Breakthroughs Don't Pay - <AUTHOR> http://innovatorinside.com/2011/10/19/breakthroughs-dont-...

<comment><USER2> Oh, but Harry Potter _was_ a breakthrough. It's a little of Roald Dahl's magical realism, a little boarding-school fiction, and a dash of Agatha Christie. I can't think of any other writer who tried to write a magical whodunnit for teens. OK, most of the parts are derivative. But so's a lot of Roald Dahl's stuff.

According to wikipedia, he was influenced by Rudyard Kipling, William Makepeace Thackeray, Frederick Marryat and Charles Dickens; and the Norwegian fairy tales his mother (Sophia) told him.

A genuine breakthrough is a small part. It can be a nice "secret sauce", and in some cases it can give you a competitive advantage. But a real hit needs lots of parts, and lots of work, not just a single breakthrough.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is, I think, the one you're making. If you think a breakthrough is going to make you rich, think again. Every product of the last decade that got people rich had very little that was genuinely new in it... so I think we agree.</comment></comment>


Angel Investing 2009: Leading Investor Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/wingmen-and-women.html <comment><USER2> The word "leading" is a bit misleading, because these angel groups seem to be irrelevant. I don't know what they invest in, but it's not Internet startups. More YC alumni have received funding from Sequoia alone than from all angel groups put together.</comment>


Absentee and early voting information for each U.S. state - <AUTHOR> https://safe.voting <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool, but I feel like the COVID counts may be off. Clicking New York lists ~25k COVID deaths but I thought the total was above 30k?

<comment><USER3> These stats come from covidtracking.com which collected the information at Sept. 8th 00:00 GMT so its probably coming a day late.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Know your state's voting options to stay safe during Covid-19.

JAM stack / React / AirTable / Netlify</comment>


How we hacked Intercom to create a MVP - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/post/-Kx2i-CLU1EoO1DRHvV1 <comment><USER2> You submitted basil.chat and the blog post already. Submitting a 3 sentence indihackers post which just tell us to go to the same URLs is redundant.</comment>


Sending Subdomain POST Data to Root Domain - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
I was told that this would be a great resource to ask this question. We are building a web application where when a user creates an account, a subdomain is created (user.site.com). I need to be able to submit POST data from user.site.com to site.com but that is a violation of Same Origin Policy. What is the best way to go about this? I've looked a little bit into JSONP requests as well as Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (http://websitez.com/javascript-cross-domain-post-get/). Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Scott <comment><USER2> stackoverflow.com would be a better place to ask such questions and it is likely that the question is already answered there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


YouTube fought trolls by changing its algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18255265/brie-larson-youtube-captain-marvel-mcu-algorithm-review-bomb-trolls <comment><USER2> I'm all up for that, the amount of people sharing hate and misogynistic views is heartbreaking.

lately, it seems anything you look up in youtube has some kind of conspiracy or just plain negation of rights against certain groups like if they don't deserve anything.</comment>


Software jobs, mentioned regarding skills shortages, see abysmal wage growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.epi.org/blog/why-is-real-wage-growth-anemic-its-not-because-of-a-skills-shortage/` <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

" _Computer and mathematical science occupations, which require skills that are often mentioned in conversations about skills shortages, do have a relatively low unemployment rate, at 2.3 percent, but have seen abysmal wage growth, at less than 1 percent over the last year. No widespread shortage there._ "

<comment><USER2> Yes refusal to share profits is one issue. Also, the "skills shortage" is partly due to companies absolute refusal to train on the job, combined with the explosion of tech stacks and tools that no one person can keep on top of. Even confining yourself to one niche is difficult these days as the niches grow to encompass data, browsers, admin, and ops.

Many places sit on a job req for six months to find a unicorn, when they could have hired a smart person off the bat and let them study for a month.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure which companies you have worked at, but at every one of my jobs, at a mix of small-medium, medium-large, and really huge companies, learning on the job has been absolutely expected.

<comment><USER2> Learning on the job, yes.

Getting hired without having used libX, or SQL statement Y, no. Even if it would take 30 minutes to learn. If you don't know it right this second, you're a moron or a fraud or both.

Of course the natural state of a developer is constant learning, and forgetting, and checking, and remembering. So the trivia you know this second is largely irrelevant compared to problem-solving ability.

<comment><USER4> This is one of my biggest frustrations with this industry. Interviews often feel like a perverse hazing ritual. Rather than seeing if you're capable in general, we hit you with obscure trivia and worthless brainteasers to see if we can trip you up.

I've watched great, experienced candidates be rejected by a co-worker because they couldn't recall the arguments to some arcane function. The candidate had decades of experience, had worked on awesome stuff, had a good personality, and seemed super capable. It's mindblowing that he was rejected because of something so worthless.

My personal suspicion is that developers use this interview style as a way to boost their own ego. They feel better about themselves because they get to reject someone. This is purely anecdotal, but it's usually the least capable developers I've worked with who are most eager to reject candidates for bullshit reasons.

I'm fortunate to be really good at this kind of brain teaser interview. It's helped me keep steady employment for a long time. That said, I don't think makes me a better developer than someone who isn't good at whiteboard coding. In production you can use Google, or an IDE, etc.

I just don't see the point of this style of interview.

<comment><USER5> The purpose of this kind of hazing ritual is to keep employees from changing employers. And since there is a monopsony power in the labor market, as article explains, those employers can keep this up for as long as they want, because it benefits them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The link seems dead.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I get "We can't find the page you're looking for."

<comment><USER8> Remove %60 from the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So go for legal is what I'm seeing here.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some cool new technologies/databases to learn up? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Postgres, though not new, has some incredibly powerful features these days that make it worth investing in.

\- JSONB column type, get NoSQL-esque document storage when you need it.

\- Generated columns, computed from other columns without the need to maintain triggers or syncing app code

\- Extensions, all kinds of OSS and SaaS-based extensions that add powerful facets to your DB

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, already am pretty skilled with it :) looking for something more niche for fun and ideas :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://cuelang.org](https://cuelang.org)

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe quantum related stuff like Q#.</comment>


New Statistical Law Discovered - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news-DA-New-Statistical-Law-Discovered-122110.aspx <comment><USER2> Just in time to vie for "most overhyped scientific headline of 2010."

The paper, "Bimodal gene expression in noncooperative regulatory systems" (available at <http://www.pnas.org/content/107/51/22096.full>), addresses the question of how bacterial populations achieve bimodal phenotypic distributions (basically, 1 blue cell goes in, 5 blue cells and 5 pink cells come out in a stable ratio, wtf).

This phenomenon has previously been explained by a) cooperativity or b) feedback loops. Cooperativity is a phenomenon in molecular biology where the binding of one protein to, say, DNA will increase the _rate_ of binding of a partner in crime (which can, say, turn a gene on) -- this is a relatively simple regulatory scheme that allows proteins that respond in linear fashion to their environment to produce a non-linear output. Feedback loops are pretty self-explanatory (one thing worth mentioning is that if the feedback loop involves the transcription of a gene, then it is much slower-acting than cooperativity).

Cooperativity can explain the bimodal distribution problem because cooperative systems can act as "regulatory switches" where very small fluctuations in environment can result in very different behavior (see [http://bioweb.wku.edu/courses/biol566/Images/MCB3-29hemoglob...](http://bioweb.wku.edu/courses/biol566/Images/MCB3-29hemoglobin.JPG) for a simplistic example of hemoglobin response to oxygen). Thus, one blue cell goes in, 10 cells come out with very slight environmental differences that are on this response-boundary - voila, 5 blue cells, 5 pink cells.

Anyway, this paper shows that a cell population can have a bimodal phenotypic distribution without cooperativity, simply by having single proteins that respond in non-linear fashion to their environment. That's...a new statistical law?

I don't have the time to fully deconstruct this paper, but after a skim I'm left with the question, "so how does a single protein achieve non-linear response?" This paper seems to provide a mathematical model without giving a good explanation for how it would be achieved in nature. The only answer I can come up with is cooperativity within the protein itself - say, cooperative allosteric regulation. Which would make the theoretical contribution of this paper a lot less exciting.

