Show HN: Would love some feedback on our pre-launch page (find the Easter egg) - <AUTHOR> https://share.link <comment><USER2> If you click on the pink flamingo when it exposed it opens up a flappy bird game. They are layered so if the blue flamingos are "in front" of the pink one you cannot click to open the game. Pretty neat and I like the simple/clean look of the website.</comment>


Black holes and neutron stars merge unseen in dense star clusters - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-05-black-holes-neutron-stars-merge.html <comment><USER2> Interesting reading! But I take issue with the title. The article says

       "Laser Interferometer Gravitational Waves Observatory" (LIGO) in the USA, are able to detect these waves.

So not unseen, in as they've been seen :)

Curiously, its the fact that there was no visible light, that suggests it was this particular collision. Vs two black holes or two neutron stars. So I guess an indirect observation. Boy are astrophysicists clever!

<comment><USER3> If we don't perceive this event using the electromagnetic spectrum, is it fair to state that it remains un'seen' as such?

We need a verb for gravitational perception!

<comment><USER4> I mean, events that are _seen_ are a subset of events that are _observed._ So with that in mind, _" observed"_ is probably sufficient.

Another example: you can observe a fire by smelling it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could gravitational waves be faster than Light/EM? Faster than c event?

<comment><USER6> They're not faster than C, but they could outrun a beam of light if there was some stuff hanging out in space and raising the index of refraction. In relativity the C limit is geometric, in the same way that "you can't make an apple bigger by rotating it around in your hands" is geometric.

<comment><USER7> Not only can, but do.

The intergalactic medium (IGM) is very diffuse, but not pure vacuum. The difference in arrival time of light and gravitational waves from an event billions of light years distant could help measure the density of the IGM.

Incidentally, while it is very cold, the IGM is plasma, so obeys plasma fluid- dynamic laws, which is why the clouds seen at the ends of Active Galactic Nucleus jets, millions of light years across, can be visibly turbulent.</comment></comment></comment>


What sites would you pay to use? - <AUTHOR>

I've been thinking about supply, demand, and pricing for software and websites lately.  The question in my mind is:
If your favorite site switched from free to pay, would you pay to continue using it?  If so, how much?
Here are a couple of my answers:
-Google: I'd probably switch to another search engine.  Search results are fairly comparable now so I'd be comfortable with an alternative.  In the 90s I would have paid a lot for Google because the others sucked so bad.
-Hacker News: I think I'd pay to stay on here.  The discussion and submissions are miles above any other site I've been to.  I'd pay $10/mo? $20?  If I didn't want to pay I'd just substitute other entertainment - there's no site I'd switch to, free or not.
-Gmail: not sure about this.  I haven't seen the other web based email clients in a while but I imagine they're better than they were 4 years ago.  I use it so much that I'd probably pony up $5 or so/mo.
-Google Reader: hard to imagine there's not another free web based feed reader out there.  I'd probably drop it.  (I haven't seen the competition)
-WordPress: I think I'd pay (now that I've used it for 6 months and am very comfortable with it).  But I don't think I would have chosen it in the first place if I had to pay.
-DropBox: I'd totally pay.  It seamlessly solves a problem I've been fighting with for 5 years (multiple computers I'm on all the time).  In fact, I've written about some beta products I've tested but I can't even write about DropBox because there's nothing to say besides THANK YOU!
What are some others?  I'm thinking sites you use as opposed to blogs and essays you read (that's a whole different animal). <comment><USER2> I would actually be thankful if most sites charged me, as I'd waste less time on them.

<comment><USER3> You mean, you'd either pay and spend as much (or more) time on them, or you'd never visit them again and not subscribe.

Sadly, there's no middle ground.

<comment><USER2> I'd be interested in paying per use or per minute. Something 8aweek could do and give proceeds to charity?

<comment><USER4> Or just invest it in some sort of fund for you that only pays out when your usage goes down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with this question is, when you think about it, one big reason all the popular free web services ARE popular is because they're free. So pretty much my answer to any of the sites I use would be, I might be willing to pay if I couldn't find an alternative, yet at the same time, I'd probably never be using any of them in the first place if they weren't originally free. However, I would NEVER pay for social news/discussion sites like this one (or digg, reddit, etc.). Regardless of the quality of the stories and discussion, social news sites are services I only use in my leisure time, I would probably not visit them if I didn't have tons of spare time anyway. No offense to social news sites, it's just that I wouldn't pay for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great answer. The question was an attempt to see what's entertaining but not valuable, and what's so unique that there's no good substitute for. For instance, there are other web based email clients (not as good as gmail) but there's no other community I've found as great as HN. Since I'm sort of technologically isolated, the community here is a godsend that's the most stimulating entertainment I get outside of my wife and kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> \- Consumer Reports: When it comes to buying a big ticket item, like a car, the reviews and the user comments are very useful. Plus canceling my subscription after I bought my car was quick and painless

<comment><USER7> In a similar vein, Amazon. Not for the shopping experience (though it is nice) but for the reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have been thinking about this a lot in the past hour or two, too. Though slightly off-topic:

I've been thinking that a hassle-free solution for micro-transactions needs to hit mainstream before the average internet user will be willing to pay for more things online.

Most people (including myself) would pay for more things online if it didn't involve finding your wallet and typing in your billing address and credit card information. Paypal is the closest thing I can think of, but I still get overwhelmed thinking about logging in and all that. A simple one click button that could somehow be synced with your RFID chip would be great..

On my current project, I am thinking about ways to monetize a small feature similar to the old Facebook gifts, which as stupid as those are, could potentially bring in $15 million this year for FB? (Source: [http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/facebook-digital- gifts-...](http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/facebook-digital-gifts-worth- around-15myear/)) I bet FB could just charge users who upload more than 500 or so pictures $5/mo, and those sorority girls with 2500 party pics wouldn't think twice about pulling out daddies credit card.

It feels like it has become almost too trendy to give software services away for free lately. If you never charge you will never know how much people might have valued your service. If you start losing users drop the price? If you are trying to grow a user base, start out free and charge for additional features?

<comment><USER8> Actually, just today I went to cancel my $6/mo subscription to www.mofuse.com, which I use to format the iPhone app for my music blog that I run for fun (<http://rawberryjams.com>). After I logged in, the mofuse team announced that they were dropping their rates to $3/mo, so I accepted the new terms and logged out, keeping my subscription. Perfect example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd pay for any site that helps me make money, directly or indirectly.

Gmail, Google, Adwords, and Hacker news fall in to that category.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wikipedia. I'd pay a pretty penny for that.

<comment><USER11> They do accept donations.

<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate>

<comment><USER10> Who said I don't regularly donate?

<comment><AUTHOR> No one, it's just a fairly safe assumption.

<comment><USER10> You're right. I should have phrased my original comment differently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google (more so in 2000 than now)

HNYC

Gmail

8aweek

Chatterous (seriously)

Used to feel that way about Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER13> I currently pay for Flickr and Remember the Milk. I also pay for my web host.

Would pay for nymag.com (restaurant reviews & db is worth a few bucks a month).

... other than that, everything else I use has enough free comparable alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER14> Do I get anything out of this payment, or would it be exactly the same as now but with cash exchanging hands? I might pay for GMail if it meant actual support (can't get IMAP to work) and no ads, for example.

In general, no, I'd just switch. Everybody has competition.

I only spend money online when buying a physical product or human-generated service. Amazon already knows my CC#, and if one of my regular webcomics went pay-only I'd pay to keep reading.

</comment><comment><USER15> As to paying for Hacker News, there are several community sites that have a low one-time (non-reimbursable) fee for joining. MetaFilter (<http://www.metafilter.com/>) costs $5 to join, for example. I feel like it makes the community a little more invested in the content, and is worth it overall.

I think that paying for community membership will become more popular in the very near future.

<comment><USER16> I hope reddit starts charging people to post. The "joke accounts" are ruining the site. $5 would kill those in 20 seconds.

Then we would just have to delete the non-programming parts of reddit. :)

<comment><USER17> Science, Gadgets & Cogsci are not bad either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Gmail definitely, but I would consider it bait and switch.

Wikipedia absolutely.

wordreference.com (online dictionaries for english/french/italian/spanish). Love to have better options though.

The Economist (used to have a web subscription, but cancelled it when they made all content free).

Rescuetime. Keeps me productive.

Fogbugz definitely (it's free for 1-2 persons). I entered 3000 bugs in 5 months.

<comment><USER19> I pay for the Economist. But I have a dead tree subscription and get the web one as a bonus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google obviously.

Pandora.com - ($15/mo ... i already pay this to Napster for unltd dls ( _but I would have to be able to press a back button to play the previous song,etc_ ),

Hacker News ($20/mo ... keep the trolls off)

Wikipedia? Well if it came down to it, i'd donate to it; if it started charging, i would use other alternatives. the beauty of wikipedia being free is that it is free from the undue influence of paying subscribers- which is pretty essential to a site that wants to supply unbiased information.)

Facebook.

I don't really know of anything else that truly provides a unique value proposition for me that other sites can't duplicate rather easily.

<comment><USER21> I think Pandora is the only one that could reasonably charge there. The rest would see massive switchovers to free, similar competitors.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not recommending they do or that quality would remain if they became paid. I just wanted to feel out which sites people really valued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I pay for a Safari subscription. The quality of content there is so much better for some things than just randomly searching Google for programming problems. Right now, I have the $15 a month, but I'll go back to the $40 a month unlimited account after school's done and I'm in startup mode.

I also pay for a Rhapsody subscription. It's just so much nicer to have most any song available to me whenever I want it. Besides, I have a primordial dislike for I-Tunes. I did have a Yahoo Unlimited music subscription, but their customer service was awful.

