Bomb kills journalist who exposed Malta's ties to tax havens - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/eec3f8b5b9274e7e8e7545136b809c94/Bomb-kills-reporter-who-covered-Malta%27s-%27Panama-Papers%27-link?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP <comment><USER3> Very disturbing. EU needs a "federal" police force to investigate such things. Regardless of what the prime minister says, and we should assume his innocence, we cannot assume that his government will investigate it when he's an obvious suspect.

To make matters worse, Malta is a tiny island state where "everybody knows everybody". I was there just a few months ago and you can comfortably walk around the (stunningly beautiful) capital in a few hours and see the entire nation in a matter of days.

While Malta supposedly has a great deal of corruption, it's not considered more corrupt than so many other member states in Southern and Eastern Europe, and quite frankly, it would be nice also in Western and Northern Europe to have a supranational investigative body in stead of or in addition to parliamentary hearings, commissions etc. that often require parliament majority which rests with the government parties anyways.

<comment><USER4> Yes, a supranational organization which draws its executive leadership from unelected politicians certainly needs to create an armed force with broad- stroke investigative powers in order to _prevent_ corruption. That sounds like a fantastic idea!

Exactly part of the EU meisterplan - 1st economic union, then, oh wait, that doesn't actually work without sacrificing national sovereignty.. guess we need to have a federal european government afte rall, and all the better if noone is elected.

Heil das Heiliges Römisches Reich!

<comment><USER3> What's with the funny German? Are you saying you are an EU sceptic or are you mainly a germanophobe?

You know that different dialects of German were just some of the many languages spoken in the Holy Roman Empire, and not the official ones, right?

I agree that democracy in EU is far from perfect but no EU institution is beyond democratic control. All answer to democratly elected politicians.

<comment><USER4> Not a germanophobe; but that the trajectory of a single autocratic western empire (what would result from this police force in my view) is not a new idea, and infact the EU is to some extent simply an economic-focused philosophical follower-on of the holy roman empire, which in turn was the philosophical follower-on of the actual western roman empire.. The fact that the german central bank dominates the economic discussion does make for a bit of fun double entendre however.. which is not to say that this is either good nor bad - i'm of mixed feelings as concerns our view of historical systems.. it's just rediculous that it pretends to be some sort of 'free market democracy'

> All answer to democratly elected politicians.

In much the same way that when acting in cabinet, the 'prince electors' were still subject to their local populace.. it is a second tier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was an assassination, yet not a single article about this contain that word.

<comment><USER6> Is there really a significant difference between "assassination" and "slaying"?

<comment><USER7> There's a very big difference.

Assassination = murder of a prominent person for political reasons, often carried out by a third party (an assassin).

Slaying = a killing. That's it. Besides not having any political motive, a slaying isn't even necessarily murder; killing someone in war, in self-defense or on accident is still a slaying.

<comment><USER8> I always thought that slaying refers to non-human victims, as in "slaying the dragon"

<comment><USER7> "Slaying" is mostly archaic outside of literary contexts at this point, but it does refer to both humans and animals. It's still used pretty often in North American crime journalism.

Some AP stories from the past two weeks found with a quick Google using "slaying" to refer to the killing of humans:

* [https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2017-10-12/3-people-...](https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2017-10-12/3-people-fatally-shot-in-southern-ohio-8-year-old-missing)

* [https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/philly-man-arreste...](https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/philly-man-arrested-in-community-activists-slaying/)

* [https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/connecticut/articles...](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/connecticut/articles/2017-09-27/judge-to-question-man-on-slain-wifes-estate-worth-642)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _The leak exposed the identities of rich and powerful people around the > world who allegedly had offshore holdings in Panama._

In other words, some foreign intelligence agency could have very well assassinated her. Good luck getting to the bottom of that.

I'm kind of at a loss why there isn't some organization that offers protection to investigative journalists. They're basically fish in a barrel otherwise. Surely there's enough altruistic rich people out there to fund something like that.

Of course, when you're talking intelligence agencies, there's not much that can stop them if they're determined. Protection on that level has to be more in the form of mutual understanding.

<comment><USER10> > Surely there's enough altruistic rich people out there to fund something > like that.

Evidently not. And they would be hugely outnumbered by rich people who buy newspapers and journalists to pursue far more harmful agendas.

<comment><USER9> I guess security could be crowdfunded too. Kind of like a life and death version of Patreon.

It might be a tough sell though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's the point of assassinating anyone after the documents (Panama Papers) have already been leaked? Surely the cat's long out of the bag. Just ask Nawaz Sharif (ex-PM of Pakistan).

<comment><USER12> This is the dark side of capitalism. It won't go away. You discover 1000 people, they maybe even lose everything. 2 years later there will be another 1000 people.

<comment><USER11> Ah, but this is the light side of information. We keep uncovering these 1000 people, and the next 1000, until they realise there is nowhere to hide and their activities will become public knowledge. This is what they're scared of, after all. That they lose the ability to operate normally in public.

<comment><USER12> Yes each of them is worried about losing here. But the system is the system. That is what "next" means. You discover a few, but it doesn't change the system.

<comment><USER13> The system won't change if the guilty stay in charge.

Here is how you change a system: 1 - you replace the people in charge; 2 - <USER2> the new people don't change it, you go back to item 1.

<comment><USER12> Who replaces the people in charge? Who takes care of the people in charge not getting corrupt themselves? Who takes care that the most logical action for a leader is not a corrupt one?

It's simply not possible. And look through history. We already went through many systems and in all faced this same issue. The people in charge where replaced multiple times already, because the previous generation died. And it's not always the blood related children who pick up the crown either.

<comment><USER13> > Who replaces the people in charge?

People somehow pressure them out. It is always messy and specific, so, it's pointless to ask for generalities.

> Who takes care of the people in charge not getting corrupt themselves?

Nobody. You follow the steps.

> Who takes care that the most logical action for a leader is not a corrupt > one?

I don't understand this question.

Anyway, if you take a look at history, you will see that the only thing that ever solved a rotten top are those steps I outlined. Waiting for the old people to die off is a way of doing it, but quite slow and unbiased; it works much better with societal pressures biasing it towards keeping the more honest people.

<comment><USER12> > People somehow pressure them out. It is always messy and specific, so, it's > pointless to ask for generalities.

lol. then give an example. If my argumentation is true this should basically never happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maltese person here who has been following this journalist for a long time. The international reporting of this omits a lot of important information. It is far from certain that her assassination had a political motive. While I admired her for uncovering cases of corruption, she also had a very nasty streak, resorting to things like publishing revenge porn [1][2] and mocking women for the way the dressed [3]. A revenge motive completely unconnected to politics cannot be excluded.

I don't deny that the circumstances of the assassination are suspicious, and I also think a political motive is possible, but people are jumping to conclusions without waiting for evidence.

[1]([https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/08/oh-look-whos- here-m...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/08/oh-look-whos-here-mr- starkers-appointment-to-the-chair-of-the-pharmacy-council-is-announced-in-the- government-gazette-today/))

[2]([https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the- barre...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-barrel-the- labour-mayor-of-hal-qormi/))

[3]([https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/09/hot-new-style- wroug...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/09/hot-new-style-wrought-iron- patterns/))

NOTE: I cross-posted my comment from the other thread on this subject ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15485005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15485005)).

</comment><comment><USER15> This sounds to me like a plausible motive:

[https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20170906/local/nd...](https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20170906/local/ndrangheta- ran-a-2-billion-money-laundering-operation-through-malta.657333)

[https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/07/the-gaming- activiti...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/07/the-gaming-activities- are-legal-but-they-are-used-for-laundering/)

Background: One of Malta's biggest industries is online "gaming". It's basically virtual poker and other virtual gambling games. It's a huge money maker and has attracted lots of foreign EU nationals to work in the small nation's IT sector.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thoughts on Daphne Caruana Galizia from the Malta sub reddit before the assassination -

[https://www.reddit.com/r/malta/comments/4tltyf/i_think_ive_l...](https://www.reddit.com/r/malta/comments/4tltyf/i_think_ive_lost_respect_for_daphne_caruana/)

Also see throwaway_malta's comments - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15485624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15485624)

A lot of comments here seem to be implying she is a highly respected journo who broke the Panama Papers. She did some good comments on them and other interesting stuff but was also a TMZ as someone puts it.

<comment><USER14> This. As a Maltese person who has been following her for a very long time it is frustrating to see the way in which she is being mischaracterised in the international media. She was well known in Malta for making false allegations, character assassinations, mocking people from what she considered to be a low social status, publishing revenge porn to humiliate people and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Caruana Galizia's death resulted from a "barbaric attack" that also amounted to an assault on freedom of expression, Muscat said._

Memo to all: if you cost someone reputation, $ hundreds of millions, jail time etc., freedom of expression means jack. If they can kill you without being traced to them, they will kill you and your daughter in the crib. In US due to FBI etc., they try to "kill" you differently via lawsuits, blackballing...

