needs

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like a managed caprover.com :-)

Is there a way to store immutable files (something similar to S3)?

Is the filesystem available and persistent?

Regarding PostgreSQL and other databases, do you backup the WAL? (DigitalOcean Managed Databases backups the WAL every 5 minutes.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yeah! I used Caprover when it was still CaptainDuckDuck, it was awesome :)

\- No, for now it's only application hosting. You should use an external service like S3 to store immutable files.

\- Although filesystem is available it might reset on server upgrade / scaling / migration. That happens very rarely (safe for temp files) but general files should be stored somewhere like S3.

\- For PostgreSQL backups, they are actually done with dumps (pg_dump) so it's not a base backup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The lowest price is quite attractive to people who run an app on a $5 VPS (although there are some < $5 / vps out there). $5 VPS vs $3 PaaS, Kinda good market positioning!

Would be nice if you support Elixir (you don't have to, maybe it's not worth it since demand would not be high)

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice, I have always been wondering why Heroku don't work with other Infrastructure provider on cheaper alternatives at the low to Mid end price range.

Congrats on launching.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another viable alternative is OpsCaptain. [https://www.opscaptain.com/](https://www.opscaptain.com/)

<comment><USER11> > If you want another database such as PostgreSQL, MySQL et al, you must > deploy them in another container as an addon.

Sounds like a pain.

<comment><USER10> They are listed on the dashboard, you point and click, select the version you want and the database is ready and running. There is no requirement on your part to handle the installation.

<comment><USER12> Would you call it a managed database, i.e. does it come with continuous backups and things like that?

<comment><USER10> Nope not managed. Only the Shared MongoDB database is managed. Does not provide continuous backups although planned only snapshot backups at the moment. We intend to offer a managed shared offering for the other databases as well but not a priority as MongoDB was and still is the most requested database.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As soon as someone makes a serverless postgres with a free tier on low usage we're going to see some big changes in the industry

<comment><USER14> What does that mean, a serverless postgres? Per query billing?

<comment><USER15> For me that would mean no limit on number of tables and rows assuming "low" usage, probably in terms of number of reads+writes over a certain period of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks great. Do you Oka on offering US hosting? Looks like it is currently based in Amaterdam.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hi, do you handle something similar to buildpacks and heroku addons? The price is very attractive. I should get around to try it this week.

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats on launching.

Unfortunately after the parse.com fiasco I have vowed to never again use a PaaS/BaaS service again for important deployments.

<comment><USER17> parse is alive and kicking on OSS [0], we at Universal Voucher are based on a vendor that deploys quickly the updates

[0] : [https://github.com/parse-community/parse- server](https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server)

<comment><USER14> Yeah, one of my clients ran on OSS Parse for a while too but at the time of Parse.com shutting down OSS parse was not stable at all.

In the end we decided to rewrite the whole thing as a Java/Spring/Postgres monolith on Kubernetes. The rewrite took 3 months from decision to production and has been running fine for two years now. Initially on AWS and more recently the staging/dev environments have been moved to DigitalOcean in a couple of hours.

After the pending acquisition we'll probably move the whole thing to Azure and I expect that to take a couple of days.

<comment><USER17> quick question :

if you are happy on DO, why switch to Azure ?

<comment><USER14> We switched our staging/dev environments to DO because of cost. A small Kubernetes cluster and hosted Postgres does not cost much there and is very easy to setup. But their hosted Kubernetes and Postgres services are still in "early access" so I'm holding off running production services on there for now.

The switch to Azure will likely happen post-acquisition to move everything into the infrastructure of the buyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's your MongoDB version and is it legal according to their new license?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently Mongo version is 3.4.x, I believe it's still within their old license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a minor spelling mistake "Ressources" on your page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :) fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks great! I'm going to give it a shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let me know what you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Excellent work! Taking a look.

</comment><comment><USER22> Dokku is a FOSS Heroku alternative, like this one

<comment><USER23> Yes, well no, not really.

It is single host. It requires still managing the host node you run it on. Dokku is nice and they did a good job mimicking the Heroku tool chain, but it is not even close to actually providing the value Heroku gives.</comment></comment>


Raspberry Pi book by The Pragmatic Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://pragprog.com/book/msraspi/raspberry-pi <comment><USER2> I saw the ToC and almost all information from the book seems to be present on the elinux wiki for the RPi, looks like it is a very basic introduction to the RPi indeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> To be accurate it is published by The Pragmatic Programmers, not written by them as the title kind of imples.

