Show HN: I built a community for women entrepreneurs and makers - <AUTHOR> https://womenmake.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, today I'm presenting you Women Make. I use to struggle to find fellow women entrepreneurs so I created a group on Telegram. Since then it grew to 500+ members. I felt it was time to make a website to go with the group. Happens I learned Node JS last year, which I used with mongoDB and Telegram's API to build a forum. Members can interact with the website thanks to a bot. And here is the result! Let me know what you think, any feedback is welcome!

<comment><USER3> Congrats! I am curious, does having 500 people in a single channel present any challenges?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually yes. More people and more activity means more moderation. And I think it's the time you realize if your foundations are strong enough. Moderation really is everything, and it's a lot of work to make people understand what are the values of the community, what is tolerated or not, etc. while making it welcoming. If you made that clear since the beginning, it's easier to handle later. And members might actually help you too, they become messengers, they also represent the community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What do you not get from, say, Hacker News or StackOverflow that you're trying to fill with WomenMake? Genuine question, not a snark.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just the fact that StackOverflow have been accused of not being inclusive at all is enough to create something else. They also have moderation issues. I'm trying to keep a high quality standard on Women Make, just like dang and sctb here with the moderation.

Also, like I said in another comment, women tend to promote themselves/put themselves in front of others much less. The idea of Women Make is really to show them they can and they should. So basically it's giving women confidence, and the specific support they don't necessarily get from other places.

<comment><USER4> What could us men do to improve the support they give on sites other than Women Make? I'm always afraid that my attempt at a supportive gesture will feel like I'm patronising or mansplaining.

<comment><USER5> One thing I think is key to being a good ally is to work mostly in the background, to avoid the spotlight unless necessary, and to yield or share it when possible. Speak less, listen more, _trust_ what you hear and defer to the judgment of the underrepresented party.

There was a moment in college when I was participating in a Take Back the Night march, and I was leading the call-and-response chant "What do we want? Safety! When do we want it? Now!" It felt awkward and wrong. Once I stopped leading the chant and started participating vigorously in the _response_ of the call-and-response, it felt right.

<comment><USER6> This comment is incredibly cringy. GP do _not_ think this way. Be careful.

<comment><USER5> What is your actual objection?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the image previews/thumbnails that appear in the threads from the actual site. I assume you're rendering/screenshotting the site for mobile/desktop in order to generate the previews.

Is there a particular tool you're using/that you'd recommend? Headless Chrome, PhantomJS, NightmareJS? Do you just wait an arbitrary amount of time to assume the necessary visuals have loaded/rendered, or is there a feedback mechanism to indicate when it's ready to be captured?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'm using webshot-node (which relies on PhantomJS) but I might actually change. It doesn't always work well. There are different options (like waiting for the website to respond, or waiting for a specific amount of time), but even by tweaking those parameters it's not always reliable. I might give a try to capture-website soon.

<comment><USER7> Will check those out, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can you please elaborate how does emphasizing gender difference help women in business?

Don't get me wrong I do believe it works, I am just curious about the psychology.

<comment><AUTHOR> Like I said the first reason why I created Women Make is because I couldn't find fellow women makers. There are several reasons for this: women are less visible in general, and also tend to less promote themselves. Gathering us is an opportunity to find allies, but also models, people from who you can inspire from and find the strength to do what you want to do. That being said, it doesn't have to be exclusive. I am myself part of several communities, and most of them are not emphasizing on women. But I'm glad I have a place like Women Make for certain topics and to know I'm not alone in this.

<comment><USER8> I see, thanks.

"People from who you can inspire from" \- do you mean you might have higher "basic level" of connection with the same sex?

Or are there also topics you can get into?

Seeing im downvoted up there: these are honest curious questions, I want to understand better how these social things work. And I'd be glad if I could understand more here, because unfortunately my previous attempts to understand similar social constructs failed (unfortunately I've been told multiple times by women that as a man something is not my business at all and I was not even let understand the nature of the relations.)

<comment><USER9> If I had to guess, you're not being down voted for intellectual curiosity, but rather how you frame the question.

There are many ways you could have framed the question, but the way you did sounds like you're challenging the premise of what OP is trying to do.

Someone built something. If your first response is "Why did you build this thing?" or in your case "Please elaborate why you think building this thing helps?" it comes across as being intentionally and unnecessarily negative, even if perhaps your intent is not to do so.

If you are actually curious, a few similar ways to frame the question:

\- How have you seen your work impact women?

\- What are the most meaningful ways this community has helped your users?

All positive ways of framing the similar "I'm curious how or why this works" question.

<comment><USER8> Okay I see, I am just surprised, because that's why I put that part to the end:

"Don't get me wrong I do believe it works, I am just curious about the psychology."

<comment><USER10> These same questions get asked every time something geared towards women in tech is presented. At some point it becomes disruptive to continually ask the same questions and receive the same justifications. Not that I think its the same people asking, but even well-meaning questions contribute to an environment that is counter-productive.

<comment><USER8> Hm, what is the point? It feels like you're saying it's not my business and I am not even allowed to understand it. If you know some anwsers please share it to me and believe me I won't ask it over and over again once I get it.

<comment><USER11> > If you know some anwsers please share it to me and believe me I won't ask it > over and over again once I get it.

I think this is part of the issue - the subject of women's business groups and their psychological efficacy, and at a larger scale women's under- representation in tech, has been a conversation in cyberspace/meatspace for several years. At some point, asking the same questions about the premise of a movement become an affront to the movement itself. You can compare this to other identity-based movements; asking the question "why are there all-black congregations? Are those even psychologically beneficial for black people?" or "why are there gay bars? Do they actually promote well-being for gay people?" are not questions that people ask (in the part of the world that I'm in) because those questions seem like non-issues: of course black people want to feel community with other black people. Of course gay people want to connect with other gay people. It's perceived as almost rude to ask!

Maybe this has to do with a cultural mismatch. For many, gender politics has been a frequent conversational topic in their information spheres for many years. For you, it may have not been. Just a perspective for moving forward.

If you're interested in understanding the female perspective in tech, I would recommend being a fly on the wall in communities of women:

[https://www.facebook.com/groups/LadiesStormHackathons/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/LadiesStormHackathons/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/)

And also reading these essays:

[https://www.amazon.com/Men-Explain-Things-Rebecca-Solnit- ebo...](https://www.amazon.com/Men-Explain-Things-Rebecca-Solnit- ebook/dp/B00IWGQ8PU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the site guidelines,

> Don't mansplain, be respectful and remember to give the floor to women. That > being said, all members are welcome to participate in all discussions... And > keep in mind that the purpose of Women Make is to put women at the > forefront.

Presumably the site is primarily for women, may I suggest perhaps a better choice of words? Although I find it unfortunate that we have to create a separate community based on gender, I hope you succeed in creating a positive community for women.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not English native so copywriting suggestions are more than welcome. How would you have said it?

<comment><USER13> By avoiding pejorative, sexist words like "mansplaining".

<comment><USER14> Please don't be a jerk on HN. If you have a point beyond just wanting to lash out, the idea here would be to make it thoughtfully and substantively.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER13> I wasn't being "a jerk". Please read my commenting history to understand that I'm not a troll or a person who goes out of their way to be mean.