If you saw El Chapo e few years ago at a California mall, would take to twitter to announce "OMG, just saw El Chapo...look at his picture"? I wouldn't. He could have lunch with me and I wouldn't recognize him

</comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know or have any good ideas about how to donate money to her cause? (her website doesn't have any donate links on it).

I often find with stories like this, that are horrifying, that the least I can do to show my support is donate money to the cause in the hope that it can help those brave enough to pursue it.

<comment><USER19> Her son works for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and is sure to continue her work. You can donate to them here: [https://www.icij.org/donate/](https://www.icij.org/donate/)

<comment><USER18> good idea, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The title makes it sound like other nations had criticised the Malta for having these ties, when it actually was about an individual doing something _against_ the law of Malta (I presume).

<comment><USER21> It's more complicated than that. Among other topics, she was investigating ties between the mafia and Malta's gambling industry (the island's most important after tourism), and the links between those and the island's politicians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Another one?

<comment><USER6> No, it's the same. I think the only new information is that the FBI has agreed to help with the investigation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Unfortunately this is what happens when you say the truth.

</comment><comment><USER20> In addition to the president doing this against a critic, you could also do this as a third party if you wanted to incriminate the president!</comment>


GRUB 2.00 released - <AUTHOR> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2012-06/msg00093.html

<comment><USER2> I wish they would fix the UI and make it idiot-proof.

I'm dealing with servers every day and Grub still gives me headache every time I have to deal with it.

I know it's a low-level tool and tackling a hairy problem. But the overall handling is just terrible (chrooting, insufficient error/debug output, insufficient transparency about what the _current_ state is and what grub is doing/going to do, etc.).

When shuffling raid-sets around often enough I'm not even sure from which drive it booted (or didn't boot) in a particular instance, there's way too much trial & error involved for my taste.

</comment><comment><USER3> After so many years. That's great news.

I remember when I started to use GNU/Linux and they were talking how great will be grub 2.0. It took maybe too much time, but it's a great tool.

</comment><comment><USER4> A cautionary tale in how _not_ to implement configuration files. Don't make them a Turing-complete programming language.

<comment><USER5> simple solution: don't even try think of them as configuration files. vim and emacs have the same issue and you don't hear many complaints.

<comment><USER4> Well that's not so convenient in virt-v2v, where we have to parse grub2 configuration files to work out what they mean, what kernel is actually going to boot by default, what options it'll be booted with etc.

In fact the current approach we take is to ignore grub2 configuration. Very tellingly, all the important distributions ignore the files too. They generate the files from ordinary static configuration files stored elsewhere (in different places for each distro, naturally). So we parse those files instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would be cool to have this signed by a trusted-boot key that ends up in all consumer x86 BIOSes, since it will probably be used by a lot of distributions.</comment>


Time Warner Cable drops Ovation and Current TV - <AUTHOR> http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/01/02/3761236/time-warner-cable-drops-arts-channel.html

<comment><USER2> More context: [http://www.deadline.com/2013/01/al-jazeera-to-acquire- curren...](http://www.deadline.com/2013/01/al-jazeera-to-acquire-current-tv- ny-times/)

Since Time Warner Cable would not consent to the sale "Current will no longer be carried on TWC. This is unfortunate, but I am confident that Al Jazeera America will earn significant additional carriage in the months and years ahead." Time Warner Cable says that it is "removing the service as quickly as possible." The loss of the No. 2 cable operator will hurt: Time Warner Cable has 12.2M video subscribers and Current reaches about 59M homes. Others also could follow Time Warner Cable's lead as they look to prune their often bloated channel lineups.

</comment><comment><USER3> Time Warner and other cable companies are anticompetitive monopolies that offer poor-quality service at high prices. At one point Comcast had a worse customer service rating than the IRS (hence the new Xfiniti brand). Dropping these channels is pure greed.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a strange overreaction. I mean, I get Al Jazeera English here in DC. There really isn't anything on it that should be controversial.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Current was reportedly tanking, which is why it was on the block in the first place.

<comment><USER5> The actual headline is "Time Warner Cable drops arts channel" which talks about the Ovation channel being dropped because nobody tunes in, as an aside it also mentions that Current TV was dropped after being acquired by Al Jazeera.

Now I suspect the person who submitted this thought there was some weird conspiracy about Al Jazeera and Time Warner and what not but the reality is that when a channel changes ownership previous contracts get voided, sometimes that gives folks an easy out. In this case it looks like they took that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does carrying a TV channel cost Time Warner real money? I guess they pay the channels for the rights to broadcast, but how much was really costing them? A few hundred thousand a year? What if Ovation was free?

As for the politics of carrying an Al Jazeera owned channel in the U.S., it's a sad day for free speech.

<comment><USER7> So at least in the past when I worked for TechTV new networks paid for carriage, and eventually got paid by the cable operator once they earned their stripes (usually 3 to 5 years)

I doubt this cost is really the relevant one though. More importantly its the opportunity cost. Cable operators are limited in bandwidth and the number of channels they can carry at any given time. Getting rid of Ovation free's up that network bandwidth for another, more profitable network (or more HD channels etc...)

Ovation and Current both were at a disadvantage as independent networks. Larger network groups like NBCU, Scripps (food network) Viacom (Comedy Central & MTV) have a better chance getting a smaller network off the ground because of their increased leverage.

Hopefully at some point the cable operators will move to a Switched Digital Video[1] system which would free up bandwidth and allow for these smaller networks to get traction a bit easier, but its not going to happen soon and (hopefully) streamed internet networks will really start to flourish. Maybe the Ovations and Currents of the world will move this way sooner now.

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

<comment><USER8> Actually, TWC does use SDV in most of their markets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's fine. I dropped Time Warner and Comcast years ago. Oddly enough, between Youtube, podcasts, Netflix, iTunes, and bittorrent I have no need to have "channels" any more.

If there's a movie or tv show I want to see, Netflix -> iTunes -> bittorrent.

I've actually been finding I watch Youtube more than anything else. I have a particular set of interests and have found a particular set of regular independent producers on Youtube and subscribe to them.

      Minecraft: Etho's Lab
      Starcraft: HDStarcraft and Husky
      Bread baking: multiple
      Telescope mirror making: multiple
      Photography: multiple

Beyond that, I listen to a variety of podcasts about tech and photography.

I literally have _no_ need for cable tv and haven't for years. All of the interesting stuff is online.

What I'd really love to see is a popular tv show with a loyal fan base but marginal viewers on cable to just switch over 100% to Youtube. Put the episodes in full HD and run regular Youtube ads. Maybe do some in-show advertisement, product placement, that kind of thing.

Recently, Dirty Jobs was cancelled after 8 years by Discovery. That was a really cool show with a loyal fan base. Its numbers got too low for Discovery so they canned it. It'd be the perfect example to try switching to a pure online model.

<comment><USER10> > What I'd really love to see is a popular tv show with a loyal fan base but > marginal viewers on cable to just switch over 100% to Youtube. Put the > episodes in full HD and run regular Youtube ads. Maybe do some in-show > advertisement, product placement, that kind of thing.

The budget for one Top Gear episode (for example) is greater then what PSY made from his youtube video with a Billion views.

On top of that, even the smaller networks enjoy a built in audience of hundreds of thousands (if not several million) viewers for each new show they put out there. If you start a show from obscurity it has a much steeper hill to climb.

If you take an already existing show, like you say, it will lose most of its audience because people will think "whatever happened to" and promptly forget about it. That's how good stuff like Firefly gets killed, you move the schedule around a bit and ratings tank because people don't keep up with that.

<comment><USER9> I know the current monetization for videos is low. That's not for lack of audience, its because advertisers have not really switched over a lot of their ad spend to online video.

Look at this video from HuskyStarcraft. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfBKFLrUQU4>. That's his episode celebrating his 700,000th subscriber. 700,000 people subscribe to his channel. He posts several videos a day, usually about 20-30 minutes in length. Each video gets hundreds of thousands of views in a day, and even more over time. There are entire cable networks that don't have that kind of viewership, and this is just a highly-caffeinated guy broadcasting high-level StarCraft 2 games. There are thousands of Youtubers just like him.

There's a _huge_ audience worldwide on Youtube. It and sites like it are already the future of broadcast, and the traditional networks are way, way behind. They're going to be less and less relevant as time goes on.

If you take an existing show that, as I already said would likely be cancelled, and move it to Youtube there could be an amazing response.

<comment><USER10> That is rather what I am talking about. He posted 18 videos this week (I'm not counting the two from the last 24 hours) with an avg. of ~55,000 views.

There's a lot of noise and people have short attention spans, he also posts stuff willy nilly. So only some small fraction of his 700,000 subscribes see any one video, for the rest it disappears into their feeds.

His 360 Million views is still quite a lot, by definition there can only be so many accounts with such a high view count. And yet that translates to a check of only around a quarter million dollars.

This is great for a highly caffeinated individual sitting in underwear and recording his screen - it simply doesn't cover a cast and crew even if you improve the CPM by a factor of x10.

