Ask HN: How do you handle new developers being added to your project? - <AUTHOR> New doesn't mean they're not experienced, just means they're potentially using different technology than yours. In my case I admit the tech I use is outdated (LAMP) so if someone comes in and is like "Oh we should completely redo this in MEAN/MERN" which while it hurts (haha), I admit my code is probably garbage. But I'm also happy to the idea that I'm not going to be the developer working on this and underpaid as well.
It'll just be interesting because I built it from scratch, no frameworks, setup the server and everything, I briefly looked into running Node/Apache side by side or port directing... I don't know that's a hypothetical situation anyway. It's just that with web dev there are different ways to develop something and deploy it. I'm not the guy to fight so I'll just be like "Alright sure, sounds good, have at it, what do I know I've only been building this thing for the last 4 months." But I acknowledge that I'm behind/not great. Have an open mind I guess.
It's not a big project or anything either. But the person I "work for" is looking through UpWork for another developer and I'll have some say (provide specifics of the site/what it's using/running on).
I am going to make the transition into Node, at least to be able to do what I do with MySQL/PHP with JavaScript/Mongo. No particular reason on Node, but to not be stuck in LAMP either. There's also Go... ahhh. There's a reason I don't work full time as a web developer. <comment><USER2> Defining it as _your_ project, makes it difficult to create a team and pretty much impossible if _you 're_ not the boss.

On the other hand, a person whose first response to the project is "rewrite all the code" is probably not the ideal person to add to a team whose job is to maintain and improve the code unless they are explicitly hired to rewrite all the code right at the beginning.

Possibly relevant: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you- should-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never- do-part-i/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am acknowledging that there are probably(definitely) better ways to do what I did. I'm trying to think in advance to put my own ego aside and be open to changes. My work really isn't anything extraordinary. It's just a new thing for me to give access to something I've been working on that someone else might change completely.

Still I mean it's about production, doing it right, efficiency, performance, etc...

The other developer will be developing a separate area. I don't know I think I am pretty logical in my thinking on how I code/break a process down.

Yeah I guess I'll have to see how it goes.

Thanks for your input and the link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha I like that on that link it says "...Bulldoze the site down ..Start over..." I am kind of guilty of that when I took over this abandoned single page eCommerce thing (without the payment) that was built using bootstrap and at the time I didn't know how to use Bootstrap (still don't really). So I rebuilt what they had with scratch code, the scroll-animations the sectioning of content it wasn't a large site to rebuild but yeah that was probably dumb.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rambling alert

I doubt someone would rewrite the progressive loader I developed for this area (really bad internet like 0.3Mbps) that has a 2 second max-delay "interrupter" that shows what it has so you're not thinking the page is broken. I don't know I feel pretty proud of what I made but yeah it would suck from an external person to trace though it though not really it's two blocks that loop back on to themselves before ending. Load and grab the very small 1KB images and then load the higher resolution and replace the low res ones.

It could have been written better like the tiling that calculates and "perfectly" divides the screen. Yet it's not easy to decrease the width of each tiles and change the number of tiles per row. There are currently five of them. If you kept scrolling you'd end up displaying 400 images+.

Anyway onwards I suppose. Rambled.

Edit: I shouldn't say I doubt. Once you see how something works I think it is easier to reverse engineer it than arriving to that conclusion due to various changes. I'm actually looking to the eventual freedom of moving away from this particular project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I forget I'm not anonymous on Hacker News, but it has been both ways, 1 really good outcome so far.</comment>


The Hello World Open 2014 – Slot car racing simulation contest - <AUTHOR> https://helloworldopen.com/rules#game-description

<comment><USER2> This is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7500573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7500573).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm participating and I have to say at first glance I'm a little bit disappointed about the format which seems to limit the possible strategies significantly. Too early to judge though.</comment>


Documenting Software Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://herbertograca.com/2019/08/12/documenting-software-architecture/ <comment><USER2> These all seem like bloated ways to perform a simple function: communicating an idea (software architecture) to an intended audience (usually software developers).

What irks me about this article the most is that it goes into documentation frameworks while skipping the fundamentals such as written exposition.

There is more I could say about this, but I always take the approach of minimising cognitive load on the reader by using diagrams with minimal conventions (and any not immediately obvious is explained) with an accompanying explanation. And usually a written exposition at varying levels of the architecture.

I wouldn't describe implementation details (code structure) unless it has some relevance to the architecture such as a plugin system, but even then - I would relegate the implementation details to a separate document divorced from the architecture.</comment>


Data leak reveals how China 'brainwashes' Uighurs in prison camps - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-50511063 <comment><USER2> What I find chilling is that Uigher children are being kidnapped from their families and sent to barbed wire enclosed camps as well[1].

There, they are subjected to CCP brainwashing[2].

[1] [https://youtu.be/v7AYyUqrMuQ?t=1791](https://youtu.be/v7AYyUqrMuQ?t=1791)

[2] [https://youtu.be/v7AYyUqrMuQ?t=1826](https://youtu.be/v7AYyUqrMuQ?t=1826)

<comment><USER3> It's 2019, who cares? Everyone is doing it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The documents reveal how every aspect of a detainee 's life is monitored and controlled: "The students should have a fixed bed position, fixed queue position, fixed classroom seat, and fixed station during skills work, and it is strictly forbidden for this to be changed.

"Implement behavioural norms and discipline requirements for getting up, roll call, washing, going to the toilet, organising and housekeeping, eating, studying, sleeping, closing the door and so forth."_

Is it even possible to not be broken by something like this?

<comment><USER5> > The students should have a fixed bed position, fixed queue position, fixed > classroom seat, and fixed station during skills work, and it is strictly > forbidden for this to be changed

My school was like that when I was growing up.

I'm not justifying what China is doing, and I didn't like it myself. But I find it weird to find it quoted here like that.

<comment><USER6> But you chose to only select a portion of the text. The second sentence is useful, too:

"Implement behavioural norms and discipline requirements for getting up, roll call, washing, going to the toilet, organising and housekeeping, eating, studying, sleeping, closing the door and so forth"

 _My school was like that when I was growing up._

Your school proscribed when you go to the toilet and how to close a door?

<comment><USER7> Mine did, yes.

Grew up in rural Midwest US in the 80s. We walked in lines on a schedule for bio breaks.

We had to "shut a door respectfully" basically library rules for the sake of others.

Our school had 25-30 kids per class. How else does one manage that? If you really needed to go you could and this article does not say that's explicitly disallowed.

I think you're losing the forest for a tree here. The problem is the whole kidnapping & cultural cleansing.

<comment><USER8> Hiding green accounts (tons of automated pro-China posts by Chinese bots) will be much helpful here.

<comment><USER9> Although it is true that China would make propaganda posts, there is a much simpler explanation here. Let's go with the simple explanation. People are creating fresh accounts to avoid the wrath of people who support Muslims.

You don't have to be generally pro-China to be fully in support of what China is doing. You can hate the Uighers (Muslims) even if you also hate China. When you see your enemies fighting, you can pick the side you find to be less-bad or you can just cheer the fight in the hope that both suffer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe Tim Cook will show some "courage" now.

[Edit] Sorry for the snark. In a market economy, the only way companies like Apple might act in the same way that compassionate human beings would, is if it were in the interests of their bottom line. Perhaps articles like this will hit critical mass, and Apple will put out a statement, carefully composed to ensure that China doesn't lose face. Perhaps they'll do something tangible.

Come back 12 months later and nothing will have changed.

<comment><USER11> We have to stop expecting moral behavior from publicly listed companies.

They will naturally trend towards short to medium term profit maximization within the given legal constraints.

The boundaries for corporate behaviour have to be established by elected governments.

In the case of China that could mean customs duties, sanctions and stricter regulations for moving part of your supply chain there.

<comment><USER6> This is a false dilemma. There are plenty of publicly listed companies that also engage in moral behaviors. Pretending it's an either/or situation only serves to excuse the behavior and derail the discussion.

<comment><USER11> We should support companies that act morally, and punish others by not buying their products and criticizing them.

But _expecting_ them to act morally out of their own volition seems foolish to me. Note also that I explicitly said publicly traded companies. Large ones always have a diverse ownership structure with institutional investors. A CEO that hurts profits by acting in the public interest will probably be replaced pretty soon, forced to fall in line, or have to otherwise do enough to offset.

The only way to motivate them is external pressure or benefits.

Eg Apple has probably decided to focus on user privacy to provide a contrast with Google and the Android ecosystem and maintain a good relationship with customers, not because privacy is "good".

The situation is somewhat different with private companies, where there are few owners that can actually have an impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is the leaked document if you want to read it: [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6558510-China- Cables...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6558510-China-Cables- Telegram-English.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> The meaning of the phrase "Made in China" has now evolved to "Do not buy".

<comment><USER14> Hard to do when it seems that China is now the world's factory...

<comment><USER15> I wonder if there are any organizations that can certify products and brands. From inhumane conditions to poor quality to scammy marketing and outright fraud (especially on Amazon), I want to avoid Chinese products as much as possible. It's difficult to avoid completely, but there's certainly a lot of low hanging fruit.

<comment><USER16> In fact, _any_ organization can do this. In the vegan/vegetarian/organic/non- GMO food space there are multiple competing certification programs. The LSD Avengers used to fulfill this role on the old Silk Road. It seems there is at least one NGO that specifically certifies goods as made in the USA, though I have no idea how legit they are: [https://madeinusacertified.wordpress.com/](https://madeinusacertified.wordpress.com/)

<comment><USER15> I agree that any organization can, but I don't know of any. I'm vaguely aware of orgs that certify organic/non-GMO/etc and presumably someone certifies kosher food and conflict free diamonds and the like, but I'm not sure of any that certify labor conditions or that a given company operates with some baseline of ethics and is subject to accountability.