I think the word "mansplaining" is sexist and pejorative.

>If you have a point beyond just wanting to lash out [...]

I read this as, "If you have a [perspective] other than one I agree with [...]".

Please don't turn hn into a community that just echos opinions you agree with.

<comment><USER14> It always feels like the mods are just disagreeing with you. The opposite side feels the same way.

I described your comment as being a jerk because mariedm asked for copywriting suggestions, specifically in the context of being a non-native speaker, and you responded with a polemical smackdown. That's not good-faith discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This may be a dumb question, but I'm assuming this is a women-only community?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a dumb question. I made Women Make open because I think a change is only possible together (making women and other underrepresented folks more visible). Which means everyone is welcome, including men, as long as they are here to empower women.

<comment><USER16> what would empowering women entail? Helping them to make stuff, answer there questions? So does that mean men are not allowed to get questions answered? Or is it about the community/morality guidelines? Because if its not an exclusively female forum, I don't understand it's purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> A few examples of what it means: answering questions, listening, offering your help and advice. Men are allowed to ask questions as long as they are contributing to the community. That being said, Women Make is here to promote women, and on a moderation level, I will always make sure women are being put at the forefront.

<comment><USER17> Could you explain a bit more about the specific problems / challenges your policies (e.g. women-first moderation) are meant to address?

I'm a man working in the tech industry, and I feel like I still don't 100% understand the concerns or frustrations that motivate a project like yours. I'd like to better understand where you (and presumably some other women) are coming from.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does this comment I posted earlier answers your question? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22128957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22128957)

<comment><USER17> Thanks! That comment was helpful. If you don't mind I have some more questions still:

> Gathering us is an opportunity to find allies, but also models, people from > who you can inspire from and find the strength to do what you want to do.

IIUC, you're saying that you see value in having (specifically) women as allies and sources of inspiration / strength. If that's true, why would that be?

> But I'm glad I have a place like Women Make for certain topics and to know > I'm not alone in this.

Would you mind sharing a bit about what those topics are?

<comment><AUTHOR> "What would that be?", what do you mean by that? What I'm trying to say is that obviously I identify myself better with other women. And I want to be able to find other women entrepreneurs specifically because we face certain common issues. I think this comment sums up pretty well what it's like: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22129625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22129625).

<comment><USER17> Thanks, I hadn't seen that latter comment until you posted the link. That was very helpful.

I can't tell if your question to me was rhetorical, but I'll try to answer it just in case you're interested. (Apologies that it's long-winded, I couldn't find a way to make it brief.)

The comment you linked to includes this: "Would you rather hang out in a community where everyone fundamentally understands the challenges you face daily, or one where you have to explain the basic premise of your daily challenges when you initiate a conversation about them? (Or rather, would you prefer to hang out in both, or just the latter, since it's not really an either/or.)"

I understand the appeal of working in a team where, on an interpersonal level, I can easily and naturally relate to every one of my teammates. And it sounds like that's the vibe you're going for, IIUC.

When I'm leading a team in the tech industry, part of my job is to remove obstacles to the team's happiness and productivity. The kind of homogeneity mentioned above would undoubtedly prevent some of the problems that can arise in a diverse team. But my job is to make find ways to make a heterogeneous team happy and productive; turning it into a homogenous team (e.g. all members being the same sex) isn't an option that I have (or want).

So I'm hoping to understand, in as much detail as you're interested in sharing, what the factors are that make you more comfortable doing maker work with women than with men. Because perhaps that knowledge would help me create a better work environment for everyone on my teams.

<comment><USER18> What you're missing is that this is not akin to the teams you have lead at work. Those teams are working towards delivering some product: the team exists for some outside purpose, and has an exterior goal.

That is entirely different from the community that is being built here. It is more a _support group_ , and the goal is to enrich the lives of the member of the group. Support groups tend to be made up of people who have experienced similar hardships. They do have an exterior goal: try to make others experiencing that hardship in the wider community less likely. But that goal is secondary to the primary goal of being a place for people who have had similar experiences to support each other.

As an aside: when someone has said, "I experience this bad thing," it's bad form to continually questions them on the dimensions of their experience of that bad thing. I assume you are doing this in good faith, and haven't thought about it from this perspective. Since mariedm created an entire community around this, perhaps a better way of gaining an understanding is to read that community for a while.

<comment><USER17> > What you're missing is that this is not akin to the teams you have lead at > work. Those teams are working towards delivering some product: the team > exists for some outside purpose, and has an exterior goal.

Good call.

> As an aside: when someone has said, "I experience this bad thing," it's bad > form to continually questions them on the dimensions of their experience of > that bad thing. I assume you are doing this in good faith, and haven't > thought about it from this perspective.

It seems I need to find a better way to recognize when a conversation has gotten into this territory. This could be one of those social-interaction observations that many find intuitive, but I need to have explained. I'm genuinely grateful for you pointing this out.

When someone makes a "Show HN" post, I've been assuming that they're interested in discussing the project's motivation in some depth. I gave some thought about whether or not I was drilling too far into the motivations, but I couldn't think of any likely answer that would be too painful to bring up in a public forum.

I also hoped that phrasing my question as "Would you mind sharing a bit about what those topics are?" would clearly indicate that I wasn't sure how far down this topic the author wanted to go, and that I didn't mean to pry. I figured worst-case scenario, the OP would ignore any questions she felt went too far.

<comment><USER8> I totally understand you. I am trying to understand -for hours- what concrete things might come up over there but I'm still facing walls. I don't get why no concrete examples live in the whole thread just vague generalizations (to me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> @mariedm awesome community, curious on what tech stack you used? back end and front end. Congrats, looking forward to hear about how it goes with this project.

<comment><USER20> I like the site, it's quite fast. Seems to be similar to dev.to in speed and functionality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, but I think dev.to is built with ruby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This looks great! I'm not a woman but my daughter will be eventually and she already likes to make.

Any reason why you chose to build your own vs use existing infrastructure (ie your own subreddit you moderate, closed facebook group, etc)? I'm not intending to sound critiquing, I'm interested in learning more about your insight.

<comment><AUTHOR> I started with a Telegram group so I was relying on an existing infrastructure at first. Then when the community got bigger, I thought we needed a website, as an extension of our private group. I don't think it would have make a lot of sense to create a new group on another platform like Facebook or Reddit (since we were already using one).

<comment><USER21> Good points! Thanks for the reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thank you for making this, what you're doing is so important. I was wondering if your site is inclusive toward trans women? I didn't see any mention of it on your About page so I thought I would ask. Looks great by the way and I'm excited to see it grow!

<comment><USER23> Why does it need to be mentioned? If they consider themselves women, isn't 'Women Make' enough?

<comment><USER24> That'd be nice, but there are some women-only spaces that are specifically hostile to trans women.

<comment><USER25> Can you give an example?

<comment><USER24> The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is a well-known example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have been wondering why "women" is used as an adjective so much these days -- "women entrepreneurs" \-- rather than the word "female." "Women" as an adjective has a very 1950s, almost Ralph Kramden-type vibe to it. "Women drivers" and the like. We wouldn't say "men nurses."