The truth is that TV advertising is very overpriced and just like newspapers trade physical print dollars for digital pennies the same thing applies here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Carl Meredith is one local viewer upset about Ovation's removal from his > Time Warner lineup. Meredith and his wife, who live near Clayton, are big > fans of Ovation's reruns of the original British version of "Antiques > Roadshow." Meredith said he had his DVR set to record the episodes during > the day, and the couple would watch them together at night. Now, he gets a > blue screen telling him Time Warner Cable no longer carries Ovation._

That's a rather left-field choice of show to enjoy, and in most of these discussions reruns (especially esoteric ones) don't get a lot of focus. Pundits tend to focus on the newest episode of, say, _Homeland_ as the item worth buying. The Merediths show us that there is more to that puzzle.

The à la carte selection of and payment for individual shows, as opposed to individual channels, may have some merit after all; if you read between the lines, they don't want Ovation. They want reruns of British _Antiques Roadshow_ , and Ovation just happened to have them. This couple is already down the road toward a different model, too, since they utilize their DVR to time-shift the episodes anyway.

The downside to shifting to paying for shows is (the often useful) local network affiliates, live sports programming, real-time news, and so forth, which are problems yet to be solved. Basically, anything live. I think the generation that's in their 20s and 30s now, though, is more palatable to this kind of model, and we're very likely on the way.

\----

Other point I'd like to make here is that British _Antiques Roadshow_ is produced by the BBC, who haven't quite figured out the United States yet. Different legal systems force them to make real bummers, like rescoring _Top Gear_ since they have a very liberal licence to use popular music in the UK and America is a very different picture. In many _Top Gear_ films, the music is half of the equation[1] and its replacement with stock light rock jams is a real shame. Heard some of that in the _Best of Top Gear_ edits that BBC America just aired. That's also probably why they have to be really aggressive on YouTube, and a lot of the unofficial clips of _Top Gear_ on YouTube have been disappearing, replaced by official edits following the same rules.

A lot of Americans, myself included, are chomping at the bit for _Top Gear_ but the BBC finds itself having to edit it to remove British-specific jokes (which I disagree with) or rescoring as mentioned above (which is just unfortunate). They're pretty lax on _QI_ on YouTube, though, which is just great; I've seen all of _QI XL_ Series J so far, not far behind Britain.

[1]: Example from last series, brilliantly written, shot, edited, and scored: <http://vimeo.com/40226173></comment>


SQL Server 2017 Graph Data Features in Action - <AUTHOR> https://gavindraper.com/2017/06/12/sql-server-2017-graph-data/ <comment><USER2> This just seems like a slightly different join syntax.

If they want to support graphs, they could make their recursive SQL work properly, i.e. not like this: [http://www.sql-server-helper.com/error- messages/msg-460.aspx](http://www.sql-server-helper.com/error- messages/msg-460.aspx)</comment>


Improving Server Performance through Better Scheduling - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bianca/project_pages/project_sync.html <comment><AUTHOR> Bianca was a faculty candidate here at Ohio State and gave an interesting talk about a month ago about improving system reliability. The part I found most interesting was how a small patch to the Linux kernel to change scheduling gave a remarkable improvement to performance.

<comment><USER2> I wonder to what extent this is a statistical artifact rather than a genuine improvement. For example, if you measure performance as the mean time to serve each kilobyte, then the proposed scheduler does not increase performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, but what was actually measured was the mean time to serve the entire request. I think in nearly any usage pattern, this would be the data point that you would be most concerned with. You want users browsing your pages to get their pages and small images very quickly, and if they have to wait a couple seconds for the larger images to finish, or for minutes for large file downloads, that seems to be the kind of behavior a user would expect.

What this scheduling algorithm avoids is the case where several people are downloading large files and other more casual users are having a worse browsing experience because of that.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you switch frameworks when you have a large codebase? - <AUTHOR> I recently got a job at a company that has a very large Angular codebase. The company has a great engineering team and is trying to work on improving the design and structure of the code. The general opinion seems to be that Angular isn't ideal for how we want to work but we're so invested in it at this point that any move away would be painful and could be very costly. Stopping progress for a full-scale re-write would never be an option but I'm struggling to see how we can make gradual changes.<p>Has anyone had any experiences of transitioning a large clientside application to use a significantly different framework or design? How did you handle it? <comment><USER2> The best line of code is one that doesn't get written.

The first question you need to ask is _How important is this, really?_ It's not a matter of whether Angular is "ideal", but whether Angular is _tolerable_. Is Angular actually _preventing_ the team from implementing new features? Is it the primary source (or a primary source) of bugs? Do you have to do complicated workarounds to get real work done within the Angular framework?

 _What problem are you trying to solve?_

Keep in mind that every line of code you write that doesn't directly increase the value of the company is an opportunity cost. The man-months of work involved in switching frameworks are man-months that aren't being spent creating new features or new products, that aren't fixing known bugs, etc. Moreover, it introduces risk - what if the engineering effort fails to produce something that a: works, and b: is substantially better than the existing Angular code?

If it is truly important, if it's really limiting the company's bottom line or the stability of the engineering team (which is just another way of saying bottom line), then talk about how to get from A to B. But first, decide just how important this really is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Start writing new features with the new framework. Rewrite the most used parts of the old one, as much as you can.

You will end up with a codebase with two frameworks. It's not the end of the world.

When we faced this issue, we did a complete rewrite. It actually reduced the amount of code and made everything nicer, legacy code is often full of hacks and undocumented nonsense.</comment>


NoSQLIndia is online on September 26th - <AUTHOR> http://nosqlindia.pbworks.com agenda for the day, interviews, chat, etc <comment><USER3> Is there anyway to edit that Wiki page without registering for an account?

<comment><AUTHOR> that might probably make it an easier spam-target. and if i were pbworks - <USER2> some point the freemium model might have to equate to new user-registrations

~B</comment></comment>


Train Your Machine Learning Models on Google's GPUs for Free - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/train-your-machine-learning-models-on-googles-gpus-for-free-forever-a41bd309d6ad <comment><USER2> They even allow installing of python modules via pip.

And they already include opencv

      import cv2
      print(cv2.__version__)

      '3.4.0'

So I guess this is an incredibly awesome gift for many more than just ML devs

After playing some random python module bingo here are some of the most useful libraries

      sklearn 0.19.1
      skimage 0.13.1
      bs4 0.4.6  (BeautifulSoup4)
      scipy 0.19.1
      seaborn 0.7.1
      PIL 4.0.0
      keras 2.1.5
      nltk 3.2.1
      zmq 16.0.4

</comment><comment><USER3> Good to know thanks!

Quick summary: Google Colaboratory (Colab) provides a Jupyter notebook environment with up to 12 hours continuous access to an Nvidia K80 for free.

[https://research.google.com/colaboratory/faq.html](https://research.google.com/colaboratory/faq.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is great - especially for small projects and learning. However, there are a few limitations to be aware of if you're thinking about using it for real projects.

First, is memory. I've seen reports of practical limitations being around 500mb. Call me a spoiled millennial noob but the vast majority of my real- world ML projects use a lot more - especially when working with image data.

Second, is getting data into your notebook. Most ML is data heavy and you want a fast way of working with it. For example, the Google Landmark challenge on Kaggle has nearly half a terabyte of _unaugmented_ images just for the test set. You could easily push several terabytes for that one-off challenge alone if you were not careful.

Note: it is possible to work with much less data in many cases by resizing and preprocessing the images as you pull them down but that has problems too. Also, you can use Google Drive but it's not ideal for large datasets.

Related:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/84532y/n_g...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/84532y/n_google_colab_gives_you_free_usage_of_a_k80_gpu/)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48750199/google- colabora...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48750199/google-colaboratory- misleading-information-about-its-gpu-only-5-ram-available/49225460)

<comment><USER5> [[deleted]]

<comment><USER6> They give you 12GB of GPU ram.

The 500mb is simply the host ram for the python runtime. As long as you aren't converting everything to numpy arrays, you'll be fine.

<comment><USER5> fantastic, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > for Free — Forever

Nothing is _ever_ free forever.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm assuming they have an eye on all your data, or will so in the future? What's the catch?

</comment><comment><USER5> just so that you appreciate this outstanding gift: the equivalent compute time would quickly be worth several dozen of dollars if not hundreds of dollars on Amazon (plus setup time).

this is truly one of the most remarkable giveaways since … the Internet. of course by doing this they want to find talent and hook you. but I see no harm in this bait and switch scheme.

TL;DR: wow! free supercomputer time!

<comment><USER5> what we need now is some peer to peer or community driven learning so that people can collaborate on creating the best speech recognition model etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Something makes me think this offer won't be this free for long.

</comment><comment><USER10> what prevents ethereum mining on this if its free?

<comment><USER11> I would assume it's against the TOS and you'd run the risk of losing your Google Account if you got caught.

<comment><USER12> Do you have a URL for the Google Colaboratory TOS? Maybe I'm blind, but my cursory search failed.</comment></comment></comment>


Criminal Over-Incarceration - <AUTHOR> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/criminal-over-incarceration/#! <comment><USER2> One of my passengers was sent to prison for almost 2 years. Her doctor had prescribed xanax, then she found alcohol, and figured, "what do I need Xanax for, when I have Schmirnoff?"

