The $50 device that symbolizes a shift in North Korea - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/27/us-northkorea-change-insight-idINKBN0MM2UZ20150327

<comment><USER2> great progress... they are starving but at least they are entertained.

<comment><USER2> Why the hell does the world tolerate this regime? Why not have a coalition that goes in and free these people? Isn't that the right thing to do?

<comment><USER3> Nobody wants the responsibility for "bringing it up to code." Aside from the difficulty of de-brainwashing 25 Million people, it would cost an entire country's GDP to support the kind of reforms needed for DPRK to become "modern" to a Chinese standard.

It's a political Rat King.</comment></comment></comment>


The Naked Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2010/06/16/the-naked-entrepreneur/ <comment><USER2> Yes, I'm an entrepreneur and sometimes I work from home naked. Just because I can do it and nobody will know.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you do start-ups over 40? - <AUTHOR>

I am just over 40, have tons of experience in the industry, but will probably be out of a job in 30 days. Should I go start-up or look for a safe, big-company position? <comment><USER2> Of course you can!

But it's harder because you likely will have a bigger number to reach before 'ramen profitability'.

Cut your fixed monthly costs as much as you can as soon as you can, that will increase your runway considerably.

A step back is always hard, but this will increase your chances of success by quite a substantial margin.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not?

The question is how much you have in the way of savings, and what sort of lifestyle you want, and how quickly the startup would either 1) fail, so you can get on with your life or 2) start generating money.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm...

if it were me, it would mostly depend on how I want my life to be 5 from now or 10 years from now. (or in which direction i want it to be going)

And then choose whichever option has a higher chance of delivering that. So do you know what you want 5 years from now?

Also, it would partly depend on whats important right now? high excitement, high reward, high risk type of position or a safe comfy type of position?

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> The most important thing for the next 5-10 years to me is a) be happy b) provide for my family (I do have two kids and a stable marriage). All my jobs until now were very good, but I was hardly happy at them. I worked at big, big name companies in tech and also in one start-up, albeit not as partner.

<comment><USER2> Maybe you should start out with part-time 'regular' work, and do your start-up stuff on the side, then as you make more money on the side you can build down your 'regular' work. That way you get to do it without taking the plunge in an all-or-nothing fashion.

<comment><USER5> What's the best way to find that kind of work?

<comment><USER2> Anything will do, really the only requirement is that you don't have to be there all the time, so this is more geared towards the kind of job where people can be replaced on short notice without interrupting the workflow.

Think retail, that sort of thing. All you need is for it to cover the basic expenses and to leave your head free so you can think about stuff while doing the work. Then when you get home you're not too mentally tired to do some 'real' work for a bit, and on your 'off' days you can implement the stuff that you've been thinking about / working on on a slightly larger scale.

When I was 17 or so I worked in the mail room of a bank while at the same time working hard on becoming a professional computer programmer. If the work had been more demanding mentally that would have been a lot harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can go start-up but you can also go start-down. When you are very young you weight failure with a low number, when you are over 40 and have a family to support failure is a big factor. So think in this equation:

What-to-do = maximize w1 _p(failure)+w2_ p(safety)+w2*p(success), where wi are personal and family factors, and p are probabilities.

Is your experience something that a start-up need? or is experience only something to change for the future?

</comment><comment><USER7> I think you might be too wise and experienced for that </sarcasm></comment>


AMD Listened to us, and added a PSP disable option in their new AGESA version - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/7i6kl7/amd_listened_to_us_and_added_a_psp_disable_option/ <comment><USER2> I heard the NSA can secretly reenable it even on switched off machines via mind control.</comment>


BitNami Launches MongoDB Stack To Develop Apps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/07/bitnami-launches-mongodb-stack-to-develop-apps-as-demand-scales-for-aws-based-services/ <comment><USER2> I wonder why they chose Apache instead of something like NGINX instead which is far superior and scales a whole lot harder than Apache can? I've seen Apache in the right hands scale well, but why make things harder for yourself than they need to be when you can use NGINX which is lighter and consumes less CPU and memory?

Cool stack though. Seems like MongoDB has emerged as the clear winner in the commercial NoSQL arms race. I do like it and with every release it's getting better and more feature-packed.

<comment><AUTHOR> We chose Apache as it is the common front-end to the rest of our stacks (the idea is that you can mix and match all the apps in our library and serve them through a common Apache frontend). Regarding performance, what you mention is correct with older versions of Apache. Apache 2.4 with the Event MPM is pretty much equivalent to NGINX in terms of performance and memory footprint.

Having said that, we do include NGINX in some of our other infrastructure stack and we plan to expand its usage (as well as provide other NoSQL engines, we just started with the most popular :)

<comment><USER2> You are right in many aspects in regards to Apache 2.4 and NGINX. However, when traffic and intensity of traffic ramps up, you notice that NGINX still comes out in front in terms of CPU usage especially, like night and day in most cases. If you run both on different machines and send the same amount of traffic to them, the system monitor shows that NGINX easily uses less CPU. Apache's real strength is its market share, not its track record for being resource respective.

Cool stuff though guys, good to see some MongoDB ready stacks and looking forward to what else you release in the coming months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I dont want to sound negative but now that we have Docker I feel like this approach is generally outdated. And the AWS EC2 prices are so much higher than smaller VPS providers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The stack itself will be launched next week at AWS re:Invent conference</comment>


D&D for the Surface - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10451247-1.html?tag=mncol

<comment><USER2> Cool, but I kind of wonder if D&D has grown close enough as it is to being a board game.

For people who want to emphasize storytelling and role-playing, I recommend checking out Burning Wheel:

<http://www.burningwheel.org/?page_id=2>

That's not to say you can't do good collaborative storytelling etc. in d20, but Burning Wheel has explicit structures & rewards for doing so.

<comment><USER3> There are different styles of play. I have been in games that essentially were board games with a visit to shops in between the exploration and combat. I have also been in games that barely touched the dice at all and combat was handled by DM fiat after the players laid out their strategy in very broad terms. Both types can be fun, depending on your personality/mood at the moment.

The Storyteller System used by White Wolf for the old World Of Darkness series struck me as a very good balance between the two, back before children and grad school essentially put an end to my playing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am dying to get a Surface at home as a coffee table that handles the obvious stuff (photos, music, videos queued to the TV), plus other things like large- format TV guides, weather, bit of home automation, etc. Then add on stuff like home logging (entries whenever lights were switched on/off, front door opened, mail dropped in letterbox, garage door opened, etc) and security (manage security cameras and check videos of your frontdoor while you were out) and so much more.

And to keep this remotely topical, I think Scrabble and then 1-6 player Risk would be great also since I'm seriously addicted to playing Lux on my iPhone...

Any guesses as to how far we are off for these sorts of things? I'd love to see a line of Surface machines on the market and an app store for them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Surface is still active? I've heard squat since it first appeared on the screen, some two years after identical techs were being made all over by the DIY crowd. Last I saw of it, it was still frickin' huge and projected to be really expensive, while the DIY options are simple, small, extensible, and cheap.

That said, interesting interface for the game. Seems like it'd be well suited to Warhammer too, given the firing maps & rather complex rules at times. A graphical overview could really enhance strategy.

<comment><USER4> It's offered for sale in Australia for about $21k ($24.5k for developer edition) which is pretty outrageous.

<comment><USER6> I'd love to see a pre-emptive iSupply costing for that one!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Then we'll see a wargame targeted to the Surface specifically. Then the Surface will be completely dominant and unbeatable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe not for the Surface specifically, but how about just multiplatform but with built in support for Win7 multitouch? For that we'll have R.U.S.E.: [http://ruse.us.ubi.com/index.php?page=news&newsid=10422](http://ruse.us.ubi.com/index.php?page=news&newsid=10422)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I am ever successful, this is my dream -- having money to sponsor people to make my dream apps like this [and open source them for the community].

</comment><comment><USER9> I expect to see something similar on the iPad when it's released too. Of course the pieces would need to be made from sausage to work I'd imagine :)

<comment><USER6> Could do. They share the same screen resolution (1024x768)</comment></comment>


What programming language should I use? - <AUTHOR>

I plan to develop a web/mobile app and I'm trying to figure out what language to use. Any thoughts? What languages are generally good for this purpose? What about if I ignore availability of programmers and things like that? What languages then? <comment><USER2> Well, if you ignore general trends and the availability of people for a specific stack, I suppose you could go ahead and write your app in a language like Haskell, or even languages like Rust. But if you want to choose a language that is "meant" for the web and it's something _everybody_ knows, I'd blindly pick Javascript if I were you. Of course, it's not the best language for mobile, but frameworks like Ionic are changing that.