<comment><USER16> Aaah, I thought you were going for a made-in-America production certification, not a generally-good-people production certification. The term you're looking for is "fair trade." Here's one example of such an organization: [https://www.fairtradecertified.org/](https://www.fairtradecertified.org/)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for pointing me to fair trade; I'll have a look. There are a lot of things I'm interested in, but mostly they fall into one of a few groups. For any given product, I want to know:

1\. If (or to what degree) the product was made via exploitative labor conditions

2\. How harmful is the product to the environment (manufacturing through disposal)

3\. Does the product benefit from subsidies? (e.g., is a foreign product cheaper only because shipping is heavily subsidized relative to a local alternative)

4\. Is the product I'm buying reasonably advertised. If the product is fraudulent, can I trust that the company (including investors and leadership) will be held to account or will they simply rebrand and continue their scheme? This concern spans the gamut from Walmart selling name-brand merchandise from low-quality OEMs to companies paying for fraudulent Amazon reviews.

There are probably other concerns as well. In my experience, these concerns seem to be highly bimodal. On average, products which are not Chinese (i.e., not sold/manufactured/etc by Chinese companies) score very highly while Chinese products score very poorly. So while it would be great to have some certification provided for each of those concerns, I would settle for some certification with respect to whether the product is Chinese or not (of course, if that certification took off, there would be all sorts of issues with enforcing it--Chinese companies could operate shell companies and so on).

<comment><USER16> Labor conditions and pay are theoretically covered under fair trade.

> How harmful is the product to the environment (manufacturing through > disposal)

This one is more in line with Cradle 2 Cradle: [https://www.c2ccertified.org/](https://www.c2ccertified.org/)

> Is the product I'm buying reasonably advertised.

I'm unfamiliar with this organization, but a search popped up the Trustworthy Accountability Group: [https://www.tagtoday.net/certified-against-fraud- program/](https://www.tagtoday.net/certified-against-fraud-program/)

I didn't find anything on my first page of results for certificates of non- subsidisation.

<comment><USER15> Wow, thanks very much. I spent a good chunk of Saturday morning googling around for something like that last one. I'll look into all of these.

EDIT: TAG seems to focus on eliminating fraudulent Internet advertising; it's a much narrower scope than I had in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks like improvement version of Soviet Russia camps. They also kidnapped kids from "bad" people, plus used mass hunger as weapon: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor)

</comment><comment><USER6> Completely off topic, but can someone provide a layman's pronunciation of "Uigher?" As someone who is not a linguist, the pronunciation squiggles in the Wikipedia entry are entirely unhelpful.

<comment><USER17> Wee Gah

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I always get skeptical about stories that suddenly show up on scores of MSM websites, rather than the slower spread over a day or two or three that usually happens with 'real' news.

I've been fooled too many times by stories about 'weapons of mass destruction', 'gas attacks', 'Trump's pee tapes', 'Tonkin Gulf incidents', etc, etc that I withhold judgement for some time till the bulk of the back- story arrives.

<comment><USER16> > Tonkin Gulf incidents

Why did you include such a well documented false flag in your list of potentially fake news? [Edit: the document discussed in the following quote is from the NSA itself, so the government has admitted (39 years later) that this was a hoax.] From the NYT:

> The most provocative document is a 2001 article in which an agency historian > argued that the agency's intelligence officers "deliberately skewed" the > evidence passed on to policy makers and the public to falsely suggest that > North Vietnamese ships had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964.

> Based on the assertion that such an attack had occurred, President Lyndon B. > Johnson ordered airstrikes on North Vietnam and Congress passed a broad > resolution authorizing military action.

> The historian, Robert J. Hanyok, wrote the article in an internal > publication and it was classified top secret despite the fact that it dealt > with events in 1964. Word of Mr. Hanyok's findings leaked to historians > outside the agency, who requested the article under the Freedom of > Information Act in 2003.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20081211090233/http://www.nytime...](https://web.archive.org/web/20081211090233/http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/politics/02tonkin.html?pagewanted=print)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> These are concentration camps.

</comment><comment><USER20> If I were in such a camp, I imagine I would be very eager to learn Mandarin in an attempt to please the system.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was looking at two items in the store today and trying to decide which one to buy. As soon as I saw one was not made in China, the decision was simple.

It's unfortunate that China is controlled by the CCP.

</comment><comment><USER22> Powered by Google (R). [https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/28/tsinghua- university-plans...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/28/tsinghua-university- plans-to-open-ai-research-center-in-china-names-googles-ai-chief-as-advisor/)

</comment><comment><USER23> China's behavior is a good illustration of the fact that if Nazi Germany had kept the Holocaust restricted to its own borders and not invaded other countries we would have happily sat back and let them do it.

<comment><USER24> I realize this might be wrong and based on not reading enough history about it, but I've always understood that the Holocaust was not well documented until after the war.

Obviously many people fleeing Germany and the occupied countries during that period, knew something bad was happening, but overall, it's my understanding that before and during the war, the rest of the world really wasn't aware, or at least not aware about how bad it was.

It was the invasion of other countries that was cause to fight Germany. It was much less of a humanitarian act, though after the war it's easy to paint it as one.

<comment><USER25> It was more complicated than that: the Polish government in exile knew at least as early as 1940 and by at least 1942 those had been corroborated by allies and there were official reports presented to allied governments, the UN, and covered in major newspapers:

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

[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1942/02/13/852...](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1942/02/13/85259194.html?pageNumber=12)

The catch, of course, is that governments don't act with a single voice: during war time intelligence agencies would be loathe to confirm anything if it revealed information about their sources, and there were enough anti- semites and Nazi sympathizers that all but the most conclusive evidence might be downplayed or lead to consequences (reportedly, concern losing support in Hungary was a factor in not leading with what was happening to the Jews).

<comment><USER26> There were rumours of the atrocities, but probably the first public testimonies were the Auschwitz Protocols, based on first-hand experiences of a few concentration camp escapees. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_Protocols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_Protocols))

<comment><USER25> Read the document which was the subject of my first link and ask whether rumor was an appropriate word to describe an official report to the UN with eyewitness accounts:

[https://archive.org/details/TheMassExterminationOfJewsInGerm...](https://archive.org/details/TheMassExterminationOfJewsInGermanOccupiedPoland)

<comment><USER26> Thanks, I was not aware of this document. However, its wikipedia page mentions that it was not widely believed at the time. Heck, even Auschwitz Protocols after it did not seem to have much success in reaching the audience (western world) for quite a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> China wants the Uighur's gone, period. I don't think anything short of military action is going to stop that.

And frankly I don't think that is ever going to happen, because of the world powers that would be capable, they too hold resentment for Islamic religions.

<comment><USER28> It has nothing to do with that. If they were doing this to a Christian minority we still wouldn't be doing anything.

Mutually assured destruction is a powerful force.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One might imagine China wants Xinjiang to remain Chinese, just as the US wants Texas to remain American.

Let us construct a hypothetical situation where our geopolitical adversaries (Russia, China, parts of South America) had spent the better part of the 20th century backing equally hypothetical Jihadist (or even Reconquista) separatists in Texas.

Perhaps the situation in Texas deteriorates when separatist Texans return from jihad in Syria, and some more violent fringes, armed and trained by Russia and China through proxies, begin widely-publicized attacks on civilians in California.

Perhaps the most ethical response by the US would be to deploy prisons and security services to Texas, and use technology to monitor potential separatist action within the state. Certainly there would be human rights abuses.

Now who is at fault, truly? The US? The separatists? No, of course not. One could place moral blame at the feet of our geopolitical enemies for encouraging this in the first place, but this is simply the reality of political action.

Just to be clear, what is happening to the Uighur people is horrific and inhumane and absolutely disgusting, but I will not allow this humanist sentiment to be perverted by propagandists to manipulate otherwise intelligent, compassionade liberals into nationalists and xenophobes in the name of maintaining the Western hegemon.

The anti-Chinese sentiment that has invaded the internet over the past several months has gone well beyond 'legitimate criticism of the Chinese government', and now sounds more like a racist, imperialist drumbeat for war. We should all be suspicious when fascists and libertarian capitalists find common ground and call it humanitarian.

<comment><USER30> Dude, no. They can have Texas.</comment></comment>


ObjectBox 1.0 – fastest object persistence for mobile - <AUTHOR> http://objectbox.io/objectbox-1-0/ <comment><AUTHOR> Speed: Check [https://github.com/objectbox/objectbox- performance](https://github.com/objectbox/objectbox-performance) open source project or [https://www.netguru.co/codestories/realm-vs-objectbox- compar...](https://www.netguru.co/codestories/realm-vs-objectbox-comparison) for independent evaluation.

FAQ: What's different to Realm? Simpler to use with POJOs, no threading constraints. Relations can be eagerly loaded to prepare everything in the background.</comment>


Senator says OnStar invades privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/09/25/apnewsbreak_senator_says_onstar_invades_privacy/

<comment><USER2> I thought this was the whole rationale for saving GM - that the gov't would then easily be able to make use of OnStar.

Seriously, no one finds the idea of law enforcement being able to turn off your car remotely, without a court order or a hearing, a little scary?