Her third DUI sent her to the big house. She tried to stay sober after being released - really really tried - but life happened and she couldn't deal with it.

Punishing her for having emotional problems and trusting her doctor's prescription was of no help whatsoever. She's doing pretty well now.</comment>


Avoid overprovisioning – fine-tuning the heap - <AUTHOR> https://plumbr.eu/blog/outofmemoryerror-on-overprovisioned-heap

<comment><USER2> this is an excellent, concise explanation.</comment>


Silicon Valley's doomed creative culture - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/sex-drugs-start-ups-inside-silicon-valleys-doomed-creative-culture/ <comment><USER2> The article doesn't have anything to do with Silicon Valley. It doesn't say a lot about Chicago (where the subject worked) either. Unless I missed it somewhere? Nor creative culture anywhere. Maybe "People like to hustle and party" is a better title?</comment>


Atom treasures - a list of Atom plugins I can't live without - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@0x1AD2/atom-treasures-82a64ac391c#.fq5w01fn0 <comment><USER2> Hi author here, If someone have some questions tweet me @0x1ad2</comment>


Marijuana advocates hope to rise from 'prohibition' - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/01/us/marijuana-legalization-and-prohibition/ <comment><USER2> I just don't understand why, given all the other problems we have, marijuana is important enough to prohibit even if there were some benefit to doing so. It's clearly not a terrible scourge, even with zero benefit ascribed to reducing the scale of drug war, enforcement costs, civil liberties, civil war in Mexico, huge prison population, etc.

Especially once you factor in all the costs of prohibition, it makes no sense. If marijuana were legal today, it wouldn't be worth prohibiting; at most it might be worth requiring standard disclosures of THC percentages and maybe restricting to 18+, and specific driving or other professional restrictions.

Because it's banned, the whole issue gets attention way out of proportion to the actual importance.

<comment><USER3> The DEA/DHS are the governments consultants on drug policy.

These agencies have a strong incentives to keep the charade going. Especially now with all of the overseas military operations ending and a ton of technology and government workers needing employment.

<comment><USER4> This is sophomore dorm room thinking. 49-51% of Americans do not believe that marijuana should remain criminal because they've been brainwashed by the DEA.

I'm comfortable telling you what _isn't_ the reason for criminalization (government brainwashing), but less comfortable positing reasons for it. But if I had to guess, I'd say this:

People are inherently loss-averse; it's a fundamental part of our psychology. Most people (I think correctly, _but I understand that reasonable people disagree_ ) judge that making cannabis use as widespread as alcohol and tobacco would be a net negative. They worry about that, and it clouds their judgement about the ongoing costs of enforcement, especially because most people never come into contact with the direct costs of enforcement.

<comment><USER2> 49-51% of Americans don't need to be brainwashed by DEA. There _are_ some entrenched interests who actually fight for the drug war -- police, corrections officers, etc. -- out of their own self-interest and a misguided belief that it's the only way to save society. They contribute a lot of money to the "keep drugs illegal" marketing and research, which has worked for so long to keep the general public pro-prohibition.

(I think 80-90% of people have no real direct opinion on the drug war either way, except from what they're told by the prohibitionists. "It will harm our children, keep your kids away from drugs" is a powerful message. Racism was a powerful tool in getting prohibition enacted in the first place.)

This is why I think LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) is one of the most important anti-prohibition organizations out there.

<comment><USER4> The police aren't fighting in favor of the drug war. The police in Chicago favor drug tickets. The commissioner of state police in _Indiana_ (ffs!) just came out against the drug war.

Corrections officers, maybe, but I dispute that ordinary Americans pay attention to the interests and positions of corrections officers the way they do police.

<comment><USER2> Not local police anymore (although 20-30 years ago, I think they did support it). Federal, and the entire economy built up around the drug prohibition industry. It's an embarrassingly small industry, but it _really_ cares about this issue, which means it is a political issue. Just like 99% of people don't care that much about farm subsidies, but 1% stake their votes and budgets on it, so it persists.

In California, the corrections officers are one of the 3 strongest unions (actually, MORE influential than the police, second only to teachers I think). It's pretty insane. No one really cares about them, except that they have enough money and votes to be a major political force.

I think the drug war as a whole will be ended in 10-20 years, with prohibition at the level of stopping illegal/untaxed cigarettes today, and starting by removing marijuana from the schedules and moving a fair number of schedule I to schedule II (MDMA, in particular). But it's interesting to know why and how we got to where we are.

<comment><USER4> The whole thrust of the article we're commenting on is that marijuana is being decriminalized. Decriminalization and normalization of cannabis is inevitable. Yes, it's happening at the state level instead of federally, but that's how stuff like this is supposed to work; eventually, the majority of states that empty their holding cells of petty cannabis offenders will bully the remaining states that criminalize it with some a federal law of some sort.

It's obvious and banal to point out that there are government actors who oppose legalization. Of course there are. There would have to be, or marijuana would already be legal. But it is not true to suggest that law enforcement uniformly opposes legalization. The law enforcement bodies that tend to actually matter in policy decisions --- state and large urban police forces --- are caving on this issue. They can't afford enforcement anymore.

For what it's worth, I do not believe that MDMA and LSD and opiates will be decriminalized. At best, they'll obtain the status fentanyl has today: drugs that are prescribable, but only under close scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure how I feel about legalizing it but part of me thinks we don't need yet another substance that will make people more likely to act like idiots or endanger others.

I get the idea of having the freedom to do what you wish with your health and body but it just seems inevitable that there will be more people abusing it, using it as a gateway drug and causing negative affects on society. I can't really think of anything positive society as a whole would gain from this except maybe tax money?

[Edit] Then again, a lot of this can be said about alcohol. I'm not sure which one is easier to abuse.

<comment><USER6> Generally speaking, I expect that legal cannabis will tend to cut down on alcohol use, and I would tend to see this as a good thing.

Cannabis tends to be less addictive than alcohol, it's pretty much impossible to kill yourself with an overdose, and people intoxicated with it tend to overestimate how impaired they are rather than underestimate it like with alcohol.

I've seen a bunch of different studies using different methodologies to come up with various rankings of drugs by degree of harm [1][2][3], but every one of them rates cannabis as safer than alcohol.

EDIT: I expect that the "gateway drug" effect is due to people finding out that pot is much less dangerous than they are led to believe. People have always heard that using illegal drugs would kill them, then find that their friends are using it safely and assume that all illegal drugs are similarly safe.

[1]<http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/drug-ranking.htm> [2]<http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000774.full> [3][http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourc...](http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004477)

<comment><USER4> People intoxicated with cannabis may be overestimating their impairment because smoking cannabis is a crime, which is a factor that is cancelled out by legalization. I know from hanging out with smokers that concern about degree of impairment tends to come up only when contact with law enforcement is a possibility.

<comment><USER7> So people don't smoke and drive because they don't want to be caught doing something illegal. Seeing as DUI is still illegal in Washington, I don't see how this changes anything.

Unless you're saying that because cannabis is legal I'm going to think that a cop is more likely to let me go, or be less likely to check me or what? The legality of cannabis use doesn't change the likelihood of me getting pulled over, no?

Or am I misunderstanding where you're coming from?

<comment><USER4> Yes, I am saying that when cannabis is legal, its users are no longer going to be continuously paranoid that the mere detection of its presence is going to be enough to have them imprisoned.

<comment><USER7> Right, (barring the discussion about the differences in impairment between cannabis and alcohol...) those are the same type of people that think they can get away with drinking and driving. They're arrogant, selfish people. But I don't really buy that they're sitting at home being good law abiding citizens waiting one hour for every drink or one hour for every toke before driving to Taco Bell right now, only to abandon that once it's legal.

<comment><USER4> No, I disagree. People think they can get away with drinking and driving because they almost overwhelmingly can get away with drinking and driving, and because the penalties for DUI conviction are routinized (they're more severe than a ticket but, barring injuries, less severe than any felony). Neither is the case for cannabis. If you're pulled over and your car reeks of weed, your car will be searched, and if cannabis turns up, everyone in the car is likely to be arrested. Your prosecution afterwards will not be routine; if you're found guilty, it is very likely to cost you your job in a way a DUI conviction isn't.

<comment><USER7> >People think they can get away with drinking and driving because they almost overwhelmingly can get away with drinking and driving

The legality of cannabis does not affect the likelihood of me getting pulled over so I don't understand. Or are you saying "keeping your job and not getting a felony = getting away with it"?

I mean, how many people are you imagining are cool with a DUI conviction and not a, I don't know, whatever it is if you get pulled over with weed in the car, possession+DUI?

<comment><USER4> First offense DUI in most states isn't even a felony. It doesn't matter if your employer is "cool" about it; they're unlikely to discover it.