<comment><USER3> Unless you're making the backend/app to learn stuff, a very upfront benefit of using an "obvious language" is that it will be easier for you to extend the team in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Web/mobile app" doesn't give us or even you very much to go on in the decision. Pick the right tool for the job - or describe the job, and maybe we can help you out.

<comment><USER5> That this guy said,

You need to describe what you want to do, going to need to have video uploads and playback? Want to create something via some web GUI interface? Want to manage picture collections? Collect data in the field for orders to be uploaded later on? etc. All of that sounds easy to say but can have a boatload of complexity behind it. Some tasks can be easier on specific languages/platforms than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Javascript/Meteor</comment>


XCOR Aerospace Files Chapter 7 Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://www.parabolicarc.com/2017/11/09/xcor-files-chapter-7-bankruptcy/ <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone with a few tens of $M kicking around might want to look at this. Sad. I remember following these guys back in 2000, during the birth of the New Space movement. I really liked the operational concept behind their tea cart engine: [https://xcor.com/propulsion/research- development/](https://xcor.com/propulsion/research-development/)

Hard to believe they were founded 18 years ago.

<comment><USER2> I guess they never got enough money to do a lot of things.

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember when the New Space guys and gals would laugh at Elon Musk for spending > 100M, comparing him to old-space.

I think the lesson is that to do space on the cheap you need 100M, not 10M.</comment></comment></comment>


Chrome pushed 32bit users to 64bit (issues reported) - <AUTHOR> https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2017/05/stable-channel-update-for-desktop.html <comment><AUTHOR> It appears that the Chrome team gave little warning they are auto-updating Chrome 32bit users to 64bit (i.e. anyone with 4 or more GB of ram.) The blog post was published yesterday and the updates started promptly today. Many users reporting "Ahh Snap" error after upgrade.</comment>


The Great Clash of '09: A looming battle over re-regulation  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/176830/output/print

<comment><USER2> More regulation may be needed, but I'd be satisfied with enforcement of existing regulation -- which was completely and utterly neglected during the Bush administration, but that began during the Clinton administration.

The financial crisis was caused by more than lack of, and lack of enforcement of, existing regulation, but that was certainly a large part of it.

The root of the crisis, though, was an orgy of greed and profligate avarice that consumed American society at all levels and we will be paying the price of that for a while.

The blame is spread out over so many parties that it doesn't really matter who we blame. It's all valid.

<comment><USER3> "The financial crisis was caused by more than lack of, and lack of enforcement of, existing regulation, but that was certainly a large part of it."

Actually, that's something that regulation proposals need to address, which is that regulatory resources are already stretched _well beyond_ the breaking point. How will loading _more_ regulations onto the system really help? Regulations need to get smarter, not merely more numerous.

The current answer of SOX seems to be to offload regulation onto the companies themselves, but above and beyond the fact that the regulatory burden doesn't really belong there (per the trickle of "SOX is bad, mm'kay?" stories you see on HN), increased self-regulation is inherently problematic.</comment></comment>


Huawei's latest TV ad is not going over well in Canada - <AUTHOR> https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/huaweis-pitch-to-canadians-keep-your-friends-and-family-close/ <comment><USER2> Misleading title... as the author admits that "The video is actually totally benign."

The reactions have everything to do with the current political situation, and nothing to do with the advertisement.

Huawei could have created an ad stating that they cured cancer and the technology is exclusively accessible to Canadians for a period of 3 years, and they would still get flak.

<comment><USER3> I can't really think of any Huawei ad that would "go over well in Canada" right now, so the title is not at all misleading.

<comment><USER4> That's why he used the word "misleading". You are pointing out the title is strictly speaking true. But it can still mislead, especially by generating false expectations about the precise way in which it is true. I mean, that's how a lot of jokes work

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is a tweet with a dozen likes newsworthy? Are four?

<comment><USER6> Any given tweet? No more than any given public statement by any given person. Certainly it's the content and context that contributes more to its noteworthiness, as opposed whether or not it's a tweet and how many likes it has.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: I got banned from Twitter for literally no reason - <AUTHOR> I built https://sci.app as my quarantine project. I manually curate videos and livestreams that I think could be of interest for the scientific community.
I wanted to have presence on Twitter, so I opened a new account with an email from @sci.app. I uploaded a nice profile picture and filled all the details (website, location, etc...). I added my phone and it was verified (as well as my email, of course). Here it is, for reference: https://twitter.com/scidotapp
The very next day, I logged in so I could tweet for the first time and my account was "suspended". That was probably a month ago, since then I tried filing multiple "appeals" through their website and had zero response. I don't even know what could I have done wrong as I literally just set up the account.
It is truly sad how draconian the internet has become and how regular people like me have no recourse to fair treatment. This is the exact kind of thing that hinders innovation, who knows how many others have gone through a similar thing and just quit it. <comment><USER2> I had a similar experience with Twitter several months ago: signed up, followed a few accounts (five, I think? maybe six?), and... bam! Account suspended, for no apparent reason. I had not even tried to post anything. I used their process; no response. I started writing in every day, for two weeks. Never did get a response, and eventually lost interest.

Pretty lousy experience, overall. They'd send me these emails teasing me with stuff I should go read on twitter; except of course I couldn't get to them. I tried to unsubscribe from the newsletter... but you can't do that without logging in, which I could not do because my account was suspended!

<comment><USER3> I am sure the FCC could help them remember how to unsubscribe you.

<comment><USER2> They did eventually stop. I have no idea whether that's because I stopped trying to log in, or because some customer service agent actually read one of my pleas for relief.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also was suspended because my phone went dead during 2FA. Wrote several times. They never responded. I opened a new account, no problem, but I can't remember all the people I followed and it would be nice to get my followers back. I prepared a letter to their European corporate hdqrtrs.in Dublin, but there's no mail service from where I am during the pandemic. Been looking at that envelope for three months now...

<comment><USER5> Search for "PC2Paper" which is a service that will print out a PDF and send it via snail mail for a reasonable fee. I bet there are other services like that too.

<comment><USER4> I have an American one, but they don't handle international. Part of that good old American insularity, "what's A4"? But thank you.

<comment><USER6> I've never had issues finding A4 paper in the US. Not sure why you'd use it, but it's there if you want it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had a similar experience with both Facebook and Twitter. I opened accounts on both so that I could experiment with using both for federated logins with OAUTH. Facbook banned me within thirty seconds - I didn't even get far enough to get an API token - because they said I was a robot. I tried to appeal but no luck. On Twitter I lasted until the next day when I logged in and discovered I had been banned.

But on the bright side it was a valuable lesson in dependence on third parties I'll never forget. Federated logins with social platforms seem like a good solution to a number of subtle and common problems, but if those platforms can separate me from my customers on a whim and with no recourse then the risk of using them is too great. I'd rather lose the fraction of users that never make it through validating their e-mail address then wake up and find out I'd lost all my users because some algorithm decided to and no human can be bothered to review its decision.

</comment><comment><USER8> Similar thing happened to me except for Facebook instead of Twitter. Created an account, almost instantly suspended, scanned and sent in a copy of my driver's license as they requested and then after checking weeks later saw my account was permanently banned with no chance to appeal or know why.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't rely on twitter. Build a presence on an open source and self hosted option like Mastodon.

<comment><USER10> As an addendum to this, you don't even need to self-host a Mastodon instance in order to participate in this ecosystem (the ActivityPub Fediverse). If you have a WordPress blog, you can use the ActivityPub plugin.

You can also use Write.as or WriteFreely to interact with this system.</comment></comment>


How I coined the term 'open source' - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software <comment><USER2> See also "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software":

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)

I wish English would adopt a word like "gratis" for things that are free as in beer.

<comment><USER3> Gratis actually has been adopted as an English word, it's just not used very much.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gratis](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/gratis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huh. This is cool. If you had asked me before reading this I would have sworn that "open source" was used all throughout the 90's. I guess that's a testament to how good a phrase it is. I feel compelled to do some research now to see what else was used besides "free software" before this.</comment>


NO EU citizen access allowed - <AUTHOR> https://thepipestand.com/451.html <comment><USER2> Ok. I see a blank page, so I guess that's very informative, thanks.

I don't think this is a very useful contribution.

<comment><AUTHOR> It displays text for me:

We are sorry, but our site does not allow membership from any citizen that is part of the EU. This is due to their governing authorities belief that the GDPR applies to ANY site that a member citizen participates in, no matter that the destination site has no business nor physical presence in a country that those same governemental authorities have jurisdiction over.

The requirements to comply are overly burdensome for a small site that is paid for out of the admins personal funds to comply with. Due to this fact, we have decided that allowing access to EU based citizens is an encumbrance that we will not accept.