I'd pay a bit for Gmail. I'd also pay a bit for Hacker News if it meant keeping Hacker News small and focused.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would definitely pay for GMail and Google Reader, unless someone can find me a similar service (web based and with awesome support for keyboard shortcuts). AFAIK the competition doesn't even come close.

<comment><USER5> A good alternative to Google Reader is simply visiting the sites you want to :-) I'm being sarcastic, but I honestly don't get the point of using a web- based RSS reader, I've always just bookmarked and visited the sites I desire to check.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried using Google Reader or other? I used to bookmark and revisit, but there were two problems - too much time visiting sites when there were no updates and it was too much hassle to visit sites with rare updates (like pg essays or Yegge novels). Now I follow ~150 feeds and it takes less time than I spent following 10-15 with bookmarks.

<comment><USER24> I've solved that problem for me by configuring rawdog RSS reader. Now, it checks for update and generates a static HTML page. (if you are interested, here is the link: <http://anton.kovalyov.net/tools/feeds/>)

So I don't have to visit a website just to make sure that there are no updates and I also don't have to use some big RSS reader with a lot of unnecessary things (ajax, tags, stars, share with friend, etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really nice! I like the fact that you control the output and that it's web accessible. Does it include a way to mark items as read or do they just drop off the bottom?

<comment><USER24> Just drop off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just a specific comment on whether or not I'd pay for GMail: I would pay for any service for which I depend on if it gave me a higher service guarantee and would also include support.

</comment><comment><USER26> I would pay for Gmail if their IMAP support wasn't awful.

<comment><USER27> Do you actually have problems with Gmail's IMAP support in practice? I've heard similar comments about issues with Gmail's IMAP support, but it's working fine for me.

<comment><USER26> The biggest problem I have is the way they map IMAP "folders" to Gmail "tags". I guess my complaint is more with Gmail itself. Tags are nice, but I'd really like real folders too.

Also, you end up with basically two different inboxes: your real inbox, and the "All Mail" folder. You have to delete or mark messages in both places (I think there's supposed to be some sort of synchronization, but it's not obvious)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd be happy to pay for Rescue Time and Hacker News, but having said that I'm not sure that I would pay for either if I hadn't used them for free first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you have signed up after a 30 day trial?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ameritrade...

oh, wait.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wouldn't pay for any of those sites. I'd pay for google if all search engines started charging. Also, I'd probably end up paying for some e-mail service if gmail would charge (it might not be gmail).

I probably would pay for wikipedia if I had to, as well. Maybe planetmath.org.

</comment><comment><USER31> Surprised no one's mentioned IMDB.com; it's the first thing that leaps to my mind.

Also occasionally surprised to consider I get people to pay to use <http://linkswarm.com/> \-- not complaining, though.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hmm, I can tell you what I do pay for. A hosted exchange server account. That's it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ditto. Not really the same though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wouldn't pay for gmail. I'd go back to using Thunderbird.

As for the rest... extremely hard to predict because if all the most popular sites charged money the dynamics of the web would be completely different.

</comment><comment><USER33> Mint.com

It needs more features, but so far it's the only tool I have that is able to synch with all 12 of my financial accounts without having to manually download/import OFX or MNY files.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would pay a join fee for a lot of sites I use daily something like <http://forums.somethingawful.com/> but not much over that

</comment><comment><USER35> I have only paid for games, ebooks and hosting lately, or for buying physical stuff. I would pay for movies and music, if it was available in acceptable formats where I live.

</comment><comment><USER36> Hacker news is probably the only site I would pay for.

It seems to me there are pretty good free alternatives to just about everything else.

<comment><USER5> You, or someone else, could very easily create a free alternative to it. Hacker news is good because it's still relatively obscure. ANY social news site that is full-featured and doesn't censor its users will almost invariably start out great then begin it fail as more people find out about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're underestimating the difficulty of attracting enough of the right kind of users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> <http://news.ycombinator.com>

</comment><comment><USER38> Google. GMail. Wikipedia. DropBox. Anywhere.FM.

</comment><comment><USER39> Google Maps

Hacker News

TripIt

Zillow

</comment><comment><USER40> I would pay for twitter. Definitely.

</comment><comment><USER41> wikipedia, gmail, and thesixtyone.

</comment><comment><USER42> waffles.fm

</comment><comment><USER43> Digg</comment>


Apple told WeChat and other Chinese social apps to disable "tip" functions, - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tip-for-apple-in-china-your-hunger-for-revenue-may-cost-you-1495100964 <comment><USER2> [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-19/tencent-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-19/tencent- s-wechat-abolishes-tipping-feature-on-apple-iphones)

April 19: "Tencent's WeChat Abolishes Tipping Feature on Apple iPhones"

"Tencent Holdings Ltd. is shutting down a popular feature on WeChat that allows iPhone users to tip emoji and content creators to comply with Apple Inc.'s policy on in-app purchases."

</comment><comment><USER3> China seems the perfect place to call Apple's B.S. policies out. The government isn't afraid of confronting a global powerhouse if it threatens domestic companies with unfair trade practices. And Apple's whole running of the app store approval and payments policy and process is nothing but unfair.

<comment><USER4> I'd bet on Apple having more leverage with the government than Tencent just because Apple indirectly employs millions of workers.

<comment><USER5> Actually, I'd think the Chinese government has quite some leverage over Apple, too, since all their products are manufactured by Foxconn etc..

I wonder what negotiations and power struggles are going on behind the scenes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how long the iphone would last in China without WeChat if they were to ever decide to just not publish their app in the app store because of this.

</comment><comment><USER7> I dont quite understand why Apple requires 30% cut here.

There are many other payment services App that allow you to transfer money from one person to another. And those are free from the 30% tax.

So why does tipping requires 30% cut?

( Both are totally different to In-App Purchase )

<comment><USER8> Because Apple wants a 30% cut and is big enough to force developers to accept it.

<comment><USER9> Because 30% has always been a screaming deal for developers too.

I'm old enough to remember when Ingram MicroD took 50%, and out of our half we had to pay for shipping, packaging, disk duplication, and pay them and stores to promote our products.

<comment><USER8> If it was a "screaming deal" for developers, it'd be popular based on merit alone and Apple wouldn't need to disallow other payment methods, yet they do.

<comment><USER9> Yea, that doesn't make sense. If I charge 30% to host foodcarts at my concert event, cart owners will agree only if it's a good deal. If someone else decides to tear open a hole in the fence and sneak their cart in, it doesn't mean it wasn't a good deal, it means they were cheating scumbags.

In Apples case they've paid developers tens of billions, at least 2x as much as all other mobile app stores combined, and never lacks for new apps from their developers. Their devs clearly think App Store access is worth 30%.

Tencent should man up and pay the 30% to Apple, and send the 70% to the Tippees.

<comment><USER8> > If I charge 30% to host foodcarts at my concert event, cart owners will > agree only if it's a good deal.

They agree because it's the _best_ deal. In your hypothetical and the case of IAPs, it's the best deal because it's the _only_ deal. When the options are make no money and make a little money, you're going to take what little you can get. That by no means makes it good.

Devs have no choice. Users are caught in an Apple/Google duopoly and both app stores charge 30%. Devs can either pay their 30% or give up on IAP revenue as a whole.

<comment><USER2> Dealing with license management and account access and payment processing and chargebacks and international tax compliance and everything else I am not thinking of after only five seconds is actually a lot of work. Apple has a lot of _revenue_ from the App Store, but almost no profit: it is something they run and have weird business model restrictions on to maintain device lock-in for users, not something that makes them much profit. In fact, Apple has often reported in public earning calls that the App Store mostly breaks even, and a judge reviewing Google's finances showed that they were losing money on the Android Market.

I run an app-store-like service myself with the same 70% split (which is a more honest way of describing the "30%") that has no forced restrictions (as you can always sidestep it and still distribute your products via my services), and vendors have often even shut down their own payment processing once trying mine as it is just so much easier: being able to concentrate on building your own applications rather than spending time on distribution is actually valuable.

Again: the reason Apple wants payments to go through their wallets and they want licenses for apps to be managed by their store and to control the device licensing model is to maintain platform lock-in for users. It is really important to them that when you buy your paltry $30 in apps--where even if Apple made _all_ of the "30%" they would only net under $10--that that "investment" doesn't make you think twice about plunking down $600 on a new iPhone, where estimates have been made that Apple has a nearly 50% profit margin.

To make this work Apple needs to maintain all of this ludicrous platform control, as otherwise your custom licensing model is obviously going to support stuff like users getting discounts if not entirely free copies of your app for Android if they just bought it for iOS or charging upgrade fees for users who switch to the latest generation of device. I honestly don't believe that given their intense desire to maintain this control--which I will argue is the real problem here--that the 30% just falls out as a reasonable charge for what they are providing (in some cases whether you want the service or not, such as the app review process).

<comment><USER10> Exactly, it is not the 30%, it is more the lock in.

Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, etc would be glad to use their own payment systems

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Non paywalled article at [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/18/apple-chinese- chat-apps...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/18/apple-chinese-chat-apps- disable-tip-functions/)

<comment><USER12> As a former MacRumors regular, I find it interesting to see that the even the Mac fans there are not in favor of Apple's decision, with a notable exception being a user who mentioned that without the app store, the apps would be nothing.

WeChat is huge in China. It's used for everything. It's bigger than Apple's or Google's app stores. I expect (and hope for) Apple to lose this battle.

<comment><USER13> MacRumor regulars have turned quite sour on Apple.