Maik Schmidt is the author of this book.

> Maik Schmidt has worked as a software developer for nearly 20 years and > makes a living creating complex solutions for large enterprises. Outside his > day job, he writes book reviews and articles for computer science magazines. > He is the author of Arduino: A Quick-Start Guide, Enterprise Recipes with > Ruby and Rails, and Enterprise Integration with Ruby for Pragmatic > Bookshelf.

</comment><comment><USER4> is this aimed at hn readers? it seems like a glorified "how to plug your computer in".

<comment><USER5> Probably not. It's probably aimed at the same target market as the Pi itself—teachers and children wanting to learn about basic computing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The book costs a third of the device?

<comment><USER7> I was surprised when it didn't cost more than a Raspberry Pi.

<comment><USER6> I was surprised when it wasn't free. It goes against the goals of the device and the surrounding community.

<comment><USER8> please note that i did not look at the book; so it might be actually worth it's money; but i am a bit biased and the first thing i think once a new pragmatic programmers book hits the market is:

somebody tries to make a quick buck. whatever is in this book, is basically just a quick write-up of what can be found in the internet for free anyway...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Breathe life into your software. Give it 'personality' - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eyesandfeet.com/2010/06/breathe-life-into-your-software-give-it.html <comment><USER2> Cute, but it can easily be taken too far, as with that MS Office paper clip thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Panic comes to mind as a company that makes software with personality, just look at their site:

<http://www.panic.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> The reminder seems nice, except for the fact that its using one of those godawful modal dialog boxes that prevents you from doing absolutely anything else. That crap needs to die a quick death.

<comment><USER5> No. BLOCKING errors _should_ generate modal dialog boxes. Warnings, hints, information, etc. shouldn't.

He presssed "send" to move on to the next page. He's done with everything, but he REALLY shouldn't go forward or do anything else until he's taken care of this.

<comment><USER4> Right, it should block the action he was doing, which is within one web page. But the browser modal dialog box blocks _all interaction_ in _every tab open in that browser window_ , which is beyond obnoxious. It's easy enough to pop up one of those lightbox style popups _within the webpage_ instead of blocking the whole damn browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe we've seen this here before.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's a little too big-brotherish. I know you're analyzing my email but don't bring what you know to the forefront like that.

<comment><USER8>
      if($('email-body').value.match(/I have (attached|included)/i)) {
        confirm('Did you mean to send an attachment?')
      }

<comment><USER7> Oh cmon man that's disingenuous. Detection of a user choice of an attachment is conscious transmittal of intent. Message analysis is a different layer of intrusion.</comment></comment></comment>


Personal Transparency - <AUTHOR> http://leostartsup.com/2014/12/personal-transparency/

<comment><USER2> Because taking $1 million from the cash reserves of a funding round for private consumption always looks like a healthy move for company directors. Doesn't trigger any warning bells...

</comment><comment><USER3> $1M each for two founders is a big slice of a $3.5M funding round. That kind of percentage taken out seems to defeat the purpose of raising money.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is like writing about why I ate a banana today.</comment>


Solving a Sudoku using SQL - <AUTHOR> http://technology.amis.nl/blog/6404/oracle-rdbms-11gr2-solving-a-sudoku-using-recursive-subquery-factoring

<comment><USER2> Another fine evidence of how bloated Oracle is. Sorry, that's just my opinion. Why would you want to be able to do something like this in your datastore? Maybe a database-admin really wants to be a programmer?</comment>


Protect IP threatens the future of DNS security - <AUTHOR> http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/08/26/protect_ip_threatens_the_future_of_dns_security

<comment><USER2> Another step in America's quest to become its parody of China.

<comment><USER3> And, yet bizarre, some people will see that as a necessary evil.

<comment><USER2> Speak to enough mainlanders and you'll see the same opinion in China.

<comment><USER4> And sadly, in both cases they have little control over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some discussion on this yesterday: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2932018>

</comment><comment><USER6> This idea of PROTECT IP is really bad. As Vixie said, it will bring more trouble than solutions. And in the end, it won't solve anything.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can't you just use an off-shore DNS?

<comment><USER6> .com, .net, .org are managed by US companies. So, no matter where you have the DNSs</comment></comment>


How police unions became so powerful — and how they can be tamed - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21290981/police-union-contracts-minneapolis-reform <comment><USER2> All of the issues we have with policing in the US i.e LEOBoRs, Police Unions etc., all exist because of who we are as a country.

<comment><USER3> It's not clear to me that this sentence has any meaning at all.