Using a proxy service or bypassing the geolocation blocking that is occurring by anyone to become a member is not allowed. If you really desire to use this site (and mayhap others that block EU members) then I would recommend you contact your elected officials to complain about the GDPR and issues that it is causing. And no, your EU Commission is not an elected body - it's an appointed one so you need to complain to your nations elected officials. Note that it may do no good as the EU commission is only beholden to the EU and carries out its desires based upon that outlook. In case you can't tell, no, I don't like the EU as it's to much like a one world government - which I find to be similar to one size fits all clothing.

Once (and if) there is a clarification on several questionable aspects of the GDPR we may open access back up.

<comment><USER3> Rather than "citizen", I think GDPR applies to any resident in the EU, that is, it would include an American citizen living in Germany.

Personally, my government - the US government - feels much more like a one world government than the EU.

Eg, look at all of the reporting requirements that foreign banks must do if they have a US citizen as a client. This may include a US/German dual national who lives in Germany and has an account in a German bank.

Then there's the US policy of extraordinary rendition, including to places where the kidnapped people were tortured.

And of course the active US military presence in, what, 70+ countries, and military operations in about 1/2 of the world's countries. [https://www.thenation.com/article/us-special-forces-are- oper...](https://www.thenation.com/article/us-special-forces-are-operating- more-countries-you-can-imagine/) .</comment></comment></comment>


I Have Read Prop F, and It Is a Normal and Reasonable Piece of Legislation - <AUTHOR> https://pleblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/i-have-read-prop-f-and-it-is-a-perfectly-normal-and-reasonable-piece-of-legislation/ <comment><USER3> 23 points in 49 minutes and it's buried at #44 in the middle of the second page. Meanwhile a post with 21 points in 4 hours is at #12 on the first page

Great case study of how like Hacker News' "objective" voting system hides posts with unpopular views.

</comment><comment><USER4> -> Having 75 days to rent your home is a perfectly reasonable restriction.

Just out of curiosity, and because I can't find the answer, what is the number 75 based on? Is there something in the data about that number, wherein those who rent out up to and including 75 days are the "reasonable" people just renting out their place while they're gone on a long holiday? 75 just seems sort of random and arbitrary, to me at least. Is that the threshold for when people renting out their place become the "long-termers"?

Edit: Third party and not from Airbnb, but this place seems to aggregate some data. Gonna go play now. [http://insideairbnb.com/get-the- data.html](http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html)

<comment><USER5> What is your non-arbitrary take on that number then?

<comment><USER4> I mean, it's effectively 2.5 months. Without knowing more about some of the laws governing rentals in SF it's tough to speculate. I was merely curious if that number was informed by customer behavior.

<comment><USER3> The current law is 90 days, so it's probably as simple as "the initiative's authors wanted to shorten it a little but not too much".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While out of context, and I in no mean comment on the mertis of the piece.

>Response: There is nothing unusual about the word "assist" in the law. Laws against assisting people in skirting rules and regulations are very common, for instance, in copyright and patent law.

Using the two of the most hated laws in hacker community as positive example is hardly a shortcut to make said community endorse the legislation.

<comment><USER7> I would like to think that anyone who identifies as a hacker would be smart enough to realize that being opposed to current patent/copyright law does not mean you should be opposed to every legal concept used or referenced in patent/copyright law. That's like refusing to eat ketchup because you object to McDonald's.

<comment><USER8> The concept of «assisting copyright infringement» is not popular among those who identify as hacker. So in current context your argument is moot.

Of course, «correct representation of authorship under the authors' choice of names and pseudonyms» is a concept used in copyright law with a better reputation, in that case your argument would fully apply, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its like this site didn't exist until a few minutes ago when it was posted here and on reddit. ([https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/3n2lxn/i_have...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/3n2lxn/i_have_read_prop_f_and_it_is_a_perfectly_normal/)).

\- there are almost no search results for this blog on google \- there is no way to identify the author - no linkedin - no twitter - no facebook \- there is only one other blog post and it isn't linked to anywhere on the net - <USER2> easy to backdate a post.

<comment><USER10> The post now has a name, Zach Perez and from the bio, I'm guessing this is him: [https://www.linkedin.com/pub/zach- perez/b6/37b/a6a](https://www.linkedin.com/pub/zach-perez/b6/37b/a6a)

The person in the LI profile has no discernible ties to San Francisco. Since his only other blog post is virtually the same thing, it's possible he's acting as a consultant or shill for pro-Prop F team in some capacity. I take his claims with a grain of salt.

Also the person who posted on Reddit has a unique profile of posting almost entirely anti-development, anti-tech posts in his/her recent history.

It's doubtful they're the same person, but conceivable (even believable) this is a concerted campaign disguised as organic conversation.

I think virtually any blog post authored by an unknown person with little real social history is suspect in this campaign and should be ignored as propaganda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Property owners already have the power to disallow short term rentals in their units, and won't need this law.

We already know this is funded/supported by Hotels, which are no doubt resenting lost income. The other beneficiaries are people who resent that what their neighbors are doing is legal.

We don't need housing in the Bay Area to be more scarce, and reducing property owner's rights in order to do it is even worse.</comment>


Culture fit hiring - <AUTHOR> http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/05/friends_without_benefits <comment><USER2> Wow... I can't imagine a stupider way to hire someone... what does social networking mastery have to do with driving a forklift?</comment>


Show HN: Vision – Check your sight online with a screen and a smartphone - <AUTHOR> http://vision.vega9.com/?r=hn

<comment><USER2> Nice! I got a 54, missing a couple by mistyping (not sight) but then more lost on the last couple lines due to difficulty seeing. Is there and analysis provided? I don't see any "next" button after doing the vision check.

<comment> vision-chart Hi, thanks for the feedback. Currently you decide when the test is over and at the end you can save the result (to compare it with the future ones) or start a new session.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Review my app (Panoye) - <AUTHOR> http://www.panoye.com

<comment><USER2> This is neat.. you should sell ad space to travel companies. (Hell, you could even sell travel ads based on the location that the user is currently viewing)...

</comment><comment><USER3> I love panoramas! A few usability comments:

1) I would really like the "hand" mode to be the default. It took me a while to figure out I could change it.

2) I would like an easy way to load the whole picture in my browser at full resolution so that I can scroll horizontally at will.

3) Related, one approach to 2 that I've done on another site is to automatically resize the picture to the maximum height of the user's browser when they go in view full screen mode.

<comment><AUTHOR> The "hand vs scroll" issue is a problem. I asked a few of my friends but the results were 50:50. That's why I'm still not sure which one to make the default.

Anyway, thank for your suggestions!

<comment><USER4> Hand mode needs to be default.

It's a commonly accepted UI paradigm that the mouse needs to be 'engaged' (via a button press) in order to have a functional effect on the UI. In the non- engaged mode mouse is only used for _indicating_ otherwise actionable UI elements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice, my first thought was 'how do I photograph a panorama?' after 20 seconds on the landing page I couldn't see how so I left.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you still want to try with panoramic photography, here is a very short tutorial on how to stitch them:

[http://panoye.blogspot.com/2008/02/tutorial-panoramic- photos...](http://panoye.blogspot.com/2008/02/tutorial-panoramic-photos- with.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like it. Seems like a useful tool that has been pretty well executed.

Now some observations:

\- It's hard to tell who posted a panorama - the only information about the user is their image

\- Is each person's rating posted as a comment? This could be problematic if hundreds of people end up rating a panorama

\- I'm not too sure your permalink structure is good for the long run (using folders, categorization will make it easier for search traffic to find more content)

These are just my observations, please take them lightly. Like I said, the site is nice overall and can be a useful utility for those interested in panoramas.

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your observations. I'll make a panorama author link more visible.

Permalinks are a problem, I agree. I would, for example, like to have links like panoye.com/country/city/panorama-name.html but the problem is with google maps. When you signup for your gmap key - you have ONE key for ONE directory on the web server (for example country/city/). It means that I should have (and use) houndreds of gmap API keys :(

Thank you again for your comment!

<comment><USER7> You can just get the API key for your domain name, <http://panoye.com/>, and it will work for all directories in that domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried it once when starting with gmaps API. But, I probably did something wrong then.

Thank you (both) for pointing out that I was wrong. I'll look at the javascript API again and see what can be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> First: How do you pronounce this? Pano-eye? Pan-oy? Pan-o-yay?

Second: I wanted to turn back three times before I created an account because:

1\. Why should I have to create an account just to upload a picture? I don't care about people knowing who took the picture, especially since I only have a couple panoramas. Give people the choice of creating an account or uploading anonymously.

2\. You want my email? Why would you need this?

3\. You emailed me an auto-generated password. Seriously? People will either forget the password and keep doing password recovery or searching through their email for the password or immediately change this to whatever password they usually use on the internet. There is no sensitive information on this site, there's no sense getting in somebody's way and making it a multi-step process for your users to use the password they want to use.