</comment><comment><USER3> As a little bit of background for those not from New York state, Senator Schumer has a news conference almost every Sunday that gets picked up by the local news media where he rails against some injustice or another. These injustices are usually minor issues that are usually supported by anecdotal stories and manage to get Schumer in front of the a decent chunk of Sunday news viewers once a week.

I'm sure some action gets taken from at least some of these news conferences but it certainly feels like grandstanding on an issue as I've never personally read/seen Schumer follow up on any of his Sunday issues.

In the interest of disclosure, I've voted for the man twice.

</comment><comment><USER4> I could be wrong but this story was made public by a simple blog post by a guy who decided to crack open the OnStar TOS update he received by email. <http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=1270>

The Internet is an amazing thing!

</comment><comment><USER5> I heard that onstar has a near perfect track record for returning stolen vehicles. Is this true? And if so isn't a certain level of privacy breach necessary for this kind of success?</comment>


Emails Show Unqualified Clinton Foundation Donor Appointed to Intel Board - <AUTHOR> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/06/10/abcs_brian_ross_do_newly_released_clinton_emails_show_quid_pro_quo.html <comment><USER2> Intel as Intelligence, not the company.</comment>


Volkswagen's Diesel Fraud Makes Critic of Secret Code a Prophet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/nyregion/volkswagens-diesel-fraud-makes-critic-of-secret-code-a-prophet.html <comment><USER2> I think that the code that operates dangerous machines should be publicly available. I think that applying the DMCA to keep it hidden is a bad application of that law and beyond Congress's intent.

The DMCA was intended to protect creative works like movies or songs, where the whole value is in the encoded file.

Code that runs a car is the opposite: it is worthless by itself. Keeping it hidden from the public just enables bad behavior.</comment>


The New ?. Operator in C# 6 - <AUTHOR> http://VolatileRead.com/Wiki?id=2104

<comment><USER2> I think people often discount the value that a change like this can have in readability.

For the longest time I was impressed by sophisticated/clever code that did hard things. As I built more and more systems I realized that such a perspective was futile that the _better_ code in my mind was that which was clear, easy to read and understand the intent.

Any language changes whether they be core to the system or simply syntax sugar, any changes that make code more readable are by and large, good changes.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is brilliant, even if I don't use C# at all.

After reading keithwarren's comment I took a guess at what this operator might do and was delighted to see it confirmed in the article.

I would use this every day if it was available in the languages I use, specially in Javascript.</comment>


Co-Founder of Stripe [YC] Interviewed in Depth (Audio) - <AUTHOR> http://techzinglive.com/page/939/168-tz-interview-patrick-collison-stripe

<comment><USER3> [On one of the reasons they have a 7 day payout period]

 _We were not willing to compromise on the experience of going to Stripe, deciding "OK, Stripe looks good, I will sign up.", and then can launch right there and then._

What a great, focusing vision for a product experience.

I have also been impressed with how responsive Stripe is to feedback. In the interview Patrick gets excited about a new webhook for payment transfers that the interviewer recommends. Knowing Stripe, it is probably already implemented.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do startups who are as hyped as Stripe ever go through the trough of sorrow?

<comment><USER5> Yes. :-)

<comment><USER6> Was the trough 'PCI DSS'-related?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a great interview. Thanks for sharing. He comes across extremely well. I would trust him with my company's cash-flow.

</comment><comment><USER8> Somehow I missed that Stripe is a YC company. Which batch? (Often goes into titles.)

<comment><USER9> I didn't think they were in one of the batches (haven't seen the usual YC'whatever badging on any of their posts' titles here). Their job post from a while back (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3099362>) does list YC as an investor, though.

Edit: Patrick's previous startup, Auctomatic, was in YC W'07 I think. Maybe that has something to do with it.

<comment><USER8> I'm glad I asked, then. I'm confident someone with direct knowledge will come in and provide more information. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For some reason the soundcloud player took forever to load. Here's the direct link to Soundcloud: <http://soundcloud.com/techzing/techzing-168>

<comment><USER11> You should suscribe. TechZing is a very good and entertaining podcast.

<comment><USER12> I would recommend a previous episode (167) with the founders of Kaggle - <USER2> interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That limerick accent is fading fast:) Top it up by watching some Rubberbandits. Loved the interview.</comment>


"GPT-3 Does The Work on some business analyst SQL queries" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/aquariusacquah/status/1284706786247880705 <comment><USER2> This is something that could literally be productionized today.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yikes. Forget the machines the ML algos will take over my job soon</comment>


Electronic roadwork signs "hacked" in Ontario - <AUTHOR> https://globalnews.ca/news/3886768/aurora-sign-hack/ <comment><AUTHOR> The article's short on details - it's not even clear if this was actually a remote hack - I always thought you neede physical access to change these, (but that once you have access making a change is trivial).</comment>


Pi(e) in the sky - <AUTHOR> https://coderwall.com/p/ms7_wg

<comment><USER2> Speaking of which, does anyone know a good way to put a monitor-keyboard-mouse combo on a moveable boom? Ideally I'd like something like the monitors on booms with handles in operating rooms

<http://surgery.ucla.edu/images/pagephotos/OR-Photo.jpg>

just with a keyboard and mouse, and maybe without the multi-thousand dollar price tag.

</comment><comment><USER3> We did a very similar thing with a hacked-together VESA mount hanging on a window. It worked great! I highly recommend putting your stats up high and in a prominent place—you can't help but look at them, and that leads to good awareness and good discussions.</comment>


Ask HN: Will the Oculus acquisition dampen funding of tech Kickstarter projects? - <AUTHOR>

Given the negative reaction of Facebook's acquisition of Oculus (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469115), would you be less likely to fund tech-based projects on Kickstarter in the future? What if the project's creators pledged a no acquisition policy? How could that even be enforced? <comment><USER2> _would you be less likely to fund tech-based projects on Kickstarter in the future?_

No. Why in the heck would I do that?

 _What if the project 's creators pledged a no acquisition policy?_

No, that would be stupid.

 _How could that even be enforced?_

More to the point, why would anybody even think to do that?

What, is everyone who contributes to a Kickstarter supposed to be operating under the belief that Real Life is some anti-capitalist-hippie-commune-love- fest where the companies that raise on Kickstarter ha ve to forevermore forswear the profit motive? Bollocks.

OK, I _know_ nobody (where by "nobody" I mean "all the hipster wannabes") likes it when their favorite indy band signs with a major record label, or when their pet Open Source project becomes the seed of an evil capitalist for- profit enterprise. But ya know... they'll get over it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kickstarter backers are going to get everything they paid for.

What did backers think was going to happen? If the project succeeded, it was going to make money. Should they be prohibited from making money?

<comment><AUTHOR> Kickstarter projects will go on to be successful and may get acquired in the future, so you bring up a good point. The negative reaction seems to be at the particular acquirer (Facebook) and not the acquisition itself. Unless backers have an actual equity stake, they have little say in the future of the projects they fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am an idealistic sucker who feels that the more people create the more people can be inspired to create. So I don't think this will stop me.

Oculus VR talked a lot about how it was going to be an open platform. A place where people could make what they wanted. What seems to be a big part of the concern for most people is that Facebook will aggressively tie the hardware to their platform in order to regain that 400 million cash that they laid down.

      A lot of the people who got one wanted to do VR projects on it that they could conceivably sell to many platforms. Maybe make some cool worlds that they could share with others and maybe make a little bit of money off of down the road.

      A number of these people have also worked with the Facebook platform to make apps and games. They found it difficult and maddening when Facebook would suddenly make changes to how people found their apps or games.

So TL;DR is no it won't for me but I would love some FB stock for backing them! :)

</comment><comment><USER5> People aren't mad because they get no money from the sale of the company, they're worried Facebook will ruin the vision of VR that the project aimed to achieve.

For example, if Valve had bought the company instead of Facebook, I'm pretty sure the reactions would be quite different than what we're seeing now.

</comment><comment><USER6> The bottom line with the anger about this isn't that Oculus was aquired, it is that Oculus _was acquired by Facebook_

Had id Software or someone else acquired it, people would be happy and congratulate them on the influx of money.</comment>


Top 6 List of Programming Top Lists - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/03/top-6-list-of-programming-top-10-lists.html

<comment><USER2> 1\. Beware the enthusiastic newcomer who wants to redo everything The Right Way.

2\. Don't make standards so stupid that no one can follow them and be sane.

3\. Make a scratch directory for small throw-away tests. Use it often.

4\. Avoid auto-doc systems that require elaborate comment formatting.

5\. Never allow failure to look like success.

6\. Make everything easily testable.

7\. Make as much as possible configurable, and make all configurations automatable.

8\. Know what your compiler does to your code; if it will make your code clearer and easier to change, do it yourself.

9\. Substitution is the key to modularity.

10\. Study theory, and practice; theory gives meaning to practice, and practice gives reality to theory.

11\. A bit of wisdom always sounds more profound when formatted as a chiasma, and a chiasma always sounds more profound with a bit of wisdom.

12\. Never stop at 10.

<comment><USER3> Interesting - what's your objection to auto-doc systems (4)? I assume you mean things like javadocs and python docstrings, which I make use of a lot and people I code with find helpful, too.

<comment><USER2> My objection is not to auto-doc systems in general. Note the restrictive clause after the noun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd add a quote from Jamie Zawinski:

"At the end of the day, ship the fucking thing!"

in "Top 10 Things Ten Years of Professional Software Development Has Taught Me"

<comment><USER5> Another good one from him:

"You're not paid to write code. You're paid to ship products."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Almost all of these are gold and should be framed and hung in every cuce and meeting room.