All artificial things exist because of who we are as a species</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What were some of the more devastating PHP exploits? - <AUTHOR> I am re-writing an old website of mine in PHP. I am curious what some of the worst PHP security exploits are that have been found in the recent past. <comment><USER2> PHP itself has been pretty secure for a while. If you're concerned about security within your application, go with a framework that handles things like database access for you.

The biggest thing to watch out for is SQL injection. There's so much old, viulnerable PHP code out there - and much of it in the examples people put out there for beginners!

OWASP has a PHP Security Cheat Sheet you might find helpful: [https://www.owasp.org/index.php/PHP_Security_Cheat_Sheet](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/PHP_Security_Cheat_Sheet)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your insightful comment. I am reading through the owasp web page you linked right now.</comment></comment>


Cloud computing: A catchphrase in puberty - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/25/cloud_dziuba/

<comment><USER2> For an article whose author sets himself up as a sarcastic judge and jury of basically the whole web community, this provides very little insight or information.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> On Google App Engine: _"Finally," they said, "somebody has figured out how to make Python scale."_

Made my day :)

I hope posts about "language X will not scale" would stop. Its really pointless.

</comment><comment><USER3> I could lambast this article so much, but Im on an iPhone and my last cigarette just ran out.</comment>


Digital Show and Tell: Digital Audio Signals [video] - <AUTHOR> http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml <comment><USER2> first comment</comment>


There's Now a Real Quantum Computer That Anyone Can Use Remotely - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/theres-now-a-real-quantum-computer-that-anyone-can-use-1774630965 <comment><USER2> "That allows a single bit to potentially hold two values at once, or for two bits to hold four values at once. Keep scaling those numbers, and you quickly end up with a device that can process data exponentially faster than today's computers."

Yet another quote for the misrepresentation of science in articles.</comment>


The Pinwheel Helicopter (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/visuals/photography/la-me-fw-archives-the-pinwheel-helicopter-20180603-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter <comment><USER2> Similar principle to this one:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHI_H-3_Kolibrie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHI_H-3_Kolibrie)

Powered by ramjets at the rotor tips. Very loud little machine, they used to have one on display at the Dutch aircraft museum Aviodrome but the last time I was there it was no longer there.

<comment><USER3> The photo in that Wikipedia article...

I can't stop seeing it as a computer rendered image.

Why does it look weird like that? To me?

<comment><USER4> Lack of shadows, geometric shapes in brilliant colours (some of which look bidimensional, like the red vertical strip on the windshield), a hint of triangular patterns at the top right. It definitely gives that feeling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was reading that article and thought "that sounds cool" and got to the bit where it mentions "hydrogen peroxide fuel" and changed my view to "that sounds terrifying"...

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure how dangerous that is, but it did give them an engine with fewer moving parts:

"It is lifted by a thin, 17-foot rotor blade that whirls just above the pilot's head under the power of hydrogen peroxide fuel broken down by catalytic action into steam that is ejected at high speed from the rotor tips."

"Ultrasimple, it has _no pistons, no electrical system, no lubrication or cooling system, no clutch, transmission or starter._ "

<comment><USER5> They are presumably using high test peroxide - which is _interesting_ stuff:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- test_peroxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-test_peroxide)

Not sure I would want to be effectively wearing a tank of the stuff.

<comment><USER7> > Not sure I would want to be effectively wearing a tank of the stuff.

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

From what I understand, most rocket belt designs continue to use such a system...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is impressive engineering

"Ultrasimple, it has no pistons, no electrical system, no lubrication or cooling system, no clutch, transmission or starter"

</comment><comment><USER9> for super small kit helicopters of today, with typical combustion engine, see: [http://www.mosquito- helicopter.info/Mosquito_Options_Air.htm...](http://www.mosquito- helicopter.info/Mosquito_Options_Air.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> >> A followup story in the Nov. 5, 1957, Los Angeles Times reported that Whitehead suffered a broken leg and other injuries "after the Buck Rogers-type craft went out of control" and fell about 50 feet.

Perhaps not for civilian use, then.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what happened after this crash.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you like to see in a developers only job board? - <AUTHOR> Thinking about putting together an MVP just for developers, possibly linking Github, Stackoverflow and others accounts.  What kinds of things would you like to see that you don't currently see in Monster, etc. ? <comment><USER2> \- if remote allowed then how many timezones difference (some US companies prefer +/\- 2 hours)

\- whiteboard interviews yes/no

\- custom sample project required, if so will the time spend on that be reimbursed

Remember that many good engineers don't have public github repositories. Doing open source work is a luxury.</comment>


Murders and disappearances of Indigenous women called a 'Canadian genocide' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/genocide-murdered-missing-indigenous-women-inquiry-report-1.5157580 <comment><USER5> I'd like to bring attention to the size of this issue. It's not Indigenous women in Canada, it's all of America.