Don't get me wrong. It's still a pro Apple site with a pro Apple fan base, but it has a very strong contingent of Mac fans, many of who've been around since well before OSX, who feel, justifiably, completely neglected by Apple. Despite the fact that one could make a strong argument that these Mac fans are the reason Apple existed long enough to even make the iPod in the first place.

<comment><USER9> No one has time to post on MacRumors unless they are super pissed off. These posters are representative of little to nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> With IPhone's market share of just 9% in China, WeChat should drop support for the IPhone.

<comment><USER5> They probably have the resources to buy or develop a jailbreak. If not software then maybe even hardware via the connector, and have it installed in all those little telefone shops in China.</comment></comment>


Nominate the Best Company Blog - <AUTHOR>

Who has the best company blog? Nominate and upvote to determine the winner... <comment><AUTHOR> Note: You can nominate yourself...</comment>


Ask HN: Which translation API? - <AUTHOR>

Given the recent announcements regarding API shut-off's (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592399 is one of several posts on this), I expect many people are in need of a good translation API.
From a quick look around, myGengo is out because of the human element and therefore pricing. My particular site will have lots of property listings added daily (perhaps up to 5000/week). MS has http://www.microsofttranslator.com/dev/ but I haven't yet had a chance to look it over.
Are there any others of repute? Paid is not a problem but "good" automated translation is essential. <comment><USER2> I used to work at WorldLingo (<http://www.worldlingo.com>), who offers a translation API service. They're one of the few machine translation API services that are publicly available at reasonable costs. I'm happy to answer questions about the translation industry as a whole, shoot me an email if you're interested.</comment>


Metacademy: How to learn on your own - <AUTHOR> https://metacademy.org/roadmaps/rgrosse/learn_on_your_own <comment><USER2> Learning on our own doesn't have to be complex.

Learning via school works primarily because of the fixed, predictable and regular schedule dedicated to learning.

Learning French on my own for just 5-10 minutes daily has taught me a few things.

The amount of time spent on a subject is less important than having a predictable schedule.

Here's why this is important. We all read, hear about people who have read tons of books, who spend 5 hours learning daily and want to do the same.

And this is really bad. A recipe for predictable failure. You won't expect to eat five plates of rice because some dude you respect does it would you?

In the past, I would procrastinate when I hit a mental block, or a difficult lesson.

Now, I simply repeat past exercises because sticking with the schedule is more important than learning something new.

To keep things brief, the most important factor to learning on my own is having a reminder because as an adult, my days vanish in a myriad of unpredictable activities.

Without this reminder, i'll hit my head in six months when I remember that I was trying to learn something.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for this, it resonates with me quite well. When studying for university entrance exams I produced a very detailed and intense study schedule. Proud of myself, I showed it to my teacher who suggested it was too excessive. I don't think I followed that schedule for more than one day and in hindsight the students that studied for a bare minimum of 30 minutes a day after school performed the best, even though the numbers weren't super excessive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> HN regularly has threads about self teaching math, theoretical compsci, physics etc, they're hard to google for.

Best is to find a study group or willing tutor but for books/youtube, MOOC,

\- Cal Newport's books/blog

\- Garrity "all the math you missed", math for physics books by Boaz and Arfken et al.

\- "Passing exams for Dummies" yellow book

\- Barbara Oakley's books and MOOC,

\- Lara Alcock and Keith Devlin's "how to study" books

____________________________

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12429349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12429349)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060398)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068215)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5gu1kr/selfstudy_math...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5gu1kr/selfstudy_mathematics/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5xnhuj/how_do_you_rea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5xnhuj/how_do_you_read_advanced_math_texts/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a really neat concept. One of the challenges for me for learning is filling in partial knowledge. E.g., when I understand some statistics / AI concepts, but want to fill in some new area of knowledge, it's hard to justify taking an entire class if all the material I need is buried in one or two talks.

I'm building a search engine for lectures ([https://www.findlectures](https://www.findlectures)) and avoided this problem by focusing on standalone lectures (e.g. conference talks). Their way seems much better, for cases where you need to understand all the pieces of a big problem. Also, kudos for curating data by hand :)

<comment><USER6> [https://www.findlectures.com/](https://www.findlectures.com/)

<comment><USER5> Oops, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, this is a really wonderful site.

I do still think that it lacks visualisation of knowledge and all the different disciplines and fields you can learn.

I try to visualise it as best that I can ([https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge- map](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map)).

</comment><comment><USER8> They mention books. I appreciate books and courses because the `signal / time spent` ratio is high.

A little bit tangential to this is the idea of being able to find information online. I wonder, are there any tools that help googling things around?

</comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty neat. I have been lurking around this site and stumbled upon "prerequisite tree"s[0]. Is it possible to generate this kind of "prerequisite tree" programmatically?

[0][https://metacademy.org/graphs/concepts/beta_process#focus=p1...](https://metacademy.org/graphs/concepts/beta_process#focus=p1fycmrv&mode=explore)

</comment><comment><USER10> Really enjoyed the metacognition portion of this article. It seems like the key here is...

1\. people overestimate how much they'll remember.

2\. this is due in part because in the moment you've learned something, you can recall it easily.

3\. switching between things, pushes them out of immediate memory, so you can practice retrieving what you learned from while its less active (and competing with other things you're learning).

</comment><comment><USER11> I've recently had an idea that I'm really excited about, but it's totally outside of my wheelhouse. It's a biotech idea and I have no training in biology or chemistry. I started watching open courseware lectures but then decided to try using a biology text book instead. I went to a local salvation army and picked up a biology book for $2. It's been working pretty well, but I'm trying to figure how to self sustain my motivation. That's always the hardest part of self learning for me.

</comment><comment><USER12> The code is open source, has anyone tried using this locally to build up understanding of concepts themselves?

</comment><comment><USER13> Simply: wonderful article</comment>


Avengers Infinity Trailer 2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwievZ1Tx-8 <comment><AUTHOR> I can't stop looking at it. I am going nuts.</comment>


Hitchhiker's Guide to Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://gigasquidsoftware.com/blog/2014/02/01/hitchhikers-guide-to-clojure/

<comment><USER2> And if you are interested, after this i'd recommend:

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

[http://clojurekoans.com/](http://clojurekoans.com/)

[http://www.4clojure.com/](http://www.4clojure.com/)

<comment><USER3> More Clojure tutorials:

[http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html](http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html)

[http://www.lisperati.com/clojure- spels/casting.html](http://www.lisperati.com/clojure-spels/casting.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great adaptation of Hitchhiker's Guide! I hope you do a whole series of them. I'll get you started on one of them: "A repl, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar Clojure hitchhiker can have.." :)

</comment><comment><USER5> will read more if continued.</comment>


Software Checklist - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SoftwareChecklist.html <comment><USER2> See prior discussion from 8 few months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7655018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7655018)</comment>


My first exit - <AUTHOR> http://www.yes-no-cancel.co.uk/2009/11/30/my-first-exit/

<comment><USER2> Congratulations! I really like the "My First Sony" analogy. The start of more good things to come. Another verification of Scala for real products.

If you're at liberty to divulge, how did you connect with Red Gate?

      "Ask HN: Rate my startup, Go Test It (cross-browser testing)"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=883049>

<comment><USER3> Red Gate hosts the Springboard program (similar to YC, but Red Gate doesn't take an equity stake). Even before that, they hosted the "accidentals", a group of startups from in & around Cambridge (UK). Martin was part of the accidentals.

More on that here: [http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/08/the-accidental- in...](http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/08/the-accidental- incubator.html)

<comment><USER4> They're all microsofty though :/ puts me off a bit.

<comment><USER3> I felt that way a bit until I met the people at Red Gate and saw what they're with the local startup community. While Cambridge has a great history of startups (ARM and a lot of other high-tech companies) it's not particularly friendly for small startups. Red Gate is helping a LOT, with desk space and a good vibe. I'm really not a MSFT fan, but I'm a huge fan of Red Gate.

<comment><USER4> Good to know, I may be moving to the area soon, so I'll certainly check them out some more.

<comment><USER3> If you are, be sure to sign up with the CamTechMeetup!

<http://www.meetup.com/Cambridge-Tech-Meetup/> <http://www.camtechmeetup.com>

Disclaimer: I started it. :)

<comment><USER4> Cool, thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it appropriate, or even legal, to disclose your investors' ROI in your company?

<comment><USER6> If the answer is 15x and it just happened, how upset is the investor really going to get?

<comment><USER5> Perhaps the culture around this is changing in the US, but I take financial privacy -very- seriously. The kickbacks an investor gets from an investment should be implicitly private.</comment></comment></comment>


What would a Sales 101 course look like? - <AUTHOR> http://www.onesock.net/2010/01/18/what-would-a-sales-101-course-look-like/ <comment><USER2> There is a actually a fair amount to learn. We went through an incubator program at William and Mary and learned a ton about identifying FABs (Features, Advantages, Benefits), crafting language to appeal to decision makers (i.e., showing them how your product solves their specific problems), segmenting markets, using your resources narrowly -- rather than trying to do too much, b2b sales etc.

We are going to roll out www.nixty.com in beta mode in couple of weeks. I'll try to populate the system w/a course on sales from MITs Sloan School of Business. You can go there directly too. Our version will just be a bit more accessible.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be more interested if this blog was offering to teach sales 101 rather than just asking what should be in it. Anyone know where to find something like that online?

<comment><USER4> Learning to sell is just like learning to program. You learn by getting your hands dirty, not by reading a book.