But the following three should be tattooed to the forehead of each manager and executive:

      * Process is no substitute for thinking.
      * If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
      * "Complex problems require complex solutions". NOT!

<comment><USER7> True, but one of the reasons it is often mistaken for thinking, or managers try to force others to use it instead of thinking, is that "process" or "rules" can substantially improve the output of novices and other lower competence people. The biggest problem with rules is that they degrade the usefulness of experts to the level of anyone who can effectively follow the process; which sort of undercuts the value of having experts in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh, what the heck, here are mine...

1\. Start with the answer, then work back.

2\. It worked. You changed something. It doesn't work. It's probably something you did.

3\. The answer is always "yes". Sometimes, "yes, but", but always "yes".

4\. Never write the same line of code twice.

5\. All names (variables, functions, routines, etc.) should accurately describe what they represent as closely as possible. i.e. an intelligent user should be able to read your code and get a fairly good idea what it does.

6\. No variable name should be fully self-contained within another variable name.

7\. Indent however many spaces you want and use white space however you want. Who gives a shit.

8\. Shop standards only count if they are published.

9\. Only enter your IDE if you have actually have something to code. Otherwise go back to your pencil/paper/whiteboard (or whatever you use for analysis and design) and don't come back until you're ready.

10\. Prototype _something_ and let the user rip it to shreds. Funny how much less bashful they become when they have something to critique. It's much easier to criticize something that exists than to imagine something that doesn't.

<comment><USER9> These are wonderful, thank you. What is your rationale for item 6?

<comment><USER8>
      for(a=0;a<aa;a++){
       if(bbb[a]<bbbb[aa]){
        bbb[aa]=bbbb[aaa]
       }else{
        bbbb[aaa]=bbb[aa]
       }
      }

I'll be out of jail in 30 days.

The original programmer will be fine once the stitches are removed.

Actually, all kidding aside, yesterday I enhanced a 1700 line program with these variables:

      Cust
      CustCmmts
      CustComments
      DelCmmts
      CustNbr
      DelDate
      Cmmts
      CustID
      Comments
      CustDel
      Del

The variables "Cust", "Cmmts", "Comments", and "Del" should have different names. What are they? I spent half a day just trying to figure out what everything was, one line at a time. You can't globally locate, edit, cut, paste, or change without fucking up everything else. (And please don't ask me to use a fancier IDE. Just name your variables so the next guy doesn't have to suffer.)

<comment><USER2> Just _structure your data_ so the next guy doesn't have to suffer.

Cust.Name

Cust.Cmmt (commit?)

Cust.Comments

Cust.Number

etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I liked the "Top 10 Signs Your Software Project Is Doomed"

I'd add a few more... these mainly relate to the isolation of a development team from the end users and/or purpose of the software application.

* End users communicate only with Business Analysts, never with developers.

* Developers become aware of end user needs only through functional or technical specifications written by business analysts.

* Architects who do not write code have complete authority to dictate technology choices to developers

* Developers are unable to describe what the software does from a user's point of view.

* Developers are unable to explain why they are using a particular technology, other than that it was chosen as a standard for the project.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's more of a bottom list but this one is pretty good too. Coding languages that never took off

[http://www.focus.com/briefs/software- development/12-coding-l...](http://www.focus.com/briefs/software- development/12-coding-languages/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Something I always tell newcomers/freshers(and also remind myself)

0\. Learn the basics first(and keep hitting F5 on them occasionally), then start at 1.

But there are many 1's and many are correct; choose your own 1, heck define a new 1 for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER13> I couldn't help but observe that these lists, read independently, would apply to any aspect of life and not only to Programming. Sure we need to replace the technical jargon with their generic counterparts.

</comment><comment><USER14> There couldn't be four more lists to add?

A-he-he-he-he.</comment>


5G: The Next Big Public Health Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://anh-usa.org/5g-the-next-big-public-health-experiment/ <comment><USER2> The comment section of that page and the page itself seems like just general FUD.</comment>


Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/science/26robot.html

<comment><USER3> Of course robots will take jobs from human beings.

Have you ever seen a BMW factory? - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRg64HX5gA>

Is it a bad thing to have dumb jobs done by machines?

I'm always amused when I read "stop making progress, there are some risks!". Of course there are, duh.

As for singularity I think it's an overrated theory. Some solutions are not just a question of intelligence. As if "intelligence" was the solution to everything.... You also need resources, time and luck.

<comment><USER4> > I'm always amused when I read "stop making progress, there are some risks!". > Of course there are, duh.

It's ironic that you characature one point of view as facile, yet your point of view is similarly so - with no characture needed.

What is being discussed is existential risk, and 'unfortunately' you'll probably never get to look silly for taking your point of view, because if it does come to pass we won't be here to discuss it.

I mean to take the concept of making progress and it having associated risks and then make such as generalisation is just not sensible. Progress does not have to continue having the same properties it has had historically (which is why perhaps putting too much stock in history and its wisdoms is dangerous). We could be heading towards a proverbial waterfall.

The last remark about intelligence seems rather optimistic... resources, time and luck are largely limiting factors because of our own biological limitations.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps we are simply a link in evolution between biological life and cybernetic life. Who knows?

I still think however that the Super AI singularity is a phantasm. Intelligence is not the key to everything. As fast as ideas can go, putting them into action is the tricky part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one looking forward to this?

<comment><USER4> Apparently not, and i'm somewhat dismayed at the lack of opposition to this point of view ... so i'll try to make a case against it.

Creating smarter than human AI would be humanity giving up its dominion, and who can say what will happen as a result of this. It is not being melodramatic to say that there is a major chance that it will be the end of humanity, the end of history and the end of everything that most humans value.

I would submit that our values, what we find wise, beautiful, kind, humurous or otherwise virtuous, our appreciation of the natural world and our legacies, they are all relative to our human condition, and that jeopardising this - <USER2> everyone - is wrecklessness without comparison. Yet enough of us would do it

Were is this complicity in our own demise coming from. Are supporters of ai and the singularity misguided - by their own values - or do we have irreconcileable philosophies on the matter.

My suspicion is that a lot of support for the singularity comes from death anxiety - the way things are, in the long run i'm dead anyway so may as well have a punt (50-50?) on immortality, with humanity as the stakes. That is the singularity is a plausible alternative to an after life. Call me a wanker, but i think that one should take fatality like a man (i.e and die), and not be so selfish.

For me, one good, or at least indisputable reason, is disillusionment with humanity... i would not be able to argue against someone who lived through the trenches in WWI and had such an opinion, that this world as we know it is just not worth it. However I would not agree.

Finally I think a lot of support for the singularity comes down to pure hair- brained optimism and reading too much sci-fi. It actually made me a bit sad to watch the recent star trek movie and its clumsy attempts to make the characters relevant (a sword fight? come on!). Traditional, speculative, science fiction used to be about final frontiers and buckaneering captains, now its struggling to reconcile the future and anything that we might want from a narrative.

Smarter than human AI may be our story is coming to an end ...

<comment><USER6> The technology to end humanity is already here (nuclear and soon biological weapons). In the long run superhuman AI may be the only thing that can prevent us from destroying ourselves.

Even if it were desirable, stopping the advance of technology is impractical. If superhuman AI is possible, it will be built. A more practical argument would be that superhuman AI should be strictly controlled, though advancing technology will eventually make that difficult too. The only solution in the long (really long) term is for us to become superhuman ourselves and attempt to preserve the things we find important in the transition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs"

They sound rather crazy... perhaps I am misreading the implication?

<comment><USER8> It is a reasonable concern - the foundation of our economy is built around labor being rewarded with recompense which in turn is used to drive the services and consumer goods economy.

Robots don't consume services or goods - all they require is manufacturing and maintenance. What happens when your gas station needs fewer employees because everything involved in pumping and payment is automated (as many are in California). What happens when checkouts are all automated (Starting to Happen in Home Depot, Walmart, others..)

The answer, of course, is that people move up the feeding chain in employment, and are freed from such low level positions as technology improves - But, and here is the catch, as technology improves, the low-water mark may, in fact, start to rise above where people are capable of competing with technological solutions - then what happens?

Imaging a world in which Fast Food Restaurants, Grocery Stores, and Gas Stations were all 95%+ Automated. That may happen within the next 10 years. What are the new jobs for those people? What happens when Taxis, Trains, and Buses are automated (Skytrain in Vancouver, BC has had no drivers on their trains during normal circumstances for 20+ years)?

There will always (in my lifetime) be Jobs that technology won't be able to replace, but there are many, many, many jobs that are going to disappear.

We need to consider the consequences.

<comment><USER9> Marshall Brain's "Robotic Nation" explores this in some detail:

<http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm>

His own view seems to be summed up as:

 _The conventional wisdom says that the economy will create 50 million new jobs to absorb all the unemployed people, but that raises two important questions:

        - What will those new jobs be?

They won't be in manufacturing -- robots will hold all the manufacturing jobs. They won't be in the service sector (where most new jobs are now) -- robots will work in all the restaurants and retail stores. They won't be in transportation -- robots will be driving everything. They won't be in security (robotic police, robotic firefighters), the military (robotic soldiers), entertainment (robotic actors), medicine (robotic doctors, nurses, pharmacists, counselors), construction (robotic construction workers), aviation (robotic pilots, robotic air traffic controllers), office work (robotic receptionists, call centers and managers), research (robotic scientists), education (robotic teachers and computer-based training), programming or engineering (outsourced to India at one-tenth the cost), farming (robotic agricultural machinery), etc. We are assuming that the economy is going to invent an entirely new category of employment that will absorb half of the working population.

