Ask HN: How useful are the Cisco CCNA and CCNP networking classes? - <AUTHOR> As far as learning networks goes, how useful are the Cisco CCNA & CCNP classes and certifications vis a vis what a keen person can learn on their own from the net and so on? I've noticed they include practicals that require working on gear that is not necessarily cheap, so I'm particularly curious about that. But generally speaking, would you say they are worth the money? I'm interested in them for the sake of learning, not for the sake of getting a job where the certification would obviously have some use. <comment><USER2> They are highly specific to Cisco hardware, in terms of router/switch configs. I took CCNA classes (all 4) in high school and it was good experience for learning some of the underlying principles, but its not exactly heavy on the theory or technology. You can learn almost all of it on your own if you are dedicated. There is a program called "Packet Tracer" that allows you to simulate routers, switches, networks, hosts, etc. but there isn't a real good substitute for hands on experience. You can pick up a cheap home network set for under a few hundred dollars, though. I'd recommend making a home network, rather than paying for classes, if you are dedicated enough, as a home network will be useful for extending your knowledge in security as well.

If you key focus is getting a job and career progression, get the cert. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother wasting the money, just for the knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it could, as always, depend on the quality of the teacher. I am not speaking about Cisco courses, but I recently attended a Microsoft course and the course was provided through recorded material prepared by Microsoft, with a local trainer that could be questioned in case of need (this was due to the fact that I was attending the course in English and the training center was normally organizing it in another language). The Microsoft "recorded" teacher knew his stuff, but the local teacher was not that expert because he was acting as supporting teacher for many many courses (we were 6 people in the class, each one doing a different course: AD, Exchange, SQL Server etc..) So I missed a bit of interaction AND real-life stories that you typically exchange with other students and with the teacher as well. Fortunately the course was paid by my company, but I came back thinking that maybe paying 29$ for a month of Pluralsight would have been a better investment than spending 2000$ for the official MSFT course (even better subscribing for a full year of pluralsight and having the possibilities of having many more additional training videos).

Having said that, for Cisco I'll suggest you to check the Chris Bryant courses available on Udemy [no affiliation], I bought one of them (CCNA) few months ago but just right after I was hired in a non-networking position (and in a company that is not using Cisco) so I never finished it, but the quality seems to be very good and it is confirmed by the number of comments on Udemy and also checking certification forums like Techexam.net. It seems that he also replies to questions inside Udemy, so the interaction is clearly present.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am taking a Uni Program basically around the Cisco cert stages. Cisco offers a program that simulates all of the software and hardware called "packet tracer". The content of the CCNA at least is now better at explain concepts and theories but it emphasizes some specifics(like some protocols) that aren't industry standard and are mostly Cisco product bias. That being said besides the protocol stuff I would say that the Cisco Bias sections are really easy to spot out because they start pumping up their products. Also Learning Ciscos operating system is good so you can translate that to other operating systems, much like programming languages. I say just buy the books get packet tracer, then take the cert twice once to get used to actual hardware then second to pass. Honestly you will likely fail the first one if you haven't done a Cisco exam before because Cisco makes crazy hard marking schemes and create a scary atmosphere for the exams.

<comment><USER5> Have a look at [http://www.gns3.net/](http://www.gns3.net/)

<comment><USER4> Looks good, though most of my labs/exams will be in packet tracer I will save this for when I learning other systems. It looks like it shares a lot of the interface design with packet tracer with out adding ridiculous features that Cisco thinks is useful Packet Tracer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They are relevant if and only if you're looking for a corporate job related to networking. Your can begin your career from a networking assistant engineer with CCNA and work your way up to a network architect - probably requires CCIE and up. The exam is actually not very expensive, so you can might as well get yourself certified but I find it unnecessary to sign up for the course though. There are plenty of resources online, so just make full use of it and you'll be fine. (keyword: question dumps/braindumps) Some of the benefits from attending classes i can think of is that you get to strip your ethernet cable and plug them into the physical switches/routers and of course configure them. But in general, you're better off reading the books and playing with packet tracer/GNS3 at your own comfort.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a good question. I work with Openstack and was clueless about a lot of enterprise networking concepts .. e.g. vlans, GRE tunnels, VPN, etc. I have also looked into courses but haven't found something that fits my needs (focus on knowledge instead of a cert). Instead of buying networking gear, you might be able to use some Cisco emulation software. I've heard that is sufficient for the first level of cert. Unfortunately, it seems you can only get access to the software by taking an official course. I've watched a bunch of cert related videos on Youtube and those have helped me.

<comment><USER8> Depending on what you're looking at setting up you can also see about picking up some older Cisco gear. When I was studying for the CCNA I picked up a couple of 2500 series routers off of eBay for ~$80 shipped. They were a generation or two out of date at the time, but I picked up some newer IOS images off of a torrent site and was able to use them to experiment with most of the topics covered.

I imagine a couple of older routers/switches for the hands-on experience combined with simulation software for more complex setups would still get you pretty far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can indeed study the course material by yourself; I did that myself and got the (CCNA) certification. If you intent to go through it for the sake of learning the just get a book, Packet Tracer or any other emulator and have fun.

If you intent to take the exam as well, you have to do it a bit structured and use multiple resources. For example, I started out with Todd Lammle's CCNA book, completed it and aced the practice questions. Luckily I also went on to use other resources, (mainly CBT nuggets) since the actual exam was considerably harder than what Lammle leads to you to believe.