Third: The map on the upload panorama page needs to let me search for locations. I know the name of the place that I took the picture at, why are you making me find it manually?

Fourth: If you screw up orienting the picture (the < 6 deg. error) then you can't get past it and have to re-upload the image. Give me a "start over" button for orienting. Also, I think I oriented the wrong direction because it's telling me that Epcot in Orlando, FL is north of Gainesville, FL, but it's actually south. Either I screwed up or your direction finding is wrong.

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be good if when you zoom in on the Google map on the front page, and then go to a panorama from it, and then use the browser's back button, that the Google map would still be how you left it -- so that you can then look at other nearby panoramas).

In a similar vein, the Google map shown to the right of a panorama, should (be able to) locate all the other panoramas too, for the same reason of being able to see what else is nearby.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for your comments/suggestions/criticism. I added all suggestions in my TO-DO list, and will look to implement them as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER10> Your web app is cool. Two ways to survice: Get acquired or die because Google implements the same feature.

Anyway, I really live it. It is really stunning and amazing. But, you should at least let users know how to upload their panoramas. Put a big "Upload" button in your frontpage.

</comment><comment><USER11> The flash viewer is neat. Esp beause its keystroke activated (arrow & ctrl/shift). Why there is no keystroke for the default viewer? (or is there?) I have seen such tools on real estate sites (360˚ view). This one looks very neat though.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice. Be cool if just above the Google map you could enter a place name rather than clicking through the map. So i type "Glasgow" and it brings stuff near to there.

Great work though! Still looking through it.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is really cool and interesting. Still I'm not sure it will be easy to bring to the masses. People like much more to put useless photos of their cats on flickr.

<comment><AUTHOR> "People like much more to put useless photos of their cats on flickr."

Right :) In fact this is why it is an "app", not a "startup". I have no idea on how to bring it the masses and/or how to make some money from it.

It is still a hobby project and it will probably remain so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One minor suggestion: Would it be that hard to allow me to click and drag the panoramas without having to click that hand button first?

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow lovely web app! how did you manage to do this?

</comment><comment><USER16> I find that the letters (especially in the menu) have too much spacing between them. It's hard to read.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like it! As a suggestion, I wasn't able to find a search bar. Can you search for panoramas?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I should make it more visible... There is a google custom search field on the homepage (at the bottom of the right column). Or on the menus: Panoye -> Search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Move search to the top of the page.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like it a lot. A couple of critiques: \- I had to look for what the app was. Yeah, the explanation is on the right, at the top of the sidebar, but I'd almost like to see it above the google map on the page. \- I'm not terribly keen on the font choices throughout the page... specifically what's bothering me is the character spacing, most noticeable on the right sidebar.

On the whole, I think it's a brilliant idea, and at least to my knowledge, isn't being repeated anywhere else. That said, I'd focus on layout and design, and accentuate the social aspects of the site where I could.

</comment><comment><USER20> How does it make money?

</comment><comment><USER21> excellent job!</comment>


Why my friends moved to the Midwest in search of financial security - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/4/25/11503040/midwest-savings-atlantic <comment><USER2> As somebody who has lived in Minneapolis for over 20 years - I find it amazing how cheap and easy living here is. You are literally rich if you make over 50k a year.

<comment><USER3> Presumably most jobs do not pay very much then.

<comment><USER2> Your run of the mill programming job still pays between 80k and 120k. Not bad when renting a 1br in the nice part of town costs $750.

Even as a busboy in a decent restaurant you can pull in between 2k and 3k/month after taxes. Pretty simple to live a decent life here.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook teams with rightwing Daily Caller in factchecking program - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/17/facebook-teams-with-rightwing-daily-caller-in-factchecking-program <comment><USER2> This is a good move. I also don't consider tucker carlson 'far right'.</comment>


Record Numbers of Americans Try to Buy Guns - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/record-numbers-of-americans-try-to-buy-guns-11594719000 <comment><USER2> Not a surprise when there is rioting and the police do next to nothing. (I say that as a European that is happy we don't have the same gun culture over here).

<comment><USER3> Yeah, funny how all those anti-2A talking heads evaporated as soon as the country descended into chaos. Almost my entire family has been armed long before COVID so they haven't needed to procure any additional weapons. Although I've been trying to convince my mother to add a shotgun to complement her revolver for a while.

That said, I'm glad I live in Japan and don't have to worry about firearms in addition to the psychos with knives.

<comment><USER4> > Yeah, funny how all those anti-2A talking heads evaporated as soon as the > country descended into chaos

The country didn't descend into chaos and anti-2a people didn't disappear.

<comment><USER5> The anti-2a people are being very quiet, partly because one of their arguments as to why you do not need a gun is because you can just call the police. But that's not going to work when the large portion of the police force is otherwise occupied with protests or rioting, or after the police department has been defunded.

<comment> blaser-waffle Bingo. You either trust the police with your security, or you assume that you're responsible for your security -- but no amount of reform is going to make humanity into pliable care-bears.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's worrying how many people are purchasing firearms as first-time buyers who are also dis-incentivized from training due to the pandemic. Sure, many states mandate training before initially purchasing and/or carrying a firearm but that should be an ongoing thing.

At the start of the buying spree, gun ranges near me were all closed down and prevented the sort of practice that any responsible gun owner should have.

I appreciate people like Maj Toure and his organization Black Guns Matter who are going and teaching proper gun safety across the nation. There should be more people like him

<comment><USER7> It's a valid concern. Even a gun range or concealed carry class won't teach you what you need: Situational awareness, proper draw technique, muzzle discipline, etc.

Sheepdog Response - headed up by Tim Kennedy is another good org. with an aim to prevent responsible (safe) self-defense training. [1]

Tim is an (active) green beret and retired UFC fighter, and their org. is geared entirely towards teaching the average citizen how to safely defend themselves (both armed and unarmed). It's the real deal, and their classes are pretty much 2 full weekend days.

1 - [https://sheepdogresponse.com/](https://sheepdogresponse.com/)

edit: I do not represent them in any way. Just believe in their mission.</comment></comment>


Average Discount Rates for Convertible Notes - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/average-discount-rate-for-a-convertible-note-928cecaadc04#.7z6vbbnfj <comment><USER2> Interesting.

We are negotiating our own SAFE deal (a replacement for Convertible Notes) and VCs told us that average discount rate is 20% but I guess it depends on the team/startup.

It's pretty close to your 24,5% median and it validates your data.</comment>


There's more than one way to write an IP address - <AUTHOR> https://ma.ttias.be/theres-more-than-one-way-to-write-an-ip-address/ <comment><USER2> The different notations tripped us up big time a while ago at my company. A class of our devices used to get their machine name set from the serial number in the BIOS. On the older models these started with letters. Then we got a new model and the serial numbers on these were just long numbers. So far so good.

After a while we noticed that a lot of them (around 30%) didn't work on the network. It took a while to figure out that some of the serial numbers got interpreted as octal IP addresses so pinging them didn't resolve through DNS but instead went straight to the (wrong) IP.

In hindsight this could have been predicted but it just shows that often a design that made sense when it was created can cause huge headaches later on. Now we prefix all serial numbers with some letters to make sure they don't get misinterpreted.

<comment><USER3> Why not base64 them?

Do you actually use serial numbers anywhere else?

Why not generate a random name instead?

<comment><USER2> The serial numbers are on the back of the devices so it's nice to be able to correlate them with the network name. As I mentioned now we prefix them with a few letters to avoid being misinterpreted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did telephone tech support in an Austin boiler room for awhile and used the decimal IP notation I'd learned from my ISP days a lot. Sometimes accessing a customer's router home page is a must and there is no connectivity for name lookups. Elderly people have trouble with dots and numbers, or they add spaces, or any number of things.

Instead of directing them to 192.168.0.1 I'd tell them to enter 3232235521 and it would get the same place. My supervisor called me into the office because someone heard me doing it while snooping a call and it freaked them out.

<comment><USER5> One character shorter, so that's somewhat helpful. However, wouldn't requiring to type the [http://](http://) prefix still kill the simplification enough to make this not even bothering with? Otherwise, both Chrome and Firefox will do a google search for the decimal number.

<comment><USER6> You could just add a forward slash to the end of it instead of adding the protocol, i.e. 3232235521/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I discovered the hard way that a library I was using would parse an IP address in a URL like 192.168.000.077 as 192.168.0.63. Yeah... it treated leading zeros as octal in individual components of the IP. Lots of fun to track down.

<comment><USER8> It's always annoyed me that IPv4 addresses are valid DNS names. Unnecessary confusion and software workarounds to deal with it.

<comment><USER9> Back in the dark past of the late 1980s/early 1990s, "[x.x.x.x]" used to be a convention to force parsing as an IP address rather than a DNS name. I have no idea where this convention came from, or where it went to, but it seems to have completely vanished since.