<comment><USER27> I think people tend to think of "female" as a bit clinical of a term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In case you or anyone else is not aware, there's the FEA (Female Entrepreneur Association).

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

</comment><comment><USER29> General advice for mariedm - be prepared to ban quite a lot of accounts at their first offense, think about IP bans, email verification, banning proxies, etc.

If some of the various online communities of, um, hard to pick a term here that someone won't take offense to, but you probably know what sort of communities I'm talking about - if they take an interest in your site, you'll need heavy defense, and quick reactions, to avoid major disruption. Maybe all comments from newer accounts should go through moderation before being posted? Or have that as a switch that can be turned on when the attacks happen?

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER30> In my city I see women conferences, in my work I see women events and women supporting each other and on the internet I see women communities. I am a man but don't think of myself as a man more than as a person. This thought process is a privilege of course but I do end up feeling left out.

</comment><comment><USER31> Fantastic Marie! The website is very sleek + nice, and the community itself looks awesome.

</comment><comment><USER32> Gender-segregated communities seem like a mixed bag.

On one hand, like the single-sex schools of yore, they may provide an opportunity for disadvantaged who can't access "mainstream" communities.

On the other hand, their existence appears contrary to the general inclusivity trend, and if "mainstream" communities as a result acquire an excuse to be implicitly pro-male (since there are female communities, and explicitly male communities are considered unacceptable) then it must suck for those who do not strongly identify with either female or male gender.

It is hard to admit that our society really is still at a stage where gender exclusivity is necessary—but, given the number of female-only communities, it must be the case.

<comment><USER33> VCs hit on women, and as a rule also do not give women money - the numbers quoted in this article are 2.2%: [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/change- har...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/change-harassment- silicon-valley-change-law/597373/)

I will never try to get VC funding because it's just not worth the time investment for those odds. Therefore I welcome communities for women entrepreneurs because we unfortunately on average must have different game plans compared to men.

We also have to deal with different BS, such as employees hitting on us. Fortunately this has not happened with me with any customers yet. I put forth effort to avoid that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Honestly, some of the comments here (if you show dead ones) just prove the need for a community like this.

@mariedm - congrats! Love the design.

Edit: One suggestion - a personal peeve is when a site flashes up a "subscribe" modal when I've only been on the site for a few seconds. Not sure what the conversions are like on that, but personally I'd be more likely to do that if I'd had a chance to look around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. And you're right. I implemented this popup and wanted to change the timing because I also think it's too fast to appear. I just didn't take care of it yet.

<comment> GuB-42 Ooh, I hate these. Maybe I hate these even more than the ones that appear immediately.

I don't know how most people react to these popups. I think there are stats since I guess that people who put these on their websites also put all sorts of trackers, but for me, it is often a signal to simply close the tab and never come back.

The reason is that it completely breaks my focus. I am reading an article, browsing stuff, and find it interesting. Then the popup pops. Now, I am distracted and start to think. Is it that interesting? What am I doing here? Then tell myself I have better things to do than stay on a website with aggressive popups.

And if the content really is good, I will just close the popup and continue reading. I mean, I am in the middle of a good article right now, I have better things to do than filling some form.

Don't worry, if your content is so good that I want to subscribe, I will find your button, you don't need to shove it in my face.

<comment><USER35> I don't have the attention surplus to hunt down a "No thanks" or a tiny "X" that's been tucked away somewhere while I'm trying to read something. If I can't dismiss the modal by pressing ESC or clicking on the overlay, I've already stopped caring about the message and left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very nice project, I hope you can drive up engagement some more. It will be great to see more discussions and projects on there.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wish people would stop with throwing up dialogs/alerts/signups when I start to scroll. I can't believe people think this is a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER38> Like Elpha but better?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we are working on different ideas. Women Make is more focused on entrepreneurs and makers, whereas they are more into tech career advice (maybe like a LinkedIn for women). Also, Women Make is an indie project.

<comment><USER39> I was a member there when they just got started and the idea back then was to make a HN for women and there were more women building stuff in the beginning, now the topics have drifted away from that. (Unfortunate, from my point of view, but maybe people like it more this way)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome to join Women Make and tell me what you think! I'd love to have your feedback about this.

<comment><USER39> congrats on your platform! I actually just joined yesterday :) really happy to share my thoughts after some weeks, so far I like it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Nice idea OP, and the design seems very friendly and welcoming. I would only say one thing (and IDK how this is going to go down): but IMO, it makes more sense to me to discourage men from posting completely - and I say that as a guy myself. Why am I saying this? Because there's already plenty of places that are primarily filled with / run by / used by men.

I think if you want to have a female only site then no one should really get offended by this. I do think females probably have many different experiences than men in the tech space and having a place where it's more normalized to share them is a good idea. Without rules for a community like this it will just get diluted and you'll end up with Hacker News 2.0.

I've seen communities like this work really well in the past but only with good moderation and clear rules. Having a place like this is also a great way to understand people a little better - i.e. listening instead of speaking (if you're not a female.) just my thoughts. let them downboats flow~

</comment><comment><USER41> Congrats! This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER42> Great idea! Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER43> Arguably, the people aren't upset that there is a female-oriented space, but rather that the same kind of male-oriented space would likely be seen as "problematic" or "hostile."

<comment><USER44> Ostensibly, arguing the need for a male-oriented space implies that the default/mainstream spaces aren't already male-oriented. AFAIK, there isn't a huge outcry against male nurse associations: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAMN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAMN)

<comment><USER45> > already male-oriented

If you scroll through the comments here, you may find that it's not a foregone conclusion that the mainstream spaces are necessarily male-oriented. Quite a few people feel the opposite, in fact.

<comment><USER44> Didn't say it was a foregone conclusion. Just speculating to the parent commenter about why some people find proposed male spaces (in certain spheres) to be "problematic".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > Happens I learned Node JS last year

Neat! Have you ever heard of curried functions? I only recently started using them in JS, and they've completely (and positively) revolutionized how I write Javascript (both backend and front).

<comment><USER46> What's with the downvotes?

<comment><USER47> I didn't downvote, but your comment seems a bit off-topic (presenting a random js feature in a thread that is not really about this, and there is nothing really extraordinary in the fact that the OP learned NodeJS last year - <USER2> for her!). See also steerpike's comment with which I agree. Your intent may have been sharing this feature that makes you enthousiastic so I can understand that you may find the downvotes frustrating. Don't lose your enthousiasm though, it's a great thing.

You may want to review the HN guidelines, they discourage discussing downvotes.

<comment><USER46> Thanks, that's exactly the situation. Thank you for the support, as well.

I had forgotten HN discourages it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Can you define the word woman?

<comment><USER49> Assuming you're not being snarky, I think it generally refers to people who identify/present as women for this site (I defer to the creator tho)

Obviously it's tricky now that we are coming to terms with gender fluidity but as the population of non-binary/gender fluid people grows, there will be spaces created to address related challenges unique to the group.</comment></comment>


The Machine Stops : E.M. Forster - <AUTHOR> http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html <comment><USER2> Previously submitted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=821360>

Also mentioned in this discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=931273>

It's also related to all the threads deploring that fact that it's nearly impossible to "tinker" with things these days, since things are so complicated you can't actually see how they work. Everything is a magic black box.