<comment><USER7> Is there a way to legally get PacketTracer without going through a course? I looked and have had no luck so far :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> CCIE here. I did all my certs by self study. If you want to go CCNA > CCNP > CCIE, I advise building a small lab. If you just want to learn without getting a related job you can go the virtualization route (GNS3) or simulation (packet tracer). It also depends on which track you choose CCNA R&S, CCNA Voice or CCNA Security. I had a few classes for other certifications but to be honest you can do them by yourself and using the internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Suppose part of your motivation for understanding networking was the desire to set up a "last mile" sort of ISP in your neighbourhood/town, where you lease fibre capacity from someone with fibre in the ground, then you build out a wifi or wimax network that, every so often, terminates into this fibre; is this the correct learning path to take, would you say? How helpful/essential is the knowledge?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the replies everyone.</comment>


TLS in HTTP/2 - <AUTHOR> http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2015/03/06/tls-in-http2/ <comment><USER2> > _Internet Explorer people have expressed that they intend to also support > the new protocol without TLS, but when they shipped their first test version > as part of the Windows 10 tech preview, that browser also only supported > HTTP /2 over TLS. As of this writing, there has been no browser released to > the public that speaks clear text HTTP/2\. Most existing servers only speak > HTTP/2 over TLS._

I'm hoping it will stay this way. Defaults are important, so it's the platforms' responsibility to support and enforce the "safer" options.

> _The fact that it didn't get in the spec as mandatory was because quite > simply there was never a consensus that it was a good idea for the protocol. > A large enough part of the working group's participants spoke up against the > notion of mandatory TLS for HTTP /2\. TLS was not mandatory before so the > starting point was without mandatory TLS and we didn't manage to get to > another stand-point._

Which is interesting, because I remember quite clearly the "Snowden discussion" at the IETF, and there were consensus for an "encrypt everything Internet".

> _There is a claimed "need" to inspect or intercept HTTP traffic for various > reasons. Prisons, schools, anti-virus, IPR-protection, local law > requirements, whatever are mentioned._

Right. So IETF made it non-mandatory so law enforcement can get their "master keys" in a way. Also this "anti-virus" kind of protection, is basically what Superfish was. I'd rather that kind of behavior was stopped.

IETF would better start actually becoming useful and come up with ways to replace the CA system over the next few years, instead of taking protocols from others and ruining them as they standardize them. Otherwise we should rethink a new model for standardization if IETF is as useless/malicious as it is right now.

<comment><USER3> > Which is interesting, because I remember quite clearly the "Snowden > discussion" at the IETF, and there were consensus for an "encrypt everything > Internet".

I think this is still the official IETF position. RFC 7258 "Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack" is published as Best Current Practice and has not been retracted.

<comment><USER4> Certain corporate companies formed a consortium to prevent encryption to ensure that monetisation of personal information would continue.

At the very last stage, the IETF appeared to be hijacked by very large telcos (e.g. ATT, Verizon, Ericsson, Comcast) to remove the mandatory requirement for TLS

As an outsider, this look likes a careful co-ordinated attack on the IETF standards process by a small number of "serial IETF professionals" who are paid by the big carriers to be inside the organisation and ensure that standards do the bidding of corporate masters. (some hyperbole there)

Waiting until the last phase restricted discussion, and used the existing momentum to complete HTTP2 standard while removing one of the fundamental reasons for HTTP2 to exist.

It is a very sad day that consumer rights have been compromised by big money. And as the Lenovo Superfish debacle showed, likely it will backfire in the long run.

Here is the consortium: [http://www.atis.org/openweballiance/about.asp](http://www.atis.org/openweballiance/about.asp)

Here is an summary I wrote about this topic: [http://etherealmind.com/response-open-web-alliance- lobbies-i...](http://etherealmind.com/response-open-web-alliance-lobbies- intercept-traffic/)

<comment> grey-area Thankfully the browser and server vendors can do an end-run round this by simply not supporting http2 without encryption. Then no matter what the standard says ordinary users will be protected and it'll be one more reason for sites to move to https everywhere. The article discusses this in _TLS mandatory in effect_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even when only doing domain validations, CAs still usually ask for personal information. You would have to lie at least somewhat convincingly to obtain a certificate without providing personal details which feels fraudulent and could potentially put you at risk of having the certificate invalidated. I'm assuming let's encrypt will address this since it's going to be a fully automated(?) system.

</comment><comment><USER6> How could certificates ever work in embedded applications connected to consumer LANs that provide interfaces over HTTP? Aren't certificates tied to IP addresses, which wouldn't work with e.g. DHCP? Not to mention certificate expiration and updates…

<comment><USER7> Certificates are generally based on hostnames. You can put an IP as the common name but it's problematic (and you can't get one signed by most authorities for an IP address as far as I know).

Generally the devices just generate a self-signed certificate and you have to click through the warning.

<comment><USER6> Ok, so it's just a horrible user experience then :]

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Worse, it trains users to ignore cert warnings.

I don't have any problems with the campaigns to make the public internet HTTPS-only. However, for software inside an intranet, or software that just wants to expose an interface on [http://127.0.0.1:*someport*](http://127.0.0.1:*someport*) non-SSL is the better default.

If people want to protect their intranet that's great, but it means that they have to go through the work of buying a cert, since only they know the hostname it will be exposed as. That's a poor initial-install experience.