The absolutely best way to learn sales is to get a job cold-calling people trying to sell them newspapers or something. You'll learn more from the people you work with than you'll ever learn in university or anywhere else. After a few weeks you'll pick up peoples intonation, mood and other subtle cues and you'll be able to tell within 30 seconds whether the guy at the other end of the phone will end up buying. When you've learnt to cold-call people and sell to them everything else is easy.

<comment> daniel-cussen I did exactly this for a while in college, for this exact reason. At one point I was getting hung up on seven, eight times a shift.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are lots of one day training classes that are pretty effective taught by Miller Heiman, Huthwaite, etc.

I took one in grad school, the professor's background is a huge contributing factor. Fortunately ours was pretty good and certainly experienced in selling and sales instruction;

[http://www.kenan- flagler.unc.edu/Faculty/search/detail.cfm?p...](http://www.kenan- flagler.unc.edu/Faculty/search/detail.cfm?person_id=721)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Certainly working as a sales person is the best way of learning the skills of selling. However, the points I was trying to make was that: a. Business Students completing degrees at Australian Universities will never be exposed to Sales - despite the fact its the most important thing they can learn in a commercial career. c. There is a lot about sales that is theory based and that you won't learn on the job (customer psychology, legal frameworks for transfer of title, designing a products revenue model etc.)

I think the argument for including Sales 101 into commerce degrees is strong.

Brendan www.onesock.net

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd spend more time on week 3- including practice. That would make a lot more sense than the focus on ephemera. Much of the other stuff is going to vary by industry.

There are many different sales methods out there. You can get trained in the carnegie method, for example. [http://www.dalecarnegie.com/search_courses/course_desc.jsp?c...](http://www.dalecarnegie.com/search_courses/course_desc.jsp?cCode=SLS&state=VA&moduleFlag=Y#modules)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've never done it (it's on my list of things to do), but I'm guessing that a summer job at a used car dealership will teach you everything there is to know about sales.

<comment><USER8> so tricks taught at used car dealerships are the height of sales? I don't doubt you'd learn a lot, but if that's the best you can do, sales might deserve its reputation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sales is the engine that pulls a business along not production.

This sentence really sticks in my craw. You can produce and not sell, the results may not be as good as doing both in concert, but without production, you can't sell. What's with this constant reverence for sales?

Don't get me wrong, I'd actually like to learn more about sales, and I think approaching it scientifically / rationally is a good idea, I just don't grok this whole concept of sales uber alles.</comment>


Siren of Shame – Build Monitor - <AUTHOR> https://sirenofshame.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Does your team conveniently ignore broken builds?

> Plug in our USB siren, the blaring lights and audio will have build-breakers > cowering in fear.

USB siren: [https://sirenofshame.com/products](https://sirenofshame.com/products)

GitHub: [https://github.com/AutomatedArchitecture/SirenOfShame](https://github.com/AutomatedArchitecture/SirenOfShame)</comment>


Ask HN: What can I build that would pay a dollar for? - <AUTHOR> I want to build something of value within one month that a lot of people would want and will pay a dollar a month for. I am open to ideas where usually the market charges $10 or more. I am experimenting on a model that needs zero employees, zero evil, no hockey-stick growth ambitions, and yet delivers a great lifestyle by doing what people want and charging 10x lower.
What is your no-brainer idea?
PS: I am a 2-time entrepreneur with 1 small exit and a reasonably successful product startup. <comment><USER3> Probably nothing. Transaction costs (including risk) swamp the value of a $1 online service. Among the risks is the low probability of a viable business of $1 transactions. Unsustainable business models make services unreliable in the long term.

To put it another way, you're competing with Dollar Tree's one dollar duct tape, tortillas, and spatulas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

I would not do any business that will not have a healthy gross profit margin when bootstrapped. I am looking at ideas where the volume will make up for the free cash that per-sale generates.

There are a lot of 'lifestyle' plugin makers that do this.

PS: I do value the input and the time you took to answer. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd pay much more than that for an way to "read" (watch) media RSS feeds on Apple TV. Instapaper, Pocket, and other "read later" services expose RSS feeds of their folders - and they are accessible without the user giving their Instapaper/similar password to a third-party app.

Anyone who sends videos to a read-later service like that - rather than using the service-specific version, like YouTube's own "Watch Later" list - <USER2> then be able to watch those videos on Apple TV. Basically, a media-only RSS reader (player) for tvOS.

(This would also work for YouTube's own RSS feeds and any others, but I don't see use cases for those.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic idea. I haven't, first-hand, felt this pain. But I will research further. Appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> People find value when they pay for things not get them at a discount. If a product or service was truly valuable I would expect to pay a larger amount not one dollar. If this is just a trial to get started I understand. Just some feedback

</comment><comment><USER6> Based on your restrictions, this doesn't sound like a 'no-brainer' idea whatsoever... I think your best option would be to join a team which is building something of value to a lot of people for one month and charge them 30$ as your salary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Marcelo! One idea I have is to build an email open tracker that does not sell data to third party. Doesn't take time to build and can be priced at a dollar a month. I am looking for tools like these that are not that hard to build if your ambition is not to scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd willingly pay a dollar a month for a service that credited two dollars a month to my PayPal account.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will be the genie who will grant that wish, the moment I have the F you money.</comment></comment>


Jobs Keynote in 60 seconds - <AUTHOR>

http://daily.mahalo.com/2008/01/16/md038-the-steve-jobs-90-minute-keynote-in-60-seconds/ <comment><USER2> why not just link this to it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I added the page so quickly that I posted the link in the wrong spot.</comment></comment>


All New Mac Pro Available Starting Tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/12/18All-New-Mac-Pro-Available-Starting-Tomorrow.html <comment><USER2> I'm typing this on a windows PC with 192GB ram. 64GB RAM LIMIT? WHY OH WHY? it is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks.

(repost from a similar thread earlier today)

The RAM limits on laptops are nearly understandable. But on a machine like this, it seems like obvious greed on the part of Apple to give this machine a maximum life span of 3-4 years.

edit: spelling

<comment><USER3> Just out of curiosity, what sort of serious tasks does one use 192GB of RAM for? (I'm not implying that there aren't any; just want some examples.)

<comment><USER2> I guess the industries that benefit from "the more RAM the better, with no limit" would be 3d rendering, video editing, simulations, and large-format photography. I am doing the latter, joining together thousands or tens of thousands of images into a single seamless photo. for example:

[http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama- photo/](http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/)

[http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-gigapixel-roppongi-hills- mori...](http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-gigapixel-roppongi-hills-mori-tower/)

[http://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel- panorama/](http://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel-panorama/)

[http://www.360cities.net/gigapixel/strahov- library.html](http://www.360cities.net/gigapixel/strahov-library.html)

I am aware that in many applications, the GPU has taken over for some of the "heavy lifting", but that is not true in all cases. Given there are basically no real power or thermal considerations limiting the RAM for a computer like this, I would really like to know if this 64GB limit is real, or if it is due to what RAM modules are available on the market now. Is it a limit in the OS? Will the Mac Pro be able to have 256GB RAM in the future, or not?

<comment><USER4> _it is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks._

You present a few valid examples. But I can't see how that represents "many" tasks; it's a very, very small subset of the fields in which people use computers for work.

If there were _no_ hardware out there that supports the RAM requirements you're talking about, that'd be a great area for development. But if you're suggesting everything -- or even most things -- should support what to most of us is an over-the-top amount of memory, perhaps your niche is not quite as major as you think.

<comment><USER5> I agree that it's a niche application, but imho it's one of the target demographics of a 4k+ USD workstation. I'd like to know the reason (software/hardware) behind the 64 GB limitation as well.

<comment><USER6> There are only four ram slots. The largest ECC stick available now are single 16GB sticks. Just not enough room for slots on the board, is my guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still find it incredulous people accept these are enterpise/workstation/pro machines:

\- No ability to have more than one hard drive (No RAID possibilities)

\- 64GB limit on RAM (as mentioned)

\- Single power supply

\- "Your Mac Pro comes with 90 days of complimentary telephone technical support and a one-year limited warranty" My toaster comes with a better warranty than that...

Compare this to the dell workstations of 3yrs of next day onsite & 24/7 support, 4 hard drives and dual power supplies...

<comment><USER8> _No ability to have more than one hard drive (No RAID possibilities)_

That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps.

 _Single power supply_

Workstation, not server.

 _Compare this to the dell workstations_

Large, noisy, ugly, inefficient uses of power?

<comment><USER7> > That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps.

Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an external drive...

> Large, noisy, ugly

Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become "Super-compact" and "beautiful"?!

I would agree on the noise, except no-one has actual heard these things running in a realistic environment so there is currently no comparison.

<comment><USER9> > Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an > external drive...

The parent was talking about having your assets on externals if you had high storage requirements, the OS can live perfectly fine with any number of apps on the SSD.

> Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become > "Super-compact" and "beautiful"?!

We weren't always so utilitarian, Silicon Graphics did gang-buster business for a long time selling style and compactness in the workstation class. Yes, SGI eventually crashed and burned, but Apple is in a far better position to experiment with this, given that they have about $147 billion of cash on hand.

<comment><USER10> SGI crashed and burned _because_ they stopped making beautiful MIPS boxes and tried to make ugly Windows PCs.

When the company imploded, the CEO who made that decision went to work for Microsoft. I'm not even kidding...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm incredibly surprised there's no Retina Display to go with this.

Buy our $5000 desktop computer, it looks best on somebody else's display.

<comment><USER12> doesn't apple sell a cinema display? or is the 27" not retina?