I sympathise with recent requests by pencil (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pencil>) for a path to enlightenment in physics/math/electronics. How do we get from intelligent but unknowledgable to being able to understand and perhaps build computers?

It's a long road.</comment>


WordPress still uses MD5 for hashing passwords - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/77e365efbf2e499e2ed11d29c101ea466cf1ceed/wp-includes/class-phpass.php#L142 <comment><USER2> This is actually incorrect.

It's using Phpass by Solar Designer, which is not the same thing as merely "using MD5". Typically, I reserve that choice of words for constructions like this:

        $hash = md5($password);
        $hash = md5($password . $salt);
        // etc

This MD5 code is still bad. They really should migrate to just using password_hash() and password_verify(), but they won't. They're committed to supporting PHP 5.2.x forever (or at least until every shared host in existence stops supporting 5.2, which is effectively forever).

[https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/6edbcc88ff5ba0ac...](https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/6edbcc88ff5ba0acaba8a8e1d2490ed64ff33b63/wp- includes/class-phpass.php#L225-L239)

Note that, on newer versions of PHP, bcrypt will be used instead of the method linked by this HN submission.

</comment><comment><USER3> We wrote a plugin for this a while ago that uses crypt(3) with 5000 rounds SHA-256 and a 96 bit salt – it's the safest method I found that fit within Wordpress' password hash column without altering it, even if I'd have preferred scrypt (argon2 wasn't out yet).

I guess we should open source it after all.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm shocked! WordPress, the security pioneer under all the PHP based apps, uses MD5 ...

</comment><comment><USER5> Please do not judge all PHP apps based on this.. there are plenty of PHP apps that use better methods :(

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Passwords crack at a rate of 5000/second on my 3 year old, super bad GPU laptop :-/</comment>


Brooks, Friedman, and the banal authoritarianism of do-something punditry (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/22/the-simpletons

<comment><USER2> Government is a god-object.

<comment><USER3> Would you like to support this statement? As it stands it's spam.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. There's a pattern that affects codebases, particularly when they have moved out of initial development and into maintenance.

A maintenance programmer is presented with a bug or feature request. To address it, they make adjustments to existing classes to solve it, rather than refactoring the relationships between classes.

Over time, functionality accumulates within one or a couple of the original architecture objects. But it's no longer really an object-oriented program. Rather, there is a 'God object' that knows about the internal state of lots of the rest of the system. A related development - the inherited data structures are stretched and stretched to meet needs of a system they're no longer suited to represent.

Once a codebase crosses over into this swampland, it's very difficult to drag it out, because there's no longer any unifying principles to guide you in building a supportable application.

If you throw unfamiliar programmers at it in the attempt to improve things, there's a risk you'll make the problem worse, because the key thing is to appreciate where the architecture is, and where it needs to go. New programmers won't have the context for that. Often they won't even care.

I find a strong analogy with government. When a community problem presents, many people will respond, "The government should do something!" In many minds the government is a generic fix-all institution that can right all wrongs.

The dynamic suits cynical politicians as much as cynical maintenance programmers. They placate people by throwing some money at the issue while it is in the media cycle. They might hire some people, or tack institutions on. This new momentum does deliver some quick results but re-enforces the dysfunction. By the time that is clear, the people who have benefited from the short-term play have moved on. Often government wasn't even an appropriate institution to be involved in addressing the problem.

After a time people say, "it's impossible to [create good government|write good software]." This is completely untrue, but it's easy for that depression to set in when you let media cycles or your manager's next bonus payment drive development.</comment></comment></comment>


No one is safe: This tiny $30 device can break into your car and home - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2015/08/10/car-hacks-how-to-garage-door-opener/

<comment><USER2> Is this is how things actually work? I was under the impression that once you use a code the system won't let you use "previous" codes, and move on to generate the next set.

Edit: Found this:

 _No codes are ever repeated, and once the alternating signal -- like, locking an unlocked door -- has been released, all previous codes are invalidated, which is intended to be a fool-proof safeguard.

RollJam, though, hacks the process: hidden near a car or in a garage, RollJam 'jams' a signal with a radio, blasting noise on a common frequency used by automobiles, while another radio captures the rolling code. A user will press the fob again, thinking the device hasn't performed the intended function, and RollJam simultaneously captures the second code while releasing the first one -- the car is now locked, but RollJam has the second code needed to unlock the vehicle._</comment>


LLVM 8.0.0 Release - <AUTHOR> https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-announce/2019-March/000082.html <comment><USER2> I've been wanting to test out the LLVM IR to WebAssembly compilation, but I've been too lazy (or impatient) to compile LLVM from source. Nice to see that it's now enabled by default!

<comment><USER3> Does this mean wasm is effectively just another ISA to compile to and emscripten is no longer needed?

<comment><USER4> If you need really small functions, yes. emscripten is providing all the libc functions, WASM loading code and binding generators. You will probably need some of that when porting existing libraries or applications to the web!

<comment><USER5> Well, you generally need a libc when compiling for any platform, so that shouldn't be too special?

<comment><USER6> You don't inherently need a libc for wasm. That is, libc is usually the API for the platform; wasm doesn't have such a thing really. Your wasm module says "hey, these are the functions I expose, and these are the functions that I am planning to call from the environment" and it's the host's job to wire that up properly. In the browser, that means when you instantiate a wasm module, you need to provide all the required functions, and then you can call the exposed functions from JS. Outside the browser, what things you can call and will be called is defined by the host.

A libc can be useful _inside_ of wasm for existing C or C++ code (or whatever) that is built for another platform, so that you can more easily compile to wasm as well. But it's an option, not required.

<comment><USER5> Well, I meant that if you want to cross compile general code, you might want malloc, printf etc...

I'm not sure the _primary_ appeal of wasm is treating it as a low level target (even if that is possible and sometimes useful).

<comment><USER6> You can get that stuff without a libc, if you're not literally compiling C or C++. If you are, you're right, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While they did an amazing job on improving the framework, compiler, and tools, a few important compatibility features weren't addressed:

\- '-MT' and '-MM' options support (like in GCC)[1]

\- '-M'/'-MF' options support (like in GCC)[2]

\- 'MENUEX' menu resource section parsing (like in MSVC)[3]

Also, we recently found a problem[4] while compiling radare2 with 8.0.0 clang- cl for Windows. Hopefully, it will be addressed soon since the tool offers sanitizers support for the Windows platform, which is a blast.

[1] [https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10091](https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10091)

[2] [https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8312](https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8312)

[3] [https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40108](https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40108)

[4] [https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41128](https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41128)

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know what the status of the llvm riscv backend is? I haven't heard about it in a while.

<comment><USER6> rustc has support in-tree for

      riscv32imac-unknown-none-elf
      riscv32imc-unknown-none-elf
      riscv64gc-unknown-none-elf
      riscv64imac-unknown-none-elf

So, it's at least far enough along to have that turned on!

<comment><USER9> Nice, was just looking into this!

<comment><USER6> You have to

      $ rustup target add <triple>

to download the pre-compiled libraries, but then it should be a --target <triple> away! As far as I know anyway, I'm sure there are bugs since it's so new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > -mspeculative-load-hardening Clang now has an option to enable Speculative > Load Hardening.