<comment><USER3> The overstatement in the headline reminds me about the article posted earlier this year in which someone rediscovered integration: <http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract>

<comment><USER4> To add insult to injury, the article is cited dozens of times. This is extremely disappointing and worrying. It raises a whole score of questions regarding both the intelligence, the knowledge and the moral fiber of people participating in medical research.

<comment><USER5> Well. You cant really tell that without trawling through the papers themselves. For all you know many of them are refutations. (This is not the first time that someone managed to publish something awkward like that; Academics often flock to this sort of thing like sharks on a blood trail. You can get a lot of leverage by publishing early refutations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I don't have the time to fully deconstruct this paper,

That's why you did not understand it.

> but after a skim I'm left with the question, "so how does > a single protein > achieve non-linear response?"

If you read the paper carefully (also the Supporting Information), you would see the origin of non-linearity. Transcription factors (TFs) bind to the operator and unbind from it. We make an assumption that this process of binding/unbinding is the fastest of all processes in the system. That is why we can describe it in a continuous way (so we do not consider TF single molecules, but their concentration, which is a continuous variable). Under such conditions, the transcription rate is a non-linear function of the the TF concentration. This is explained in the Supporting Information of the paper for the general case of n binding sites. Here I explain it in a more verbose way for the case of 2 binding sites: <http://th.if.uj.edu.pl/~ochab/h.pdf>

This non-linear function acts as a noise filter: If the TF concentrations across a cell population are not same, but given by a statistical distribution (one may call it "noise"), then the output distribution of transcription rates will be transformed in a counter-intuitive way. For example, a unimodal input distribution (of TFs) can be converted into a bimodal output distribution (of target proteins).

So far, no one have found an analytical method of prediction, when the output distribution of proteins in a typical open-loop gene regulatory system will be bimodal. Even in the case of cooperative TF binding. Moreover, no one expected that bimodality can be found also in the case of non-cooperative TF binding. Which is kind of surprising, because the idea itself is simple. We did this. What is especially nice in our work is that the conditions for bimodality can be found without complicated calculations, only using a simple geometric construction that involves quantities that can be experimentally measured.

> This paper seems to provide a mathematical model without > giving a good > explanation for how it would be achieved in > nature.

This is certainly not true. Please see the references, especially Friedman et al. PRL, Cai et al. Nature, Nevozhay et al. PNAS, Dublanche et al. Mol Syst Biol, and Taniguchi et al. Science.

Best regards, Anna Ochab-Marcinek

</comment><comment><USER6> > Anyway, this paper shows that a cell population can have a bimodal > phenotypic distribution without cooperativity, > simply by having single > proteins that respond in non-linear fashion to their environment. That's...a > new statistical law?

What I mean by a "new law" is the formula that describes the conditions for bimodality [of the output distribution resulting from a gamma-distributed input passing a nonlinear filter in the form 1/(1+x)^n or 1/(1+x^n)] in terms of the intersection of two curves (those curves have a well-defined experimental meaning). Maybe, as one of the internauts remarked, this should rather read "a new law based on statistical theory". The language used in the press release was simplified (perhaps over-simplified).

<comment><USER6> Actually, this seems to be the error of translation. At least in Polish (the original language of the press release), "a statistical law" (of how cells differentiate) means something different than "a law of statistics". The correct meaning is "a law based on statistical theory".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Anna Ochab-Marcinek is one of the co-discoverers of a statistical law that describes how a random disorder inside individual cells transforms into an order leading to a differentiation of population..."

...so we're showing you a picture of her cleavage?

</comment><comment><USER6> > ...so we're showing you a picture of her cleavage?

LOL, yes, that was exactly my idea. As I expected, everyone loves this picture. ;-D

<comment><USER8> If you got it you might as well flaunt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bad headline, sure, but interesting result. It suggests even without signalling, and with identical nuclear DNA, cell division can result in daughter cells that each try a different side of a gene-regulation possibility space.

If the environment has changed subtly to advantage or disadvantage that gene expression — well, voila, half the offspring are a probe in the better direction. That's why the process reminds me of binary search.

And across the billions of sibling cells each trying different levels of each gene? Massively parallel search for the optimal levels of gene expression, without any mutation or genetic exchange. That's an exciting idea, to this layman.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's molecular biological binary search!

</comment><comment><USER10> Commonly in natural processes, a 'concentration' is a 'random walk' with two 'absorbing' states, (1) concentration 0% and (2) concentration 100%.

A state is 'absorbing' if when once reach it, then never leave it.

So, the work is talking about concentrations of proteins or their mRNA varying due to thermal 'randomness'.

Maybe in this case, a decent first-cut mathematical model of what is going on is just a discrete time, discrete state space Markov process. So here each discrete 'step' in time is one generation of a cell. The 'states' record the concentrations. So, could use, say, some of the 'nonlinearity' effects to estimate the probability of moving in one step from one state (of concentrations) to another.

But the big, 'global' issue is that the concentrations just keep changing and stop changing only at the absorbing states of 0% or 100%.

For something with more detail than this 'global' view, if have those probabilities, then can use some standard work in such Markov processes to say how fast the concentrations reach the 'absorbing' states of 0% or 100%.

The literature on Markov processes is enormous. For a start, consider:

Erhan Çinlar, 'Introduction to Stochastic Processes', ISBN 0-13-498089-1, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1975.</comment>


Workspaces - Simplifying Your Find and Fix Workflow With The Chrome DevTools - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GoogleChromeDevelopers/posts/644qQuBKZeL

<comment><USER2> Back in the day, you would hear often something along the lines of "Chrome is good, but I keep coming back to Firefox because of Firebug". Fast forward to today and debugging with Firebug feels clumsy and sluggish whenever there's something Firefox specific to debug (no offense to the devs of firebug, if it wasn't because of them the chrome dev tools wouldn't exist; it's just lagging a bit behind nowadays)

<comment><USER3> Wow- I have to say I disagree. For serious debug work I go to firebug. Chrome seems clunky- and I can never find what I'm looking for. Maybe depends on what you're used to.

<comment><USER2> Try getting used to Chrome, I assure you you won't look back after a while. The event timeline for instance is one thing completely absent in firebug and invaluable to debug client performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was literally just thinking, after reading the comments on the post about hot-swapping in Chrome's editor [1], that this seemed like the next step.

I like it. Obviously, I don't expect (or want) Chrome to replace my text editor any time soon, but this will be great for quick fixes.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5197695>

<comment><USER5> Does it work with the hot-swapping stuff? I've set it up as per the instructions (I thiiiink...) - and now I can edit files in the console and they are saved to the file system: but I've lost the magical beautiful hot- swapping!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I will again play the grumpy old guy, but this seems like building Eclipse into the JVM.

Firebug/Devtools are obviously ridiculously awesome. For debugging layout, there will never be anything as good as "Inspect element".

But for programming, I want to write/debug in my IDE, and poke the browser via a standardized wire protocol that IE/FF/Chrome/Opera all support.

Not to say they shouldn't be working on this; if this is the workflow you like, that's awesome. I just hope wire protocols get some love too.

With the amazing collective effort going into browsers, hopefully I don't have anything to worry about.

<comment><USER7> Wire protocols are already here: WebDriver wire protocol: <http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-webdriver-20130117/>

Firefox "marionette" automates (controls) firefox via the WebDriver API: <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Marionette>

Chrome also has an "automation proxy" API that is used by ChromeDriver. <http://code.google.com/p/chromedriver/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes! I actually wondered if this is where they'll go, asked if there is a way to do it on programmers.SE and posted it here [1] (question got closed, should have been an SO question probably). so I'm not that crazy after all. getting hot swapping and contextual real-time auto completion is really a productivity boost.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5115930>

</comment><comment><USER9> I think that one of the big advantages to building it into chrome is that you get better window management capabilities. OS X is utterly horrible at managing windows without using the mouse, having everything built into the same app often gives more control.

Web driver approaches would work much better if there were sane ways to control where the new window pops up. Even on Linux with X Monad or stumpwm, the communication/protocol for the location of new windows popping up is difficult to impossible.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think Livereload is actually kinda similar.

I think it would be great if Google Chrome had an API that allowed any editor to push updates to the browser.

</comment><comment><USER11> This excites me. Once we have html, LESS and SASS editing my front-end dev work won't be the same again. Brilliant.