<comment><USER13> No, it's not, not really, at any rate. (The way Apple defines it, a retina resolution is simply a resolution where individual pixels are not visible to someone with normal sight at a typical working distance. I think it's a quite useful definition and I really want to use it outside the context of Apple products. I want to steal this trademark from Apple by turning it into a generic term. For example, at typical viewing distances 1080p TVs are retina screens. That means going to 4k for TVs isn't really worth it unless you plan on getting a much bigger TV or sitting closer to your TV. But the following text will focus more on the technical aspects of actually making retina happen with OS X than this nifty definition of retina.)

Apple does quadrupling of the size of its UI (on their MacBooks and iOS devices) when switching from non-retina to retina.

Consequently even 4k is not really enough if they want to replace their 27" display. That 27" has a higher (physical and logical) resolution than 1080p and quadrupling turns a 4k display merely into (about) a 1080p display when it comes to its logical resolution.

You gain all that resolution but lose all that space. That's in many ways an icky tradeoff. Yeah, Apple has a hacky way that increases the logical resolution, but it's also an icky tradeoff. The UI is rendered at an higher resolution (quadrupled in size and all) than the display can show and then down sampled to display size – but that costs performance and also leads to slight blurriness.

Both are not very big issues (the Mac Pro should have enough performance to handle it and this is really more an issue on portable devices – but maybe you can cause issues by connecting multiple 4k displays; the resolution of those displays is so high that the slight blurriness is not very visible) but are also not optimal.

OS X simply is not dynamically scalable. It's quadrupling or nothing. And that works very well, but it's not as flexible as dynamic scaling.

Realistically Apple could go for a 4k 24" screen (where having merely about 1080p logical resolution would be acceptable) but I'm not sure if they want to.

But going even higher than 4k? To 5120×2880 (that would replicate the logical resolution of their current 27" at retina resolution)? I'm not sure whether that's realistic or even possible on that machine.

As can be seen on the 13" retina MacBook Pro, Apple is willing to make icky tradeoffs in favour of less logical resolution (despite being their top of the line 13" it has a lower logical resolution than the non-retina 13" MacBook Air).

But it just seems that when it comes to the Mac Pro they currently don't want to play ball at all. It will be interesting to see how they handle this.

<comment><USER14> >As can be seen on the 13" retina MacBook Pro, Apple is willing to make icky tradeoffs in favour of less logical resolution (despite being their top of the line 13" it has a lower logical resolution than the non-retina 13" MacBook Air).

The 13" MacBook has always 1280x800, so it wasn't really a tradeoff. The Air is the higher DPI version and has been all along.

<comment><USER13> Well, yeah, but the 13" resolution has been an embarrassment for a long, long time. It just made no sense, especially compared to the Air.

I think it's a quite obvious tradeoff, Apple just decided on it early on so it's not as noticeable. (They must have known for quite some time that retina screens were coming so they kept the 13" Pro at a level where they could feasibly quadruple the pixels in the short run.)

That's my little conspiracy theory for the day, and anyway, the logical resolution of the 13" Pro is an embarrassment. That's just how it is. It's a very real tradeoff (you get higher res for less logical resolution than is usual at that size).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Gorgeous, beautifully made - but god damn EXPENSIVE for the specs. Sheesh! (disc: I own an iMac 27'' but will not be buying apple computers again)

<comment><USER16> The breakdowns I've seen have the component cost much in line with the price being charged.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it's probably not bad value for money _if you need exactly one of the combinations of components they offer, with nothing more and nothing less_. Which basically means someone who needs an expensive Xeon workstation-class CPU, dual AMD workstation class GPUs, and a fast SSD for the OS, but only 12-16GB of RAM and no RAID array or expansion cards.

If you want anything more or less than that, you'll end up overpaying or just plain not being able to get it at all. For instance, it's overpriced if you don't actually need two workstation GPUs, or if you need more RAM than the standard amount, or if you don't actually need a Xeon CPU, or if you have different storage requirements. Expansion cards? Pay through the nose for new Thunderbolt replacements or forget it.

<comment><USER16> I agree, and that makes complaints about lack of options completely legitimate.

But that's a completely different complaint from saying it's overly expensive for what's actually included. That's what was being said in the comment I replied to.

"Too expensive for my needs" is not the same as "too expensive for what's included".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Personally, I really enjoy just building my own computer.

It's very easy, much cheaper, and extremely fun.

For $3,000 (Mac Pro base price) you can build a beast of a computer.

$2,500 with a Nvidia Titan GPU [http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/454052-small- quiet-fast-build...](http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/454052-small-quiet-fast- building-modern-gaming-pc/)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XnU8MPjp1Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XnU8MPjp1Y) (Tested - How To Build a Kick-Ass Gaming PC 2013)

<comment><USER19> Agreed, but: I'm weary of Windows. I've run every version except Vista and 8 on my home machine. I've been a total fan of Windows. I'm just really weary of using it. I use Cygwin for scripting, but some things are really hard to do even in Cygwin. I'm seriously considering the new Pro, but I have issues (can't RAID1 the OS drive, what are those external enclosures really like? Noisy??) so I'm not sure.

Ironically, I probably would have definitely upgraded if they had not changed the form factor, since I know I'd be able to do what I want.

<comment><USER18> You don't have to run Windows, there's always Linux. Why are you weary of Windows?

I have used Windows 7 and 8 and use virtual machines with Debian for development. You could probably even install an OSX virtual machine if you wanted to.

Just keep your files organized and don't install every too much crap and it'll run beautifully.

I keep my files so that I can easily format the computer and start over fresh in a couple hours.

I also run a software firewall so that I can keep track of all connections in and out of my computer. Microsoft Security Essentials is sufficient for most Windows users for antivirus purposes, just be smart about what you install, or if you want to install lots of stuff run it in a virtual machine. I use Oracle VirtualBox, it's lightweight and fast.

<comment><USER19> Lightroom and some other programs. LR runs on both Windows and Mac, so I'm tied to these.

For why I'm weary, see Cygwin comments in OP. And, this[1] (while I don't run Windows 8 at home, I do at work). Microsoft could have bought Cygwin before Red Hat. They could have embraced the differences between UNIX and Windows and made me love Windows as a better UNIX. PowerShell? No thanks. Even if I didn't hate it, it's Windows only. Give me Bash.

Windows is an inferior OS. When I start a Cygwin Bash process, there is a non- zero chance that I won't get some memory I need. The fix is to shutdown all Cygwin processes and to rebase ALL of the dlls used by Cygwin to different addresses. Seriously, true virtual memory has been around for what, more than 30 years? Still today you can run/load a device driver that puts crap in the middle of every program's address space. How is this tolerated??

I have two CentOS boxes at home, where I do lots of my work. Every night they are updated with the latest rpms to fix problems. I only have to reboot when I install a new kernel. Windows, on the other hand, needs to reboot for almost every single Windows Update.

These are the reasons I'm weary of using this shit OS.

[1] [http://envoy510.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/windows-8-worst- win...](http://envoy510.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/windows-8-worst-windows- ever/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What a strange time to release something...a week before Christmas, after Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and after the "deadline" of December 15 by which most retailers guarantee delivery before Christmas.

<comment><USER21> It's targeted as a work machine, which isn't really subject to seasonal Thanksgiving/Xmas buying, not much at least. I'm guessing the demographic of people dropping $3-6K on shiny Xeon-shaped garbage cans as Christmas gifts is pretty small.

That said, I suspect they wanted to release this one earlier but hit some speed bumps.

<comment><USER22> The business equivalent of Christmas gifts is "we have to use up the whole budget by the end of the year or we'll get a smaller one next year."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lots of bitching/moaning below about the inability to get more than 64GB of ram, etc.

My only gripe: no 10Gbps Ethernet.

</comment><comment><USER24> still one of the greatest Mad TV sketches of all time [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnxvNJcx1U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnxvNJcx1U)

</comment><comment><USER25> There's a legal agreement to even look at the images.

<comment><USER26> It's the PR site, not the marketing site. The users of this site are folks looking for images to put in newspapers and magazines.</comment></comment>


A new foundational crisis in mathematics, is it really happening? - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.06221 <comment><USER2> One reason why there is no big discussion yet could be that the crisis surfaces only in rigorous type theoretic proof environments such as those provided in the proof assistant Coq and others.

While Coq has been successfully used to formalize mathematical theorems (a term I use here in contrast to computer science theorem), I am pretty sure few mathematicians use Coq or even type theory in their day to day work.

Until that becomes custom, the discussion about HoTT will probably stay in the type theorist community. Interestingly, I also think that only after the crisis is solved we can expect mathematicians to use type theory as foundation for their work.</comment>


Simple Is Now Available To The Public, Cofounder Alex Payne Moves On - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/25/simple-is-now-available-to-the-public-cofounder-alex-payne-moves-on/ <comment><USER2> Title of post, "Simple Is Now Available To The Public," is misleading; per the Simple website: "Now available by invitation only." Maybe the fact that Simple has begun letting people in from their invite list was not flashy enough for the title.

A quick look around after receiving my invite (but before signing up) left me less enthused that I'd been when BankSimple was first getting started...

Simple appears to have bailed on building an actual bank and instead teamed up with The Bancorp Bank for customer deposits.

BankSimple's cool API plans? The Google group linked from their site has been inactive for over 18 months:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/simple- ap...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/simple-api)

Now their CTO leaves in the middle of launch? I'm not feeling as excited about Simple as I was originally.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was very eagerly anticipating BankSimple, err, Simple, since it was announced. Problem was, the world caught up. I recently got my Simple account set up, and as a result decided that ING Direct + Mint offers me everything I need, and more (Joint Accounts, savings account, real checkbook, no overdraft penalties). Unfortunately, Simple feels like too little too late, and it doesn't seem that they delivered (yet) on some of the cooler things I was anticipating (API, Savings Goals, Mobile Support on more than just iPhone).