I wonder -- which targets support this flag? And which ones need it (i.e. which are susceptible)?

Also, I didn't see it in the changelog -- does libc++ have std::execution::* yet?

</comment><comment><USER11> I was able to get AMDGPU & Mesa-OpenCL working reliably on an AMD RX480 with this release.

On 6 and 7 some OpenCL kernels would consistently fail with illegal instruction problems.

If you've been using AMDGPU PRO just for OpenCL support, and prefer running mainline drivers, give AMDGPU a try on llvm8 and a recent kernel.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wish they updated the Kaleidoscope tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER7> I should also note that KLEE 2.0 was released[1] in line with LLVM 8.0 release. It is the first release in the last 2 years, so the amount of changes is huge. If you are using symbolic execution - I recommend you to check out this version.

[1] [https://github.com/klee/klee/releases/tag/v2.0](https://github.com/klee/klee/releases/tag/v2.0)

</comment><comment><USER13> Are LLVM releases always timed to align with Xcode releases these days? I guess most people expect new Xcode and iOS/Mac SDKs on Monday.

<comment><USER14> > _I guess most people expect new Xcode and iOS /Mac SDKs on Monday._

Most people don't expect them then, and they'd be wrong if they do.

Apple just has one of the regular spring-time announcements for hardware and services products.

WWDC, when the new Xcode and iOS/Mac SDKs will be announced (but usually not released to non-devs until Fall), is, and has always been, in the summer (June).

(And there's another hardware/services announcement in Fall usually).

<comment><USER13> It's expected that iOS 12.2 is coming with Swift5, and ABI stability for the first time, as well as os-bundled libswift for the first time. Sounds like a semi major sdk update to me.

<comment><USER14> Hmm, the minor update with new Swing is indeed a good point.

Not the usual way it happens though. Usually those things came at WWDC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19441297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19441297) links to the release announcement for the whole project, not just the LLVM module.

<comment><USER16> The other post has no comments yet and the link is: [https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm- announce/2019-March/00...](https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm- announce/2019-March/000082.html)

<comment><USER17> OK, we'll update this link from [http://releases.llvm.org/8.0.0/docs/ReleaseNotes.html](http://releases.llvm.org/8.0.0/docs/ReleaseNotes.html).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> edit: nevermind

<comment><USER19> No, it does not.

According to you reference link:

> We currently plan to install the new developer policy and add the new > license in January 2019 after the LLVM 8.0 release has branched.

Also, the source archive for LLVM 8 still contains the old license.

Which means that the first release under the Apache 2 license should be LLVM 9.</comment></comment>


Report: Reddit falling short on revenue, may close Upvoted - <AUTHOR> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/04/29/report-reddit-falling-short-on-revenue-may-close-content-aggregation-site-upvoted/ <comment><USER2> From the start it seems there was a lot of excitement about reddit and what revenue it could achieve. I think people were more caught up in the hype of it being the front page of the Internet when when you break it down it's more of a large forum covering a broad number of topics, which is very convinient and central. Nonetheless it's a great central community however expecting it to grow into A larger revenue stream would simply be unrealistic.

Reddit needs to look at expanding or introducing new products that the community will embrace and help give momentum. Reddit users are very patriotic and can help startup with gaining traction. \- they have data on users, topics demographics and opinions. Such data is very powerful for any startup to pivot in the right direction and make the right decisions on new products.</comment>


UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/22/uk-suffers-crushing-defeat-un-vote-chagos-islands <comment><USER2> This is why you shouldn't use .io domains. It sounds cool but you're indirectly sponsoring a military base where people were tortured and because of which people were deported.

<comment><USER3> Based on cursory research the British government has refuted the claim that any money is given to them from .io domain registrations.

<comment><USER2> That's an answer to a question in the House of Lords. It needs to be read between the lines. Government doesn't effectively receive anything but according to the second article cited by Wikipedia, Paul Kane, who originally runned the .io domain said that the _Crown Bank_ was receiving money :

 _" In a second conversation with Kane, he reiterated that "we do remit money to the Crown bank in accordance with our agreement. We pay X amount per name." Kane did not say what "X amount" was, due to confidentiality."_

Meanwhile it seems that in 2017 Affilias has bought the .io domain for 70 millions dollars...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >The UK retained possession of the Chagos archipelago after Mauritius gained independence in 1968, effectively paying Mauritius more than £4m for the islands.

Is the idea here that this deal was unfair?

<comment><AUTHOR> As I understand, there were 2 main issues (1) sovereignty over the Chagos islands (2) the int'l human rights issue because of the forced exile of the natives.

The natives are not allowed to return to the archipelago because of the US military base in Diego Garcia,

Mauritius argued that it leased the land to the UK and the UK sub-leased it to the US. On the other hand, UK said the archipelago is a British territory and it has sovereignty over the islands.

can £4m compensate for the human rights violations on that scale ?

<comment><USER4> Well that was the price a while back but:

>The UK recently set aside £40m for exiled Chagossians who live mainly in the UK, Seychelles and Mauritius. Relatively little has been spent so far because programmes are being developed.

Not to say that automatically resolves anything of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does this mean that people can return to those islands?

Certainly seems unlikely they would close the military base unless they were forced to so do by some military or substantial economic action.

This type of thing is what makes me worried about the long term sustainability of US security. The paradigm is not really rule of law when it comes right down to it, it's might makes right. This is an inherently insecure paradigm.

Whether there can actually ever be a different paradigm seems difficult though.

<comment><USER6> I'd imagine this is the sort of situation where Mauritius uses this embarrassing (for the UK and US) defeat to pressure the UK/US for a lucrative base hosting agreement. There's little value to Mauritius themselves in having a massive naval complex on an isolated island, their economy can't sustain the sort of military that would benefit from it. Their best use of it would likely be to reestablish sovereignty and then "rent" it to "great powers" like the US/UK, Russia, China, India, etc.

<comment><USER7> Mauritius has made it clear to the US that they do not intend to change the status of the base in any way. It will simply be on a Mauritian island instead of a UK island.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a British source that describes why the Chagos islands are so contentious:

[https://politicsfirst.co.uk/editorials/britains-shame-the- et...](https://politicsfirst.co.uk/editorials/britains-shame-the-ethnic- cleansing-of-the-chagos-islands/)

<comment><USER9> That article is misleading, calling it ethnic cleansing of "indigenous peoples". These islands were uninhabited prior to European contact.

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

<comment><USER10> Not true at all. Diego Garcia is just one island among these Archipelago and it was always inhabited by the native creole-speaking "Chagossians".

UK evicted them forcefully in the 70's or 80's I think.

<comment><USER11> The way I understand what I've found is, the islands were not inhabited before the Europeans arrived there, and "Chagossians" weren't native. They were brought in as slave workers after the settlement. (Then, the population expanded with voluntary migration)

<comment><USER10> Regardless of their ancestry timeline, the natives have known to have been living there for at least three centuries. Expelling them now is cruel and unwarranted.