It's possible that it was a UK-specific convention that was borne from JANET but I don't know; I do know that PAD and CPAD addresses (from X.25) were more common on JANET than IP addresses, so that seems unlikely.

<comment><USER8> This is a great point. Square brackets are still used in ipv6 to more easily distinguish between the ip the port: e.g. [::1]:52

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Parsing IPv6 also requires some thought! Consider 0000:0000:0001:0002:0000:0000:dead:beef

\- 0000:0000:1:2::dead:beef

\- ::1:2:0000:0000:dead:beef

\- ::1:2:0:0:dead:beef

\- ::1:2:0:0:184.108.40.206

\- 0:0:1:2::184.108.40.206

<comment><USER10> Digging more about IPv6 representation:

\- It's possible to stick "::" in many places

\- It's possible to have :0000: before or after "::"

\- leading zeros (:0001: is the same as :1:)

\- "Text Representation of Special Addresses", so the ::192.168.0.1 representation

\- hex uppercase vs hex lowercase

see [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5952](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5952)

<comment><USER11> that rfc says upper/lower doesn't matter? Am I wrong?

<comment><USER12> That's the point: because it doesn't matter it provides two representations for the same semantic thing.

<comment><USER13> Well, that's just like IPv4, then. They can still be canonicalized, if you need to compare them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like the hex version better than the traditional version, although the traditional one is easily recognised as an IP address, even without context, so its probably best to stick with that ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> I believe you can also represent an ipv4 address in base 10, by doing something like

a.b.c.d, (a * 2^24) + (b * 2^16) + (c * 2^8) + (d * 2^0)

(the first time i did this was the first time I understood raising a constant to zero was one, so I left it there for myself)

The resultant number should be somewhere between 0 and (2^32)-1. It's a neat toy. I'm not sure what value it has in practice.

192 x 2^24 + 168 x 2^16 + 0 x 2^8 + 1 x 2^0 == 3232235521

ping 3232235521 PING 3232235521 (192.168.0.1): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 ^C

<comment><USER16> I've used this a handful of times, actually!

I've mostly done it to determine a "next" IP address from a large range - i.e, what IP comes after 10.0.0.255, and how can I bound it between 10.0.0.30 and 10.0.1.128?

It's much easier to increment an integer, compare it to other integers, and then convert it back to an string-format IP than it is to implement those operations by "parsing" IP addresses.

<comment><USER17> An IP address like 127.0.0.1 is an integer, written in an odd base 256 notation! What I think you mean is that it's easier to increment an integer written in conventional base 10, because people are used to working with numbers like that.

<comment><USER13> I'm imagining magmastonealex found it useful for things like working with each of 10.0.0.0/16 without having to manage the digits of those base-256 numbers:

      for (var i = 0; i < 2 ** 16; i++) {
        work("10.0." + i);
      }

as opposed to

      for (var i = 0; i < 2 ** 16; i++) {
        work("10.0." + i / 256 + "." + i % 256);
      }

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's even more ways to skin this cat. Octal notation works (prefixed with a 0), and each octet can be represented differently (0x7F.1 == 0x7F.0.0.1 == 127.0.0.1).

</comment><comment><USER19> The bit with `ping 0` is sadly unexplored, as the nature of "any host in network" and "any host in any network" addresses are sadly unmentioned these days.

Then come the joys of debugging someone's configuration because a tutorial told them to "connect to 0.0.0.0" instead of localhost...

<comment><USER20> As a side note, why wouldn't 0.0.0.0 be a valid address if you have a route for it (just like you can set any public IP, and are not restricted to private ranges)?

I recall setting 192.168.0.0 as a valid address in windows XP a while ago.

I usually find people in the networking are (especially teachers) to quite stubbornly assume that things are always one way, while almost the entirety of networking is comprised of RFCs.

Sure, default configurations help in that you don't have to change a device's configuration, but I see no reason why I couldn't change my MAC, or set my broadcast address to 10.0.0.42, or the broadcast MAC to 01:02:03:04:05:06, and my gateway to 10.0.0.0 while I enjoy browsing the web on my 0.0.0.0-addressed computer...

<comment><USER19> 0.0.0.0 _is_ a valid address. You also have a route for 0.0.0.0/0, usually called "default" :)

Just not valid for a host, as it is a _network_ address where "network" is specified as _the whole internet_. It's how you create services listening to connections from _any_ address - technically you can setup a listening socket waiting for connections only from specific network, but I haven't tested it.

It's also why minimal _compliant_ IPv4 network has 4 IP addresses: the network address, host 1, host 2, broadcast. There's an unratified RFC for allowing only host 1 and host 2, but I believe it works only on some combinations of gear/software.

Then of course you get systems accepting broken setups, like 192.168.0.0 host address with /24 or /16 netmask.

However, 192.168.1.0/23 is a valid address a host can have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This was quite interesting thanks!

On a related note, does anyone have a good recommendations/blog post that explains how IP addressing, ports, subnetting, etc. all work?

This is one of these things where I know that I'm just working off of empirical knowledge without knowing the fundamentals.

</comment><comment><USER22> Validation lib wip: [https://github.com/jakeogh/hostname- validate/blob/master/hos...](https://github.com/jakeogh/hostname- validate/blob/master/hostname_validate_regex_mono.py)

</comment><comment><USER23> What's the explanation for why Linux treats 0.0.0.0 as 127.0.0.1?

<comment><USER24> When I bind a socket to 0.0.0.0 it means to all interfaces on the host machine, of which 127.0.0.1 is one of those interfaces. Not sure if that answers your question.

<comment><USER23> If you ping 0.0.0.0 on Linux it pings 127.0.0.1. That's the behavior I'm talking about. Binding to 0.0.0.0 is something completely different and not Linux-specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As documented in the man pages...

[https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=inet_pton](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=inet_pton)

</comment><comment><USER26> Wait, so does this mean 192.168/16 means 22.214.171.124/16 rather than 192.168.0.0/16?

</comment><comment><USER27> Octal notation. pshyeah</comment>


Norway's Village where there is no Government and Everything is Private - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsocieties.com/?p=594 <comment><USER2> It isn't governmemt that takes away our freedom, it is our own human nature and how we interact with others.

Coexistence requires some sort of ruling, even if tacit. At some point the interaction gets too complicated to be a matter of simple respect. Also, even if a good or service is privately owned it would be publicly used (like a park, or a street) and that requires specific rules as well. Once the initial simple ruling becomes insufficient, some form of government will arise, maybe a city council. Since it is impractical to have every inhabitant attend, speak and vote on said council, some form of democratic representation will arise (and quite probably propaganda, lobbying and corruption with it). And then you'll need rules enforcers (aka police) because not all Liberstandians will have the same ethics nor personalities.

The paradox: as soon as these utopian anarchies become successful, they need a government.</comment>


Here's a way to silence Trump on Twitter: Buy the microblogging service - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/heres-a-way-to-silence-trump-on-twitter-buy-the-microblogging-service/ <comment><USER2> Just LMAO. The ignore button is a lot cheaper.</comment>


The F# development home on GitHub is now dotnet/fsharp - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/the-f-development-home-on-github-is-now-dotnet-fsharp/ <comment><USER2> I'll just throw a random comment here:

F#, to me, has the most beautiful syntax. Reading F# code is such an eye pleasing experience!

I actually don't know much about the language, but always dream about being an expert in it and using it every day.

Edit: to give some context, the others I find especially beautiful syntax-wise are Ruby, Lisp, Haskell, Ocaml(very similar to F#). Still I think F# is the best.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those interested in the current state of F#, Sergey Tihon's Blog tracks the latest news.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Hijacking the thread (bear with me).

Is f# a good language to work with in Linux servers? Is possible? Would you recommend it?

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. F# is just one of 3 languages which you can use to develop .NET Core applications. .NET Core itself is cross platform and really well supported on Linux and macOS. The other two languages are C# and VB.NET, but personally I think that F# is just the nicer of the three.

It's also worth noting that .NET Core is not only cross platform, but an extremely performant runtime which really hits the ceiling in various benchmarks [https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=...](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=ph&test=fortune&l=hra0hp-1)

<comment><USER6> Not really, and the highest Core test spews errors in that test. [0]

[0] [https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/)

<comment><USER7> I see 1 error for: aspcore-ado-pg

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Changelog podcast with a focus on F#, [http://changelog.com/podcast/62](http://changelog.com/podcast/62).

</comment><comment><USER9> I wouldn't recommend F# on other platforms yet, specially because .net core isn't supported very well.

<comment><USER10> Can you clarify what you mean by not being supported very well? F# has been fully supported on .NET Core for a while: it's a part of the .NET SDK, FSI support is in, it's fully tooled in Visual Studio, etc. Would love to know what you feel is missing here.