I hope they do well, as I think online banking needs something to shake it up, but first impressions are incredibly underwhelming.

<comment><USER4> I use ING Direct + Mint as well for all banking. I was interested in Simple because it seemed to be the combination of the two - with a drive to improve both formats. However, I was disappointed on not being able to find any details on how their banking works. I'd love to track my finances from within my banking website, but not at the expense of interest rates and multiple/joint accounts. (Do they offer that?)

<comment><USER3> No Joint accounts yet. They are definitely planning on it, but there's no timeline at the moment. In addition, there's no way (that I've found at least) to separate out buckets for saving towards goals, which is also a pretty big deal for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Co-founder stepping down soon after a public launch is bad news.

<comment><USER6> We are all skeptical too, but really it could be any number of things and he stated that he wanted to do more programming and less CTOing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The simple website still says it's invite only. I've been on the waiting list since December and haven't heard anything.

<comment><USER8> They're definitely working through the list: I was on the waiting list since August/September and I just got an invite last week. (Received my debit card in the mail yesterday, too.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> (on the waiting list for over a year) I wish I hadn't found out that it's now public from TC

<comment><USER10> I just got the email to join them today but when I went to sign up they won't let you unless you have an iOS device. If you select Android it states that you have to wait until they release an Android version. Disappointing.

<comment><USER11> Really? I understand they can only target one mobile platform in the beginning, they don't want to spread themselves too thin, but why is a mobile device a requirement?

<comment><USER3> The answer I got was "to take pictures of checks you want to deposit" and "for our partner bank to get your signature". I have an Android device, but my wife has an iPhone so I answered iOS anyway, figuring I'd use her device. Turns out, I haven't _actually_ needed an iOS device for anything I've done yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's probably worth the way. It takes time to work out the intricate details of transactions and UX. I, for one, am excited about this. and I look forward to finally ditching my bank of 10 years!

</comment><comment><USER13> What a terrible article, terribly written. "We all hate our banks", said in a casual tone, makes for some great reporting.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is Simple available outside of the United States?

</comment><comment><USER15> Now if they could just launch in the UK too...</comment>


Scotch Box Pro - <AUTHOR> https://box.scotch.io/pro/ <comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if it's appropriate to say or not, but I feel this is kind of weird.

This project was not maintained for a while despite multiple offers to help. (for example, [https://github.com/scotch-io/scotch- box/issues/273#issuecomm...](https://github.com/scotch-io/scotch- box/issues/273#issuecomment-305081966))

Today the box was finally updated with a "Pro" version that offers "generally higher versions of things".

I no longer use this box but have been following the project out of interest. I feel like this is a weird move. Is it weird?</comment>


"It's so incredible to finally be understood." - <AUTHOR> https://www.16personalities.com <comment><USER2> I personally didn't find that interesting, engaging, or insightful, but I would be interested to hear the views of others. If you took it, did you find the results useful? Accurate? Insightful? Thought provoking?

Personally, honestly, I found this[0] _far_ more useful, and in my experience it's been worryingly accurate given that it's obviously a parody:

[0] [http://www.solipsys.co.uk/LipsonShiu.html](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/LipsonShiu.html)

<comment> T-A It's just another Myers-Briggs test, and a pretty short one at that. FWIW, the result I got (INTP) did not match what I usually get when I waste time on these things (INTJ).

The Lipson-Shiu one on the other hand quite correctly identified me as "ICUE (Mad Scientist/Hacker)". :D</comment></comment>


The Most Reputable Stack Overflow User - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet <comment><USER2> When Stack Overflow (SO) was new I did a lot of Java work and I quickly noticed that the best answers were from on particular guy and I remembered his name - _Jon Skeet_. For some time I thought he was a Java expert and only later learned that he is the author of _" C# in Depth"_ and his specialty is really C#. It still amuses me today that even as a C# expert he probably knows more about the intricacies of Java than many Java experts.

That being said I think that Jon's exceptionally high SO reputation is not only because he is really good but also because he has earned a lot of it very fast and very early on. Unlike other platforms (HN for example) your reputation on SO still increases over time if you stop engaging or only engage lightly with the community. Given the rules stay the same as they are today I don't think it is possible for any new user to ever surpass any of the high rep early SO users like Jon, VonC, Hans Passant or Marc Gravell. I don't think the same is true for HN but I'm not entirely sure.

<comment><USER3> > Unlike other platforms (HN for example) your reputation on SO still > increases over time if you stop engaging or only engage lightly with the > community. Given the rules stay the same as they are today I don't think it > is possible for any new user to ever surpass any of the high rep early SO > users

Yeah, something like 80% of my SO karma is from a single evergreen question I asked 10 years ago.

You bring up a very interesting community design point: SO's desire to be a curated list of questions makes it increasingly hard to engage with the platform, which may eventually end up killing the community. Knowledgable people may not want to stick around patrolling new questions, if it's rare that they can actually contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The question of their all time top answer is very interesting:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333/why-is- subtracti...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6841333/why-is-subtracting- these-two-times-in-1927-giving-a-strange-result/6841479#6841479)

<comment><USER5> I loved this part:

        I only noticed this because I'm collecting questions like this in Noda
        Time, in the form of unit tests... The test has now been changed, but
        it just goes to show - not even historical data is safe.</comment></comment>


Texting May Be Taking a Toll - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26teen.html

<comment><USER2> How about a feature to disable text alerts? I'd like something that could aggregate my SMS texts with my Twitter and Facebook alerts.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is taking a toll is this fear of change. Texting isn't going to ruin our kids, the same way the Internet didn't ruin our parent's kids. Pure FUD.</comment>


1 word in beta invite email subject reduces conversion by 14% - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonywright.com/2007/everything-is-linkbait/ Hey All-- thought any startup folks out there might find this interesting.  We're rolling out more and more RescueTime invites and I saw conversion on the invite email plummet on the most recent invite (with the only change being removing 1 word from the subject). <comment><AUTHOR> I should add that this word cost us 89 users directly (14% less people opened the email, 91% of people who open the email convert to an account).

I don't yet have the volume of data to understand word of mouth virality, but we see a big spike of signups every time we do a batch of invites, so losing 1 user costs us more than 1 user...

</comment><comment><USER2> I think it's hard to form a conclusion from a sample set of 1.

If you were to test this though, I do think your theory would hold mostly true, at least to some extent.

SEO and other modern marketing "sciences" have shown us that minor changes in text can lead to major changes in how people read/consume/value/react.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, we did two rounds of fairly big invites (500+ each time) with the original language, and both hit that 65% number. The most recent (just a few weeks after the previous invite round) was where we made the change (700 invitees). But yaw, I'm suspicious of any conclusions drawn from stats like these. At the end of the day, all I could offer was my hypothesis. :-)

<comment><USER3> Were they both sent at the same time of day / day of week?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Knowing the significance of good copy and subtle changes is invaluable. Almost any site that hasn't put thought into their registration flow and copy could be tweaked in a day and increase signups by 20%+. The same kind of thing absolutely applies to email. Realizing this and making it a part of everything you do is a _so_ valuable that it pains me when friends don't get it (but brings me joy when competitors don't).

FYI: Tracking "opens" is inherently inaccurate. An invisible image "beacon" won't automatically load on a great deal of mail readers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yaw, I shoulda mentioned the way CampaignMonitor tracks that... I amended the post via the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you were to post it on reddit, how about this ;)

Finally, the single most amazing tool that Ron Paul could use to be more productive [pic]

<comment><USER6> Lets see how it goes :) <http://reddit.com/info/2z6fy/comments>

<comment><USER5> LOL. I intended it as a joke, you know. In reality, though, a title like that would probably get many readers to click, but once they realize that the title is misleading, they'll down-vote it.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, out of 28 voters, 9 voted up :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would have been very helpful to send half the emails with 'finally!' and half without, at the same time.

Next beta, I guess...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea! It hadn't occurred to take this as an opportunity to experiment until the most recent batch yielded such interesting results. I'll definitely A/B test next round and post the results. We've got several thousand more people to invite (in blocks of 500-700) and 5-60 more signing up per day, so.... Plenty of opportunity!</comment></comment>


Report deems Russia a pioneer in GPS spoofing attacks - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/report-deems-russia-a-pioneer-in-gps-spoofing-attacks/ <comment><USER2> GPS is routinely spoofed in area around Kremlin, for a couple of years already, to a great annoyance of drivers and runners. Coordinates are replaced by those from Vnukovo airport. It seems they try to prevent operations of consumer grade drones, many of them refuse to fly near known airports.

<comment><USER3> I would like to think that, having done research on GPS spoofing and being generally interested in GPS, I would have heard of this before if it were routinely done anywhere in the world. It sounds like you don't have this from an online source but from first-hand experience. Did anyone write this up? Is there local news about it perhaps?

<comment><USER4> I did not dig up for a detailed technical write up, but have a plenty media sites mentions (sorry for original Russian content):

Just news, mentioning this, back to 2016 [https://lenta.ru/articles/2016/11/07/gpsoff/](https://lenta.ru/articles/2016/11/07/gpsoff/)

Nice write up, also from 2016 [https://meduza.io/feature/2016/10/19/teleportatsiya-iz- kreml...](https://meduza.io/feature/2016/10/19/teleportatsiya-iz-kremlya-vo- vnukovo-pochemu-gps-navigatsiya-v-tsentre-moskvy-rabotaet-so-sboyami)

News from Jan, 2018 [https://snob.ru/news/156463](https://snob.ru/news/156463)

Nov, 2018 [https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/2018/11/12/786188-kre...](https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/2018/11/12/786188-kreml- otvetil-gps)

Hope that helps!