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

<comment><USER11> What do you mean by "natives"? It's often used for the first people - and as weird as it is in this case, by that definition Europeans were the natives on that island. If we ignore the timeline, then does Dubai become natively Indian?

This does not mean I disagree with the expelling being cruel and unwarranted. I do think it shouldn't belong to the UK, just don't think that "natives" is meaningful here or explains the reasons.

<comment><USER10> I used to term natives to refer to people who have been living here for centuries and have made it their home.

The equivalent is expelling everyone from Australia because US/UK wants to build military base there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What do people here think about thee role of the UN here?

Without unanimity in the security council, there doesn't tend to be much action they can take. Even with the SC, the track record of reaching resolutions isn't great.

In principle, it makes sense for there to be a formalized "community of nations" to express a decision. But, in terms of having a practical role that leads to resolving these kinds of issues... would it be better if they now aimed for a reperations/compromise solution?

I can't see british sovereignty or US occupancy changing. Is the right thing now to leave chagosians with a recognized moral right, with no hope of exercising it in practice or to go for compromise?

Just curious what people think.

<comment><USER13> The UN isn't perfect, but this is still a pretty official slap in the face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Réunion [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Réunion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Réunion) is much closer to Mauritius and claimed by France, I wonder if that's why France abstained on the vote?

<comment><USER15> No the folks there are happy to be French, enjoying the EU passport and French safety net.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure a bunch of people in third world countries would be happy to have US/EU passports, but it would still be colonialism for US/European countries to annex them, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER16> Colonialism is a double edged sword. France now has a responsibility to those islands. The Netherlands has the same problem: a bunch of fairly useless Caribbean islands that were a good idea at the time but are an anachronistic leftover from a different past now.

It would be criminal to just dump them now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am not really interested in politics, but I am curious why countries abstain. They surely have an opinion; my countries (born in NL, live in ES) had NL abstain and ES vote against the UK. Now I can understand why Spain voted; a lot of people are of the opinion that UK left EU and they should suffer a lot for it. It's a underbelly thing but it's quite accepted here. They want Gibraltar and they want to see them (UK) suffer for what they messed up (opinions vary but even my most angry brexit voting friends of mine would not do that in a re-vote). That the Netherlands didn't vote is also not a surprise; our gov has no backbone (see MH shoot down/Russia/Olympics crap; same jellyfish still is the boss; he is smart but people want to see a lot more action, not just moving with the tides) and just tries to be everyone's friend. But France & Germany? That must be political but why? Is that because ties to UK/US or ?

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi I'm sure that Spain would vote against the UK irrespective of Brexit. If you have some territory illegally occupied by the British in your very country, it's obvious that you are going to vote against the British occupying territory elsewhere. It's coherent with Spanish foreign policy for many decades, from far before Brexit was even a talking point.

I haven't noticed any will of the Spanish government to punish the UK for Brexit. That might be an opinion of laypeople, but not of the government as far as I know. In fact, I think Spain was the first country to sign an agreement so that the British can keep entering the country without a visa after Brexit, as long as there is reciprocity.

<comment><USER18> That would perhaps be a bit hypocritical of Spain given their own enclaves like Melilla and Ceuta in Morocco - both of which are claimed by Morocco?

<comment><USER19> There are subtle differences. Gibraltar was Spanish before The Utrech Treaty, that even included some expiration date IIRC. Ceuta and Melilla were Spanish towns before Morocco even existed. Not that it will matter in the long run...

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure there is an expiration date. Wikipedia (so pinch of salt) has the text as reading that Spain ceded to Great Britain:

"the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar, together with the port, fortifications, and forts thereunto belonging ... for ever, without any exception or impediment whatsoever."

<comment><USER19> That's right, I got confused with something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An interesting article about Australia's Cocos Islands which was considered as an alternative to Diego Garcia

[https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/australias-cocos-islands- can...](https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/australias-cocos-islands-cannot- replace-americas-troubled-diego-garcia/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Don't kid yourself that this is about the islander's claims. They are being used as human shields.

Diego Garcia is a very strategic location. It will always be controlled by one of the great powers. Who would benefit most if the US were to leave? Who has the most to gain? Countries like China and Iran.

<comment><USER22> they are planning on putting it back with mauritius as it was before.

<comment><USER23> Meta: This comment is 20 000 000 item on HN.

<comment><USER24> Congrats! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19990101](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19990101)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not really crushing unless it's the Security Council. The GA is just talk.

<comment><USER26> The symbolism is telling though, US and UK used to be superpowers with diplomatic might, now countries are openly rejecting them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > focusing dissatisfaction over its permanent seat on the UN security council.

But China isn't having dissatisfaction focused on it for their permanent seat? That's rich. When China gives back Tibet, then perhaps we can talk about dissatisfaction about the U.K. on the Council.

<comment><USER28> I think China will "give back" Tibet when the USA "gives back" Indian Territories.</comment></comment>


Does life online give you 'popcorn brain'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dutiee.com/edition-cnn-com/2011/HEALTH/06/23/tech-popcorn-brain-ep/index-html

<comment><USER2> I agree but it's an irreversible phenomenon. Some people will balance online/offline better than others, but we will continue to adapt to the times we live in, and not to a sense of what is ideal.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is anyone else bothered by website designs like this one which have a fixed header like that, messing up the PgDn/spacebar style of scrolling by hiding some of the text?

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone else think worrying about getting used to life with the internet is like worrying about not spending enough time in caves any more?</comment>


Oddities in x86 Assembly - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/corkami/wiki/x86oddities

<comment><USER2> I was making a small x86 assembler once and I was frustrated that the encoding seemed almost random and very hard to generate. Until I fell over a comment in some google group stating that the key to understanding it is that all opcodes are coded in _octal_. It's inherited all the way back from the 8080, but for some reason this information was nowhere to be found, including the official references from Intel that I had.

<comment><USER3> Here's an analysis of x86 encoding in octal: [http://reocities.com/SiliconValley/heights/7052/opcode.txt](http://reocities.com/SiliconValley/heights/7052/opcode.txt)

The author claims to know most 8086 instructions by memory alone!

<comment><USER2> Well, that was the exact post I used back in the day :-) It helped me a lot, it's a really good reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is somewhat off topic, but this page has incredible visuals. One of the hardest parts for me of writing technical information online is including the accompanying visuals needed to make it digestible. I think it's hard for me to do that because I'm forced to either context switch between writing and doing screen captures/cropping, or go back after the fact and create visuals which is very time consuming.