Stipulate a fixed likelihood of being pulled over at all. You're pulled over for making the kind of mistake anyone could make, or pulled over because a traffic cop is bored or has a quota. But once you're pulled over, the likelihood of an officer detecting marijuana _anywhere in the car including its passengers_ is far higher than the likelihood of an officer detecting _alcohol intoxication in the driver_.

These observations are so straightforward that I feel like we might be getting argumentative just for the sake of it. For what it's worth, I'm in favor of decriminalization.

<comment><USER7> >These observations are so straightforward that I feel like we might be getting argumentative just for the sake of it. For what it's worth, I'm in favor of decriminalization.

huh? I'm not trying to argue with you. I know that you think cannabis is a net-negative and I have no desire to argue with you about that. I respect your position and know that you're in favor of decriminalization.

I still do not understand what you're getting at. If I were to smoke a bowl, drink two beers and get in my car and got pulled over, I _guarantee you_ I would be asked if I had been drinking because that would be far more present on my breath. Even if I had some weed in a grinder in my glove box.

>detecting marijuana anywhere in the car including its passengers is far higher than the likelihood of an officer detecting alcohol intoxication in the driver.

I have no idea how you come to this conclusion or find it obvious.

Besides, I think we're just going to disagree at the core of this. I like to think that there is more keeping people from recklessly drunk-driving than a "felony" on their record or losing their job.

<comment><USER4> I'm asked if I've been drinking virtually every time I'm pulled over (I am not an unsafe driver). I simply say "no". If I've drunk 2 beers in the last couple hours, I am driving unimpaired and won't be questioned further.

But if I'm pulled over and my car reeks of weed, a bunch of things are probably going to happen. The cop is going to shine his flashlight throughout the car looking for sources of the smell. He's going to ask me to get out of the car and will probably then frisk me for his own safety. He'll ask to search the car. He'll question everyone in the car. In many states, he is likely to call for a drug dog to effect probable cause for a search of the car.

My impression is that these things not only happen but happen _routinely_ at traffic stops where cannabis is implicated; the state police have a whole infrastructure ready to go to make cannabis arrests happen, and they are higher-value stops (arrests) than traffic stops. None of these things happen during ordinary traffic stops, and unless you've been driving erratically or spilled high-proof alcohol on your clothes or have an open container, nothing else does either.

The problem is that cannabis stinks (literally); it has a sticky, lingering, resinous smell. Alcohol simply doesn't generate the same evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had some room-mates that were abusing weed often, which made reconsider my previous support for legalization. Or at least it should be very heavily regulated if legalized.

I learned the following from observation and having frank conversations with them (before that I expected recreational marijuana use to be like alcohol use):

* Weed is addictive, probably on the level of cigarettes. Sure plenty of people have tried tobacco and don't have the habit, but for people who develop it may be pretty hard to quit.

* People high on weed seem more pleasant and predictable than drunk people.

* Withdrawal seems to be unpleasant. Paranoia and restlessness.

* Decreasing returns - its harder to get high after a while, making you smoke more.

* They all admitted they feel damaged from continuous use - their thinking ability diminished after a few years and the habit costs them plenty of money. One girl smoked every day, even though she has reduced her use significantly and doesn't get high any more.

I really want a balanced approach to this. While not like heroin or cocaine, cannabis is definitely a drug. While banning its use is counterproductive, legalization shouldn't be done in a way encouraging use or minimizing the real dangers. People should be in the least informed before making a responsible choice. Maybe putting warning labels, banning use in public and banning advertisements in a good complement to a legalization.

<comment><USER4> I don't think weed is benign, and I think more people smoking more often is a net negative for society, but as everyone on this message board is likely to tell you with varying degrees of civility, you can say the exact same things about alcohol. Alcohol is definitely a drug.

<comment><USER9> Where is the net negative? In reduced productivity -- because people are high, they will be less motivated to make websites, attend classes, and contribute to open source projects?

<comment><USER4> Potentiation of latent mental illness.

<comment><USER9> Do you believe latent mental illness exists in that large of a percentage of the population? I've seen this happen to a few people, but I don't believe it's a large risk.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I believe mental illness is underdiagnosed, and that illness (or "predisposition" to illness) that is asymptomatic normally can be dangerously symptomatic in the presence of cannabis.

Like you, I have firsthand experience with friends who have had this problem. I also know enough people who have had this experience with _their_ friends to be fairly confident that this is a common problem.

<comment><USER9> So psychiatrists should use marijuana as a means to exacerbate mental illness, so these illnesses can be more quickly identified, and people can receive the correct treatment more quickly?

I don't believe mental illness in the general population to be underdiagnosed, rather the opposite. I believe most people are narcissistic enough that treatment has an effect somewhere between the Hawthorne Effect and Munchhausen Syndrome. Attention and approval are highly addictive, more than caffeine, sometimes more than even heroin -- look at how well interventions work. I believe most psychology and psychiatry academics studied those fields to understand their personal problems, which leads people in those fields to hold a perception bias about the rest of the people on the planet.

<comment><USER10> No. You can live your whole life without having an episode if you don't cause one. Weed seems to be a facilitator. On the psychiatric ward (specialized on schizophrenia) most people were smoking weed (some probably to alleviate symptoms).

Some illnesses are overdiagnosed some are severely underdiagnosed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Richard Branson wrote about a year ago in his personal blog post, "Time to End the War on Drugs,"

[http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/time-to-end- the-w...](http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/time-to-end-the-war-on- drugs)

"Ten years ago the Portuguese Government responded to widespread public concern over drugs by rejecting a 'war on drugs' approach and instead decriminalized drug possession and use. It further rebuffed convention by placing the responsibility for decreasing drug demand as well as managing dependency under the Ministry of Health rather than the Ministry of Justice. With this, the official response towards drug-dependent persons shifted from viewing them as criminals to treating them as patients."

I found this interesting, because the factual outcome that Branson reports for this policy change is "Now with a decade of experience Portugal provides a valuable case study of how decriminalization coupled with evidence-based strategies can reduce drug consumption, dependence, recidivism and HIV infection and create safer communities for all."

I would like to see a policy change that reduces drug use, especially by young people whose brain structures are still forming. I have seen too many people in my generation, and in the generation of my children, who appear to have used "only" marijuana among the drugs that are currently illegal in the United States, and who yet "burned out" and have basically become losers. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. There are a lot of interesting trade-offs involved in attempting to ban selling and using a substance that is relatively easy to produce and to trade, just as we found when the United States tried Prohibition of alcohol in years after World War I. The current system of drug regulation in the United States does not appear to be working to achieve its stated goals. If an approach like that now found in Portugal--correctly characterized as "decriminalization" rather than as "legalization"--can both reduce burden on the law-enforcement system and reduce use of drugs, I think that approach would be worth trying in the United States.

AFTER EDIT: To reply to the first comment posted below, asking for study citations, one study,

Fu, Q., Heath, A. C., & Bucholz, K. K. (2008). A twin-family study of suicidality and illicit drug use in young people. Samuel B. Guze Symposium on Alcoholism.

[http://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](http://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context=guzeposter2008&sei- redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fas_ylo%3D2008%26q%3Dmarijuana%2B%2522young%2Bpeople%2522%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%2C24#search=%22marijuana%20young%20people%22)

is particularly interesting for having a "genetically sensitive design" (it is a study of the offspring of co-twin parents). Marijuana use increases suicide risk for young people, controlling for other factors that raise suicide risk.

More generally, cannabis use increases risk for psychotic symptoms.

[http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=10228...](http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=102282)

The review article

Bava, S., & Tapert, S. F. (2010). Adolescent brain development and the risk for alcohol and other drug problems. Neuropsychology review, 20(4), 398-413.

doi: 10.1007/s11065-010-9146-6

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2988999/>

provides a good overview of current research on adolescent brain development and abnormalities observed during neurological studies of marijuana users.

<comment><USER12> Is there any scientific evidence to suggest that marijuana use among young people is any more harmful than for other age groups? Or are claims like "I have seen too many people..." just a case of observation bias?

<comment><USER13> Yes. During adolescence some significant brain changes occur, these changes will determine the brains natural level of happiness. These changes are directed by a class of neurotransmitters called monoamines. A lot of drugs influence the amount of these Monoamines in the synapse, which causes their euphoric effects. When you take drugs during adolescence it will change the level of monoamines and thus alter brain development. This is why pharmacologists are so reluctant to let children go on antidepressants, we don't yet have enough data to confidently say what the effects are.

<comment><USER10> Also we don't even really know how AD work. It can't be serotonin (alone).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It already is if you watch [American] TV.

I uh, guess it's anecdotal... I watched several hours of TV while at home with my parents over the holiday. I honestly think every show they were watching on CBS had a pot reference in it and it was light hearted and didn't even put it in a bad light. It's a long running joke on shows. Late night TV is inundated with guests who talk and joke about using it.</comment>


Expert feedback on pitch decks and models for free during Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> http://pitch.pariti.io <comment><AUTHOR> Pariti is a startup advisory platform helping startups raise capital. During COVID-19, we know a lot of companies are struggling to raise capital and stay afloat. We want to help the startup ecosystem in this time of need by offering pitch deck and financial model review for free.