P.S. And yes, I personally see this behaviour near Kremlin. It's almost impossible to order a taxi nearby.

<comment><USER3> Wow, this is really happening. I'm surprised to hear this, very interesting, thanks!

<comment><USER5> You can also check [1]: "through a collaboration with researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, we expose the use of GPS spoofing in active Russian combat zones, particularly Syria, for airspace denial purposes. This is a capability scarcely reported in the public domain. Using data from a scientific sensor on the International Space Station (ISS), we are able to identify ongoing activity that poses significant threats to civilian airline GPS systems"

\- works best on desktop though

[1] [https://www.c4reports.org/aboveusonlystars](https://www.c4reports.org/aboveusonlystars)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To be fair, the report is authored by an US entity. I'm sure if they could have studied US operations without losing their funding they would have found similar deployments by US forces, albeit, I think not as widespread. The US has always seemed to have better tech, and GPS spoofing is cheap, from what the article states, which makes it ideal for the cash-bootstrapped Russian military.

<comment><USER7> > The US has always seemed to have better tech

While the US can spend a lot more on its military and has a corresponding lead, the US is mostly focused on offensive technology (like its carrier groups). Russia, being geographically much closer to "enemy" territory, has a much bigger focus on defensive capabilities and excels in many areas. For example the Russian S400 air defense system is usually seen as superior to the American Patriot system.

With GPS spoofing being mostly a defensive technology it seems exactly like the thing Russia would focus on and the US would neglect.

<comment><USER8> S400 is no where near as good as our Aegis system. I know because I worked on it. The patriot missile did have some spectacular fails though where an anti- missile became confused and shot right into the ground

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YS4i2InVB-Y](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YS4i2InVB-Y)

Although I will give the Russians props for possibly being the first nation to land the missile back in its own tube. [https://youtu.be/gNNkRuSw_0Q?t=52](https://youtu.be/gNNkRuSw_0Q?t=52)

<comment><USER9> You worked on both the Aegis and the S400? That seems a _bit_ implausible.

Or do you mean you worked on one of them and therefore can compare them (without experience of the other)?

<comment><USER10> Then there's also S500 now, which can shoot down anything that flies, including stealth planes, ballistic missiles, hypersonic planes, and LEO satellites. This is a typical example of asymmetric warfare. The US spends 1.5 trillion building a super plane, Russians spend 1/1000th of that building the thing that can make use of such a plane a costly proposition (even if it can't _reliably_ shoot it down), and offers it for export eventually, too.

<comment><USER11> Which one they use for shooting down passenger planes over Ukraine?

<comment><USER12> MH17 was shot down by a Buk missile system, which is a less sophisticated medium-range system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> GPS spoofing is a big part of the Bond movie "Tomorrow Never Dies". Funny that in a movie it seemed totally fake, something invented for the plot, and yet here I see it's a real thing.

Interesting how truth can be too much for fiction sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing the Manning leaks taught me is that if it can be done, it is being done. GPS spoofing is demonstrably effective at a variety of tasks including straight-up stealing military drones, therefore it is being done across the globe.

<comment><USER15> Aren't military drones using the military GPS profile with encrypted messages? Those cannot be easily spoofed, AFAIK.

<comment><USER16> Full-blown spoofing, ie, being able to generate a 'valid' _sui generis_ GPS signal is effectively ruled out by encryption.

However a replay attack that uses a valid signal received at some other locate re-broadcast at a second place is not affected by encryption. You can imagine lots of clever ways to use a re-broadcast attack to draw a drone off course.

<comment><USER17> >However a replay attack that uses a valid signal received at some other locate re-broadcast at a second place is not affected by encryption.

That seems like a pretty obvious and absurd sort of vulnerability.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but one that's almost impossible to defend against it. Any viable defense has to happen on the client side with something like an antenna array to distuingish broadcasts from space from replay attacks, or a clock accurate enough to detect that the broadcasted time is off by dozens of microseconds and thus has to be a replay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wouldn't it be possible to mitigate some of the effect of these spoofers using on-board navigation system with an IMU?

Or it least allow for it's detection?

<comment><USER19> You can make spoofing harder. Most of these spoofing attacks target off-the- self drone GSP, and don't work against adversary who plan against them.

If you want to spoof more expensive gear, like those used in commercial shipping, you do it gradually. You start by transmitting the correct coordinates and then gradually start to increase the difference between correct and false coordinates. When done gradually, IMU can't detect GPS spoofing.

Unfortunately many otherwise good navigation systems are not doing even the bare minimum to detect spoofing. It's not the cost. Spoofing protection has not been priority.

<comment><USER20> This has been demonstrated on commercial shipping using the exact technique you described:

[https://news.utexas.edu/2013/07/29/ut-austin-researchers- suc...](https://news.utexas.edu/2013/07/29/ut-austin-researchers-successfully- spoof-an-80-million-yacht-at-sea/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would it be possible to upgrade GPS satellites so the signal would contain digital signatures, while retaining backwards compatibility? GPS uses NMEA data messages, which are plaintext.

Perhaps there is some reserved field, or usually ignored message, that can be used to insert digital signatures. The DoD will keep the master key, so the signatures could be easily verified, but spoofing them would be nearly impossible.

<comment><USER21> Look here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19652414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19652414)

Tl;dr: nope.

<comment><USER15> All modern digital signature systems protect against replay attacks (by signing sequential counters, timestamps or other state information, or using cypher block chaining).

<comment><USER16> All of those things require some alternate source of ground truth, e.g., a trusted clock.

There is no such thing in GNSS systems. They _are_ the ground truth. There is no way to combat a replay attack without some second source which would obviate much of what a GNSS delivers.

<comment><USER15> GPS time is monotonously increasing. If you ignore all messages with timestamps lower than the last one received, and check their digital signatures, you should be protected against replay attacks at least until the next cold restart (or GPS time counter reset, which is once in 20 years).

There are other possibilities (CTR/CFB encryption modes, relying on increasing counter and/or previous messages contents).

Or am I missing something? Could you please describe the attack vector with these assumptions?

<comment><USER16> TLDR: you essentially never see repeated time stamps.

GPS time is broadcast in the very low bit rate (50 BPS) NAV message, once every 6 seconds. In between the receiver counts at the chip rate (1023 kHz) just counting signal transitions.

A rebroadcast attack happens at the speed of light. A signal is received at Moscow airport and is beamed to the Kremlin via some alternate transport path. At the Kremlin the signal is broadcast immediately at higher power than is possible for the direct signal. This happens at the speed of light.

There is nothing you can do about this without access to a clock that is at least as precise as the GPS satellite's multi-million-dollar onboard clock, which you then somehow keep correctly synchronized at all times.

There are some things that can be done to detect rebroadcast in the RF domain by looking at time of arrival across an antenna array, but again, that's not going to happen in a cell phone or wrist appliance.

There are some techniques that are used to discern direct path signals from multipath ones which involve tracking the lower power level signals, but rebroadcasters make sure they are radiating enough power to put that technique outside the dynamic range of the receiver.

<comment><USER22> Back of the envelope. The distance between Vnukovo airport and Kremlin is 30 km, speed of light is 300,000 km/s, time delay is 10^-4 seconds. Let's say it takes the moving car 100 seconds to get from outside the jamming area to inside. So receiver clock has to drift less than that. A year is pi * 10^7 seconds, so in a year receiver clock should drift by less than pi*10^(7-4-2), or approximately 30 seconds. My wristwatch can do better.

<comment><USER16> Now please explain, in terms of how GPS receivers operate, how that information helps you defeat spoofing.

<comment><USER22> GPS receiver determines its position by measuring the distances to GPS satellites. Those distances are calculated from time delays. To get the delays, the receiver should know the exact time. Its own clock is not stable enough to do it, so our receiver has to determine exact time by monitoring one more satellite than is strictly necessary, and calculating the time from that.

Now if this "exact" time suddenly jumps (compared to internal clock), it probably means that the signal is not coming directly from the satellites, but relayed from Vnukovo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They have mobile jammers, when Putin visits some place GPS devices there start showing near airport instead of actual location.

One guy claims he found building with the jammer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiy2Mt79M1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiy2Mt79M1c) (device and process is described in [1], russian), he uses self-made "radar" [2].

[1]: [https://habr.com/ru/post/337608/](https://habr.com/ru/post/337608/) [2]: [https://habr.com/en/post/332746/](https://habr.com/en/post/332746/)

</comment><comment><USER24> If I understand it correctly, the spoofing works by replaying the original signal delayed in time but at a higher power so the receiver selects your better spoofed signal. I wonder if it would be possible for the receiver to compute what the appropriate signal level should be and if it is too strong that could be a way of detecting if you are receiving a spoofed signal ?

<comment><USER25> You could technically do this, but such a technology is too expensive to incorporate in civilian use receivers that have to retail for a couple bucks.

Military receivers used by the USA and NATO allies can easily detect spoofing because they listen for signals on separate frequencies reserved for military use, with higher precision. On these frequencies, all traffic is encrypted using a private key that only the DoD has access to (in theory). In this case, it is easy to detect spoofing because your enemy cannot encrypt signals using the DoD's private key (they just don't have it). If the receiver is unable to decrypt the incoming signal (key mismatch), it knows there is something fishy going on. I would also speculate there are additional countermeasures which are not publicly available.