        - Why isn't the economy creating those new jobs now?

Today there are millions of unemployed people. There are also tens of millions of people who would gladly abandon their minimum wage jobs scrubbing toilets, flipping burgers, driving trucks and shelving inventory for something better. This imaginary new category of employment does not hinge on technology -- it is going to employ people, after all, in massive numbers -- it is going to employ half of today's working population. Why don't we see any evidence of this new category of jobs today?_

Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?), I still find this to be rather persuasive.

<comment><USER10> The results of complexity theory heavily suggest that automated science and automated engineering are impossible.

<comment><USER11> Enlighten us, if you don't mind, as to which results from complexity theory indicate that these things are not possible. By my reading none of them say anything of the sort.

All the results I know of don't apply to computers any more than they do to humans, who reason no less algorithmically than computers (even if our algorithms are currently more subtle); these results tend to say that certain magic cannot be performed without invoking new classes of computation, which has absolutely no bearing on whether computers can do the type of practical research humans have been engaging in for our entire history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There will be the time when mankind stops to exist. The only question is: Will we exterminate ourselves or will we transform ourselves into something greater?

</comment><comment><USER13> Constraints usually aren't that hard to implement. For example, "computer worms and viruses that defy extermination" is and always will be a computer security problem, not a philosophical AI problem.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm sure Skynet only has our best interests in mind.

</comment><comment><USER14> All assuming of course that sentient machines want anything to do with us. They may just join the dolphins in swimming around having fun.

</comment><comment><USER15> When it comes to intelligent nonhuman organisms, the question seems to be: dominate or cooperate?</comment>


How do sites validate gift card balances? - <AUTHOR> When dealing with thousands of gift cards how do sites like raise.com or ejgiftcards.com validate gift card balances? Is there an api do such a thing? <comment><USER2> Most companies let you lookup the amount on a gift card. Regarding those sites it looks like they don't pay out unless they've emptied the card first.</comment>


YouTube - Future Designer laptop - ROLLTOP //Diploma Thesis// - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H0K1k54t6A <comment><USER2> Wicked! Where can I buy one? :-)</comment>


Acid-bath stem-cell study under investigation - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/acid-bath-stem-cell-study-under-investigation-1.14738

<comment><USER2> My wife works in cell biology and worked with stem cells for the last several years. Differentiation protocols are very difficult. She was working on turning IPS cells into lung epithelial cells so she could study the effects of CFTR malfunction with genetically matched control cells.

The differentiation protocol she was trying to replicate is several month long protocol. Because each cell line has unique properties protocols must be "optimized" for each line before it will work. She ended up switching to primary lung epithelial cells for her experiments because the differentiation protocol was too difficult to replicate.

I guess my point is cell biology is very tricky and stem cell biology seems (from an outside perspective) to be even trickier. However, that isn't a reason not to be sceptical -- it just means it may take some time to really answer the question of whether or not this acid bath protocol works.

<comment><USER3> This was my thought. So far 10 attempts to replicate it failing isn't a _good_ sign, but I'm willing to bet, based on my track record when I did wet lab research, that the lab that produced the study (if indeed it is correct) failed more than 10 times.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Article about the study: [http://www.nature.com/news/acid-bath-offers-easy- path-to-ste...](http://www.nature.com/news/acid-bath-offers-easy-path-to-stem- cells-1.14600)

HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7143630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7143630)

</comment><comment><USER4> Good, any incredible result should be doubted until it can be replicated.

<comment><USER5> What about credible results- should things require less evidence if they support the status quo?

<comment><USER6> The status quo by definition has a lot of support in scientific literature. Sure, you could right a botched paper supporting it, but people would basically ignore it because it would be a bad paper (though a peer reviewer would likely tear it to shreds anyway).

<comment><USER7> > The status quo by definition has a lot of support in scientific literature.

Not really. Science is by its very nature subversive, and as many Nobels have been awarded for work that falsified the status quo as confirmed it.

When the Michelson-Morley experiment falsified the luminiferous ether, much of physics fell into limbo (without a credible "status quo"), until Einstein's relativity theory offered an alternative explanation for electromagnetic propagation. But Einstein's proposal was met with incredulity until very good evidence confirmed it. That's science at its best -- perpetual doubt and skepticism.

<comment><USER6> I think we're using two different definitions of "status quo". Science most definitely has a status quo - that's the established theoretical basis for various fields.

That of course can be very different to the cultural status quo.

<comment><USER7> > Science most definitely has a status quo - that's the established > theoretical basis for various fields.

Yes, that's true, but to call a falsifiable theory a status quo is to imply that it represents an anchor, a stabilizing influence, rather than a tempting moving target for skeptical scientists, its true role.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> alex-g I don't know a lot about biology, but I do know a lot about proofs, provenance, zero-knowledge, etc. I wonder if there is some way, in an experiment of this kind, to tell whether the embryonic stem cells obtained are "really" derived from an adult mouse, as opposed to being extracted from an ordinary mouse embryo. In that case, third parties could verify the claim just by looking at the cell cultures. But I assume that they are actually completely normal-looking, as this is the point of the protocol.

Otherwise, perhaps it is possible for the provenance to be deliberately marked in some way that is resistant to forgery. For example, the adult cells used could be provided by some independent source who is generally trusted not to "leak" the corresponding embryonic cells. Then, if you produce ESCs with the right genome (which is easy to test), you must have done it using adult cells alone. If a clever and unscrupulous biologist could forge that - say by taking a normal ESC and injecting foreign genetic material, or by cloning the mouse and harvesting the new embryo - then perhaps some alternative marker could be devised. It would have to be something that could be introduced into the adult mouse cells, but couldn't be easily extracted, swamped by a new marker, or transferred in the cloning process. Or we could cross-check against other signs that those methods might have been used - some biological equivalent of tamper-evidence, maybe?

</comment><comment><USER8> Not a biologist or chemist (but have worked a lot of them). I was very suspicious of "acid bath" being a secret sauce. Chemists and biologists always work through PH range studies early and often. It is one of the things that is very easy to control and measure, so they all hope it will have a useful effect (and check for it).

</comment><comment><USER9> Suspicious images: [http://blog.goo.ne.jp/lemon- stoism/e/008ac025ee1ccf4c694869f...](http://blog.goo.ne.jp/lemon- stoism/e/008ac025ee1ccf4c694869f09b053ee7)

</comment><comment><USER10> Huh. I've always thought all placentas look alike.</comment>


How to write a good Git commit messages - <AUTHOR> https://juffalow.com/other/write-good-git-commit-message <comment><USER2> I'm particularly susceptible to writing crap commit messages so I really appreciate this article. I've found it very helpful to focus on smaller commits in addition to well-thought messages. Few things are more frustrating than trying to locate a particular change via a commit log and not finding it because I was lazy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is how Linus Torvalds describes a good commit message. [https://github.com/torvalds/subsurface-for- dirk/blob/a48494d...](https://github.com/torvalds/subsurface-for- dirk/blob/a48494d2fbed58c751e9b7e8fbff88582f9b2d02/README#L88)</comment>


Guerilla Tactics on Finding A Decision Maker - <AUTHOR> http://life-longlearner.com/how-to-find-a-decision-maker-part-1/

<comment><USER2> I won't go so far as to call this unethical, but this is basic social engineering. You're tricking somebody into violating the normal "flow" of external communications into the company. This may end up hurting that person if, say, they are identified as the reason that some random person schmoozed their way onto the phone with a busy higher-up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great post. I'm definitely going to have to go back and read your archive of sales advice.</comment>


Whole Foods workers' worst fears may be coming true - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90275538/whole-foods-workers-worst-fears-may-be-coming-true <comment><USER2> What a load of bull.

The article takes some anonymous sources that they're testing Go technology in a "larger store" and conflate that to mean that they're replacing workers in Whole Foods with Go tech. The entire article revolves around this idea.

It's just fear mongering for clicks.</comment>


Show HN: Project Management Tool for Your Wedding Planning - <AUTHOR> https://ladymarry.com/#!/hn

<comment><USER2> I like your approach. Thanks for making an expensive service open-source. I've tried some similar apps on hn, but your "steps" and "timetable" look promising.

One suggestion: I am planning the wedding with my fiance, so a multi-account management is super helpful for us. We also share our status with family. But it is just my case.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot for sharing! And yes, we are on our way to develop the multi- account features.

Please shoot me an email at email@example.com if you would like to chat with us how you would take advantage of the multi-account functionality. That information will be valuable for our development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting! So how can I adjust time of each task?</comment>


Would you accept cheaper rent in exchange for a monthly Amazon purchasing quota? - <AUTHOR> https://alexdanco.com/2019/06/12/would-you-accept-cheaper-rent-in-exchange-for-a-monthly-amazon-purchasing-quota/ <comment><USER3> Thought experiment (I don't actually want to go down this road): can you out- market Amazon in this scenario? If you have a $400 committed spend for a $500 rent discount, can you find people who would buy things from Amazon anyway and offer to make purchases on their behalf at a 1% discount (which is, on paper, obviously rational for them), such that you're now getting back $396 of the $400? Now you're spending a mere $4 for the $500 rent discount.

And in turn, why would market rent for your area be N instead of N-$500 (or N plus discount matching), if that discount is generally available? If _everyone_ gets the $500 Amazon discount, then _everybody_ has the switching cost problem, and so landlords would want to match what the market is actually willing to pay, not what it looks like they're paying on paper. This is basically the same scenario as early termination fees - when cell phone companies decided to increase the switching cost, other cell phone companies said they'd eat that increase in switching cost just to unlock locked-in customers that they couldn't reach.