 _downloads canary immediately_

</comment><comment><USER12> No, it's not hard to "arrange" windows. We have tiling window managers for that.

</comment><comment><USER13> Chrome Workflow + Sublime Text 2 = Puuuurrrfect!</comment>


Apple deluged by police demands to decrypt iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57583843-38/apple-deluged-by-police-demands-to-decrypt-iphones/ <comment><USER2> Do any HN people know what they're doing to unlock phones? Brute-forcing the passcode as the article suggests?</comment>


How to get what you want in life - <AUTHOR> http://changemakrs.com/arnoldschwarzenegger/4feaa0bcbd25660008000001

<comment><USER2> I still need to watch the video, but sadly I'm in a hotel and my laptop battery is almost empty. Would like to advise anyone to read the book "The Alchemist" - very inspirational stuff and offers some explanation why some people don't get what they want in life.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The video is pretty awesome...thats the right attitude to build something outstanding in life!

don't miss it</comment>


The case for single character Git commit message prefixes - <AUTHOR> https://smalldata.tech/blog/2018/10/04/the-case-for-single-character-git-commit-message-prefixes <comment><USER2> There's good case for single word commit prefixes, but the cognitive load that acronyms create is best avoided whenever possible.</comment>


Gary Kildall - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall <comment><USER2> The failure of Digital Research and IBM to reach a deal to bundle CP/M with the original PC provides one of the great "what-ifs" in computing history.

If that deal had been made, Microsoft wouldn't have gotten the big infusion of capital that turned it from a niche vendor into the behemoth it eventually became. Which means Windows, Office, and IE (if they were ever developed at all!) would have had to compete in the marketplace without MS being able to use their monopoly over PC operating systems as a lever to boost them up over the competition. Which in turn means a whole host of products whose names are just footnotes today -- Netscape, OS/2, GEM, TopView, DESQView, DeskMate, GEOS, Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, Ami Pro, and on and on and on -- would have had access to the oxygen that could have turned them into the Next Big Thing. Oxygen that Microsoft was only able to deny them because of the muscle the failure of that original deal had given them.

Who knows what the computing world would look like today if that deal had been reached?

<comment><USER3> But CPM/86 WAS shipped for the PC, by IBM. When I bought my IBM PC, I had a choice of PC-DOS or CPM/86\. I chose the former because it was $40 and the latter was $180 or something like that.

It was the price that killed CPM/86, as nobody could give a reason why someone should pay so much more than for PC-DOS.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget UCSD Pascal! (Or maybe we should)

<comment><USER5> What was so bad about UCSD Pascal?

<comment><USER3> S----L-----O-----W

It was basically Java before machines got fast enough to make Java practical.

<comment><USER6> Definitely ahead of its time. For awhile it was possible to run the same applications on IBM, Apple II, TI-99/4A and more but it was cumbersome and it never had a "killer app".

It was also difficult to transfer files between disparate platforms in those days. If there had ever been a p-code applications market, distribution would have still required separate boxed copies for different platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Highly recommended (though the Gary Kildall bit is very short):

\- A movie: Pirates of Silicon Valley ([https://youtu.be/BI- nzUIYIX4](https://youtu.be/BI-nzUIYIX4))

\- A documentary: Triumph of the Nerds ([https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudrw8Z7-gFa7Is4YZitO...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudrw8Z7-gFa7Is4YZitOF7-AfLl2u8IA))

\- Not involving Gary Kildall, but about open source, gnu, and linux: Revolution OS: ([https://youtu.be/fxjElWL8igo](https://youtu.be/fxjElWL8igo))

<comment><USER8> I too would highly recommend Trimuph of the Nerds Documentary (That Cringley Guy is involved in it). Lots of first hand accounts. Plus IBM Carols being sung!

Triumph of the Nerds has some first person accounts from Jack Sams of IBM and Bill Gates and Balmer (of the whole IBM/ Digital Research negotiation (or lack thereoff). Its in part 2 (11 minutes in).

Basically IBM wanting programming languages and an OS from Microsoft. MS didn't have an OS, so they sent IBM to Digital Research (Gary's Company). The deal to get CP/M fell through Microsoft said, we'll sell you (IBM) and OS too. Microsoft then bought the OS from a company across town. That os was basically adapted from CP/M (the author used the cp manual as a starting point)

<comment><USER9> That's not exactly how it happened. IBM already knew about CP/M because it was already powering the non-Apple PC market. Knowing IBM's desire for an OS as well as Basic he sent Steve Balmer across town to license 86-DOS, aka Seatle DOS which became his offering MSDOS.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS)

IBM eventually offered three different OS on the original IBM PC but Gates shrewdly made sure his was the lowest priced one and the rest is history.

<comment><USER10> If I recall the story correctly, there was some confusion because IBM saw "Microsoft CP/M" running on an Apple II. (MS licensed it from DR and sold it with their "Z80 SoftCard". The Apple II+SoftCard was supposedly the most popular CP/M machine.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQ4CWBfR_g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQ4CWBfR_g)

<comment><USER11> Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founder) writes about the Z80 SoftCard and the early Microsoft history in his book "Idea Man": [http://www.amazon.com/Idea-Man- Memoir-Cofounder-Microsoft/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Idea-Man-Memoir- Cofounder-Microsoft/dp/1591845378/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love this video Computer Chronicles: Unix (1985) feat. Gary Kildall

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7P16mYDIJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7P16mYDIJw)

<comment><USER13> Even today, years after that show has long since ended, talking about tech that isn't necessarily relevant any more, it is still entertaining and worth watching for anyone interested in the field or its history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want to know how was he IRL I recommend watching Computer chronicles. Gary Kildall Special:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdj8gh9GPc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdj8gh9GPc4)

Whole playlist of episodes, its like watching non-fiction 'Halt and Catch Fire':

[https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT/playlists?...](https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT/playlists?view=1&sort=dd)

</comment><comment><USER15> You can watch many of the Computer Chronicles episodes Kildall was in at the Internet Archive. They're simply awesome snapshots of the state of the market at the time.

[https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles](https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles)

And the episode celebrating his life [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVqBokd3l2E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVqBokd3l2E)

</comment><comment><USER16> Before CP/M and such, he was a serious compiler guy who made contributions to data-flow analysis, etc. E.g., [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=512945](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=512945)

<comment><USER16> More accessible: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data- flow_analysis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-flow_analysis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oddly, I learned about Gary Kildall a few days ago after reading a wired article about the "Halt and Catch Fire" tv series ( [http://www.wired.com/2014/05/halt-and-catch- fire/](http://www.wired.com/2014/05/halt-and-catch-fire/) )

"Easter eggs: Gordon and Donna Clarks' first initials and back story echo those of Gary and Dorothy Kildall"

</comment><comment><USER18> Gordon Eubanks worked with Kildall during this time period, he talks about the events surrounding the deal with IBM in this oral history. Fascinating stuff:

[http://www.cwhonors.org/archives/histories/Eubanks.pdf](http://www.cwhonors.org/archives/histories/Eubanks.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> He was one of my childhood programming idols lo those many years ago; cemented after reading the original Programmers At Work.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you've ever wondered why newlines are sometimes CR and other times CR+LF, I think Gary is part of that answer.

<comment><USER21> It's because on a terminal, CR moved the cursor to the left column and LF moved the cursor down one line. That was also true for dot matrix printers, and paper-based terminals like a modded IBM Selectric or the DecWriter.

So if you wanted your file to display properly when type'd to the console or pip'd to a printer, you needed CR,LF make it work. LF alone would give you text in a barber pole pattern, and CR alone would give you the last line of a file on a terminal, or a horrible mess of over strike text on a printer.

<comment><USER22> Ah, I remember those days. If someone made the mistake of just using CR alone in a big file they spooled to the lineprinter, it sometimes quite literally would halt and catch fire. There was a fire-extinguisher placed next to it for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It seems that IBM is in bad shape because of a non-disclosure agreement. Maybe the lesson should be that NDA are bad.

</comment><comment><USER24> The article didn't ever mention the second listed spouse, Karen. Apparently he underwent a second divorce after beating her with a pool cue < [http://issorp.com/site/umour/garykildall.htm](http://issorp.com/site/umour/garykildall.htm) >.