<comment><USER9> My view is starting to change on this.. can you really trust a LAN beyond a certain size? (That size being what one person can comfortably architect and maintain.)

Nowadays, I'm a firm believer in "encrypt all the things", but that's because I'm a geek and can deal with the PITA. There _needs_ to be either an encryption mechanism that's _completely separate_ from authentication, or the use case of LAN encryption for regular people needs to be addressed in some other way.

<comment><USER10> I'm a big believer in a (local/p2p) transport encryption mechanism /in addition to/ one for auth, and for it to be transparent to any UX... that's very much our goals for telehash v3 :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only one of the counterarguments that interests me is that it defeats caching. I mean, if 100 users in a large network want to access the same video or other large resource from the Internet, it seems pretty ridiculous that the connection must use 100 times as much bandwidth as it would if they could just install a simple caching proxy, especially if it's just some cat video or online game, which is probably the common case. True, not all large resources are as innocent, and there is no real way around encrypting and not caching everything if you don't want devices on the network to tell the difference... but the result is just so pathological. The price of freedom?

[For the record, YouTube seems to use HTTPS by default for video content, so this is already the case for some large percentage of the types of large resources typically accessed from shared networks.]

<comment><USER12> Caching already happens through CDNs at the ISP level, such as through the Google Global Cache (YouTube), Netflix Open Connect. That roughly covers about half of network traffic.

Plus, running a squid proxy on 100 users isn't nearly as effective as it once was; pages contain far more dynamically generated content than they used to. Think about a Facebook News Feed or Twitter Stream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I still don't see many arguments about advertising when it comes to TLS. I can't deploy TLS across my sites without losing a huge amount of ad inventory due to cross-site request policies (no HTTP content from HTTPS domains).

AFAIK, Google is the only network actively working on having HTTPS-supported ads. The value of the ads drops significantly as the auction pressure from all the HTTP ads is gone, meaning any sites that rely on ad revenue can not afford to use TLS.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised to see Certificate Transparency presented as a band-aid. My understanding is that assuming it will be deployed successfully, forged certificates will require very significant resources to use successfully for an attack, typically limiting such attacks to nation states.

But I would love to know where I'm wrong about this.

</comment><comment><USER15> For how long will HTTP 1.1/1.0 live alongside HTTP/2? It's all nice if every web page has TLS, but if I can just not upgrade to 2.0, it will not matter at all...

<comment><USER16> HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2.0 will coexist forever. HTTP/2 is mostly just a higher- performance, binary version of HTTP/1.1.

HTTP/1.0 is basically dead and has been for years, because it lacks Host: and so cannot be used for vhosts.

<comment><USER8> That's not completely accurate about HTTP/1.0. It's true that HTTP/1.1 requires "Host:" (a compliant server MUST reject any request from a 1.1 client that lacks that header). However, HTTP/1.0 clients had been sending "Host:" headers for years before the 1.1 standard came out.

It's still possible to use a 1.0 client today if you don't want to handle other client-side requirements of 1.1 like chunked transfer-encoding. Likewise, embedded devices can speak 1.0 only without any problem.

<comment><USER16> Host: isn't part of HTTP/1.0, though, and if you try to send it, some servers will respond to you with HTTP/1.1!

<comment><USER8> It's perfectly normal (and allowed) for servers to send back a version string of "HTTP/1.1" even if the client sent the request as "HTTP/1.0". As long as they don't do anything in their response that assumes that the client has 1.1 features, all is fine. This basically just means: * Don't use chunked encoding in the response. (Technically a 1.0 client could specifically indicate support for that by sending a "TE: chunked" header, but since chunked encoding arrived at the same time as 1.1 I think most servers just assume that HTTP/1.0 clients never support it) * Don't assume that the client supports keep-alive connections. However, prior to HTTP/1.0 clients often did indicate that they could do keep-alive by sending "Connection: keep-alive". The only real difference in 1.1 is that now the client must support it unless they specifically indicate that they don't by sending "Connection: close". In the absence of a "Connection:" header, a 1.1 client supports keep-alive and a 1.0 does not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Professional Matching: Never Network Again. Welcome to Listee - <AUTHOR> http://www.Listee.net <comment><AUTHOR> Listee matches people, opportunities, employers, and jobs all with each other.

</comment><comment><USER2> Invite list? In 2020, really? Startups need to start letting people in without needing an account or at least not a pre-registration

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thank you for the feedback. The only reason We created this landing page was to create buzz around our idea and service. I agree as well, but we're trying to collect user feedback from the idea; things people see in the service & of course an email. We're also launching another page for a much larger audience. It's really just to dip our feet into the water and see what people think. Thanks</comment></comment>


Show HN: Chef's Hat for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1019007017

<comment><USER2> Great idea. I save the recipes in bookmarks and it's a mess.</comment>


Defend Innovation: How to Fix Our Broken Patent System (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/wp/defend-innovation-how-fix-our-broken-patent-system <comment><USER2> Software patents can only be fixed in the near future if the largest software companies in the world work together. Sadly, some of them profit (immensely) from putting up that huge barrier for smaller companies to compete with them. Case in point, Microsoft has had to pay hundreds of millions in damages to trolls like Eolas, yet stand solidly behind software patents. For the millions they paid Eolas, Steve Ballmer could claim that Linux infringes over 200 patents. Oracle gets to claim $9B for 37 methods in the Android code. Apple gets to sue Samsung over icons, among other things. Basically, this is a cartel. They even have a website: [http://ww2.bsa.org](http://ww2.bsa.org)

These companies thrive on mind share. As is evident with MS shipping Linux subsystems with Windows 10, they have to court developers or their influence will wane. The loss of developer community happened over many years, and it should continue until these companies change their approach. Get projects you have influence over to try open alternatives. Spread the word in forums and meetups. Make their platforms uncool.