</comment><comment><USER5> I recognize OllyDBG being used, but what is the debugger here? [https://corkami.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/pics/x86_15bop_64b.g...](https://corkami.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/pics/x86_15bop_64b.gif)

<comment><USER6> WinDbg

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Minor nitpick: I think the equivalent code in [https://code.google.com/p/corkami/wiki/x86oddities#future_op...](https://code.google.com/p/corkami/wiki/x86oddities#future_opcodes) has a copy-paste error. In

        89d8 mov eax, ebx
        f7d0 not eax
        21c8 and eax, ebx

there should be a ecx somewhere.</comment>


Product Planning, OKRs, & Harry Potter - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/semi-random-thoughts/product-planning-okrs-harry-potter-50bb2637321d <comment><AUTHOR> A framework for better product planning cycles, illustrating good (and bad) OKRs in the Harry Potter universe</comment>


It's 2010 - finally my jet pack is here - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmag.com/first-commercially-available-jetpack/14423/

<comment><USER2> For the metric headed readers like me:

        Dry weight: 113 kg (250 lbs)
        Pilot weight: 64 - 109 kg (140 - 240 lbs)

        Measures: 152 cm high x 167 cm wide x 152 cm long (5 ft high x 5.5 ft wide x 5 ft long)

        Rotor size: 52 cm (1.7 ft)
        Maximum thrust: 272 kg (600 lbs)

        Fuel capacity: 19 liters (5 gallons)
        Fuel burn: 38 lph (10 gph)

        Can reach: 2500 m (8000 ft)
        Range: 51 km at max speed of 101 kph (31.5 miles at 63 mph)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've always wondered why metric users call measurements in grams "weight" when it's really mass and measurements in Newtons is weight. Sorry, I'm an American befuddled by perfectly sensible decimal based measurement systems.

<comment><USER2> What is meant when using grams as force units is actually the gram-force (which is not part of the SI units). But the -force suffix is typically dropped in informal speech, so gram appears to be used as both a mass and force unit.

<comment><USER3> I also round 1 kilogram-force to 10 Neutons.

Unless you are trying to hit another planet, you'll be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A friend of mine is the test pilot for them. He said their quite cool to fly, but scary as hell.

<comment><USER3> If it's not scary, it's not cutting edge.

When did we start to assume that strapping yourself to an engine-and- propellers (or ducted fans) gadget and flying around would be anything close to safe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not really a jet pack. It's more a thing you strap yourself onto than something you could carry on your back.

Would an A380 qualify as a jetpack if I managed to strap myself to its underbelly?

<comment><USER5> What's the human/jetthingie ratio that turns it into a jetpack? :)

<comment><USER6> If you can't walk a mile wearing it, it isn't a jetpack.

<comment><USER7> Who needs walking? I have a jetpack!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We Were Promised Jetpacks [1] will be delighted by the news.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Were_Promised_Jetpacks>

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks more slick, but just as scary as the one shown in Arrested Development.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think a water powered jet pack would be awesome. You could keep the pump and power source on the ground so it would be a very small apparatus. You'd be tied to the ground by a hose but it would still be fun.

In fact, I wonder if that could be an alternative to extension ladders. Imagine cleaning your gutters riding on a jet of water.

<comment><USER11> It exists; <http://www.jetlev-flyer.com/>

<comment><USER10> Cool! Just get the price down from ~100K to 1K and you have something that could help with housework and construction.

I wonder how hard it would be to build one of these myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think you can buy this one now: www.jetlev-flyer.com

It's connected to a water source which limits about a 10M altitude, and the market seems to be focused towards a adventure tourist market.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not to sound like a curmudgeon, but: let's solve these oil and CO2 problems before trying to popularize flying cars and jet packs.</comment>


ASCII Fighter II Super Hyper Text-Based Championship Edition - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5243521/ascii-fighter-ii-super-hyper-text+based-championship-edition

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately they appear to have bypassed the whole "text-based" thing and used 3D APIs to render their characters on the screen. I want to see a curses version.

<comment><USER3> Wow, anyone know any good curses games, other than nethack?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you like Nethack at all, though it's been a few years since I've played them, I highly recommend Angband (<http://www.thangorodrim.net/>, somewhat outdated website, but I'm not sure what the current one is) and its variants. ToME (<http://t-o-m-e.net/main.php?tome_current=0>) is one I know of that's in active development these days.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Smlr – re-encode jpegs using butteraugli visual quality measurement - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jasonmoo/smlr <comment><USER2> It looks like this binary searches across the Go quality levels to find acceptable quality. This isn't a bad idea, but it won't be fruitful. The Go standard library JPEG encoder is pretty basic, and reuses the quant tables from the spec. It also doesn't optimize the huffman tables, so the pics are typically 10% bigger than they need to be.

This idea, taken to the extreme is mozjpeg. It is really advanced and can take advantage of a lot of cool tricks (like trellis optimization) in order to get the absolute best quality for the size.

[https://github.com/mozilla/mozjpeg](https://github.com/mozilla/mozjpeg)

<comment><USER3> There's an existing tool that does this and uses mozjpeg.

It's called jpeg-recompress and is part of the jpeg-archive project on Github.

It currently can use mean-pixel-error, SSIM (the default), MS-SSIM and SmallFry (an implementation of the patented algorithm used by the JPEG mini app). So they may be open to adding this new comparison algorithm too.

edit: someone already filed an issue asking them to look at it:

[https://github.com/danielgtaylor/jpeg- archive/issues/40](https://github.com/danielgtaylor/jpeg-archive/issues/40)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First thing that popped into my head when reading this title was Silicon Valley.

<comment><AUTHOR> Had that in mind when I named it.</comment></comment>


Using flash cards to improve your programming skills - <AUTHOR> http://peterevjan.com/posts/slides-using-flash-cards-to-memorise-almost-anything/

<comment><USER2> If anyone wants to try this method, check out [http://cardflashapp.com/](http://cardflashapp.com/) which I hope to make into a simpler alternative to ANKI (still very much a work in progress though)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool!

What parts of Anki do you hope to simplify?

<comment><USER2> Hi evjan, just saw your reply. Here's a few ways I want to improve on Anki: \- "just works" deck importing from various formats (including Anki) \- Card formatting with Markdown \- Better deck sharing, forking and subscribing. Commenting on decks and collaborative shared deck creation. (I'm considering piggybacking on Github for this feature set) \- Slicker, more user-friendly UI \- Progress-updates and study-reminder emails \- Better sense of progression and achievement through charts and study-session summaries.

Most important however is creating something you don't need to install on your computer, looks good, and that "just works".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I and I think everyone else heard of spaced repetition software from that Wired article in ... 2007, was it?

Here's my favourite writeup so far:

[http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki- method.html](http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html)

My main problem is having a fixed time to do the reviews.

The second "problem" is that repetition just helps you to remember. Until you understand what you're memorising, it's useless. (This is the first thing you're told, but I'll tell you again).

So the truly hard work -- wrestling with material until you _get_ it -- is still there. You just get to cut down on how often you'll have to do it in future.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're probably right. If Wired wrote about it 6 years ago there's probably no point in repeating it, in spite of people telling me it was interesting and something new to them. Maybe they were lying to be nice to me.

But thanks for the link, I found that useful. Even though it repeated stuff from the Wired article.

Remembering stuff is only the beginning, yes. But you need it nonetheless.

<comment><USER3> I think you should be more sarcastic, that _definitely_ belongs on HN and in _no way_ makes you seem unnecessarily defensive.

Edit:

OK, I'm not being constructive either. But here's the thing about good ideas: you are not the first to have them. I am not the first to have them. I even wrote a disclaimer on my website about this exact problem.

Cracking the shits because the first comment -- on a site with thousands of people who read widely -- is about someone else who's had the same idea is kinda pointless, don't you think?