</comment><comment><USER25> If nothing else, he was certainly one of the best looking of the early micro- computer pioneers.</comment>


African Scrabble players pose a dilemma in the IQ debate - <AUTHOR> http://www.unz.com/article/will-scrabble-have-the-last-word-on-the-iq-debate/ <comment><AUTHOR> "A look at Gabon's demographics makes the Scrabble achievement of Gabon impossible to explain under the present racial hypothesis. Gabon has a population of 1.7 million and a reported national IQ of 64." and "There should still (statistically) be no single person from African countries like Gabon. And yet they exist, constantly outperforming math professors and computer scientists from the developed world. That's a statistical problem for the racial hypothesis but it is not a problem at all for the alternative hypothesis: the African nominal national IQs are artificially depressed by more than 30 IQ points due to an extremely deficient cognitive environment."</comment>


Ask HN: Enough profit to replace a day job? - <AUTHOR>

As far as i know, a successful startup is supposed to make you rich or well off, but what about a web app that brings enough profit to replace your day job? I've been programming for about 6 months and i don't have nearly enough experience to venture into the real startup world. Is the failure rate still really high for web apps that make, let's say, $1000-$2000 profit a month or are there tons of these, but we just never hear about it because it's so common? Can web app revenue stay stable or are web apps that make at least $1000 profit/month "doomed" to eventually grow substantially? <comment><USER2> _Can web app revenue stay stable or do web apps that make at least $1000 profit/month "doomed" to eventually grow substantially?_

The user base of most web apps is driven largely by epidemic effects: Most new users are "infected" by a previous user, either as a feature of the application (e.g., paypal's create-an-account-to-receive-your-money) or via old-fashioned word of mouth. As such, the growth should look approximately like a logistic curve.

In general it takes at least 5 years to reach the saturation point on the logistic growth curve; google reached that point a few years ago, and facebook is reaching it now. Prior to that point, you're still growing approximately exponentially.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying: If it takes you 5 years to reach $1k/month in profits, you might end up staying there; but if you can reach $1k/month in 2 years, you're probably going to end up a lot bigger than that.

<comment><USER3> Google hasn't saturated the search market. They're doing something like 50 ~ 100% YOY growth in number of searches in Japan and the United States. This is partly due to getting their toolbars installed as the default in more places and part in moving the entire userbase towards search as an activity.

We're very quirky in our usage of computers. I live on the Internet, and Google reports that I've done in excess of 20,000 searches. That works out to about 25 a day. I'm going to guess many of us have roughly similar numbers. The average user, on the other hand, does something like 30 _a month_ if you can believe Comscore et al. Move them a little from where they are to where we are and Google gets to make _another_ round of money hats.

<comment><USER2> _Google hasn't saturated the search market_

I didn't mean to say that they had. Google _awareness_ however, has saturated the market.

I'm dividing startup growth into two phases: First, an exponential "people become aware of your product" phase, and second a much slower "convince people that your product is useful / better than the competition / etc." phase.

How much growth you get in that second phase will depend on the market and your competitors, but it will never come close to the first phase -- and that first phase generally takes about 5 years.

Of course, none of this applies to you, since bingo cards don't really act like an internet startup -- you're getting traffic from google, not from your users saying "hey, there's this really cool website you should check out".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Self confidence is not a sin. You are no less well prepared than many folks here (my previous management experience was a WoW guild, and many quite talented folks go to YC straight from undergrad).

I know some folks with software that fits your description, but most either consider it a failure or have it on autopilot. They typically do not talk too much about it. Absent putting something on autopilot I think that certain dynamics of Internet marketing favor sustained growth over statis but there are plenty of examples of either. For example, an app reliant on Google will tend to grow automatically over time as the site accumulates trust and Google grows the search pie. All bets off on app store.

Do not assume existence of a profit cap. Google does not stop sending traffic after you hit your projections.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're not looking for a homerun, I suggest you look at niche markets.

I'm making about 15k/yr w/ my niche product: <http://createyourproglang.com/>. Where I live it's not enought to replace my job, but it's a nice complementary income.

There was a nice thread recently on HN about ways to find & test a niche market: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1454221>

</comment><comment><USER5> This wouldn't necessarily have to be a web app. If you are talking "web" then it could be any monetized site. This could be a blog, informational site, simple ecommerce or even a collection of a number of each of the above to combine for the amount that you are looking at. Of course, you are likely going to have a smaller upside with a blog than you would with a web app. In other words, TechCrunch (a blog running on Wordpress) is a successful tech news site but it doesn't have the same potential as Facebook.

I don't see why there would have to be a high failure rate for web apps which might bring in 1 - 2K per month. That's a business and as long as it's paying for it's cost and your time then there would be no reason for it to fail other than flagging interest of the owner. That range for two developers with no other income would be a problem, but for someone who spends a few hours a week on the app and has a day job, then it might be a nice income boost.

<comment><USER6> In many countries, 1/2000$/m is a full time income, not just a nice income boost :)

<comment><USER7> For reference: It's only a little less than I've made working at a newspaper in California, and the savings on gas might actually make it break even.

<comment><USER8> Some people are way too accustomed to the consumption-driven lifestyle and think they'll perish if they make less than $60k/year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, talking about web businesses in general. I think there are a lot of these lifestyle web businesses around where people are making enough to support themselves, but are not crazy rich.

It's a bit of a contrast to the VC/silicon valley world where people get investments and try to build a massive business.

It's hard to quantify a failure rate when the cost of starting a web site is so low. I have 200+ domains, but only a few "real" websites. In some ways each of those un-used domains is a failure. :)

<comment><USER10> _Well, talking about web businesses in general. I think there are a lot of these lifestyle web businesses around where people are making enough to support themselves, but are not crazy rich._

So true. Because the barrier of entry for most of these businesses is so low, you're competing against a huge pool for that $1k-$2k a month. You're competing against 3rd worlders to whom $1k-$2k is a TON of money. You've competing against stay at home moms for whom anything close to minimum wage they can do in downtime is perfectly fine, etc. You have to have something that makes your business not worth competing against for these people or they WILL do it for less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's no magic, web apps don't just take on a life of their own.

To build a web business takes a lot of hard work, dedication and persistence, just like anything else in this world that's worthwhile.

<comment><USER12> Truly. Making that amount of money is non-trivial. The web is a chaotic, crowded place filled with free stuff. For most of us, it takes a clever idea and persistence to make anything over small change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's actually very easy to make a web service that makes a couple thousand dollars a month, if you stay away from 2 startup pitfalls:

1) Don't rely on advertising to monetize 2) Don't target it to consumers/end- users (if you're selling a web service, obviously this does not apply if you are selling an actual product)

There are many B2B niches right now that have terrible software solutions people are willing to pay for improvements to.

For example: About a year ago, I created a very niche web service for Internet marketers. It was basically a PayPal subscription tacked on to a few custom scripts I wrote to automate certain marketing tasks for myself. I didn't advertise it at all except for posting on a couple of Internet marketing forums I frequented. The site only had a few hundred visitors a month, however about 10% of those converted and became subscribers. Within a couple months, I had about 30 subscribers paying $50 a month to use the service.After I wrote the code for myself, the site required no work to maintain, the subscriptions were coming in on autopilot, it was an easy $1500 a month with no effort.

I was surprised at how easy it was to make a little extra money this way- the key was focusing on a very specific, small B2B niche, and creating a paid subscription service that was far superior to anything else that was available.

<comment><USER14> How did you evaluate it was a small niche? Are you getting any growth in terms of customer signups per month?

<comment><USER13> It's a web service that only marketers running certain ads on a single ad platform would need, I know there's not that many people doing things this way.

At the same time, since my target audience was so well defined, I could quickly build a service that would do exactly what they need compared to broader, non specialized services.

<comment><USER15> How did you get it known among this audience ?

<comment><USER13> A combination of several cold emails + a couple forum posts on relevant forums, it didnt take more than a couple hours. This was really a very minor side project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _As far as i know, a successful startup is supposed to make you rich or well off, but what about a web app that brings enough profit to replace your day job?_

That's an interesting perception. I have a web-based startup and I'm located in the Midwest. There is a huge entreprenuerial scene here, but web-based startups are as rare here as elevation changes.