Being Open Source friendly isn't about releasing code under liberal licenses. It is about the commitment to software freedom. Not differentiating these two is ignoring history.

<comment><USER3> _> Sadly, some of them profit (immensely) from putting up that huge barrier for smaller companies to compete with them._

Patents go both ways. Studies that while patent thickets may discourage entry [1], this effect is limited, and smaller companies are more likely to enter the same markets (and succeed) if they have patents themselves [1, 2, 3, 4].

 _> Oracle gets to claim $9B for 37 methods in the Android code._

This has nothing to do patents and everything to do with copyright licenses like the GPL. And just to be pedantic, it's 37 whole packages. And without this, Google would have been rip off Sun's hard work of building a developer base for Java. "Free software" should not mean "freeloading".

 _> Apple gets to sue Samsung over icons, among other things._

And without those, as ridiculous as they are, Samsung would have gotten away with ripping off Apple wholesale.

 _> Being Open Source friendly isn't about releasing code under liberal licenses. It is about the commitment to software freedom._

False dichotomy: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583749)

1\. [http://people.bu.edu/cockburn/cockburn_macgarvie_entry_and_p...](http://people.bu.edu/cockburn/cockburn_macgarvie_entry_and_patenting_in_software.pdf)

2\. [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=510103](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=510103)

3\. [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=989592](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=989592)

4\. [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=926204](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=926204)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How to fix? Getting rid of it is probably the only way. Especially software patents. The trouble that the EFF faces here is that the only correct move is one that is politically unpalatable. They're giving advice on how to make an unfixable system a little less broken, but there is no happy path for that strategy that leads to a healthy software patent system. Such a thing cannot exist in an industry where the cost to invent is lower than the cost to patent, and where the spread of knowledge has nothing to do with what is patented.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's an idea I've seen before that makes sense to me:

You have property tax; You have (so called) intellectual property. Why don't you have "intellectual property tax"?

Similar to e.g. how property tax works in the US, you would pay something like 1% of the value of your "property" in taxes each year -- and when you sue, you can only sue for how much of that "value" was taken away from you (with perhaps treble damages or something). Then, all of a sudden, it's not enough to claim that your copyrights are worth $18B to sue Google for $9B - you have to have actually paid $180M/year or so in taxes in the last few years to make that claim.

Devil is in the details, of course, but if "intellectual property" is property, it should be taxed like one.

<comment><USER6> > Similar to e.g. how property tax works in the US, you would pay something > like 1% of the value of your "property" in taxes each year -- and when you > sue, you can only sue for how much of that "value" was taken away from you > (with perhaps treble damages or something). Then, all of a sudden, it's not > enough to claim that your copyrights are worth $18B to sue Google for $9B - > you have to have actually paid $180M/year or so in taxes in the last few > years to make that claim.

So poor small time developer can't sue any large company for a substantial payout because they can't afford the $N x 1% fee? I don't think that'll work.

The real solution to this is time. We'll eventually get a new set of judges and legislators that understand technology. The former is all that's really needed though their extended terms make change very slow

Once you've got level headed judges willing to throw out bullshit cases and impose punitive fees on trolls, this entire problem goes away. Until then, it makes financial sense for trolls to operate and even legitimate companies have to play that game to survive.

<comment><USER5> > So poor small time developer can't sue any large company for a substantial > payout because they can't afford the $N x 1% fee? I don't think that'll > work.

Do you think a small developer can sue a large company for substantial payout today? They cannot - litigation costs start at $100K and go north from there (Not to mention, filing and maintaining a patent costs a minimum of $20K-$30K). Today, when these lawsuits actually go to court, you have investors in the lawsuit - either someone financing it, or the lawfirm itself ("contingency") is the investor. So things might change a little, but not by much.

If your invention is really worth $100M, and you can't find a way to get $10M out of it -- then it's not worth $100M. The problem with the current system is that it lets you claim (and believe) that it is worth that much.

> The real solution to this is time. We'll eventually get a new set of judges > and legislators that understand technology. The former is all that's really > needed though their extended terms make change very slow

Every generation believes that things will change for the better once the older generation steps down. That has been wrong every single time, and I bet it will be wrong with respect to patent judges as well.

> Once you've got level headed judges willing to throw out bullshit cases and > impose punitive fees on trolls, this entire problem goes away. Until then, > it makes financial sense for trolls to operate and even legitimate companies > have to play that game to survive.

The problem is not trolls. Trolls are a (relatively) recent phenomenon banking on the brokenness of the patent system. They might go away with minor changes or a change of the guard -- I don't disagree.

But what I argue is that the problem is much deeper - the patent system is broken by virtue of allowing the patenting of software, business patents, and other intangible processes -- as it is (even if all trolls disappeared tomorrow), it lets the incumbents (IBM, Intel, AT&T, Microsoft, Google) kill any new competitor easily and cheaply, by virtue of holding a 100,000 strong portfolio of patents that shouldn't have been awarded in the first place.