And ultimately all of these mechanisms are annoying and fiddly mental overhead, but could purchasers band together and join an organization that negotiates on their behalf, organizes boycotts, etc. for a relatively small fee?

<comment><USER4> A more wild and outlandish thought experiment: would you become infinitely indebted for infinite reward? Imagining some cyberpunk wasteland where every commodity, pastime, medication, and media content is wildly expensive but offset by huge subsidies from complicated conglomeration of other corporations and government entities. Every action you take in your life adds wild positives and negatives to a fantastically complex and intractable balance sheet of funny money, credits, discounts, loopholes, taxes, rebates, free services, restrictions, obligations.

Watch Spider-Man 87 for $1,340,233 but receive free Chex-mix for life, $3000 off each gas purchase at qualifying locations, in-home massages, the ability to use highway 37 from 11:30-3:30 without charge from Nov 23rd 2043 to Oct 18 2067, increased inspections from police, tutoring for your next born child, and 34 trees are planted in your name in Nigeria.

This obviously grows necessarily from an economy focused on increasing GDP and maximizing the effectiveness of financial instruments :)

<comment><USER3> Are they fungible? Do secondary markets exist? The whole promise of money is that you can just add and subtract the value of all those things to get a number in a reasonable range. With money you can meaningfully compare "a pound of gold" and "two pounds of silver," and you can settle a debt you owe Alice via a debt Bob owes you instead of keeping both imbalances forever.

Maybe this is me being broken by working in finance (even if just SRE for finance), but your example doesn't seem too far off from the problem of valuing ETFs or options or currencies or cattle futures (in theory, if you buy one and forget to sell it in time, some cows show up at your office...).

<comment><USER5> In the future which is rapidly closing in, everything is a "license." You own nothing. Nothing is transferrable or resellable by you. Things will feel like you own them, but you will not. Despite all the marketing and advertising telling you that you are "buying" something, you will actually only be able to secure a license to possess and use it. These licenses will restrict how you use the thing, and circumventing them will result in federal charges of violating the DMCA. These licenses will also not obligate the seller to anything whatsoever and be voidable at any time with no notice for any or no reason. This is already the case with most peoples 'ownership' of most media, and it is already spreading into other products. Farmers have had to fight John Deere for the right to repair their own tractors (they won temporary special exemptions which can only exist for 3 years at a time and have to be re-fought-for every 3 years) but still can't prevent their own tractors from reporting soil data back to John Deere which the company then sells to Monsanto and other companies.

None of the things you 'buy' will be fungible because they will all be discrete licenses locked to you personally and have no actual 'value.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No. And I would expect anti monopoly laws legislation to outlaw this in any halfway civilised country (altho I wouldn't hold out much hope for America).

"The toaster oven will only accept certain co-branded bread and other marked- up food products: any attempts to cook other food will throw an error message; "Unauthorized Bread.""

Barely fiction: Keurig, Juicero.

<comment><USER7> Assuming it was in the form of: You pay the total value in rent, and each month $500 is added to your amazon balance (I'm assuming that's how such a plan would feasibly work in practice)... then, yeah sure. Of course, the devil is in the details, but taking the deal just at face value, yeah it's profitable why wouldn't you do it?

Even if you bought stuff you didn't need, but you could resell later for a 20% loss after fees, that's still essentially a free $400 a month just for holding onto some merchandise in your closet temporarily. That's probably worth it for most people.

<comment><USER8> Minus the value of the time it costs you to sell the goods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The thing is, moving apartments has a high switching cost. It's really > something you want to avoid being forced to do, both for economic reasons > and for social & personal reasons. Now, Amazon has you trapped: however much > you may be inconvenienced or disappointed by being effectively required to > purchase Amazon's stuff rather than other merchants, it'll be less bad than > the monumentally large cost of moving apartments.

Worse: in this scenario, "Amazon" competitors are unable to provide competitive pricing any more because everyone else, like you, waited a few cycles, and now they don't get enough sales volume for that. It is no longer economical for you to leave for another apartment that doesn't mandate this supply monopoly. The only way to break out of the cycle is if 1) a large proportion of people in your situation agree to move at the same time, which is particularly difficult because of individual circumstances as well as political will; and 2) all of you can afford to prop up the more expensive competing suppliers until volume discounts start rippling through the supply chain.

* I say "Amazon" because this is entirely hypothetical, as the author admits, and I think it's rather unfair to use Amazon's name like this, which the author does not.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would not want a house I own or rent to have microphones and or cameras installed "for" me.....

Forget the math about rent, they're bugging my house.

<comment><USER11> No smart tv or mobile then?

<comment><USER10> Hard not to buy a smart TV, but I do not connect them to the internet (hopefully they're not up to something I don't know).

A smartphone seems like a requirement in life to some extent, but it isn't added to any given homes that I'm aware of.

I'd love to see some improvements in that space as far as switches that actually power off mics and cameras.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think Amazon even needs experiments like this to increase its dominance.

Take the apartment complex i live in as an example, last year there was a marked increase in package thefts that the residents started complaining. The management came up with a few solutions that all got shot down, cameras were a straight no from most people because of privacy implications, increasing rounds by the security was also shot down since its a huge complex and it would require a lot more people (which they implied might lead to increase in rents in the coming years).

What did everyone decide on? on-site Amazon lockers. So now the choices are that you either buy from Amazon, or risk having your package stolen. Guess what everyone does now?

<comment><USER13> > on-site Amazon lockers.

why not general lockers that all deliveries could be put in? The pin could be given as instructions to the deliverer.

<comment><USER14> Because tenets have to pay for those. My building has them and apartment company offloads cost to tenets in form of a yearly fee.

<comment><USER15> FYI:

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

vs

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting thought experiment, but I don't think the economics work out.

Retail has razor thin margins as it is, so I can't imagine companies paying customers enough to make a significant enough dent in their rent.

Also, the practice of buildings selling exclusive customer access to certain companies already has precedent - cable providers. And as you may imagine, profits or savings from such deals are never passed down to renters.

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems the premise of every rental or subscription service is that you will send them more money, on average, than if you purchased the items a la cart (on average). I'm basically betting against a company with way more time, data, and expertise which seems like a fools agreement.

The flip side of this coin is that I get free stuff subsidized by investors in hopes that eventually they get big enough or kill enough of their competition to get to the above state.

<comment><USER13> > you will send them more money, on average, than if you purchased the items a > la cart (on average)

a properly functioning rental mechanism should produce a maximum utiliztion of the object being rented. The savings to the consumer ought to come from the fact that an object you purchase isn't 100% utilized at all times, but the rental mechanism could make this the case, and therefore, produce a savings for the renter (you don't pay for under-utilization like you would for purchasing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> With the right circumstances, I would actually accept such a deal.

Those circumstances would have to include clauses such as:

1\. reasonably low purchasing quotas (i.e. well under a few hundred dollars per month)

2\. reasonably substantial rent discounts

3\. Amazon maintains its competitive pricing

4\. the "subsidized" rent has to be meaningfully cheaper than a comparable "unsubsidized" competitor while maintaining substantially equivalent quality

However balancing #1 and #2 cannot actually be possible in reality in my view.

<comment><USER13> in the short term, amazon may be willing to make a loss to acquire customers.

But in the longer term, the rental discount has to at least be balanced by the extra profit from the sales quota. If amazon then turn a dial to increase sales quota (or decrease the discount), they then stand to make significant profit on the captive customer (who may no longer have an option to move away at the same low cost).

I think this type of deal is anti-competitive, and should be prohibited under monopoly laws (i.e., using dominance in one market to leverage another market).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't like creepy, polluting, malevolent people in my home.

A creepy, polluting, malevolent non-human entity would be doubly unwelcome.

<comment><USER20> I'm really glad my wife and I are on the same page about "smart" speakers, in that we know never to get one of these devices for the other as a gift or otherwise. She is not at all a techie, but finds the technology creepy from a privacy perspective. Knowing that people outside of our circles are uncomfortable with it makes me a little more hopeful for the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This "everything as a service" industry is a terrible deal for consumers. It's a great deal for companies though.

Why should I pay a constant fee for things that should have been one time purchases?

Why should I lock myself into a proprietary ecosystem?

Why should a pay a membership fee to Cos. who just want to harvest my data at every turn?

Lawmakers, in the spirit of promoting competition, should seek to lower switching costs, increase price transparency, increase interoperability, reduce network affects, and lower barriers to entry for all fields, tech especially. Generics, in every field, should be encouraged and widely available.

1(see Spotify, Netflix, most terrible VC ideas(Bryd, Line) etc) 2(see Amazon, Apple's walled garden of hardware and software, etc) 3(see Amazon, most membership clubs)

</comment><comment><USER22> > The elevators, for example, will only take residents from the lobby to the > Poor Floors and back if there are zero outstanding requests from the Rich > Floors; this effectively forces the lower income residents to either walk > thirty flights up to reach their units, or else wait forty minutes at rush > hour to use the elevators – a pretty thinly veiled analogy to what happens > today with commuting inequality.

But here's the kicker: the people on the Rich Floors have to pay _more_ , effectively subsidizing the rent of the people on the Poor Floors.

</comment><comment><USER23> Privacy issues aside, all that does is rob me of the opportunity cost of spending that money optimally and it forces me to spend it at a vendor that's not always the cheapest or most convenient.

<comment><USER24> The company store for tenants. Dystopic.