Of all the entrepreneurs I know here, the vast majority of them make just enough to get by with a little stability, and you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't consider that a success.

I think a web-app making $1k-$2k a month with relative stability is a great thing to have, a good source of income, and even potentially a successful business, though by popular definition (as you pointed out), it probably isn't a "startup".

</comment><comment><USER17> Why do you want to do this? Because you don't want to work for the man, because its hard to service your web app and keep your day job? Do you have a family that is getting strained from this?

If you are young, on your own, and can manage it - keep both. Theres no reason to go independent soon as one of your apps goes Ramen profitable. Consider the situation where profit plummets quickly before you can figure out how to turn it around and you can't pay your bills. You'll be scrambling for a job and you may end up taking one you don't like.

Consider _why_ you are thinking about doing this, and look at your own situations and emotions on the subject. We can give great advice but in the end you'll know you situation better than anyone else - even if you explain it.

</comment><comment><USER18> The obstacles are not as high as you think. I know many people have a rather poor opinion of affiliate marketing, but if you want to free up your time to work on interesting projects, I'd say it's definitely the fastest way to 1-2k a month, will very little maintenance required. If you'd like examples of folks who are doing it in a respectable, non-spammy way, see the following (and they are definitely doing well over 1-2k):

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

<http://camelcamelcamel.com/>

<http://picclick.com/>

</comment><comment><USER19> I wouldn't venture a guess about the actual failure rate, but I'd bet that there's way more profitable web apps (and correspondingly, lots of failed attempts) out there than you think. As a single or small team, $1-2k profit/month is pretty doable when your primary costs are just server hosting.

If you can find a way to leverage SEO or inherent viralness in your product, you can rely on a reasonable amount of consistency, but it maybe be averaged over months as opposed to month to month.

Some people can work on things on the side of their day job until they reach a good level. For us, we knew we wouldn't get anywhere with such non-committal focus (my co-founder was also in a different city which made it harder). We just made sure we had enough cash runway and quit. Reached profitability about 1.5 years after quitting and have been doing it for 4+ years now. It's amazing how much "business" you learn along the way when you're fighting to stay alive. It's not easy, and definitely more work than a normal job, but it's a fantastic experience.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd venture out to say that we just don't hear about the smaller web-based businesses that make good money, because they aren't making millions or have millions of users (mainstream tech media only covers businesses like these). Similarly, a big VC deal is a sure way to get noticed.

So yes - I truly believe that is possible to build small, sustainable web- based businesses selling a digital product or service of sorts. And if you're clever about running your idea as a business, then there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to quit your day job in favour of working for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yes, there are tons of online lifestyle businesses that make enough to support their owners. And they don't necessarily take years to build. It just depends.

Generating significant revenue from advertising is tough because it requires a huge audience. But a lot of lifestyle businesses are driven but a more old- fashioned business model: you make something of value and charge a fair price for it. The failure rate of these businesses is lower than that of VC-style startups.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER22> There are tons, we have our own frequently cited example of Patio11's Bingocardcreator, a lot of the small optional plugin apps you can buy for 37 signals products and general tools like Balsamiq Mockups and Noble Samurai (flash apps). They're the ones I know of just reading this site, I'm sure there's a ton of b2b ones as well we don't know about.

But even with a simple web app you need to know a fair bit about a lot of different aspects of web programming. On the otherhand building one is one of the best forms of practice :)

<comment><USER23> If you take a look at patrick's bcc sales page <http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month> , it shows that it took him more than a couple of years to be profitable enough to comfortably quit his day job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Do you know the Techzing podcast? One of the hosts has a freemium Twitter/social media tool that's generating $1k/month after one year of effort, between coding and marketing. You could listen to previous episodes to hear how it evolved.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, there are quite a few sites that make 1/2000$/m, and yes, you rarely hear of them. That's not to say it's easy. It does tend to take some time to get there (ie. a few years).

</comment><comment><USER25> The likelihood that your project will grow beyond what you want is very low. After all, you can always close it to new customers.

Our app (<http://letsfreckle.com>) was growing only slightly per month, until we really started promoting it. Now it's growing how we like.

But we could have coasted along at $5k/mo forever.

There are lots and lots of small web apps making a nice tidy living for their owners, but yes, they don't get talked about because it's not sexy enough for the tabloid nature of "startup" news coverage. Only the extreme win, extreme fail, and extreme weird (bingo cards, teaching your parrot to talk) get major traction over time.</comment>


Newegg just switched everyone's reviews to use their name on record - <AUTHOR>

Newegg seems to suddenly have made everyone's reviews show their name without any sort of opt in or notification. <comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, I filled out a review a couple days ago and put in a 'name' to use for the review like always. Today I logged in to track shipping on something unrelated and discovered it used first name, last initial instead. There's a new control panel option for 'anonymous' reviews, but there was no notification of this change. To be honest, it's not the end of the world, but it was a shock and just felt wrong.

If you look at the pages for a product with lots of reviews like this gpu [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131338), you can see that even on the 36th page you still see firstname last initial.

And apologies if this happened a while ago/isn't new and I just didn't notice.

Update: The option to go anonymous also doesn't seem to be working.

</comment><comment><USER2> No warning seems odd.</comment>


$6B United Nations Agency Launches Bitcoin, Ethereum Crypto Fund - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2019/10/08/6-billion-united-nations-agency-launches-bitcoin-ethereum-crypto-fund/#25db760c493b <comment><USER2> "UNICEF launches Cryptocurrency Fund: UN Children's agency becomes first UN Organization to hold and make transactions in cryptocurrency" [https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unicef-launches- crypto...](https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unicef-launches- cryptocurrency-fund)

From [https://www.unicefusa.org/](https://www.unicefusa.org/) :

> _UNICEF USA helps save and protect the world 's most vulnerable children. > UNICEF USA is rated one of the best charities to donate to: 89% of every > dollar spent goes directly to help children._

</comment><comment><USER3> holy fuck no

<comment><USER4> A currency that can't be debased or inflated and is hard money is what an NGO like UNICEF needs.</comment></comment>


The Lockheed Sea Shadow and the Hughes Mining Barge - <AUTHOR> http://aviationintel.com/inseparable-to-the-end-two-cold-war-treasures-may-face-the-scrappers-torch/ <comment><USER2> The _Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1)_ was originally developed by the CIA to salvage the Soviet submarine _K-129_ from the ocean floor.

It then had a second life 25 years later as the hanger for the _Sea Shadow_. Then they were both put in mothballs in the Suisan Bay fleet. Someone broke in and photographed it.

[http://scotthaefner.com/beyond/mothball-fleet-ghost- ships/](http://scotthaefner.com/beyond/mothball-fleet-ghost-ships/)

The _Sea Shadow_ was sold for scrap to Bay Marine for something $2.5M. But Bay Marine got to keep the HMB and that's what's on the Estuary.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185831/Declassified...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185831/Declassified-170million- Cold-War-Stealth-boat-snapped-2-5million-condition-scrap-parts.html)

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Shadow_(IX-529)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Shadow_\(IX-529\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_\(1960\))

<comment><USER3> It's too bad the _Sea Shadow_ is gone, but I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to go and see the _HMB-1_.

It's docked at Bay and Ship right next to the ferry terminal on Alameda. Here's a picture I took of it [1].

If you're in the Bay Area, it's probably not worth making the trip out there for just the ship, but it's neat to walk around the old naval base close to there, and I'd recommend a stop off at Rock Wall Wine Company along Monarch St. There's a spacious outdoor area with a very unique perspective of downtown San Francisco.

[1] [https://drop.brandur.org/hmb-1.jpg](https://drop.brandur.org/hmb-1.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that's the Alameda Ferry Terminal. I said _Bay Marine_ and I should have said _Bay Ship_ ; same parent company.

Anyways, this is a Google Maps satellite photo.