The fact no company has yet done this is not proof that the system is fine. See e.g. Shkreli & drug pricing - the broken market structure was there all along, but the incumbent players raise prices slowly (albeit at 5x inflation) so it's not noticed. But then Shkreli came along and did a fast-forward, exposing the system, which got everyone mad, and Shkreli retaliated against. The other players are not more fair - they are just more patient. And similar brokenness exists with respect to patents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Get rid of patents.

The purpose of patents and copyright is to promote innovation and reward creators, and there are plenty of alternative possibilities for doing that. If patents and copyright laws are stifling innovation, for example in drug development, we should scrap them and look for a new model.

Dean Baker has written a lot about this and has proposed a public bounty purse for useful innovations. He would reward an organization that developed a cure for malaria with several billion dollars, and there would be another reward system for creative work, for unexpected innovations that benefited society, etc.

[http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/more-thoughts-on- patent...](http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/more-thoughts-on-patents-and- copyrights)

[http://cepr.net/publications/reports/financing-drug- research...](http://cepr.net/publications/reports/financing-drug-research- what-are-the-issues)

</comment><comment><USER8> perhaps patents should only ever be in the name of the people who actually did the inventing, and the only way a company can have an interest is to pay said persons a fee for a right for use, AND must have an active interest in developing and persuing the patent in the form of a product to be able to sue others to prevent others using the intellectual property.

Wages may be sufficient payment but if they leave the company, the people who do the inventing are the ones who should continue to be rewarded in continued payment for succesful invention giving companies advantage in the form of patents.

this would kill off trolls and exploitation of inventive people.

<comment> loup-vaillant So. You want to get rid of this piece of lucrative property. Now what about the others? I like this idea of killing off the exploitation of creative labour. Now what about menial and manual work?

We're talking about abolishing (a piece of) corporate capitalism. Expect some resistance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The EFF is broken. They started as a First Amendment organization. Now they've become a front for the anti-patent lobby.

The EFF's own data on demand letters exposes their false claims about "patent trolls". [1] Only six patent holders on their list have sent more than two demand letters. There was one big patent troll who sent out hundreds of demand letters, and he lost in court years ago. With that one lawyer out of the picture, the "troll" problem went away.

Their legislative proposals are terrible. Allowing "independent invention" as a defense encourages companies to lie. A five year patent term is so short as to be useless; it takes about 3 years to get a patent issued.

Stop the EFF before they kill invention.

[1] [https://trollingeffects.org/patent- owners](https://trollingeffects.org/patent-owners)

<comment><USER2> > Only six patent holders on their list have sent more than two demand > letters.

The point is that monopolies on ideas are fundamentally unfair, and can only be justified if they provide substantial value over the norm. That _might be_ true in some industries like Pharma, but it is provably false in Software.

When has something (in software) been invented by building on some text in a patent filing?

<comment><USER3> _> The point is that monopolies on ideas are fundamentally unfair_...

I could just as easily say "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity is fundamentally unfair".

 _> ... but it is provably false in Software._

Citation needed? Many of the sources cited in OP have flaws and/or have been refuted elsewhere, especially studies by Bessen & co. Many of their other sources are from people who don't know the first thing about patents. They cite that "This American Life" episode where the clueless dude from M-CAM suggested there's a patent on toast, something that you'd know is BS with a glance at the actual claim and 5 minutes of research on Google.

On the other hand, there are studies showing that having patents increases the chances of software startups get VC funding and successful exits by a factor of four. How much innovation happens without funding? Even the majority of open source is financed by various industry sources.

 _> When has something (in software) been invented by building on some text in a patent filing?_

And how often is something in software _not_ been built by simply copying somebody else's ideas? Some ideas are harder to generate (e.g. RSA) than others (e.g. online pet store) and deserve protection.

<comment><USER10> > I could just as easily say "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity is > fundamentally unfair".

You could, but it would be ludicrous. The very existence of human civilisation is due to "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity".

> And how often is something in software not been built by simply copying > somebody else's ideas?

Who cares. Not copying ideas is not the purpose of patents, it's the exact opposite.

> On the other hand, there are studies showing that having patents increases > the chances of software startups get VC funding

Again, irrelevant. Getting startup funding is not the purpose of patents.

If you want the role of patents to be to help startups then that should _be_ their stated role. In which case, you'd probably only allow companies <5 years old to hold a patent, they'd only be valid for 5 years, and ownership could not be transferred. Of course then you have something very different from our current system, but frankly it sounds a lot better.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's Next for Marketplace Startups? - <AUTHOR> https://andrewchen.co/how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-service-economy/ <comment><USER2> I would say Zocdoc is the best example of B2C company tackling a regulated industry (healthcare) through a marketplace that I have come across. It does seem to me that more startups are tackling the professional services layer with B2B solutions at this point. i.e. helping a lawyer process documents for discovery or allowing a doctor to more quickly process medical images for diagnosis.

It seems to me, physician groups, law firms, accounting firms and architecture firms have all consolidated over the years, making B2B solutions fit better with status quo.

I also think it is really hard for a marketplace to prevent future service transactions from occurring offline. As anyone who has used TaskRabbit knows, the first thing that happens is you usually get a direct number from the end provider and a lower rate to skip the marketplace in the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hadn't heard of half of these newer companies. Is there a way to stay on top of this? Some of these seem pretty useful.

I guess this is also telling me I should catch up to the times and stop finding contractors on Craigslist.