<comment><USER9> I suppose language wise the support is there but there are lack of libraries. A while ago I was consider considering F# for the backend. While looking for database client I found most third party like SQLprovider, rezoom.sql didnt support .net core very well.

<comment><USER11> SQLProvider has been ported to .NET Core - I've used it no problem when scripting/prototyping across a variety of different data sources at once. Admittedly I tend to just use straight ADO.NET anyway - its simple enough to use and with F# your not saving all that much code/if at all moving to Dapper since the language tends to be more succinct.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons Learned from a Failed Startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getarkad.com/post/50348770974/lessons-learned-starting-our-first-business

<comment><USER2> Thanks Ron! We hope that others learn from this and avoid some of the mistakes we made.</comment>


Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg is out, as the company struggles with Max crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/boeing-stock-halted-pending-news-company-battles-fallout-737-max-crisis.html <comment><USER2> About. Freaking. Time. I wonder if the Starliner failure to reach its intended orbit this week was the straw that broke the camel's back? Though obviously the 737Max is the bigger issue.

<comment><USER3> Or perhaps both the NYTimes and Guardian articles the last 2 days faulting his handling of the crises? Too much bad pub.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is a CS degree worth it if it comes from a state school? - <AUTHOR>

This excerpt from an article[1] criticizing Jason Fried's Inc. Magazine piece caught my attention:
"Does this sound even remotely plausible? Ignore resumes, really? Let's say two candidates came in:
Candidate 1
Stanford, MS CS, top marks
Facebook (aka hot startup)
Candidate 2
State school
Doing Java at HP
You'd ignore this information, and go straight to the cover letter?"
The implication seems to be that the second candidate is lackluster, in part for having attended a "state school," an unnamed member of an amorphous blob of mediocre institutions that churn out equally mediocre graduates. This is not the first time I have seen this sentiment expressed, and I have often wondered about the value employers place on degrees. Sometimes it seems as though their preference is almost binary: either they, like Google, recruit exclusively from top, generally private schools like MIT, CMU and Stanford, or they take all comers, even those who lack a degree.
I have no doubt that a degree from MIT, Stanford, CMU, and even from some spectacular public schools like Berkeley can open up doors for those who hold them. But I wonder whether the same is true for degrees from less-than-stellar state schools. An undergraduate degree from a four-year college, even one with cheaper in-state tuition, is still a substantial investment: four years of your life and thousands of dollars. Over the past few months I have been considering going back to school to get a degree, but it looks as though the only institutions I can afford and get accepted into are those rueful state schools. For someone in my position, I would really like to know (after hopefully not offending anyone who has such a degree), do you think it's still worth it, or would my time and money be better spent elsewhere?
[1]http://blog.scottolsen.net/?p=144 <comment><USER2> If you just want the knowledge, then quit worrying about this. It doesn't matter if you go to Miskatonic University or Stanford.

If you're worried about getting a job... I say quit worrying about it anyway. Yeah, sure, there are _some_ managers out there who have the mindset "I won't talk to you unless you went to Stanford or CMU or MIT." Most normal people, on the other hand, realize that the name of the university you attended is a pretty weak indicator, if it's an indicator of anything at all. If you're legitimately good at what you do, it'll show. And it won't matter one bit where you went to school, for 99% of employers. (disclaimer: 73.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot. The point still stands though, IMO.)

Also, ask yourself if you _want_ to work with the kind of pretentious snobs who spend their time worrying about shallow symbols of status as opposed to worrying about things that really matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's your objective in getting a degree? I.e. where are you now and how do you expect or at least hope a CS degree will change that?

<comment><AUTHOR> To improve my employability (get better job opportunities), to enrich my mind, and also to make connections. I have also toyed with the idea of going the startup route, either instead of college or sometime shortly after.

<comment><USER3> OK ... but it's still very hard to give you advice without knowing where you are today. I.e. what is your skill set and experience level(s), what sort of jobs have you been getting, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you wear a jacket to keep you warm or because it says Prada on it?

Did you go to school to get a piece of paper, or to learn something?

NB: I interview the state grad. Stanford is a plus, but hot-startup is a huge maturity flag for me. Also, if i'm hiring I will go look at the courses at that uni. Assuming you're < 25.

<comment><USER5> _Do you wear a jacket to keep you warm or because it says Prada on it?

Did you go to school to get a piece of paper, or to learn something?_

The analogy doesn't quite hold. You make it sound as if all educational quality is the same, and you're only paying for the name. That's just not true.</comment></comment>


AMD's Jaguar Microarchitecture - <AUTHOR> http://www.realworldtech.com/jaguar/ <comment><USER2> A bit meta, but for those who were not previously aware of Real World Tech, if you enjoyed this article then do dig into the archives. David Kanter does awesome writeups of (mostly) CPU and GPU architectures. I consider them a step beyond Anand Shimpi's write ups, the most recent of which was recently shared on HN, concerning Apple's Cyclone Microarchitecture [0]. They're published very infrequently, with the front page of RWT still having two articles from 2012 appearing.

Although it's not exactly relevant to the type of programming I do, I still find it useful to understand how modern processors actually work. At the very least, reading architecture articles helps me to understand exactly why certain processors are faster at specific tasks than others.

While I think it's great that David is being paid to write what he is good at, it's slightly disappointing to me that his long form writeups are going to be behind a pay wall at Microprocessor Report, which is covered in the recent article "Splitting my time between MPR and RWT" [1]. The submitted article is likely one of the few more in-depth articles he talked about being release in the next several months.

[0] [http://anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone- microarchitect...](http://anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone- microarchitecture-detailed)

[1] [http://www.realworldtech.com/mpr/](http://www.realworldtech.com/mpr/)

<comment><USER3> How would you compare Kanter's writing with Jon Stokes' writeups on ArsTechnica (back in the day)

(For example: [http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/09/intels-next-must- hav...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/09/intels-next-must-have-upgrade- a-look-at-sandy-bridge/))

<comment><USER4> Jon and I are good friends, and we have very different styles. I don't write for a mainstream audience - I write for computer architects, programmers, and IT folks. My greatest strength (IMO) is that I can write clearly and in great detail about complex topics such as CPUs, GPUs, etc.

Jon's strength is taking a very complex subject and making it much more approachable to a larger audience. Sometimes that involves simplifying things, but that's quite reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The conclusion alluded to one of the most interesting parts of how Jaguar may age -- summarized horribly -- we've never had a SOC shared between consoles (XB1/PS4), desktops, laptops and tablets so closely that as the SOC shrinks and the software on it is optimized further and further, you could imagine a future in short-order (3-4 years?) where you might be able to buy a much- shrunk Jaguar-based tablet that plays PS4 games at full fidelity.

His point is this has the potential of greatly extending the life of the Jaguar SOC just by virtue of die shrinks and power savings and no significant rejiggering of performance through the generations.

I thought that was a good call out... we never had this apples-to-almost- apples comparison before to see this story play out.

<comment><USER6> The CPU side can definitely be matched but packing in the GPU power would take a lifecycle at least as long as the last console generations.

Personally I'm dismayed by the level of CPU performance found in the new consoles. Last generation quickly ran into a roadblock posed by the limited memory capacity but I think developers have been hamstrung by a lack of CPU horsepower right out of the gate. This is coming from a total layman who can only interpret benchmarks but I know that Jaguar's IPC is very weak compared to every other modern x86 design and the power of a single thread is a huge limitation no matter how much you try to program around it.

<comment><USER7> Ever since the PS3 games are very good at taking advantage of multiple cores due to extensive use of data oriented design. Consequently in my experience single-threaded performance isn't as important as you might think.

<comment><USER8> PS3 games made everyone learn to take advantage of multiple cores, but the incredible single-thread (more like thread and a half with careful manual scheduling) performance of the SPUs should not be discounted.

<comment><USER9> The SPUs were fast, but still a simple design. Some workloads are entirely inappropriate for them.

However, lots of generic CPUs will be perform well enough for any task, so more of the overall workload can be expressed as asynchronous tasks.

Game devs aren't complaining about the CPU performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >>Fundamentally, AMD is the only company outside of Intel that is capable of designing, validating, and shipping x86 microprocessors.

Everyone always forgets VIA and their CPU division, Centaur Technology. The VIA Nano's are modern amd64 CPUs that perform well for their power envelope. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Nano](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Nano)

<comment><USER11> What happened to Transmeta and their Crusoe?

<comment><USER12> I had a Crusoe based ultrabook during college (2002ish-2005). Performance wasn't fantastic, but it was a third the size or less than most people's laptops, and I could get 8-10 hours out of it. I didn't even take my power cord to school with me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fascinating that the GPU dragged x86 along to the consoles.