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.2931087,173m/da...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.2931087,173m/data=!3m1!1e3)

The HMB is now used as a floating dry dock which was its original purpose.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20131224162647/http://www.bay- sh...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131224162647/http://www.bay- ship.com/uploads/4/0/3/3/4033527/press_release_-_hmb1_08-01-2013.pdf)

I remember reading the _Sea Shadow_ itself went for $400,000 and yeah, you had to break it. You pay $400,000 to ship break a 572 ton boat; at $.20/lb that isn't gonna work. I suppose that only makes sense if you get the _HMB-1_ for a decent price and you can use it. Apparently that was the case for Bay Ship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The CIA has invented an entire fake scientific field to cover this: manganese nodules deep sea mining (it is actually not commercially sustainable). More than that, they have posted hundreds of peer reviewed (and completely fake) papers to convince Russians that it is a feasible idea, so they launched their own deep sea mining programs (completely abandoned after the nature of the operation leaked).

<comment><USER5> I remember reading about undersea manganese mining in an illustrated science book when I was a kid! It even had pictures of the mining craft.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, it doesn't look like this was entirely fiction. Here's what Wiki has to say on the subject [1]:

> Interest in the potential exploitation of polymetallic nodules generated a > great deal of activity among prospective mining consortia in the 1960s and > 1970s. Almost half a billion dollars was invested in identifying potential > deposits and in research and development of technology for mining and > processing nodules.

And in a few cases they actually succeeded in extracting some metals:

> In the late-seventies, two of the international joint ventures succeeded in > collecting several hundred ton quantities of manganese nodules from the > abyssal plains (18,000 feet, 5.5 km + depth) of the eastern equatorial > Pacific Ocean. Significant quantities of nickel (the primary target) as well > as copper and cobalt were subsequently extracted from this "ore" using both > pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical methods.

A lot of R&D money was sunk into this before it even had a hope of commercially viable (and it still isn't to this day), but it wasn't a hoax either.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule#Proposed_Mini...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule#Proposed_Mining)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Time is almost up for the Sea Shadow and the Hughes Mining Barge. Sadly if > a miracle does not come to pass immedietly these relics of American > ingenuity will be turned into rebar and Pepsi cans very soon…_

Setting aside the fact it's a complete tragedy that no one has picked these two vessels up as museum pieces, I wonder how radioactive those Pepsi cans would be—considering the entire point of the operation was to raise a nuclear submarine, carrying nuclear weapons—one that supposedly broke in half according to the official story.

I'm sure contaminated areas (if any) were decontaminated, but perhaps there's still trace amounts resident in the ship that might tell an interesting story.

<comment><USER7> The barge wouldn't be radioactive, it was just used to get the recovery device into the Glomar Explorer before it set out to recover the submarine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had read that the Sea Shadow was actually too stealthy. Sure you're radar couldn't see it, but it also left a boat shaped hole in the ocean.

When it was sold for scrap, it went really really cheap. Like $100,000 I was tempted to put a bid on it until I learned I would be contractually obligated to destroy it.

The Sas Shadow was sold for scrap.

</comment><comment><USER9> We were just talking about this!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277274)

</comment><comment><USER10> (2012)

</comment><comment><USER11> Fascinating!</comment>


Don't Get Left Behind When AI Replaces DevOps – The New Stack - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/dont-get-left-behind-when-ai-replaces-devops/ <comment><USER2> > Where DevOps once was focused on monitoring dashboards and reacting to > problems as they emerged, with automation, IT can focus on more innovative > activity that impacts the overall business.

This is hardly how I experience IT Operations to be. DevOps and otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Letting AI program systems that are used for extended periods of time guarantees that no living human being will be able to pick it a part and make sense of it. It will be the ai adoptor that gets left behind.

</comment><comment><USER4> Did somebody barf brain damage on a screen and hit 'publish!' ?</comment>


Simjacker – Next Generation Spying over Mobile - <AUTHOR> https://www.adaptivemobile.com/blog/simjacker-next-generation-spying-over-mobile <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20951578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20951578)

<comment><USER3> You shadowbanned me, which is unethical, rude and it should be reserved for spammers. I don't like you anymore, and I will remember that you shadowbanned me when deciding how to comport myself on my real account in the future. I will also be making a point of commenting more frequently to ensure that your shadowban has completely backfired. You are bad at your role, you moderate with a PR motive, and you treat users poorly. Fuck you, asshole.

<comment><USER4> Future historians, this is the birth moment of another news aggregator: Crustacea.ns

<comment><USER2> If a new forum got created every time a user jumped to a mistaken conclusion about how they were moderated, we'd have thousands more forums and the world might be a better place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The benefit of Simjacker from the attacker's perspective is that many of its > attacks seems to work independent of handset types

> Mobile Operators could also try to change the security settings of UICCs in > the field remotely, or even uninstall and stop using the S@T Browser > technology completely, but this may be _slower_ and considerably more > difficult to do.

I'm very curious to see what the actual fix will be and whether or not the general public will become more aware of the fact that their phones had always been vulnerable to SIMjacking. How do mobile operators usually notify customers of these large-scale exploits?

</comment><comment><USER6> Article in PC Mag is indicating that none of the major telcos in the USA are affected. [https://www.pcmag.com/news/370736/sim-card-flaw-poses- spying...](https://www.pcmag.com/news/370736/sim-card-flaw-poses-spying- threat-but-us-users-appear-to-be)</comment>


Tech Startup Founder Says Women Are Like Men, Only Cheaper - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-22/tech-start-up-founder-says-women-are-like-men-only-cheaper

<comment><USER2> not only stupid from an illegal point of view and from an offending-his-own- employees point of view, but if his talk convinces many other companies to do the same thing, he loses that competitive advantage.</comment>


How Digg is Built - <AUTHOR> http://about.digg.com/blog/how-digg-is-built

<comment><USER2> Great overview of the technology choices and how they interact. I really appreciate when important companies reveal some of the inner workings of their sites. It gives something for the rest of us to go on. It can help inform our judgement when we make similar choices. This happens all too rarely. Many thanks!

<comment><USER3> Thanks, we hope to go deeper in areas people are interested in. Let us know.

<comment><USER4> I'd love to see you go deeper into devops. How are changes pushed? How often do you push changes? How are changes tested? How do you performance test at scale? How do you recover if something goes wrong?

<comment><USER5> Hi! We posted something that somehow answers that question.

[http://about.digg.com/blog/continuous-deployment-code- review...](http://about.digg.com/blog/continuous-deployment-code-review-and- pre-tested-commits-digg4)

Some parts of it are a bit outdated --we don't use Selenium tests for pre- testing all commits-- but overall it should give some idea of how deployment works at Digg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Read this again and i find it great. so helpful for a young start-up to choose from the start the rigth tool and architechture.

Thanks again.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cassandra, Redis, MySQL, and Mogile as primary data stores? Good lord. And I thought my company had a complicated architecture.

<comment><USER3> You think this diagram is complex? You should see the one that describes the full details. Things I missed out include the tiny Java bit. No Ruby though.

<comment><USER6> Why are you using so much data stores? is it due to some legacy? I understand why you need MySQL (because some key algorithms are based on jointures), but why have at the same time Redis and Casandra? you also mention that you'll maybe replace MySQL by HBase? why? You also mention that the MapReduce jobs inputs are some flat logs (i suppose that those logs are stored in HDBS) so are you using any API to write in HDBS from RabbitMQ?

<comment><USER3> Boy, a lot of questions. I already mentioned that the different stores have different features. I wouldn't see Redis or Cassandra replacing each other for anything. HBase is a potential replacement for bigger MySQL-like things such as big joins across all user data, actions. M-R inputs are logs in HDFS, copied from scribe. RabbitMQ isn't involved in logging those.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the answers. I know, a lot of questions: this is because we are architecturing our plateform and having a detailled help from a successful website is very helpfull.

Looking forward to see the next article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice article. It'd be great to have some numbers that indicate the size/scale of the system and its components.

<comment><USER3> I'll see if we can include some figures in tech posts that follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting. If that's world-class (which it is), I'm probably charging too little for my time.

</comment><comment><USER10> So basically users are happily swimming in the sea of advertisements with content they don't own or create.themselves. Nice business!

<comment><USER3> I'm the author of this article which was about the technology we use. Your comment doesn't seem to be about tech at all.