<comment><USER4> One problem, that is alluded to but not really addressed in the article, is that so much is still offline--especially for those of us who don't live in the middle of major metros. I'm not even sure how much of this is really a technology problem.

I feel the general pain. There are a number of things I would be willing to write a check tomorrow to have handled at an even semi-reasonable price if I could just make a phone call and say "Make It So." Unfortunately my really good contractor retired and the last contractor I found (through Lowe's) did a generally good job in the end but was terribly uncommunicative and otherwise difficult to deal with.

I have various companies and individuals who do stuff for me but, in general, finding someone to do some semi-defined task for me is painful and I don't really expect that to change.

<comment><USER5> I thought services like Angie's List were a way to circumvent the 'finding a _____ guy/gal' for some job.

How do you envision a perfect service functioning?

<comment><USER4> Ask your neighbors for a recommendation?

I actually don't mean to be facetious. I'm just not sure that finding a good general contractor is as amenable to a tech fix as getting a driver from point A to point B. Where the post lost me was implying that Uber for X was part of a logical progression and I'm not sure it is.

I'm not sure what's available today for things like local plumbers is any better than the Yellow Pages was 20 years ago. Especially once you get out of high density population centers.

<comment><USER5> And for a plumber I'd rather a) do it myself if I can, or b) ask family for a recommendation.

I see your point. Trust is a key issue, I think.

<comment><USER4> >Trust is a key issue, I think.

Yes. And that's also the business challenge with these listing services. Once you find that A+ plumber you'll just work with them off-list. (For cookie cutter jobs, I've been happy enough just using the Yellow Pages but for something more complex and ill-defined I'd rather have someone I know and trust.)

That was my biggest annoyance about the contractor I had for my last big job. I would have loved to have a new contractor person in my Rolodex but nope. Just too hard to deal with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"If you're a founder who is looking to take on the challenge of tackling more complex services and bringing them online, we'd love to hear from you."_

Hear from us how? Does this just mean "apply to YC"?

<comment><USER7> This sounds shitty, but if you have to ask, then you're probably not the person they are looking for.

People with legit founder tenacity and skills will find a compelling way to be introduced to these folks — note that a16z is always looking for promising founders.

<comment><USER6> Yes, it does sound a bit shitty, but only because it seems to shame the founder rather than just point out that the venture capital business is run a certain way (including with each one advertising and buiding their own ecosystem and network and brand). Why do you think there is a constant culture of blaming of startup founders for not working 20 hour days or not having enough "hustle" skills or "tenacity" because they didn't get through to a VC or land VC funding? In the 1960s-90s that was a bit like blaming musicians for not being discovered by the A&R department of the record labels. Only a few can make it that way, the rest today use Spotify / Patreon / YouTube etc. and are discovered and approached later.

I like A16Z a lot. But I am curious, what is your background, did you have the founder tenacity, do you know founders that had it, that easily got meetings with partners of VC firms? Do you think anyone could do it if they didn't live in the Valley? To me, a compelling way to be introduced is to have your app already out and being used by everyone and making money. Before you approach a VC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > 4\. The Managed Marketplace Era (Mid-2010s)

In the context of VC investing (outsize returns, $1B valuation targets) this is such a joke, because these types of companies will never reach software- like margins. Their scale is almost entirely correlated to HR count, thus affecting DCF numbers.

That being said, these companies absolutely deserve a chance as heavily tech- enabled business services firms reduce a lot of undesired waste in their business processes...it's just not appealing from a VC perspective.

<comment><USER9> Unless this parallels a thesis that AI will in turn allow HR costs to scale sub-linearly as these companies grow...

<comment><USER8> Except no one's proven that to work yet. For the same level of investment dollars, you'd be better off buying a mom-and-pop service company and throwing the software in there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "...while services make up 69% of national consumer spending..."

69% seems like a huge number considering that many people that I know can't afford most services. What is the definition of a 'service'? And, did he possibly mean all services, not just consumer services?

<comment><USER11> According to wikipedia: "Activities in the service sector include retail, banks, hotels, real estate, education, health, social work, computer services, recreation, media, communications, electricity, gas and water supply."

Retail, banking (loans), education, healthcare, energy, all very large portions of the average persons expenses.</comment></comment>


Researching alternatives to the chemical imbalance theory of depression - <AUTHOR> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-hari-depression-causes_us_5a6a144de4b0ddb658c46a21 <comment><USER2> No serious scientists have thought depression was caused by any simple story of chemical imbalances that drugs were directly fixing. The author acts like everyone has been assuming that depressed people have an ssri deficiency. And that's it's a huge insight to consider therapy.

And people have tried therapy for a very long time. The best studies show it's as effective as anti depressants. But here's the rub, it's very expensive to go the therapy.

My wife had a condition that is more amenable to therapy than drugs and that cost us $500/week, and the only reason she could make her appointments was because she didn't need to work. I have no idea how a working family would have been able to afford it.

Her ssri's are 15$ a month and she has to see a psychiatrist every 3 months.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is environment + chemistry.

"Underdog" animals develop a low serotonin state.

[http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/TheBiochemistryofStatusandtheFunc...](http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/TheBiochemistryofStatusandtheFunctionofMoodStates.htm)

Many of the behaviors and attributes associated with "poor" people are similar to the low-serotonin state described above.

If you are "ground down like a minion", SSRIs attenuate the negative impacts of that.