<comment><USER25> That's my first thought as well. What's next? Amazon credit card with discount on Amazon and minimum spend for even cheaper rent?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I reject the premise that something simply being cheaper is an abusive situation.

This is the sort of thinking that leads people to state that (for example) smaller apartments shouldn't exist, because someone will be forced to live in them. A purely theoretical person, of course, no-one they actually know - <USER2> sort of downtrodden non-entity.

The entire economy is set up on the basis that negotiation is a thing that people can and will do. If you don't do it, you're setting yourself up to get shafted at every turn; this sort of thing is the least of your issues.

I wouldn't rent a flat like this because it sounds bloody stupid. It makes me think of American sponsored things. 123 North Street brought to you by Coca- Cola(tm) and Amazon(R). Weird unnecessary legalistic nonsense.

<comment><USER27> this would clearly have an income effect where instead of paying $x on stuff i would normally buy elsewhere i would pay $quota at amazon. Down the road, after plenty of competition has been destroyed, they can raise their prices and quotas to their best needs, not mine. It's the sort of thing that starts out OK and winds up abusive.

<comment><USER26> You choose to engage in it.

I would personally stay far away from any rental agreement that had weird corporate subscriptions going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So essentially a loan from Amazon? Why would I believe they can do better than my bank or credit union? Or if they can, why is it tied to mandatory purchasing?

I thought we invented money so we wouldn't have to trade this for that.

</comment><comment><USER29> Really enjoyed this blog post! This is the type of critical thinking which I'm missing a lot in recent years. The stuff which we are building in our little tech bubble is increasingly shaping and impacting the entire world in ways which many of us could have never imagined a decade or two ago. It's funny how many things which have been mentioned in this blog post are literally only one corner away from reality! In Singapore there are already lots of Grab only parking bays where a Grab driver can stop for you but not an Uber for instance.

</comment><comment><USER30> Basically why I haven't watched season 3 of The Expanse: I'm far from being an Amazon boycottist, but I refuse to enter any form of ongoing agreement that would make them a default choice or bring them closer to becoming one. I have never put even remotely as much thought into this as the author, but the central idea has been clear nonetheless: don't give away your wallet-vote in a bulk transaction, nothing good can come from this.

<comment><USER31> I don't understand this way of thinking. I despise Amazon in a variety of ways, but I think they do a great job in a variety of other ways. Wouldn't it be reasonable for me to spend money on the parts I think are good, like Prime Video, and withold money from the parts I think are utterly stupid (anything Alexa-related)?

Assuming Amazon reacts to spending habits of its customers, wouldn't I be more able to effect change that way (and also enjoy good services) than by a complete boycott that doesn't tell Amazon why I am diverting money from them or which parts of their services I find deplorable?

<comment><USER30> I wouldn't mind Prime Video as an alternative to Netflix if it wasn't bundled with the manipulative free delivery subscription. Sure, I could use Video on a secondary account and stubbornly keep my deliveries in the regular tier, but that would be absurd, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Some unrelated (to each other) comments. 1. These trapping effects already exist when people won't quit an otherwise disadvantageous job because of medical benefits. 2. A leasehold is not entirely one-sided in our system. It is designed to confer the full benefits of property ownership to the lessor, for a given amount of time, in return for the lessor's paying of rent. All the Alexa-like machinations described seem to be modifications of the way rent is paid. 3. The book Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff, attempts to quantify various forms of forward value extracted from consumers by social media and intelligence gathering platforms.

</comment><comment><USER33> > I'm sure many of you either have an Alexa-powered device in your house

Yeah, lost me there, pal. I thought I was getting lower rent for not going _over_ some quota - which would work great, since my quota is exactly $0, on principle.

</comment><comment><USER34> The apartment building I live in already has a business deal with Amazon. Not for appliances, but for an Amazon Hub Apartment Locker. [https://www.amazon.com/b?node=17337376011](https://www.amazon.com/b?node=17337376011)

I get an email with a pickup code to the email address tied to my Amazon account whenever a package arrives that is too big for my mailbox, from any sender. This means that Amazon presumably has a profile about my package receiving habits, including size, frequency, and how long it takes me to pick up a package after it arrives.

My building installed the Hub after I moved in and I was given no choice in the matter.

<comment><USER33> Your choice: Stop using Amazon. Alternatives exist - for now.

<comment><USER34> My alternatives are to break my lease or get all of my packages at a P.O. box. Even if I never purchase a single item from Amazon, all packages sent to me from anyone go into the Hub.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Apartments already have similar deals with cable companies in areas with multiple providers, including the Tv/Internet/Phone fee as mandatory on top of rent

</comment><comment><USER36> Talk to your bank, you may be more qualified to buy a home than you know - stop renting.

</comment><comment><USER37> No.

</comment><comment><USER38> Would you pay tax out of pocket for this benefit in kind.

</comment><comment><USER39> Sure I'd probably find a way to hustle around this.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wish we'd just run out of oil already. At least then I won't have to worry about my senator pimping me out to some faceless suit in a high-rise 4,000 miles away.

</comment><comment><USER41> Only if the quota weighs 16 tons.

</comment><comment><USER42> Like, minimum, or maximum?

</comment><comment><USER43> Can you buy from yourself?

</comment><comment><USER44> Buy all food, toiletries, etc. on Amazon and it's probably hard not to meet such a quota

<comment><USER45> Perhaps so. But would I really want to do that?

<comment><USER44> Seems alright to me

<comment><USER45> Well, some people in my household have various food sensitivites. We have to be very careful about what we buy (different brands of milk, say, are very much not equivalent.) I'm _not_ buying food from a vendor who's known to do brand substitution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not unless they sold the things I would otherwise buy. And that is unlikely.

<comment><USER14> What do you buy that amazon doesn't sell?

<comment><USER8> Most of what I buy these days are services not goods. I pay to have the wheels changed on my car twice a year (winter versus summer tyres), insurance, house painting and maintenance, servicing for my car, electricity, water, sewerage, an internet connection.

As for goods, well I buy a new computer about once a decade and a phone perhaps twice as often, fresh bread, fruit, vegetables, meat, butter, biscuits, and tea, every few days or weeks.

No idea if Amazon sells all that but it doesn't seem so from a glance at their web site.

<comment><USER14> Amazon sells food, computers, cell phones.

<comment><USER8> My point was that except for food the goods purchases are rare events and also the food is not a lot so hardly likely to make much of a dent in my rent.

They sell fresh bread, real bread that is worth eating? Fresh fruit?

Actually of course in my particular case it's all theoretical anyway because Amazon has no physical presence here in Norway</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The Daily Cramp – A daily reminder to master her monthly cycle - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailycramp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> From an article this morning:

"Email newsletters aren't a sexy business but they can literally print money for the people who start them," Hilley says. After studying other successful newsletters like Thrillist, he projects The Daily Cramp can generate a whopping $77 million in advertising sales in just three years. "We're banking on a viral effect," he says.

Yet even Hilley has doubts. "Will this turn into something that people want to get every day?" he wonders.

Hilley's response in a comment below the article: "It's just like some jack@ss Goldman guy to make ridiculous projections like that... pretty soon, him and his awful Crazy Bear are going to take the entire newsletter world down with him, just like he did the financials."

</comment><comment><USER2> They need to add multiprocessing: I need to track a wife and two daughters. Now if you'll excuse me, I must run for my life :-)

<comment><USER3> I know how you feel. I grew up in a house with 4 older sisters. The way their moods would change was unexplainable to 10 year old me. Probably why I only date women post-menopause now...lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm, it seems pretty similar to one from a while back <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390147>. Maybe this is an April Fool's joke though. Anyways I can always tell when my girlfriend's period starts, but I think her mood change is partly a psychological reaction to the physical symptoms rather than just a "hormonal rollercoaster" as they're claiming.

</comment><comment><USER5> just signed up, could easily save my life one day.

Think about including an "add another crazy bear" button for people who have to live with abusive female co-workers, daughters that are plagued by puberty AND pms, etc... they won't behave differently on their pms just because your position to them is different.

<comment><AUTHOR> Best comment of all time! We've got an option to "add a partner"... will think carefully about "adding another crazy bear". Don't want to overwhelm users with too many emails (but there is probably a nice, simple way to include it in the 1 email you're already getting). Let me noodle that...

<comment><USER5> by god, think about not sending the whole mail with all partners to every partner that gets the mail too, this could easily lead to more killings than Natural Born Killers is said to have lead to.

<comment><USER4> #LOLd

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Jason Baptiste loves newsletters but thinks our idea is "just odd". What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the concept a lot, but I won't sign up because of the frequency.

I don't want to think about female menstruation every day.

Once a week--that I could do. Daily? And I start to get grossed out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Israel - yeah, we're going to watch unsubscribe rates and see if 1 a day is too much.. then we might have to change our name to "The Weekly Cramp". ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The chart of a woman's mood throughout the month makes sense, but It is scientifically proven?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Jim - thanks for the comment. What's proven is that hormones affect behavior (to a certain degree). It remains to be seen if there's such a direct link that you can write content around it to describe each day. But we're certainly doing our best! ;)</comment></comment>


Explaining Docker and Containers - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSLpG_spOBM <comment><USER2> Am I the only one which thinks the docker vs vm slide is just wrong as there is nothing running on the docker daemon at all and even super simple docker pics on docker Inc. always talk about the docker engine as abstraction between os and container. This also lacks a bit but is a way better analogy for all the Linux namespacing cgroups etc. Which habens in reality on the kernel. The daemon doesn't run anything at all but maintaines state.