<comment><USER10> Agree.</comment></comment></comment>


Algorithms tutorial series for beginners - <AUTHOR> https://adrianmejia.com/blog/2018/04/04/how-you-can-change-the-world-learning-data-structures-algorithms-free-online-course-tutorial/#.W8dYeheQiu0.hackernews <comment><USER2> Curious if anyone knows of a short overview of CS or Engineering topics(i.e. linear algebra, diff eqs, etc) for keeping refreshed as you age. I'm not talking about a full tutorial, more like something you could scan through every few years just to make sure you're not forgetting the important stuff that you haven't used since college.

As a side note, I recently interviewed with a couple companies in the valley and the focus of the interviews was not on 'gotcha' algorithm questions. There were a few, but I came away feeling that the process was more fair and reasonable than I'd been led to believe. Now, granted, I'm an embedded software guy and maybe they tailored the questions for me, but I feel like I wasted a month going over graph algorithms. It was a good learning experience, but my time would have been better spent reviewing more basic embedded topics.

<comment><USER3> Skimming the materials at Open Courseware is really good. Just reading the problem sets from the thermo course I took 30 years ago brought back lots of buried memories and forced me to learn some stuff I honestly hadn't at the time.

It's not taking an online course -- it's all the material handed out with an offline course. [https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm](https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm)

<comment><USER4> It's a good strategy. Refreshing and bringing back the memories, and patching some knowledge holes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >A math genius called Alan Turing joined the British military to crack the German "Enigma" code. He knew they would never get ahead if they keep doing the calculations by pen and paper. So after many months of hard work, they built a machine. Unfortunately, It took more than a day to decode a message! So, it was useless :((((

I could not read past this. Yet another distortion of what was done at Bletchley Park. Yes, I understand, keep your readers interested, but not by making up stuff and claiming it was real. I think the author should find a better example of an import use of algorithms than this one.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's your understanding about what happened at Bletchley Park?

<comment><USER5> To answer that would take an entire book! One book you might try is "Battle of Wits" by Stephen Budiansky, published in 2000 by The Free Press. ISBN: 0-684-85932-7

There was never a single break through at Bletchley. The Bombe machines (there were eventually many of them) were useful, but were just one part of the overall effort, and they did not always get results. The idea that all messages ended with "Heil Hitler!" is just wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Liked your writeup on balancing trees :-)

My biggest issue: The amount! You can do more algorithm and datastructres! Greedy, Divide and Conquer etc.</comment>


DNS Over TLS: Encrypting DNS End-To-end - <AUTHOR> https://code.fb.com/security/dns-over-tls/ <comment><USER2> FYI this is about the connection from a resolver to the authoritive name server, not the connection between a client and a resolver.

<comment> move-on-by Thank you for this clarification. Its definitely an interesting decision. I wouldn't think there is much to gain privacy-wise between cloudflare and FB's DNS servers.

Without a doubt, as far as security goes, DNSSEC would provide the security side - with DoT being a privacy provider. However, FB doesn't implement DNSSEC. I know there is a LOT of opinions on DNSSEC and I completely understand why they do not implement it. This just leaves me in the dark a bit as to why they did this. Anyone have insights?

<comment><USER3> > I wouldn't think there is much to gain privacy-wise between cloudflare and > FB's DNS servers.

You gain everything by this. Encrypting traffic from your stub resolver to the recursive resolver is meaningless if the recursive is going to send your request unencrypted to the authoritative. Recursive resolvers will send ECS data revealing your subnet and fingerprinting information, and open you up to active and passive mitm attacks.

> Without a doubt, as far as security goes, DNSSEC would provide the security > side

You're comparing apple to oranges here, and DNSSEC is a far cry from total security. They are complementary; DoT provides a private and protected path to the authoritative, while DNSSEC proves origin authenticity and response correctness. But you're right in that DNSSEC is controversial and difficult to turn on.

<comment><USER4> From operational perspective, it may be easier to maintain a certificate (after all, that's what you already do for an HTTPS service) than a DNSSEC signed zone. It is also easier if you have a multiple DNS providers, since you don't have to coordinate zone resigning. On the other hand, DoT doesn't provide the same properties (like client-side revalidation) as record level DNSSEC. It is undoubtedly an imperfect solution, but better than a perfect solution that isn't deployed. I see the two technologies as complementary, a fairly good DNSSEC deployment at the TLD level can provide a safe way for key discovery at SLD level. There are many facets to this, and it is still fairly early in resolver-to-authoritative DoT standardization process, this is just one of the first steps to show that it's feasible in real world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I trust more my ISP, witch is in my country, under my country laws that remote DNS under unknown laws, operate by super-big corps or by unknown guys...

It's the same for VPNs: today to many people ask to "VPNs" without considering who host them on the other side and many other "encryption manias".

Conceptually I fear far more modern browsers+webapps tracing capabilities than DNS-based monitoring so for me that's nice but certainly non important. Sorry for being rude.

<comment> move-on-by The connection discussed in this post is between FB's DNS servers and CloudFlare- not end users. So ISP trust and VPN usage is a moot point here

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is absolutely wonderful. DNS has long been an easy target for attackers, and its design has been nothing but painful to retrofit with better security mechanisms the have led to incredibly low adoption (I'm looking at you DNSSEC) of better protections against forgery.

Worse still, clients that believe themselves secure using HTTPS are essentially voiding their warranty by using UDP DNS. DNSCrypt, DoH, and DoT will hopefully change all of this, and I think it says something about Facebook that they're working with Cloudflare to protect their users from the dangers of DNS. Nicely done CF and FB.

<comment><USER6> "Worse still, clients that believe themselves secure using HTTPS are essentially voiding their warranty by using UDP DNS."

I wouldn't go that far. It's true that if the browser has never gone to a website before you can MITM to have the client connect to a server that doesn't support SSL and basically be left with a MITM'd HTTP connection. It's not fool-proof, but there's various measures that are being deployed to reduce such attacks:

* Chrome has started adding "Not Secure" to proactively alert users of websites not using SSL. If a user sees a major website and "Not Secure" is visibly displayed, hopefully that'll serve as a good warning to not continue.

* HSTS won't protect the initial connection, but will protect from future downgrade attacks by telling the browser to not accept insecure connections from the domain.

* Unless it has been otherwise tampered with, the HTTPS connection will still be encrypted and the certificate verified regardless of whether DNS has been tampered with. At that point the attacker would need a valid certificate from a trusted CA for the domain, which is outside of most threat models and they could likely get a certificate to MITM the DNS over TLS requests as well.

* In more secure settings, applications can be forced to only accept specific CAs, oftentimes a self-generated one. The above attack wouldn't work in that occasion.

Generally speaking, the biggest gains in DNS over TLS come in privacy, not security (although there are some, especially for applications that don't enforce SSL).

<comment><USER7> _> HSTS won't protect the initial connection, but will protect from future downgrade attacks by telling the browser to not accept insecure connections from the domain._

But HSTS preload [1] is meant to protect even the initial connection, right? If a site serves HSTS headers, it could (potentially) choose to be added to the preload list that's used by many browsers.

[1]: [https://hstspreload.org](https://hstspreload.org)

<comment><USER6> I hadn't heard of that service before, very interesting, thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sorry for my ignorance, but didn't we have Stubby ad the latest DNSCrypt for the same purpose? In what is this project different?

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd rather want to see DNS-over-QUIC

<comment><USER10> I don't understand the downvotes. Wouldn't QUIC be the perfect fit for a secure transport of DNS requests? The IETF already has a draft: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-huitema-quic- dnsoquic-05](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-huitema-quic-dnsoquic-05)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can a TLS connection ever be considered end-to-end secure? I mean,it's perfectly acceptable for a middleware with a valid cert from an authorized CA to intercept the traffic before the true endpoint,not to mention loadbalancers and other possible TLS terminators.

As I understand it,end-to-end means application to application (endpoint to endpoint?) with assurance to the client that no middleware can intercept traffic successfully. Always thought TLS only assured the presenter of the ServerCertificate is authenticated for the subject,that is to say the client cannot say "I am sure this is the server I meant to communicate with",it can only say "The server I'm speaking with has authority to communicate on behalf of my intended peer"

<comment> move-on-by > perfectly acceptable for a middleware with a valid cert from an authorized > CA to intercept the traffic

Wow, that is a LOT easier said then done. With today's Certificate Transparency Log requirements, any new certificate must have a cryptographically verifiable entry into at least two different public logs. If a bad actor at a CA were to generate this trusted cert you described, there would have to be a public record of it for it to be trusted. Beyond that, if the CA was found to be complicit, then they would lose their trusted status- looking at you Symantec.