Feel free to message me with any questions.

pitch.pariti.io

<comment><USER2> What kind of feedback are you offering? Will all uploads and feedback be confidential?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question -

For pitch decks, slide-by-slide feedback and overall pointers For financial models, overall pointers and a score

Everything is confidential under an NDA!</comment></comment></comment>


Project SPAN: Ad-hoc Networking for Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.mitre.org/research/technology-transfer/open-source-software/smartphone-ad-hoc-networking-span

<comment><USER2> If SPAN interests you, you might try the Serval Mesh open source project:

[http://www.servalproject.org/](http://www.servalproject.org/)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.servalproj...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.servalproject&hl=en)

Admittedly the UI has not seen a refresh in a while, but the functionality is there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll check it out.

Looks to be a similar concept with a wildly different implementation. SPAN appears to operate at a much lower level.</comment></comment>


Gold, Tulip Bulbs, Rai Stones? (Cryptocurrencies) - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2018/08/gold-tulip-bulbs-rai-stones-whats-the-best-analogy-for-cryptocurrency.html <comment><USER2> >In fact, the former president of the DCB has said that bitcoin mania is "worse" than tulip mania: "At least then you got a tulip."

How can someone in such a high position say this? Are they unaware of the rarity/scarcity of Bitcoin? Are they unaware that you can send BTC over the internet?

I can see if people were skeptical of using altcoins that print infinity money or sending money to people was a solved problem- But that is not whats going on.

Serious question- why is someone in this position so 'stupid'?</comment>


The 5G contradiction and lessons from fixed networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.analysysmason.com/Research/Content/Comments/contradictory-investment-5g-rdns0/ <comment><USER2> Getting people to pay more for low latency doesn't make sense.

People in manufacturing know that high latency increases costs. That is, to have high latency, you have to delay things in transit.

That doesn't make money, it costs money. The cheap way to run a network is to keep traffic flowing so it doesn't jam up.</comment>


Grubhub is using fake websites to drive up commission fees from real businesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-seamless-fake-restaurant-domain-names-commission-fees <comment><USER2> "it has always been our practice to transfer the domain to the restaurant as soon as they request it"

This is a form of financial blackmail. Transferring a domain usually requires paying for one year's additional registration to a new registrar _and_ , sometimes, a transfer fee on top of that _and_ , most times, a hosting fee to redirect it. So, to summarize simply, in story form (to make very explicit how much of a scam this is for a business owner):

<GrubHub> We've speculatively registered 50 domains at a cost of $500 to mislead people into using our order form, which at 20% commission* at $25 per order average (that we take out of what we would have paid to you) will pay itself back entirely in 100 orders placed.

<Restaurant> What?! Stop it.

<GrubHub> Hey, no sweat, we're happy to transfer those domains to you. All you need to do is initiate transfers for all of those domains, at the cost of _at least_ $500 out of the revenue that we've been reducing by 20% for every order placed through these sites, and we'll be happy to transfer those domains to you. Also you'll have to find someone to host the redirects for you, and clean up the SEO damage we did. Best of luck with that!

<Restaurant> I don't have $500 because you've been cutting my revenue by 20%!

<GrubHub> Please rate your GrubHub Support experience by filling out a 5 minute survey.

* "Marketing commission": [https://ghlearnprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/...](https://ghlearnprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Grubhub_One-Pager_Pricing-Overview_Final.pdf)

<comment><USER3> If it's really just a transfer, then I'd expect less than $100, and it's paid to the registrar, not Grubhub, so it's not quite blackmail.

Now, what Grubhub is doing is unethical as fuck--best case. Worst case, it's criminal impersonation or business identity theft.

<comment><USER2> I assume $10 per domain and GrubHub is shown to register tens of domains. Assuming a popular restaurant is worth 50 domains, they only need to capture 20% of average $25/order for qty.100 orders through 50 domains in 1 year to pay the annual registration cost of the scam.

The scam is that restaurants can't as easily pay $500/year to prevent GrubHub from squatting on and SEOing typos of their domain, and GrubHub can simply go make up another 50 domains when the owner takes over the first 50, because they only need the 20% "marketing" ripoff from 100 orders to break even again.

<comment><USER4> I'm really curious to know if GrubHub will simply purchase new domains after handing over the previous fake site to the small business owners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is 'Casey Winters', former growth hacker at GrubHub explaining their strategy:

[https://firstround.com/review/pinterest-and-grubhubs- former-...](https://firstround.com/review/pinterest-and-grubhubs-former- growth-lead-on-building-content-loops/)

I absolutely can't stand the whole 'growth hacking' phenomenon, usually it boils down to doing something at someone else's expense in order to improve ones own position in the market. It's the mafia mentality brought to start-up land, suddenly you find you have a 'partner' that you did not choose who skims off a good portion of your profits.

<comment><USER6> If Casey Winters did the "growth hacking" at Pinterest he is responsible for polluting search results with useless, paywalled Pinterest spam.

Pinterest is like ExpertSexChange dark pattern strategy taken to the max.

<comment><USER7> Yeah for years I've found myself having to "-pinterest" out of searches. I wish that it was just removed period.

<comment><USER8> And this is how I know google does not give a shite about the people who actually use their search engine as a search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you read the article to the end they claim they're not cybersquatting. Sounds pretty disingenuous to me. One of the rationales given is that they'll transfer the domain to the restaurant if the latter requests it. Most of those restaurant owners probably won't know what's going on, or who to ask to have the domain transferred to them, or that they could even ask.

Edit: The text of their response is quite curious. In part it reads: "Additionally, we have registered domains on their behalf, consistent with our restaurant contracts. We no longer provide that service..."

If I were to guess, the fact that they'd be registering these domains was something slipped into the small print of their original contracts. Most restaurant owners probably wouldn't have noticed or understood the implications. The practice could have then been discontinued once it served its purposes of getting (or helping to get) Grubhub up to scale.

<comment><USER10> The pizza delivery app Slice does something similar... they buy domains that look like they could be legitimate and then outrank the actual website of the small local pizza shops with SEO. Then they tack on additional Slice fees and send the order through to the pizza place. Here's an example:

Actual site: [http://www.mariostogo.com/](http://www.mariostogo.com/)

Slice scam site: [https://www.mariospizzaphiladelphia.com/](https://www.mariospizzaphiladelphia.com/)

Most of these small pizza shops have no idea this is happening and Slice is just ripping off customers. They even claim listings or suggest edits on yelp, foursquare, google, etc. with their Slice domain so customers assume it's the shop's actual site. I wish someone from Yelp, Google, etc. would blacklist Slice sites and kill the company and their scammy business practices.

Edit: I forgot to mention they created fake phone numbers for the shops too which is what alerted me to this scam in the first place. I googled the number for Mario's and called it but a young female answered the phone and I heard call center chatter in the background... normally when calling Mario's one of the guys with a thick accent answers and speaks in broken English. I've never seen a single female employee work there in the 15 years I've been ordering from them. On top of it all, the delivery address got screwed up between my call in order that Slice intercepted and Slice then calling the actual Mario's number to relay my order. Come to think of it, I payed with a credit card over the phone so Slice took my CC info and then relayed that as well... that doesn't seem kosher.

(I now have the real Mario's number stored as a contact in my phone.)

<comment><USER11> I realized that they even copy the logo. Is this even legal? How can it be in any way legal to "impersonate" a business, just to funnel business away into a funnel that forces the business to pay fees.

<comment><USER12> Seems analogous to buying a product from a retail shop then reselling it in your own shop with a markup. If your SEO is better, then you can do that successfully, and why not? The original seller was leaving money on the table or failing to reach potential customers.

<comment><USER13> It is - if you call your shop "Tesco" for example and use their logo and branding to resell Tesco stuff at a slight markup. Of course this would get you shut down very quickly in the real world. I don't know why it should be any different just because it's online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is not only not new, but has been done by countless other online ordering sites since as early as 5 years ago. I know this since I tried to make monthly-fee based ordering system for restaurants.

This turned out to be a hard sell so most other systems took the other route: they bought a domain and did SEO for thousands of restaurants across the country. SEO and websites is not something the average small business owner is an expert on.

To make it even worse, some of these online ordering systems even convincend Google maps that they were the official site, and a google maps search would also list their fake website as the official website.

Of course to these businesses it just seemed like they were getting a lot of sales from these companies, in reality these people were just typing in the restaurant name into Google. The restaurants usually had to pay 10%-20% to Grubhub, beyondmenu.com, et. al.

The most egregious company that does this is probably beyondmenu.com.

<comment><USER15> Grubhub itself started purchasing these domains in 2011.

<comment><USER14> I have no idea when beyondmenu would have started, but I bet they were the first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it just me or are these restaurant adjacent businesses involved in some really bad practices. Between Yelp and Seamless, it seems to me that a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship will not form organically. (I'm referring to how Yelp can be predatorial to businesses to make them pay yelp or have Yelp negatively affect that business' yelp rating. There are plenty of articles showing this but data is hard to come by)

<comment><USER17> It feels like they all want to ascend to that nirvana where they monopolize and get to charge a fee on everything like iTunes.