[https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and- regional/mmiw/](https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/mmiw/)

[https://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/navajo- nation/2...](https://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/navajo- nation/2019/04/02/new-mexico-law-missing-murdered-indigenous-women-task- force/3345261002/)

[https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Almost-500-Guatemalan- Wo...](https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Almost-500-Guatemalan-Women-Still- Missing-Despite-New-Law-20170417-0027.html)

[https://www.sovereign-bodies.org/mmiw-database](https://www.sovereign- bodies.org/mmiw-database)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The actual report:

[https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/](https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final- report/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not understanding why it's a genocide. It's not one entity performing these killings and it's not organized; lots of indigenous women are just in shitty situations, that doesn't make it a genocide. We're talking about ~100 deaths a year here, that's the equivalent of gang violence in some run down American cities and we don't call that a genocide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just an FYI in response to your statement that you don't understand.

[https://twitter.com/apihtawikosisan/status/11352398862172733...](https://twitter.com/apihtawikosisan/status/1135239886217273347?s=19)

<comment><USER7> A tweet from some random is not typically how we define concepts.

Especially when the words are internationally agreed upon already.

<comment><AUTHOR> She's a First Nations Canadian author subject matter expert.

[https://apihtawikosisan.com/](https://apihtawikosisan.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Genocide is supposed to mean something a bit different than the terrible things that this article describes.

I really object to its usage here, the situation is terrible but genocide is something else.

</comment><comment> a0-prw Who does the raping and killing ? Is there any reliable data on that ? If it is predominantly people of European descent I will buy "genocide", otherwise, it's "just" another indigenous culture falling apart from being exposed to European culture. Oh, sorry ... we can't look at the "race" of the perpetrators, because that would be racial profiling.

</comment><comment><USER9> I could have topd them how to prevent more murdered or missing aborigional woman and it would have cost a lot less than $ 92 million

1\. Take some of that 92 million to run a bus service along the highway of tears and similar areas where lots of female hitch hikers go missing- or even just not arrest private entities who dont have state permission from running their bis service.

2\. Create acess points and resources for indigenous women who want to find work on cities.

3\. Actually give native people their tribal land instead of doing this thing where government cotrols sale and use of the land and natives have "fake ownership" where they get to live there. Either that or just be honest and admit youre not giving them the land and compensate with money.

4\. Make native governments actual governments that people might actually care enough to vote for rather than puppet governments that have to have every decision approved by the corrupt Indian Affairs branch of government.

[https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/ava4kk/canadas-first- nati...](https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/ava4kk/canadas-first-nations- reserves-have-a-faulty-system-of-government)

You got that government of Canada? You want to stop the murser of Canadian indigenous women all you have to do is stop facilitaing their deaths and creating circumstances where their deaths are inevitable. You dont have to spend 92 million on beurocratic reports that go nowhere.

What do we get for our 92 million $ report. We get crap like make native languages official languages like French. What does that mean - school kids learn every single native language on school like we do French? Every government agency has to have someone who speaks every one of the various native languages? The 92 million dollar report is fulled with quaint, unrealistic solutions that don't solve the problem. How is that going to stop these women from dying.

What native communities need to do is stop playing ball declare war and start stockpiling munitions. They need to fight back violently against the opressive tyrannical structure that has led to so many deaths in their communities. Only then do we have any hope of change. Because until they start shooting our government is going to keep this ridiculous structure that keeps natives imprisoned

<comment><USER10> "What native communities need to do is stop playing ball declare war and start stockpiling munitions. "

The aboriginal women dying, are doing so at the hands of aboriginal men unfortunately.

While historical social structures are obviously relevant, the $100M political show actually tried to move away form what the government already knows (i.e. intra familial violence) so as to somehow point the blame at external causes, which is shameful.

We should have invested the $100M in practical programs to help communities move on.

From Gov. Canada's own web site concerning victimization surveys [1] have a gander:

"Research reveals that Aboriginal women experience dramatically higher rates of violent victimization than non-Aboriginal women do (Proulx and Perrault 2000; Hylton 2002; Brzozowski et al. 2006). Violence within the domestic context is the most pervasive form of victimization experienced by Aboriginal women. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of Aboriginal women in Canada reported having been assaulted by a current or former spouse, compared to 7% of non-Aboriginal women (Brzozowski et al. 2006). Results from other studies suggest that this figure may be as high as 90% in some Aboriginal communities (Ontario Native Women's Association 2007).