When I read the _Wired_ article, I had the same idea too. I later wrote a research proposal on testing it on freshman comp sci students. After that I read Jack Kinsella's article. After Jack Kinsella came Derek Sivers, who at least had the grace to say "oh neat, this Jack Kinsella article is good too" and link to it.

My original comment was more about how ideas can be traced back to common beginnings, how a blooming garden can sometimes come from a single seed. But I guess you felt it was a personal attack, a swift kick in the guts from another faceless HN boo-parade. Well I'm sorry you feel that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apology accepted.

The tone in the first part of your original comment was condescending and you needed to be told so. Maybe you thought your statement hinted at "how ideas can be traced back to common beginnings", but you did come across as a boo- parader. There was nothing blooming about that.

And no, I never think it is pointless telling people they are rude. Otherwise, rude people think their behaviour is accepted.

The rest of your original comment was constructive and I enjoyed that.

I refer to Anki in the preso and I hope it doesn't seem like I am trying to claim that I invented spaced repetition.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Great mobile apps useless in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://headmind.com/2011/12/mobile-apps-useless-europe

<comment><USER2> Don't forget apps that use measurements like lbs, inches, etc rather than metric ones.</comment>


Addressing The Outmoded Swapping And Paging Strategy in OSX - <AUTHOR> http://dropsafe.crypticide.com/article/3848 <comment><USER2> There is also the "throw money at it" fix for this – an SSD. I've been enjoying one, of the Intel X25-M G2 variety, it solves VM paging/thrashing slowness very nicely and is hella fast to boot.

<comment><USER3> I have the same drive. I currently have 6GB of VM, but I've had it up as far as 14GB with no issues.

<comment><USER2> I've actually had Photoshop run out of the 20 GB that are free, by allocating all of it to manipulate a huge image. It takes about two seconds for it to allocate all of that space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reason that firefox shutdown is so slow is because it's paging everything back in to run the destructors for the objects that got paged out, not because the OS is trying to give the swapfile back.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article is an example of why Apple was smart for going Unix. It attracts really smart geeks that can help shed light on performance issues in a way normal consumers just can't.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately this is not the smart geek that they are looking for. He's worse than a normal consumer: he's a _power user_. Note how he's not done any benchmarks at all, he's just insisting that this must be the cause because the handholding Linux distros he's familiar with all use swap partitions, so OS X must just be retarded or something.

Paging is fucked in OS X, but this isn't why.

He focuses entirely on its use of swap files, which is not a problem at all, especially since the middle of the 10.5 betas. Before that, the system would only allocate new swap files and never do compaction or reclamation, so if your filesystem was normally within 10G of being full, it could page its way into filling it, and grind into a performance hell orders of magnitude worse than what he's complaining about (for years I had to reboot every 100 days or so to reclaim swap). Insisting on using fixed swap partitions made sense twenty years ago, but it sure as hell doesn't today as long as you do GC.

Paging on OS X is much higher latency than any other modern unix, but the fault lies with how VM works in the guts of Mach, not some userland configuration trivialities. Chapter 8 of Amit Singh's _Mac OS X Internals_ has details of the implementation but doesn't go too far into why it sucks.

<comment><USER7> > Insisting on using fixed swap partitions made sense twenty years ago, but it > sure as hell doesn't today as long as you do GC.

The main advantage of using fixed swap partitions is that you don't have to go through the file system to access swap. This is why swap files used to be slower on Linux with the 2.4 series of kernels -- with 2.6 and swap files, the kernel builds a map to the LBA at startup for direct physical access, so there's no performance difference any more. Shame on Linux distros that still use swap partitions in 2010.

Windows does the same, which is why Windows doesn't need (and has never supported) swap partitions, either.

However, this sort of map implies that while increasing swap size is easy, reducing the size of swap files is really difficult while the system is online, which is why Windows (and I believe Linux) don't attempt to solve this problem.

<comment><USER6> You can totally reduce the size of swap files on Linux, it's done the same way it is on OS X. It even has a nice syscall: swapoff(2) and a little utility that calls it swapoff(8) that comes with the standard util-linux package.

You create another new swapfile, turn it on, and then turn off the old one. The VM will copy all the old pages still in use in the old file and distribute them among the highest-priority enabled swaps with free space by round-robin. If you create the new swapfile sparsely, you don't even chew much disk space.

I discovered something hilarious in Linux's OOM-killer a while back. It has a bunch of heuristics for picking what process to kill next to save the rest: the very first one is "are any processes blocked in the swapoff syscall?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These sorts of mistakes seem to be common: forgetting that Moore's law means that memory settings need to be adjusted at least every other year. For some reason, one of the Smalltalk distributions still uses default GC settings from 1994! That's only about two orders of magnitude off! Everyone just knows to go and tweak those.

</comment><comment><USER9> Clearly the solution is to disallow multitasking.

But seriously, I find it strange that so many people in the comments section are complaining about how much swap Firefox uses. Don't they have machines with more than 128M of RAM!? (My Firefox is using 131M of RAM right now.)

<comment><USER4> My firefox memory usage has regularly gone over 1 gigabyte of RAM. Currently, it's sitting at 531 megabytes of resident pages, with 39 of them shared. It's also at 1.4 gigabytes of address space used.

<comment><USER9> Ah. I use conkeror (an xulrunner app) and Adblock Plus, and that's it. If you use plain firefox with a lot of extensions, I guess it uses more memory.

<comment><USER4> Adblock Plus, Flashblock, Zotero, and I have Firebug installed but not enabled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would this also make a difference on a Macbook Pro? It seems that it should... When I look in my /var/vm I also have a collection of incremental swapfiles in there.

I also get lots of slow-downs when closing apps - exacerbated by the fact that I swapped my MBP's hard drive for a 5'400rpm, bigger one, which means disk IO is even slower. Anything that reduces disk IO would be welcome.

<comment><USER6> If you force-quit / SIGKILL the app, it won't bother to page as much of its bullshit back into memory as it's terminating it. I'm kind of baffled by the continued presence of graceful shutdown procedures in an age when everyone does recovery on startup anyway.

The problem isn't that the 5400rpm drive is 'slower', but that the average latency is higher (though only by about 1.5x) -- it likely has higher streaming bandwidth simply by virtue of greater areal density.

<comment><USER11> By the way, Apple does just that in Snow Leopard. The processes now have a "Sudden Termination" flag, and if a program has no unsaved data and is ready to quit, it sets this flag on itself. When shutting down such a process, the system sends it SIGKILL instead of a usual SIGTERM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> revisited:

<http://dropsafe.crypticide.com/article/3915>

</comment><comment><USER13> very well done.

i wonder what the effect would be if you simply increase the paging size, as he describes, without creating the separate partition. this solution might be more appropriate for those of us who simply want to avoid the beachball-of- death, and aren't to hung up on speed.

</comment><comment><USER14> Where did the article go? I can't resolve the host.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't have any problems reloading right now.

[http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://dropsafe.crypticid...](http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://dropsafe.crypticide.com)

It's just you. Maybe try again in a few?</comment></comment>


Hacking your CRM to handle phone calls - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.dovetailsoftware.com/blogs/kmiller/archive/2009/04/13/can-your-crm-place-a-phone-call.aspx

<comment><USER2> Great Twilio application! Great writeup Kevin.</comment>