<comment><USER18> Surprisingly enough. I use a lot of things in the App Store (which I assume you meant) without paying a dime to Apple - including Amazon digital purchases and prime video, Hulu, Netflix, Office 365, Udemy and DirecTVNow.

Most of the money Apple makes from the App Store are for in app consumables from games. Admittedly there are still a lot of legacy subscriptions from both Netflix and Spotify before they pulled out of going through Apple for subscriptions.

<comment><USER19> the devs had to pay big fees to apple to get the app posted

<comment><USER20> $99 is almost nothing for a large company, who likely gives Apple a lot more money via the 30% cut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is obviously messed up, but its nothing new. Thousands of startups growth strategy is ranking organically for brand search of their prospects. Google sells that ad space on branded search, yelp and other directories rank for them. The great big Internet Scam no one wants to admit is that digital advertising is one big protections racket! Hijacking customers and selling it back to businesses. Just look at super shady companies like rehabs.com that ranks for thousands of rehabs and pushes their phone number on all the listings.

If google and the internet went away tomorrow, small local businesses would likely be better off. Instead of having to pay money just to keep competitors from bidding on their brand or worrying about all the ways tech startups prey on small local businesses!

</comment><comment><USER22> In related news, the FTC sued and won a $1.4 million settlement [0] from a concert ticket company in 2014. They basically place search engine ads that sound like the venue, and use a domain that look like it should be the official one for the venue.

Remarkably, this company is _still_ operating and still doing largely the same thing in violation of the consent decree. I found out about it when my mom tried to buy tickets from the Hult Center in Eugene OR, and lost $500 on 'hult.centereugene.com' thinking it was the official venue.

[0] [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2014/07/ticke...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2014/07/ticketnetwork-marketing-partners-ryadd-secure-box-office- settle)

</comment><comment><USER23> Crazy to think the people who wrote this shady script probably reads HackerNews. This is all kinds of immoral.

<comment><USER24> Yet another shiny example of money vs. ethics in the Valley.

Also, don't look towards the engineers, who may or may not have known. Look towards the money. Who are the VCs invested in them and how many of them knew and encouraged that in the name of growth? And, of course, the executives.

<comment><USER25> GrubHub is based in Chicago, however.

<comment><USER26> the valley isn't just a place, its a state of mind.

<comment><USER27> This is my new phone wallpaper image

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> From their statement: "As a service to our restaurants, we have created microsites for them as another source of orders and to increase their online brand presence. Additionally, we have registered domains on their behalf, consistent with our restaurant contracts. We no longer provide that service and it has always been our practice to transfer the domain to the restaurant as soon as they request it."

What service do they no longer provide? Registering domains on their behalf, or microsites, or both? Going forward are they going to have the company register their domain themselves and point it to GrubHub?

</comment><comment><USER29> GrubHub also runs Google Ads to push GrubHub results to the top of search results. SEO is a core part of their strategy, in the name of driving business to restaurants. I'm sure many businesses don't care and don't mind, as long as they're making money.

There's always the cost that GrubHub, or the restaurants' own solutions, could be cannibalizing each other. It's a similar problem that any company has across marketing channels. GrubHub could be more transparent about their microsites, but there's always the possibility of some restaurant owners just not understanding what they're getting after signing a contract no matter how hard GrubHub tries.

Although, phone orders are definitely tough. Restaurants have historically hated phone orders because of how GrubHub makes money off of them.

</comment><comment><USER30> Its a big scam. Registering 23,00 fake domain names and getting commission from them is not at all acceptable. They need to be fined.

</comment><comment><USER31> I guess not illegal, but super shady.

Pretty easy to see how incremental thinking leads to a shady result. We get paid $X per order from our restaurant clients, they like more orders so if we can get them more, they'll be happier and pay us more -> improve SEO of Grubhub<dot>com -> works -> what else can we do -> use our seo skills -> register other websites do seo -> more orders.

Bad result, but know how they got there.

<comment> m-ee Are there no trademark issues from using the restaurant's official logos? These restaurants may not have filed on everything they should have and probably don't have the resources to fight it regardless, but what if they did? A large company would definitely send a C&D immediately for actions like this.

<comment><USER32> The Grubhub terms of service almost certainly include a license to use the name and any trademarks for purposes including these shadow sites.

<comment><USER33> And it will almost certainly land them in a huge class action lawsuit. The SEO damage done to small businesses makes them almost reliant upon GrubHub after making the mistake of doing business with them in the first place. Terms of Service can say whatever it wants it's not an official legal document, just something they turn to when their ethics violations get exposed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Surely this has 'class-action lawsuit' written all over it. I can't speak with any authority regarding US law, but surely there are grounds for legal action being taken against GrubHub.

<comment><USER35> They are using content from the real sites. Copyright violation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Another day, another company doing something scummy. I'm getting to the point where I just don't want to check my feeds anymore.

<comment><USER37> No news is good news. Shit's been happening since time immemorial. Your awareness could be valuable. When the bad guy looks forward to his day, the good guy shouldn't put up a weak effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what the impact of the publication of stories like this have on GrubHub's talent acquisition teams. I'd love for them to call me up, and I'd love to ask them about this. When I graduated, the director of my department encouraged us to participate in the Order of the Engineer, specifically to think about the ethical dilemmas faced in situations like this.

Somebody with technical skills performed the purchasing of these 1,000s of domains and setting up these fake sites. When that person continues on in their career, will they proudly exclaim to prospective employers, how they helped their company perform these tasks to leech off small businesses?

<comment><USER38> > Somebody with technical skills performed the purchasing of these 1,000s of > domains and setting up these fronts.

Not really hard core technical skills....

> When that person continues on in their career, will they proudly exclaim to > prospective employers, how they helped their company perform these tasks to > leech off small businesses?

The tasks might be divided in various ways so that not one guy did it. For example the task of generating the front is delegated to an engineer who does this feature so that restaurant can easily generate a website for themselves if they want. What they leave out is telling that actually GrubHub sales employee registers the domains for GrubHub and generates the webistes with this one-click tool.

<comment><USER4> You can try and suggest there aren't ethical dilemmas here, but there are. Whether carried out by one or more than one individual, the intent would be clear what you are contributing, whether it's the domain purchases (I could only ponder why we're purchasing johnnyspizzanyc.com, for example, if we're GrubHub) or if you're the one in charge of putting up the phony site at the domain (which makes your role more obvious in the whole scheme).

<comment><USER38> I wasn't suggesting that there aren't ethical dilemmas, just explaining the processes how I think usually things like this work in bigger companies. Some low-skilled worker can do the ethically questionable thing. The skilled engineers just solve some cooler problems generally and provide tools to those who deal with the ethically questionable work. And I am pretty sure that most people, even talented engineers don't often think about that too much. They just want to solve cool problems.

It is quite obvious that someone with not so much skills is more willing to do unethical work than someone with higher skills and demand for those skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The New Food Economy had an article on this that was a bit better ([https://newfoodeconomy.org/grubhub-domain-purchases- thousand...](https://newfoodeconomy.org/grubhub-domain-purchases-thousands- shadow-sites/)). It was posted two days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20306604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20306604)

</comment><comment><USER40> may domains I just checked from the list cited in the article are now not working [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m9vszEQ9A13tN4AFRXWX...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m9vszEQ9A13tN4AFRXWXVKZamRpQFIltP452wSqAvFM/htmlview) weird

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm now getting 401s for a bunch of these Grubhub-created fake sites. Did they take them down already, or am I hitting a geoblock? (Not in the US.)

[http://www.pochana.net/](http://www.pochana.net/)

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

<comment><USER41> I get the following error when trying to view those sites from Australia:

Sorry about that

You do not have permission to view this site

<comment><USER40> same same from Turkey

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How is this not cyber squatting ? Also isn't impersonating a business that you don't own a crime ?

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe we should create a comprehensive list of these bad companies / bad actors? Something like:

[https://gitlab.com/simonebrunozzi/dark- companies/blob/master...](https://gitlab.com/simonebrunozzi/dark- companies/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER44> A different article with the same story: [https://newfoodeconomy.org/grubhub- domain-purchases-thousand...](https://newfoodeconomy.org/grubhub-domain- purchases-thousands-shadow-sites/) .

</comment><comment><USER45> Eat24 was doing this prior to the Grubhub purchase. Perhaps they picked it up from there? (It's also possible this started with grubhub and then bled to Eat24 I suppose).

It's also for SEO, not just commissions.

</comment><comment><USER46> Menulog and others have been doing this in Australia for at least 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER47> "Everything is securities fraud." ~ Matt Levine

</comment><comment><USER48> FTC needs to get involved...</comment>


We built our website without CSS: the highs and the lows - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/building-a-website-without-css-trials-and-tribulations-5aa30499f57c#.801svtihx <comment><USER2> > "Also, using :hover requires a library (I've enjoyed using Radium which > enables media queries too) and the item you're hovering over must have a > unique key or id."