</comment><comment><USER14> As much as I wish for success of the only "real" competition Intel seems to have, I'm still fairly annoyed that they (AMD) seem to have completely abandoned their high-end CPU line (Vishera being the most recent specimen) and any plans of making its successor.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it weird that I wistfully read that as Atari's Jaguar Microarchitecture

<comment><USER16> I frequently wonder, alt.history-style, what would modern Atari and Commodore computers look like.

Actually, that extends to other "classic" machines like Xerox Stars or Lisp Machines. Or Liliths. It would be very interesting what products those ideas would bring when combined with modern fab technology.</comment></comment>


Count Uptime for Industrial IoT in InfluxDB - <AUTHOR> https://orangeunit.com/blog/count-time-influxdb/ <comment><USER2> I like this idea, but the article bears some proof-reading

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I will try to correct.</comment></comment>


Ask HC: Which books on user interface design do you wish your CEO/Cofounders would read? - <AUTHOR>

Do you Hackers have some advice for my nonhacking self? Here is a list of some of the books I've already read, I haven't delved into UI yet. http://www.shelfari.com/o1517988867/shelf<p>Thanks HackerNewsCommunity, and I hope I didn't break any rules when I put that link to my bookshelf. <comment><USER2> I've done a little bit of consulting on interface design - even managed to have a site we did mentioned by Jakob Nielsen in a list of ten greatest redesigns. My take on UI is that it's not about reading books but all about people. Which is probably why a lot of programmers are terrible at UI (not meaning to hurt anyone here, just stating my opinion...) Here is how I work:

1) I constantly ask "will my mother understand this". If the answer is no simplify it. And my mother doesn't know that a page can be resized...

2) It's all about consistency. Links, textboxes, etc. should be the same across the site.

3) Hallway usability testing. make simple HTML mock-ups and watch a few people play with them - preferably your moms friends. This will tell you a lot about where the cranks are.

4) Stick to standards. Don't get all fancy and make your text fields arty and bleeding edge just because you can: your mom won't understand it.

5) Don't use flash unless you really really need to.

But the most important thing you can do to get better at user interfaces is to go to the local coffeshop, find a nice girl, chat her up, start talking about computers and realise how little she actually knows about how things work. There's a fair chance she might not even know what a browser is. Do this a few times - the experience is enlightening. Besides you'll get out and have a good time with some girls that think you're really smart :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't Make Me Think

[http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/032134...](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/0321344758/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220625482&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER4> Not only is the book great, Steve Krug is an all around nice guy and fun to listen to. Just heard him speak yesterday at the Business of Software conference. If you ever get a chance to hear him in person, I'd take it.

<comment><USER5> One really cool thing about "Don't make me think" is that it is short and highly readable. For some reason books of this genre often seem like Russian novels of the 19th century in thickness. Probably the most usable book about usability out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the Tufte books are deep enough background that they might be useful to execs. Philosophy rather than UI specifics.

<http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/>

<comment><USER7> Tufte books are awesome, but overkill for website UI.

<comment><USER6> As I said, deep background. I realize it was a bit off topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my experience? Make sure to read this _one_ , _ancient_ Jakob Nielsen article:

"Why You Only Need to Test With Five Users" (<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html>)

The biggest problem I've seen so far isn't necessarily that clients and programmers have no taste, or no idea what makes a good UI. It's that we spend so much time bikeshedding, sketching and resketching UI ideas in meetings, trying to impress each other with our ability to divine what is going on in the head of an imaginary customer. All the while avoiding the task of observing any actual customers!

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're short on time: <http://joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000057.html>

Spolsky's work is light and easy to read. This work is geared towards "progammers", although that is not mutually exclusive with the word "CEO". It'll help you avoid more obvious mistakes. Nielson and About Face are more thorough. I haven't read Don't Make Me Think but I've heard good things (and lots of comments here, so obviously I should read that one...)

</comment><comment><USER10> "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" is a non-techie book which covers more of the business-case 'why'.

<comment><USER11> I second. I read "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" after I read "Don't Make me Think." These are 2 books I not only reread but recommend every person involved with development or design around web to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The Non-Designers Design Book" by Robin Williams.

It was written without the web in mind. It's mostly about typography and spacing for posters, business cards, flyers, etc. But it translates suprisingly well to web design.

[http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin- Willia...](http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin- Williams/dp/0321534042/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220627590&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER7> Often, Interaction Design gets lumped in with Interface Design (or simply overlooked). For this I suggest:

"Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites" by Andrew Chak (2003)

• Similar to "Don't Make me Think", but focuses more on personal interaction & choices more than layout.

"Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points" by 37 Signals (2004)

• Error management (not just 404s) is one of the most overlooked UI portions of a web project and are often left up to the developers to "figure out".

[http://www.amazon.com/Submit-Now-Designing-Persuasive- VOICES...](http://www.amazon.com/Submit-Now-Designing-Persuasive- VOICES/dp/0735711704/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220633479&sr=8-1)

[http://www.amazon.com/Defensive-Design-Web-improve- messages/...](http://www.amazon.com/Defensive-Design-Web-improve- messages/dp/073571410X/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220633462&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER13> My personal favorite is Magic Ink:

<http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks great, the examples seem so obvious! I bookmarked the Ebook and I'll read it in it's entirety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would go with just these Jackob Nielsen's articles:

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/tabs.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/screen_resolution.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/sales_cycle.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/wysiwyg.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html>

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990321.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> The Phaidon Design Classics, although they are not specifically about web interface design, are AWESOME. <http://www.phaidon.com/designclassics/> They are great to look over for inspiration and to see examples of products that really pushed the envelope of design forward. BTW, if you shelled out for the box set you would score major brownie points with the CEO ;) as they are very accessible to people who aren't actually doing the grunt/brain work of design.

More along the lines of computing, Rules of Play: <http://tinyurl.com/554oj5> is a great read. Probably not what you'd want to give your CEO, though. Very inspiring and thoughtful writing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Since Don't Make Me Think already came up, going to add About Face (have 2.0 but heard 3.0 is even better) [http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials- Interaction-Desi...](http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction- Design/dp/0470084111/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220626879&sr=8-1)

and Design of Everyday Things [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things- Donald-Norman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald- Norman/dp/0465067107/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220626908&sr=1-1)

</comment><comment><USER17> I did a course at University called _Human Computer Interaction_. Essentially it was the science of user interfaces. The course book of the same name by Dix, Finlay, Abowd and Beale (3rd edition) was really good. It contained a lot of accessible theory and plenty of heuristics too that you can implement straight away. Highly recommended.

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

[http://www.amazon.com/Human-Computer-Interaction-3rd-Alan- Di...](http://www.amazon.com/Human-Computer-Interaction-3rd-Alan- Dix/dp/0130461091)

</comment><comment><USER18> Which of the books say that a CEO shouldn't be meddling in User Interface Design and should worry about running the business instead?

<comment><USER19> None that I'd want to read.

In the earliest stage, if the CEO's not either technical or the product lead, he's a waste of space. There's nothing to run before you have a business.

The early stage CEO should be a product designer (or programmer), and then eventually move to the side to bring in someone who really enjoys "running the business" as a CEO.

<comment><USER18> Then he's not the CEO. He's the Founder and Product Lead, which still doesn't mean he should be designing user interfaces.

Now, if the post said "What should a budding user interface designer read?" then the other answers are all great. But that's not what the post is.

Thinking that a "CEO" needs to be the user interface designer is pretty obvious start down a VERY VERY bad path, IMO.

<comment><USER19> The founder and product lead is the CEO until the company can afford to get someone else to be the CEO. You're just splitting hairs...

I believe that it is actually quite important for the product lead to have a strong sense of design - otherwise, where is he leading the product?

<comment><USER20> That might be true in YC-ish startups, but seems to be the opposite of what I've observed in the rest of the startup world. The CEO writes figures out what the market is and how to reach it; where the buttons are is not his concern.

<comment><USER19> I guess we have differing experiences then :-) My current startup's CEO is also our founder + product lead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The LAST thing you want is your CEO and fellow developers doing is reading a book on good UI design. Do yourself a favor and consult an expert in the field (designer) and leave the CEO/developers to do things that they're actually good at (like promote the company and code)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, good point JoseFresco. It's possible I didn't phrase my original question perfectly as I was trying to be concise. In a perfect world there would be a budget to hire proper specialists, but for me, right now, I'm an army of one. And a cash poor army of one at that! So at this stage I've gotta do everything myself. It's tough not knowing how to write code- I'm actually quite interested in learning but I don't have the time, and I will never be any good compared to you guys. I'm building a prototype/demo so I can convey my idea properly in order to get funded, I anticipate doing most of the design myself at this early stage, and I'm assuming it will all have to be redone later for the reasons you already mentioned. Thanks so much for your input, I agree with you completely.