<comment><USER11> If they own the device they can install trusted root CAs that are not public or have CT logs. Anyway,question is if you can call TLS end to end or not.

<comment> move-on-by Yes, if you own the device, you can choose what to trust beyond valid cert requirements. To answer your question, yes, I do consider TLS end-to-end despite involvement of a 3rd party. I believe certificate transparency has removed a lot of the trust issues around CAs that previously existed. Trust is no longer required when there is public verifiable logs. Also, with the trend moving towards short cert lifespans, the risk of certs being stolen and used against you is more difficult- requiring regular updates. I hope to see the max cert validity periods become shorter and shorter

<comment><USER11> That's ridiculous. The popular CAs are not part of the TLS standard and neither is CT. Plenty of intranet TLS with intetnal CAs. CTs are good if the end client only uses root CAs that participate.

Let's say CT solves the server authentication issues,how does does the server authenticate the client? End to end means both parties authenticate,TLS supports client authnetication but a) DNS over HTTPs isn't doing that b) even if it did there isn't CT for client certs...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Memories of unethical actions become obfuscated over time - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/05/11/1523586113.full <comment><USER2> Anecdotally, I'd say that I've experienced this because those memories carry lots of guilt. Over time, you lose the guilt because you keep trying to forget the details.

</comment><comment> saiya-jin personal self-observation - we want to be happy with ourselves, or at least in content state, feeling our actions are well justified and have good reasons. but some people live truly bad lives, hurting people left and right, doing all kinds of undeserved negative things to others. so there is some background process in sub-consciousness that goes over memories, highlights positive intense parts, and lights up the negative ones.

which is crap. I don't want to iron my memories, I want them to be exactly same as they were when experiencing them. I don't need to remember shitty girlfriends as actually nice ones, miserable travels as actually nice ones etc.

so I am always trying to counter it consciously - nice memories are OK, but the less positive ones I try to specifically remember the full mix of emotions associated with them. not 100%, but works quite well. since people generally don't change much (at least don't improve), this also helps to set expectations when communicating with some (ie family black sheeps).

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Mine are as vivid as ever.

<comment><USER3> Same here. I read somewhere that there might be a link between depression and strength of memory, which makes a lot of sense to me.

Perhaps a healthy person is supposed to forget the past. I don't, and memories of guilt and shame inform and restrict many of my decisions, and they do so more and more as I get older.

The thing is, I know that I have lived a relatively good life so far, even compared to most of my friends. Exes of mine have remarked that I was their best boyfriend, and that the messy breakups that I feel guilt over were nothing really _that_ bad. But from my perspective, they were. I've apologized profusely about certain events to friends of mine, and they had to explain that it wasn't _that_ bad and friends sometimes hurt each other. But the memories and accompanying feelings don't really fade, and I randomly get flashbacks, even to minor things that happened many years.

Reminding myself that everyone is flawed, reminding myself that these memories of 'bad' things I did to another already faded in the memory of the person I hurt, and probably didn't hurt them as much as I think it did, reminding myself that the best thing is to move on and try to do better, all of that calms me down a bit.

But the next step, allowing myself to get into situations where I might cause pain again, that's a tough one. It's much easier to play it safe. I't something I'm working on, but I wish I could just forget more easily, the way many people around me can (or pretend to, or at least don't let it get in the way of living).

I'm reminded of this quote (again):

> "We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every > attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be > healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough > time.

> When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some > added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often > that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, > diminishes our chances of joy.

> It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting > we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our > challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove > ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and > the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and > unrepeatable."

<comment><USER4> There is an entire field of therapy called CBT or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It's philosophy is around unlearning 'mind traps' and help individuals see their life in an unbiased realistic manner.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, I'm a big fan of it (and meditation/mindfulness as a broader 'field'). In fact, I'm about to start what I am almost certain is a CBT program with a therapist, to deal with these kinds of things. I have high hopes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


$1m bug bounty offered by 3rd party for iOS9 explots - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/09/spy-agency-contractor-puts-1m-bounty-iphone-hack/ <comment><USER2> sad</comment>


New Cycling Speed Record – 174 mph/280 km/h - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/18/british-man-sets-new-cycling-speed-record-of-more-than-174mph <comment><USER2> It's done using drafting. IMO, using drafting should totally invalidate this claim to the record.

<comment><USER3> I can understand the necessity in drafting for these records, but being towed up to the speed and then released?

Doesn't seem like the rider did that much effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 200m doesn't seem to be a very meaningful distance at those speeds. The rider only has to add energy for 2.5 seconds. The vast majority of the energy comes from the car. Also the speed itself isn't that impressive. Motorbikes can reach much higher speeds without external support.</comment>


Maria Loh recommends the best books on Lives of Artists - <AUTHOR> http://fivebooks.com/interview/maria-loh-lives-artists/ <comment><USER2> What a bizarre list. Camera Lucida and On Photography are masterpieces that anyone interested in photography as an art form should read, but they don't say a lot about the lives of the artists whose work they describe. Barthes says virtually nothing about the photographers' lives, in fact.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I can't vouch for anything beyond Just Kids (which is spectacular), here are some other ferociously good reads on the lives of artists:

* Ernest Hemingway - A moveable feast

* David Lipsky - Of course you end up becoming yourself

* David Sylvester - Interviews with Francis Bacon</comment>


Formal Abstracts – express mathematical publications in a computer-readable form - <AUTHOR> https://formalabstracts.github.io/ <comment><USER2> > precise definition of each term

I'm not a mathematician, but aren't some fundamental terms in mathematics NOT clearly defined? For example a set?

<comment><USER3> Sets are clearly defined. The usual formalism for defining a set is ZFC set theory. In fact to a first approximation all of modern mathematics is sufficiently well-defined to be entirely formalized in a computer. This is an approximation primarily because currently the burden to do so is immensely high. With today's technology formalizing a proof can easily take several orders of magnitude more time (if not more!) than writing the informal, but commonly accepted as rigorous, proof.

There are philosophical questions around what it means to "define" something. But if you want to go there, well then nothing is clearly defined.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that definition just consistency, both in theory and in practice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this could eventually enable some pretty amazing stuff. I'm just a hobbyist, but this makes me think about how machine search through the space of possible theorems butts up against the halting problem and/or Godel's theorems (though one could argue that human searching of the space is subject to the same limitations if our minds on some level represent formal systems as Hofstadter thinks).

And I wonder about whether certain mathematical truths will be inherently difficult to locate because they are far away from the space of other existing problems, and thus subject to problems of a search algorithm getting stuck in a local maximum.

In any case, an accelerated search through this space sounds really promising and exciting!</comment>


Deep Learning Quickstart on AWS - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifeofnav.in/2016/09/deep-learning-setup-quickstart-on-aws.html <comment><USER2> That QuickStart does not appear to be very quick.

<comment><AUTHOR> As the TL;DR says: Just follow the gist if you know what you're doing. It's literally curl a gist, run a script, restart instance, Done. :)

Just added in the details for people who're very new :)</comment></comment>


Tech is the means, not the end goal - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Sim_Pop/tech-is-the-means-not-the-end-goal-872839c302e2 <comment><USER2> I love how businesses are turning social left and right. The zeitgeist that we're moving into gives a lot less power to money.</comment>


How to get a green card - <AUTHOR> https://www.julian.com/blog/how-to-get-a-green-card <comment><USER2> While I admire the author for describing this process, his tone about "reverse-engineering" this and short circuiting the entire process might be a mistake. Just because he managed to do it without being an exceptional researcher and so on doesn't mean others who apply for EB1 are the same way.

But this brings unwanted attention to the program in a negative way in an already hostile environment for non americans. I don't see how this article leads to any good - only harm. And I'm not even worried about this bringing unwanted attention to author's own case which it might.

</comment><comment><USER3> in our country and a lot of others, green cards are given to the mentaly impaired. so people know what to expect from them ;0</comment>