The literature shows that Aboriginal women consistently report a rate of partner violence much higher than their non-Aboriginal counterparts, even after controlling for relevant social variables. For instance, while living common law is associated with a 13 percent greater risk of victimization for non-Aboriginal women, the associated risk for Aboriginal women is 217 percent higher (Brownridge 2008).

Sexual assault against women is particularly prevalent in Northern Canada where there is a much higher proportion of Aboriginal people in each of the territories than in the provinces. In 2002, the rate of sexual assault in Nunavut was 96.1 for every 10,000 people compared to the overall rate in Canada of 7.8 in every 10,000 people (Levan 2001). Aboriginal women have also been found to be greatly over-represented as sex trade workers compared to non-Aboriginal women (Oxman-Martinez et al. 2005; Royal Canadian Mounted Police 2006). In one study of the Vancouver sex trade, 52 of 101 women interviewed were Aboriginal (Farley et al. 2005). The overwhelming majority of these women reported both a history of childhood sexual abuse by multiple perpetrators and a history of rape and other assaults while working as prostitutes."

[1] [https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj- jp/victim/rd3-rr3/p3....](https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj- jp/victim/rd3-rr3/p3.html)

<comment><USER9> I think you are absolutely right - but the continuation of these structures and conditions that make violence against women ripe, easy and prevalent are due to structures that the government set in place. If natives actually owned the land - they would be able to sell and mortgage it - and use the money to move off reserve or start a business or whatever.

If tribal counsels weren't just puppet governments, people might actually trust them and they might have competence to fix the situation.

Right now Natives are almost under government stewardship - that condition doesn't seem like it will change any time soon and their situation seems to degarde the longer it continues - which will lead to more deaths and victimizations.

I think to connect our points simply, we could say

1\. Yes many of these women are victimized at the hands of men from their communities

2\. Many of their communities are impoverished and under 3rd world conditions

3\. Abuse and victimization are more likely under such conditions

4\. Women are less able to escape victimization under such conditions

5\. The government created these conditions and propagates these conditions

<comment><USER10> No, I disagree on so many levels.

A) the land ownership issue is existential and could blow up the entire country. Every treaty is also different.

B) This is not a money problem. If aboriginal communities were given the land to sell, it would be sold to outside interests and the money would be gone in a generation.

C) The 'system' that they are pointing at are the residential schools - <USER2> were ended a long time ago.

D) Many reserves have a high degree of self governance. Self governance requires responsibility. The last government forced transparency among local aboriginal communities and it showed widespread corruption. That said - <USER3> communities were managed very well i.e. 'as diverse as the country itself'.

E) The government does not create or propagate anything: 35 million Canadians live very well in Canada, there's no reason most Aboriginals could not live off reserve and do the same things that the rest of Canadians do. Obviously, not an option for some, but for most - absolutely.

We need pragmatic studies, pragmatic programs, oversight, accountability - <USER4> in the end, there is no way that anyone else can lift the aboriginal communities out of whatever conditions. They have to do it themselves. Today we could hand them money, education, jobs - and it still wouldn't work, so there are underlying issues to work on.

<comment><USER9> Im going to respond in a limited way because I think this is leading to a big fruitless debate. But notions like limiting native ability to sell the land b/c quote "it would be gone in a generation" is paternalism and I would characterize it as racist perternalism because it assumes natives are not rational actors who can decide their fates. It assumes they need government to keep them from squandering their land. And its this kind of paternalism that has characterized the governments policy towards natives and has led to the current sad state of affairs.

Second its one or the other -either you are paternalistic and take responsibilty for the state of many Natives or you give them autonomy and they take responsibility for themselves. Wanting control because you think they cant responsibily manage their land and resourses but still blaming them for their shortcomings like tribal corruption is an inconsistent position you are taking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Parsing UDP in Elixir with Binary Pattern Matching - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rokkincat.com/parsing-udp-in-elixir-with-binary-pattern-matching/?utm_content=buffer21768&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> Reminds me of [https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Bi...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Bindat- Examples.html#Bindat-Examples)

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe there is something wrong with me, but I prefer normal Erlang syntax to Elixirs Rubyish syntax.

<comment><USER4> There's nothing wrong with you, even if you're in the minority :)</comment></comment>