IMHO this are the kind of simplifications which just make people more confused about a complex topic like that on the long run And in addition the last points are also applying fully to micro vms but are shown as great benefit of docker. I can't like it unfortunately

</comment><comment><USER3> This video is just ... all over the place. It's too advanced for a basic audience and too simple for people who have been admins for years. I get what he's trying to say and it's a good production job, but it's trying to hit too wide an audience.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have almost no experience with Docker so this may be a beginners question. How would one get to the output of a Docker image such as logging? On a (virtual) O.S. I can log on, but would I have a similar solution on a Docker image? Or would I have to redirect all logging to a central server or database?

<comment><USER5> You can log inside the container as normal (if it is a long running/persistent one) and exec a shell on it to work with the logs, or you can log to a mounted volume (to local drive, another container used for storage, a remote drive, etc), or send the logs to a central log server or an elasticsearch database to have a search engine/dashboard for your logs. There are more options, but the best depends on your use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This whole channel is brilliant. Reminds me of the quote. If you cant explain something in simple terms, you don't understand it well enough

<comment><USER2> Funny statement as he didn't understand it well enough

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I run a docker container, is it booting an entire OS (minus kernel) to run that command?

<comment><AUTHOR> docker run will run a little base image (such as ubuntu), but the host kernel is indeed shared.

The Docker Client and the Docker Daemon (together called the Docker Engine) are running on the Host OS.

Each container shares the Host OS kernel.

<comment><USER7> so if my base image is say ubuntu, `docker run` runs the entire ubuntu os, then also runs the process on top of that os?

<comment><USER8> Container ~= process which has been isolated from the host system using linux specific kernel features. If you launch systemd and all ubuntu services, yes, it will effectively run the whole os, otherwise, it's just a process like any other with no overhead. Why the image? Well it contains the filesystem of your container - all the libraries your process needs to convert its' logic to kernel syscalls, all in their own filesystem bubble, so there are no clashes, wrong versions, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SCO/Novell Lawsuit Is Over, SCO Loses - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100610161411160 <comment><USER2> I did a detailed comment a while back summarizing the issues and the convoluted history of this case (see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1230340>).

In 1996, Novell sold UNIX-related rights to SCO but specifically _excluded_ all copyrights and all patents from that sale - meaning that Novell continued to own all such rights.

Less than a year later, though, the parties did an amendment that described what Novell was holding back as follows: "All copyrights and trademarks, except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies."

The wildly ambiguous language here ("except for the copyrights . . . required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies") - together with SCO's greed and venality - is what spawned years of wasteful litigation. Weak as its claims were, SCO was able to use "rights" it claimed from this language to derive equally weak claims that its supposed rights were being violated by this or that trivial element within Linux so as to constitute copyright infringement.

This final judgment in a key trial, then, is a tremendous outcome for the open source community. It kills all cases at their root by imposing a definitive judgment that SCO acquired no UNIX copyrights of any kind and, without that, its foundation for mounting assaults against Linux and the rest is completely undone (without regard to what details of Linux are alleged to infringe).

Two caveats:

1\. Apart from SCO's dire financial condition, there would be nothing preventing it from appealing and continuing the mess on the multi-pronged fronts on which it has been fought. SCO (in its current form) is essentially an investor-backed operation that sought in recent years primarily to capitalize on this series of lawsuits and it could theoretically continue to do so if the investors had the appetite to continue funding the mess. It is widely believed that this is now a venture that is spent, however, and let us hope this is true.

2\. This matter is now safe as long as Novell or some other trusted party continues to hold the UNIX copyrights. But Novell itself is in trouble and its assets may soon be acquired by private equity firms who might in turn sell such assets to trolls (see <http://url4.eu/3p37m>). Again, let's hope not.

That said, this victory does appear to be complete and is cause for celebration.

<comment><USER3> Third Caveat - SCO does seem to keep going and going. A bit more history -

o A while back there was a Judge verdict, that, as a matter of _law_, SCO did not own the copyrights. (There was no copyright transfer, ergo, the copyrights had not been transferred. That issue is now going to the supreme court, and actually may have a chance of being reviewed - the question is - "Do you need a copyright transfer for copyrights to be considered transferred"

o That was overturned, and it went before a Jury Trial. Once again, the Jury agreed - no transfer of copyrights.

o SCO asked, as a matter of Law, a ruling that clearly the copyrights had been transferred. Denied.

Now, we'll see what else is up SCO's sleeve. Admittedly they are in bankruptcy, and the Bankruptcy official has been put in charge of the organization - so presumably future behavior will be profit maximizing and somewhat rational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TechCrunch posting excerpts to spread traffic out across their blogs is annoying.

Especially when it's their gadget blog posting on a non-gadget topic, and particularly when it's just summarizing a 3rd blog anyway:

<http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100610161411160>

<comment><USER5> Now that you mention it, I'm starting to hate how HN users post links to TechCrunch's coverage of some new project instead of posting the project site-- or, in some cases, the link to the write-up that they are excerpting. I prefer to bypass the middleman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _a number of patents involved around Unix copyright_

I'm pretty sure that's a syntax error.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. The SCO lawsuits were brought over (wholly invented) claims that Linux contained copyrighted code "stolen" from source code that SCO claimed to own. No genuine incidents of "stolen" code were ever discovered as far as I am aware, and SCO was shown not to own the copyrights to the source code anyway.

<comment><USER8> The examples of `stolen code' were #define:s and things of that nature, which are so trivial that they're bound to be reproduced almost verbatim.

<comment><AUTHOR> And that's when they finally came out. They talked and talked and showed journalists who were sworn not to reveal what they'd seen in detail, and so on, and didn't show any code for the longest time.

This is one of those cases where I'm curious what, if anything, will happen to the CEO. He didn't just make some honest mistakes, he really fucked things up, running SCO into the ground, and causing a not insignificant amount of trouble for Linux and open source companies at the time. Sure, he lost his job last year, but so did a lot of other people.

<comment><USER9> Last time I checked, darlbehindbars.com was available.

It still seems so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a target of SCO's extortion efforts in 1994, I am happy that this is finally over.

<comment><USER11> 2004 you mean.

<comment><USER10> Heh yeah... If I was going to make that mistake I should have at least gone for 1984.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, what a release to see this finally end. Seems like I've been watching this insanity drag on for most of my adult life.

So... time to CELEBRATE! Where are the "SCOwned" parties going to be? I know there's going to be some here in SF this weekend... where else?

:)

<comment><USER13> I know how you feel. I graduated elementary school the same year the lawsuit started, so I have been following the case all my adult life.

Personally I am just waiting for /. to break the story, it seems a fitting end to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The full article is here: [http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/06/11/sconovell- suit-is-over-...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/06/11/sconovell-suit-is-over- sco-loses/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Excellent, that's one box checked. Now all I need to do is play Duke Nukem Forever and two things I thought I'd never see, I will have seen.

</comment><comment><USER16> Don't forget who bankrolled Darl's little fishing expedition. Just more of Steve Ballmer's celebrated leadership in action.</comment>


Show HN: TokCloud – The easiest way to get reliable tech news everyday - <AUTHOR> http://tokcloud.com

<comment><AUTHOR> The favorites/bookmarking part is something we'll implement soon enough. It is actually based on their RSS streams but in the next update we'll add sources that required web scraping and did not have their own personal feeds.

The short summaries come from using the Embed.ly API for now but we'll replace it just by scraping the Open Graph or Twitter card meta tags from the pages directly.

To keep it reliable and clean we decided not to allow users to add their own sources but we'll keep adding new ones regularly and we'll add a form to take suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank you for changing the Twitter permissions. I signed up.

This has potential. How does it work? My guess: a better RSS reader. This would be a slick design for that.

Can I add sources other than the ones you've chosen?

I like the short summaries, but where do they come from? I thought it might just be the first paragraph, but for "Feature Friday: Accept Bitcoin With Stripe", the summary comes from the middle of the article. Is it in fact from RSS?

Also, I'd like to be able to mark my favorite articles, and view a list of my favorites.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To be able to share news directly by pressing the tweet button. Actually it's the basic read-write twitter access but since we implemented the front-end tweet button I just changed the required permissions to read only.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

Would appreciate feedback about this project. The goal is to create a website with feeds from reliable tech news and opinion sources. It's still very early but who would you recommend as a source?

</comment><comment><USER2> I like the design, but why do you need to be able to create Tweets for your users and follow new people?

I stopped when I saw that.</comment>


One in three servers have outdated software - <AUTHOR> http://patrolserver.com/stats

<comment><AUTHOR> I find this the most interesting part: "As we look at the data about outdated software, we see a real trend. (We used the alexa top lists) The top 10 most visited sites are 'fully safe'. They don't leak a lot of software information, but whatever they leak shows signs that they have the most up to date software versions or even have patched outdated software before a new release is made available. In most cases, the internet is their core business and they take care of their servers.

Going to the top 100 most visited sites, this drops to 93% 'fully safe'. In other words, we could detect outdated software on 7 of the top 100 sites. In most cases, these were minor issues but we are already see that some sites have relaxed policies on server security.

The further we go from the most visited sites, the more servers have outdated software. And we believe this trend will continue as we scan more and more of the world. Our estimate is that about half of the servers have outdated servers (extrapolating the one out of four we currently have on 25.000 servers to 10 million servers). If we just look at the data of our own clients, we can support this theory, 39% have outdated software (and our current users are still security savvy, because they opted to use a security tool). Scary if you ask us."</comment>