<comment><USER4> A better catch phrase is "affective neurology," the simplified explanation of which is phenotypical expressions causal to the organism's nervous system and apparent behaviors. Here, our working models of the nervous system obviously involve a considerably higher level of abstraction than chemistry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/johann-hari- depression-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/johann-hari-depression- anti-depressants-psychiatrists-pills-therapy-change-lifestyle-job- psychology-a8151606.html)

"But I wish that I, or one of my colleagues, had a chance to meet him on this voyage. He suggests that depression is treated as if caused by "broken", chemically imbalanced brains and so sufferers are treated with antidepressants, without question. This treats a patient like a "machine with malfunctioning parts".

This is far from reality. Rather than seeing mental illness as annexed from the rest of people's lives, helping patients through assessing their social and psychological situations, as well as biological aspects, is the bread and butter of the work of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals."

<comment><USER6> Especially in the UK where IAPT (Improving access to psychological therapy) makes available a short course of cognitive behaviour therapy, free at the point of delivery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While the article raises some good points, the title is such clickbait. We've known for decades that many mental disorders have psychological roots, and that a combination of psychotherapy/CBT and medication is far more effective than medication alone.

</comment><comment><USER8> Brain chemistry is certainly important in depression but we don't know enough about it to rely on it for treatment. A large investigation was done into genomic links to depression and there were no markers related to serotonin / dopamine genes. SSRIs were discovered through serendipity largely and nothing new has really been developed since bc we don't know much about the brain (though we think NMDA receptor agonists and some allosteric modulators of GABA r may work)

Therapy is the right way to handle a lot of depression cases, but very few people get it because of stigma and the fact that psychiatrists can't make money doing therapy unless the patients are rich

</comment><comment><USER9> And it just leaves us hanging. It says there are 9 major causes, and then only discusses one of them. A quick Google doesn't come up with an obvious list, and little agreement on the number 9.

<comment><USER10> That title was bad. We've updated it with representative language from the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Meh writing. There are nine causes of depressions? What are they? Which one is he going to focus on?

</comment><comment><USER12> And for those of us who had nothing bad happen to them during childhood, but still feel depressed?

<comment><USER13> Bad can be just as well defined as a lack of good, much like depression itself. Consider that it may be an exercise in futility to try to discern the "true cause" of your emotional state, and that it may be more worthwhile to begin implementing solutions than to attempt to further deconstruct your problem. Human psychology is much like software save for one very important distinction: you cannot read the code. As such, trial and error remains the best strategy.

<comment><USER14> >> Human psychology is much like software save for one very important distinction: you cannot read the code. As such, trial and error remains the best strategy.

And there are many models of what may be wrong. You can often fit a model onto your situation, but it helps most when you find the "right one" for you and deal with it appropriately. The software bug in the brain can look like a number of things, but they are not all correct. Trial and error is correct here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hari's book on depression had another thread recently ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16092975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16092975)) but perhaps this article is different enough.

<comment><USER6> It's useful to discuss mental ill health on HN, but Hari isn't a good starting point for these discussions.

He's mostly wrong; he misrepresents the current thinking; he mangles the science; etc.

We spend so long correcting his mistakes that there's little room left for discussion.

[https://amp.theguardian.com/science/brain- flapping/2018/jan/...](https://amp.theguardian.com/science/brain- flapping/2018/jan/08/is-everything-johann-hari-knows-about-depression-wrong- lost-connections)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author, Johann Hari, recently had a Guardian piece on depression. His representation of psychiatric research and clinical practice was so cartoonish that he has burned up his credibility with me. Steven Novella (a clinical neurologist) discusses that article here: [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-mental- il...](https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-mental-illness- denial/)

This article is similar, in that Hari is claiming, without evidence, that depression is _always_ caused by life events. It's a strange claim to make, not only because it's made without any support, but because modern psychiatric research and practice most certainly incorporate traumatic life events as potential causes of depression.

<comment><USER16> In the original article Hari doesn't claim depression is always caused by life events. Rather he says this:

"The more I investigated depression and anxiety, the more I found that, far from being caused by a spontaneously malfunctioning brain, depression and anxiety are mostly being caused by events in our lives."

Emphasis on _mostly_.

At least in the article above, Hari never claimed life events were the sole cause of depression. But he did claim---in my experience accurately---that doctors around the world push the idea that depression does have a single cause, "chemical imbalance". My doctor never asked what was going on in my life---and there was plenty. He just gave me drugs and told me I'd have to take them for the rest of my life. That story is very common, and that's why I find value in an article like Hari's. And the mischaracterization of normal human reactions to painful life events as "illness" is odious to me. It's like saying a suffocating person is "ill" because they're not doing well without oxygen.

<comment><USER5> > doctors around the world push the idea that depression does have a single > cause, "chemical imbalance".

This sounds like something a scientologist would say. I remember actor Tom Cruise talking using these words

[https://www.csicop.org/si/show/tom_cruise_scientology_bash_p...](https://www.csicop.org/si/show/tom_cruise_scientology_bash_psychiatry_apa_fires_back)</comment></comment></comment>


Good Programmers Don't Work for Equity - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2016/01/12/good-programmers-dont-work-for-equity.html?2016-02 <comment><USER2> Startup L Jackson said that you should work for a startup not to get rich, but to get a crazy amount of experience.

By that token, you, a good programmer should not settle for a lower salary in exchange for equity. You'll be working many long days - that's what the equity is for. Your salary should still be normal.