<comment><USER18> So, if you won't do the code cause you don't know how and you never will, why do you think you can also do the design?

I've never really understood this. Most of the time this line of thinking leads to even worse design than your code could ever be.

<comment><AUTHOR> "So, if you won't do the code cause you don't know how and you never will, why do you think you can also do the design?"

I have good taste, thats why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The Design Of Everyday Things (mentioned above as well) is one of my favourite design books.

But will reading books help? What is your intent in suggesting such books to them?

</comment><comment><USER23> it's specific to certain types of displays, but Information Dashboard Design is pretty solid. not great for getting customers in, but excellent for internal reporting and tracking. these things make ceo's happy. ([http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596100167?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596100167?ie=UTF8&tag=httpsomethico-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0596100167))

</comment><comment><USER24> don't make me click the humane interface all of tufte books but beautiful evidence which I found disappointing</comment>


Against Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/against-neutrality.html <comment><USER2> Anyone interested in essays on photography should read Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida: [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Camera_Lucida_(book)](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Camera_Lucida_\(book\))</comment>


Single handedly building a road for 22 years - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi

<comment><USER2> Amazing what he was able to do. And yet, the State of Connecticut took over 10 years to widen 4 miles of I-84.</comment>


Help: How to avoid first traffic surge crash - <AUTHOR> Hi folks,
I am about to launch a small saas website, and hopefully there will be a surge of users if it proves popular.
Would any of you be able to offer advice on what is the best cheap method of hosting so that if a lot of users visit at once that the site does not go offline?
I host a few small blogs on bluehost, but for this type of saas site, should I be using something like AWS?
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
Ross. <comment><USER2> 1\. Scaling is a good problem to have. It usually involves throwing out all or a large part of the system that worked at a smaller scale.

2\. Most businesses don't have scaling problems. They have not scaling problems.

3\. Don't let a problem that you don't have delay shipping. If there's a host that you know, try that first before re-architecting the system for an unfamiliar platform.

4\. Launch for a small group of potential customers first to stress test the app and to gain feedback. This will also avoid lauching as a press release because nobody pays attention to press releases.

5\. Talking to potential customers (i.e. doing sales) is harder for many people than re-architecting a system. However, starting to talk to potential customers is what 'launching' really is. It's not Product Hunt or Show HN or SEO or any other automated process.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your feedback. Much appreciated.</comment></comment>


The Private Programmer - <AUTHOR> https://hiringfor.tech/2020/09/14/the-private-programmer.html <comment><AUTHOR> This post was inspired a recent HN discussion around GitHub and hiring[0]. I compiled some other relevant perspectives and also added my own about where GitHub _can_ fit into the interviewing process.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24373633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24373633)</comment>


DefendCrypto.org - <AUTHOR> https://avc.com/2019/05/defendcrypto-org/ <comment><USER2> Except they are securities as the public perceives them and the SEC defines them by the Howey test created by the Supreme Court. Doesn't matter how any given project wants or intends them to be used.</comment>


PDF Tools API one of the richest and most comprehensive API - <AUTHOR> https://rapidapi.com/logicmind-logicmind-default/api/pdf-tools <comment><USER2> Rapid API is a dumpster fire. I'm sorry I don't care how good the tool is, I personally hate their approach, and will never use the tool.

Also, the org page ([https://rapidapi.com/organization/logicmind](https://rapidapi.com/organization/logicmind)) 404's

<comment><USER3> These seem to work ([https://rapidapi.com/about](https://rapidapi.com/about), [https://rapidapi.com/team](https://rapidapi.com/team))

<comment><USER2> Those are for rapidapi the hosting service, not for the client (logicmind) that is presenting this api.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mods, can we get the title renamed? This API has 4 pdf-manipulating methods total, it cannot be either richest or more comprehensive!

I propose "Freemim PDF Tools API Documentation", based on page title.</comment>


Ask HN: Companies That Use Take Home Projects for Interviews? - <AUTHOR>

I'm an experienced developer (previously worked for Microsoft) who left to pursue building a SAAS business. Unfortunately things aren't going as well as planned and I've been looking for work over the past few months. I've had several interviews but no offers. Although I used to be pretty confident in my interviewing skills, I seem to be tripping up on the technical portions of the interview. Usually on things I wouldn't struggle with.
I've seen discussions about companies that give project based interviews, but have never seen one in the wild. I'd be happy to complete a small project to show I'm competent, I just don't know which companies to target.
About me: All professional experience with .NET stack (willing to learn others, if given the chance) Located in Seattle (Remote would also be an option).
Thanks in advance for your suggestions! <comment><USER2> I have come to regard them as unpaid labor and so refuse to participate in them anymore.

My resume is truthful it would be easy to look up any of the projects I mention.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand this train of thought. But, when it comes down to write this algorithm on the whiteboard or build something small but non-trivial, I'd much rather do the latter.

<comment><USER2> I have a hard time with whiteboards too. What works well for me but is uncommon, is to be left alone with a pencil and paper.</comment></comment></comment>


Higgs, a Monitoring JIT for JavaScript and Metacircular VM Layering - <AUTHOR> https://air.mozilla.org/higgs-jit/

<comment><USER2> The type work is somewhat interesting. I've actually seen variants of it done in a few private JIT's for dynamic languages, but not to this extent (mainly because most languages don't have code that change types as often as javascript :P). In the worst case, they still have to monitor every property write, they just use some forms of static analysis to try to reduce this in what they hope is the common case (that the types are not changing over the program lifetime).

The rest is just research. Interesting research nonetheless, but research. I don't say that as a dig, more to point out that while some of it may be productionized, most of it probably won't.

At least to me, i'm most impressed that the author doesn't present their research as the be-all, end-all of JIT's, but instead, something that may turn out well. This is not something against JIT research, i've just read _way_ too many compiler analysis and optimization papers that don't actually compare against anywhere the near the state of the art, and then act as if they've made huge gains instead of incremental improvements.

<comment><USER3> I think this monitoring concept costs too much to be really useful, but as a research project its still pretty interesting.

<comment><USER4> They optimize away unnecessary monitoring inside the traces once the types have been propagated there. So only slow path code does the monitoring. All the active traces should get stable types without extra monitoring at some point.

Essentially it's moving doing type propagation in "batch" to a "dynamic trigger" system. How effective that is really depends on the programs (or the programing style) and how often they really change types.

I hope it's not just optimized for the usual benchmarks, but some real code.</comment></comment></comment>


ICANN to Let VeriSign Raise Prices on .COMs [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/tlds/com/com-proposed-loi-03jan20-en.pdf <comment><USER2> Is this going to be the beginning of increasing .COM prices alltogether such as what they did with .ORG?</comment>


The Little Book of Python Anti-Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://docs.quantifiedcode.com/python-anti-patterns

<comment><USER2> Although I mostly agree with "Returning more than one variable type from function call," I do have some disagreement.

On the restriction itself, I'm fine with returning, for example, any kind of iterable, whether it's a list, tuple, string or whatever. It depends on context, and python is very much an interface/context kind of language.

As for the anti-example given, that code would not fail in most print contexts:

      In [1]: a = None

      In [2]: print a
      None

A better anti-example might have been:

      In [3]: for i in a:
         ...:     print i
         ...:
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
      <ipython-input-3-6fc9adb94b0c> in <module>()
      ----> 1 for i in a:
            2     print i
            3

      TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not iterable

<comment><AUTHOR> good point, will change this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Chapter performance, use set instead list: If you convert a complete list to a set only to check if a values in a list this is not performant. Use list.index or binary search instead. But for every performance example you should offer a micro benchmark example.

<comment><AUTHOR> you're absolutely right, will point this out in the next version. As said before, if you think something could be improved, feel free to contribute!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Second comment: Would you switch to python3 syntax or annotate the examples with python2/python3 differences?

<comment><AUTHOR> good point, definitely will do this. If you have any ideas feel free to contribute!</comment></comment>


Microsoft to End Support of PHP on Windows - <AUTHOR> https://externals.io/message/110907 <comment><USER2> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23788602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23788602)

</comment><comment><USER3> When they started this "support" I got worried for a while as I thought of a new strategy where MS uses their wallets to make Windows a first class citizen for a myriad of OSS software, possibly at the cost of FLOSS platforms. They did this for several runtimes ( e.g. openjdk, incredibly enough).

Now comes this which makes me realize they were not serious after all, and rather having a bit of Google syndrome. I am relieved...

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope everyone reads the post and not just the subject, which is misleading.

The tl;dr is: Microsoft will stop building the .exe's themselves, but PHP will still happily run on Windows. The community will most likely step in and build those binaries themselves.

For the common user, nothing much will likely change. They'll still be able to download the binaries straight of php.net, someone else will just have built them instead of Microsoft.</comment>