<comment><USER26> Just jam the other frequencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> GPS is permanently jammed/spoofed around Kremlin. It is tough to drive there if you are not local.

<comment><USER28> No trying to advocate the devil, but

Kremlin is trianle-like shaped, there's river from one side with bridges at the ends (so it could be counted as a tunnel), Red Square from another (pedestrian only unless you're a member of Victory Parade, one-way streets aside), the third side is surrounded by Mokhovaya street which has 5 intersections with others and you can get to the one you'd want if you've skipped your turn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Would these kind of attacks be made redundant by Galileo?

<comment><USER30> TLDR: no.

GPS spoofing can be done as a replay attack; record the signal at the airport, rebroadcast at the Kremlin louder than the direct satellite signal and voilà, your receiver says you're at the airport.

As it's just a replay attack of the original signal, encryption can't help.

<comment><USER31> > As it's just a replay attack of the original signal, encryption can't help.

Couldn't this be mitigated by added a nonce or using CBC within the cryptosystem? Replay attacks are well understood; I'd be surprised if any (eventual) proposal for signed/encrypted GPS didn't include something to defend against them.

<comment><USER16> As I loosely explained in another comment, you essentially never see repeats. The replay happens at the speed of light, and time stamps are broadcast once every 6 seconds at 50 BPS.

The receiver sees the rebroadcast because it captures the receiver's RF chain by being the strongest signal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Am I the only one that finds it odd how people read and accept this capability without question, yet don't give the slightest thought to why super sophisticated Russian* state-sponsored Twitter trolls didn't bother to use a VPN to spoof their identities?

* So the media claims as a fact. Twitter itself has actually made no such claim of certainty that the "Russian trolls" are _actually_ Russian, rather they've only said that the accounts are _possibly_ linked, but good luck finding a news article or internet forum reader that will acknowledge this fact. This Wired article is about the only one I've come across that is truthful:

[https://www.wired.com/story/how-americans-wound-up-on- twitte...](https://www.wired.com/story/how-americans-wound-up-on-twitters- list-of-russian-bots/)

As an example of how sloppy and misleading (intentionally or not) this problem (of reporting allegations or suspicions as if they are fact) is, Wired itself made the very same mistake in an article linked from that one:

[https://www.wired.com/story/congress-asks-tech-to-face- hard-...](https://www.wired.com/story/congress-asks-tech-to-face-hard-truths- about-russian-meddling/)

 _While Facebook bore the brunt of Senators ' questioning, Twitter revealed some staggering statistics about Russia's organic reach on its platform last year. In just two and a half months, Russian bot accounts tweeted 1.4 million times, yielding 288 million impressions. The fact that such coordinated campaigns went unchecked underscores the value Twitter has put on free speech._

"Russian bot accounts tweeted" is a statement of fact, but the actual fact is the accounts are only _suspected_ of being Russian

Ironically, in the very same article, they go on to acknowledge the uncertainty involved:

 _Facebook and other platforms used their technological prowess during the campaign to identify malicious actors and advertisers that might be connected to foreign entities, but those tools can miss the mark._

One can hardly blame the technically unsophisticated general public from taking what it reads in respectable news outlets at face value, but it's rather depressing (or, extremely interesting, from a mass psychology/epistemological perspective, if you're more of a half glass full type of guy like me) that not only politicians _but also technically sophisticated people_ seem to be no better in this particular case.

</beatingadeadhorse>

<comment><USER33> >people read and accept this capability without question

These days most negative statements about Russia are accepted at face value.

<comment><USER32> Of course, and this is to be expected considering the intelligence and human nature of the general public. But the behavior/beliefs _on this specific topic_ (at least) of people on relatively much smarter forums like HN is _identical_ to that of the general public.

Here we have a situation where people of above-average intelligence, especially technically, passionately believe something of a technical nature, and _will not question it_. _That 's_ the part I find absolutely fascinating within the context of the whole "fake news" discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Thwart GPS Spoofer using $10 (RTLSDR) - [https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170090006A1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170090006A1/en)

</comment><comment><USER35> In the Balkans war, Russia was caught selling GPS spoofers to our adversaries, average price $20 to $30K. US military simply installed downward seeking GPS signal seekers on smart bombs, problem solved. Then of course, adversaries installed GPS spoofers near hospitals, Chinese embassy, unethical targets, typical of rogue nations and despots.

</comment><comment><USER36> Time to update the odds that the two accidents involving navy destroyers in the Malaga straits, weren't ?

Mind you this does not automatically implicate Russia, just because one report calls them pioneers doesn't mean other countries don't posses the capability and China has more concrete issues with US naval presence there than Russia.

<comment><USER37> It would be crazy to operate ships solely with GPS data.

<comment><USER36> I'm sure the navy is aware of the threat and has standing procedures to prevent it - afaic high-ranking officers were sacked precisely because those weren't being properly followed. A huge container ship in a space as tight as the Malaga strait otoh probably has no procedure to deal with GPS being abruptly and subtly spoofed or even a way to detect it.</comment></comment></comment>


Remembering a Programming Language That Helped Shape the Digital New York Times - <AUTHOR> https://open.nytimes.com/remembering-a-programming-language-that-helped-shape-the-digital-new-york-times-cd809d707c74 <comment><USER2> A language that supported a platform for almost twenty years in the modern era? I can't call this anything but a wild success. Sure, it had issues, as discussed on the article, but they solved the business problem at the moment in time. No software decision is without costs, but running a major site for almost two decades indicates that they chose well.

Bravo!

I do wish they'd throw the source code up on GitHub, as it would be an interesting historical artifact.

<comment><USER3> Or, failing that, donate it to the Computer History museum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the sort of programming language that I would love to read a detailed retrospective of in an ACM journal. It's a programming language designed to solve a particular problem, grew over time for that problem, and it successfully did so for almost 20 years. A programming language that is useful that long is interesting to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not second-guessing the technical that the Times made here (I'm sure it made sense given their constraints), but I do wonder if these kinds of in- house general-purpose languages will die out eventually. Some of the comments indicating that this sort of project is a "red flag" seem to miss that 20 years ago the language landscape was a lot more proprietary/closed.

But these days, a big open source/community ecosystem is a really really strong reasons to invest in an existing language (or at least open-source your in-house language, a la Hack or Go). It's hard for in-house general-purpose languages to compete.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Recruiting new engineers was sometimes a challenge because candidates had to > accept that they were joining an organization with a homegrown programming > language and build system.

I got an offer from NYT in 2009, but rejected it because of the custom language thing. My interview was conducted entirely using this custom language, and the interviewers were uninterested in discussing any other technology. Even architectural questions, which I attempted to answer in terms of industry standards, were steered towards Context.

<comment><USER7> > My interview was conducted entirely using this custom language, and the > interviewers were uninterested in discussing any other technology.

Bizarre!

Writing their system in a custom programming language isn't _that_ unusual, I think. But why on earth during an interview wouldn't they let candidates program (entirely or mostly) in a language they'd heard of before that morning? Couldn't they assume that if someone has achieved a working knowledge of one or more similar languages, they can learn another in some reasonable time (days, weeks, months)?

<comment><USER8> Sounds like maybe _they_ weren't that up on industry and felt unable to evaluate candidates outside their narrowed skill scope.

<comment><USER9> I went on an interview one time in which the job was not for python, but in which the coding exercise was in python, the assumption being that they wanted to see how you handled something you didn't know.

The interviewer mentioned having another guy in who announced flat out he was not going to do it even though it was explained that you didn't need to know the language to solve the problem.

I of course had some python familiarity, but I still failed because I couldn't remember the name for binary search and that threw me for a loop when the obvious answer I should have gone for in the exercise was 'here we should use binary search'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to see an example of the language, I kept reading (the story is great) but it felt like we got left hanging without any code snippets to put it all in, uh, context I guess.

</comment><comment><USER11> Man - I have to fight tooth n nail to make code just a little more performant / re-usable / robust to changing requirements.

How on Earth did they get permission to invent a whole new language for a user name feature?

Jealous...

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it was this site where I remember Context from: [https://www.mangaupdates.com/](https://www.mangaupdates.com/) Back then in my school years I remember not being able to find anything about this language. Mystery solved now. Thank you.

<comment><USER13> But a new mystery opens up: how did a site for sharing news about manga end up being built in a custom language built for the NYT?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Domain specific language. Finance has one from APL. Why not news room have one.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was expecting an article about CoffeeScript...

<comment><USER16> I was briefly hoping it'd be an article about PostScript

<comment><USER17> When I was a ten year old kid in 1973 my school did a tour. I remember looking at some programs running on green-screen terminals, and the guy doing the demo typed in commands using the keyword FOR so I assume it was all Fortran back then.

You can get a rough idea if you watch this...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU)

<comment><USER18> Numerous programming languages, including basic, algol, etc used for loops. Notably absent from the list of languages which used FOR as a looping construct was Fortran, which used 'do' for looping, and cobol, which used 'perform'. So whatever languages it was, it wasn't Fortran.

<comment><USER19> On a lot of systems the fortran compiler is often named fortran and usually aliased as for and fortran in the shell. I know as well on VMS, RSX, and RSTS you, at a minimum, just need to type the first 3 chars of a command for DCL to figure out what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > "We probably over-engineered it, I guess," Damens said.

Exactly. Also, creating a programming language for something as simple as a newspaper is pretty much a nightmare. Worrying about scalability when most of their content is static.

<comment><USER21> Now they're forcing everything to golang. As result loosing some good guys who don't like that pressure.

<comment><USER22> This is wrong, or omits important details. Different teams there use golang, python, java, scala, clojure, javascript, and probably other languages.</comment></comment></comment>