Sounds very simple</comment>


Go 1.1 Beta 2 Released - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/golang-nuts/bQDzp4IYI1o <comment><AUTHOR> Some important Go run-time bugs fixed since beta 1:

      runtime: fix deadlock in network poller
      runtime: make CgoMal alloc field void*
      runtime: change Note from union to struct
      runtime: change Lock from union to struct
      runtime: replace unions with structs
      runtime: replace union in MHeap with a struct
      runtime: reset dangling typed pointer
      runtime: reset typed dangling pointer

</comment><comment><USER2> Only 23 open issues: <http://swtch.com/~rsc/go11.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> If I'm using it for hobby projects on my local machine, should I be using stable, weekly or tip? I'm guessing stable will be fine after 1.1 is pushed there (which sounds like it'll be soon)?

<comment><AUTHOR> The improvements in tip can be very important for large applications (for example in some HTTP realted benchmarks tip is 20-40% faster), tip also has better garbage collection leading to lower memory use. Tip also supports around 128 GB of heap on Linux/amd64 versus 8 GB for stable.

All that being said, if you are just writing small programs on your machine using 1.0.3 until 1.1 is out is probably not a big deal. Just don't judge Go on performance until 1.1

<comment><USER3> Sounds like a plan, hopefully stable in the PPA will be updated to 1.1 soonish, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really interested in finding some articles about Go language and its main differences with others, for non-programmers i mean.

May it enter on the same league as Haskell, Erlang?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it is high performance like Haskell and has easy concurrency like Erlang, but both of those languages are considered by many to be hard to read and write without a lot of ramp up time. Go is very easy for anyone familiar with a C family language to write and read and tends to have very straight forward and maintainable code.

<comment><USER4> After watching the presentation of GO what I understand that it's more about the sintaxis reduction and being practical as much as the programmer can when writing code as well, of course, many other things. But Go seems to be the perfect language to write and maintain projects.</comment></comment></comment>


The Crystal Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://crystal-lang.org/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6342609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6342609)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why go whitespace sensitive then actually choose to keep an "end" statement?

<comment><USER4> To enforce a consistent indent style?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Name clash with SAP's Crystal Reports sucks. Crystal Reports has it's own basic variant for report scripting.

<comment><USER6> Crystal Reports is never called "Crystal". It's always "Crystal Reports".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't you respond to emails? - <AUTHOR>

Being an entrepreneur, over the past few years I've sent out hundreds if not thousands of emails to businesses, clients, etc. Especially when launching a new business and you begin to reach out to people, the response that you get back is usually pretty terrible.
Now that I am on the other side of the spectrum and have been in business for over 3 years and get 25-50 emails a day, I still always respond to people, even though it may take a few days. I get all types of emails, business opportunities, support requests, pitches, etc. and I still respond, even with a polite 'Sorry, but I'm not interested at this time'. I personally think it is just rude to ignore people if it is a legitimate e-mail and not just pure spam.
My question to HN is, why don't you personally respond to your emails (if you don't)? Do you feel that it is rude to not respond to people who are waiting (and hoping) to hear back from you? <comment><USER2> For me it's a volume/time issue.

Responding to every email simply isn't scalable for one person. So either you hire someone, or you stop responding to every email. 25-50 emails/day sounds manageable, but is it manageable with 100 emails, 300 emails?

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but then how do you expect to be reached via email if your account is public and everyone knows to email you there? The way I keep it manageable is by keeping my personal email private (for the most part) and putting a business email out there for everyone else to send an email to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For me, most of my "lack of response" issues come from thinking I will respond and then forgetting.

If I'm not careful about making notes/reminders to go back and respond to people it's very easy to just forget.

I would suspect that this is the reason for a lot of people, which is why a follow up email isn't being pushy. At least not the first time or two.

<comment><AUTHOR> My problem may come from having the OCD of the inbox, or the need to keep it at zero at all times. I feel that most people just have thousands and thousands of emails in their inbox and there is no organization aspect to it so they truly just forget to respond. For me, I'll know I haven't responded if your email is sitting in my inbox :).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could Wikipedia show hashed IP addresses instead? - u-dissolve When an unregistered Wikipedia user makes a contribution, it shows the IP address from which the edit was made instead of a username. In the interest of privacy, could Wikipedia instead display a hash of the IP address? They could still keep track of an IP address's contributions, and ban them when necessary. IP range blocks could still be issued server-side.
The IP addresses of registered users are hidden anyways (accessible only by a few certain users, and only if warranted[1]), so could Wikipedia offer this to all users?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CheckUser <comment><AUTHOR> It would be trivial to brute force, so almost pointless.

<comment> u-dissolve Yes, but brute forcing would take longer to do. Could they also hash it, say, a few thousand times in order to increase the cost of brute forcing?

Isn't some layer of obfuscation better than a bare IP address?</comment></comment>


Generating random mazes with the Growing Tree algorithm (w/ Javascript demo) - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2011/1/27/maze-generation-growing-tree-algorithm

<comment><USER2> I remember this was used in my C64 Basic handbook back in the day. There was a code listing of a cat-and-mouse type of game where a labyrinth was generated like this, and the cat did a depth-first-travesal of the entire maze to catch you. At 10 years old, being introduced to the growing tree algorithm _and_ depth-first-traversal at the same time was pretty mind-blowing.

Note that these mazes are trivially solvable; you can get from any point A to any other point B by hugging the left wall. Somewhat counterintuitively, knocking down a few walls here and there will make the maze _harder_ to solve - especially if you have a limited view of it (e.g. 1st person).

<comment><USER3> I would be interested in some papers on generating hard mazes, e.g. mazes that take the maximum amount of resources to solve. Is every maze solvable in logspace? Probably so, right, because Connectivity is in logspace iirc.

<comment><USER4> How do you define "hard"? Hard for a human? Top-down or first person perspective?

Computers will use an algorithm or combination of algorithms. But which algorithm is best to solve the maze depends entirely on the algorithm used to _generate_ the maze.

<comment><USER5> Goes with how you define "fun". I went through a Hay Maze last year and realized half way through it that it was designed for "fun" which made it a lot easier. Wrote up the experience with some other notes for the curious.

<http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2010/01/hay-maze.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm beginning to think this guy has a random random maze generator algorithm article generator.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. Do it all in CSS3 and HTML5 and you will exalted by HN forever ;)</comment>


Ask HN: Favorite site for finding new js libraries, frameworks, db stuff, etc? - <AUTHOR>

I used to love browsing del.icio.us for jquery plugins back in the day and love http://www.functionn.in/ but he hasn't been updating it much lately.
HN is great but all the industry insider stuff is a time sink for me and I'm trying to avoid using the computer unless I feel like it's for something productive.
Do you have a favorite go-to site for finding cool new programming and design tools? <comment><USER2> <http://www.unheap.com/>

<http://microjs.com/>

<http://www.jsdb.io/>

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.codepen.io> <http://www.badassjs.com> <http://www.dzone.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> dailyjs.com

</comment><comment><USER5> news.ycombinator.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish it had a "cooltools" section or something, as it is even using the search function there's a lot of unrelated stuff you have to sift through.</comment></comment>


FuryBSD: A FreeBSD Desktop - <AUTHOR> https://www.furybsd.org/ <comment><USER2> I have been waiting for a FreeBSD Desktop distro with KDE out of the box. Downloading now.</comment>


Google Warns Data Privacy Changes Could Hurt Its Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-05/google-warns-data-privacy-changes-could-hurt-its-business <comment><USER2> Google should of thought about that before they choose the route they are on. Maybe go back to not being evil?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. If enhanced privacy rights hurts someone's bottom line, that someone should choose a new bottom line.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with Internet Explorer? - <AUTHOR>

We're building a web application and are finding out all browsers behave normally, but IE. Internet Explorer refuses to open our pages.
Using Fiddler, we see we receive a perfectly valid HTTP request, and answer a proper HTTP response with a valid HTML page.
Nonetheless, IE (11) keeps answering "This page can't be displayed".
How did you deal with this? Do you still test and support IE? <comment><USER2> Is it perhaps this issue? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11544048/how- do-i-suppre...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11544048/how-do-i- suppress-friendly-error-messages-in-internet-explorer) Else, I'd suspect caching issues (check the "caching" tab in Fiddler, see if anything unexpected is there).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but I think we're hitting another problem.

Our response headers are:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Cache-Control: no-cache

Pragma: no-cache

Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 16:13:51 GMT

Server: https

Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

Set-Cookie: ec=06yb41ggwa2y5rta2rfhoyaqnou5vi76; expires=Wed, 29 Oct 2014 16:28:15 GMT; path=/

Set-Cookie: ic=iuhuq9vcelwnxrffs44qmn1d6lpcrof0; expires=Wed, 29 Oct 2014 16:28:15 GMT; path=/

Connection: keep-alive

Content-Length: 3881

[newline]

<!DOCTYPE html>...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> by testing for IE as well as ff/chrome throughout the build process</comment>