Don't let startups con you out of a normal salary.

</comment><comment><USER3> True but someone who can pay cash does not mean he is a good entrepreneur. A good entrepreneur can convince you to join him with his charisma, idea and the future or possibilities that he can create. Money is second to judge him. You can suggest to become a partner not only asking for money or equity if you find the idea is good.

</comment><comment><USER4> Clickbait title should be "Good programmers will only work for equity with good entrepreneurs."

<comment><USER5> That doesn't seem to be what he's saying--in fact, he says "a good programmer will never work for equity." He says if you can't pay cash, you're not a good entrepreneur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fortunately for the world, Woz did not subscribe to this point of view.

<comment><USER5> Possibly not the best example--to my understanding, Jobs sold his car and pre- sold the Apple I to raise cash from day one, and apparently even before that got a deal with Atari that he then subcontracted Woz to fulfill. So I don't think Jobs would fail this blog author's test.

Regardless, both of them certainly risked a lot.

<comment><USER6> He certainly wasn't able to pay what the author considers "a good engineer's salary" or even what HP was paying Woz as an entry level engineer. It was sweat equity—exactly what the author complains about. The same was true of the earliest fb hires who are now fabulously wealthy. It's a common trend in startups.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Proactively getting front end/design gigs? - <AUTHOR>

Any font end developers or designers ever go out to websites and just make a few quick changes, take a snapshot and then email them, showing them what those changes can do, opening them up to the potential of using you to develop a new design? <comment><USER2> This is a good idea for sure.

I have a suggestion to make it even more powerful. Turn the mockups into a blog. This will benefit you in a few ways

1) You'll be able to grow your audience as a designer / consultant

2) It will provide you endless ways to pump out content to the audience you're building, allowing you to position yourself as an expert in your field and rank in search engines for terms related to UX design and design improvement.

3) You can do write ups on the blog which will be valuable to your following as you grow it and you'll start to get a reputation and more people will begin to approach you asking to design for them.

The above is a great long term way to demonstrate your skills and gather a network of peers in your field.

You could simply email the company the page of your website,

"Hello hope you don't mind,

I've taken a look at your website and I've used it as a case study for how I would improve it in order to benefit your conversion rates (whatever you guess their goals might be). I hope you like the publicity, perhaps you'd like to work together to make this happen?"

The above seems like a more credible way to go about this, you're giving them value for free, you're giving free and valuable information to an audience which demonstrates you care about the field and are keeping on the top of your game to your potential prospects. And you've got a handful of other example case studies that these prospects can look at demonstrating your ability to redesign things for businesses. Showing that you are the real deal and you have lots of good ideas. They will want a piece of your pie, most likely.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sadly, a lot of companies don't care to invest or make website improvements. Our site works just fine they'll say. My high school kid put that together!

Instead, look for companies that do seem to get it. Build a short list of design savvy firms. Then reach out to the chief decision makers CTO/VP/Director.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this is also a way to open up organizations to the power of the community as well as open source. Seeing ideas come from outside the organization could perhaps open them up to wanting more and more feedback and fall on to open source to better parts of their current products.</comment>


Playing Tetris while wearing an EEG shows human like AI is impossible - <AUTHOR> https://mindmatters.ai/2019/12/playing-tetris-shows-that-true-ai-is-impossible/ <comment><USER2> Just quick look of spectrogram but I'm sure that they don't show changes in brainwave.

Your spectrogram shows difference in muscle tension and activity in your scalp. Unfortunately they overlap with most of the EEG spectrum you are trying to measure and are stronger. When you concentrate you become more tense.

You need to do more signal processing and learn more to really measure changes in EEG.

<comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE:

I tested out the idea by taking an EEG while furrowing my brow, but it did not look the same. Here is the furrowed brow EEG:

[https://imgur.com/a/dp7WPS7](https://imgur.com/a/dp7WPS7)

You can see some blue bands at the bottom, but no where near the degree that showed up while playing Tetris either slow or fast.

So, I don't think it is merely the tensing of my facial muscles that created the Tetris EEG patterns.

<comment><USER2> That's intentional tension. Just concentrating into some activity creates some tension in the muscles and skews the measurement.

Here is something you can try: Lay relaxed in a bed eyes closed. Program a timer to give pleasant audio signal at random intervals 10-60 seconds between. See if you can detect the signal from EEG.

In general you need to process the signal if you want something useful out of it. The real EEG is very weak coming under skull. Noise from the surface has 100x higher amplitude. Most of what you see visually from spectrogram is just signal noise.

Here is good intro: Classification of Artefacts in EEG Signal Recordings and Overview of Removing Techniques [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cba7/b93c6810a7bbc5917bbaef...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cba7/b93c6810a7bbc5917bbaefe419fdc6fb6396.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will try the sound signal idea.

With my current setup I can easily detect alpha waves when my eyes are closed, so I am definitely getting something out of the brain.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why the fuck was I breached? - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwe3m4/this-website-has-solved-cybersecurity <comment><USER2> IMO, a six year old could do a better job, with more witty descriptions of what went wrong, and then more creative uses of NSFW language to throw in the mix.

And they wouldn't blame everything on Equifax, all the time.

This is weak sauce.</comment>


Git? tig - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/git-tig/ <comment><USER2> There seems to be some confusion here in the comments. Atlassian did not make tig, Jonas Fonseca (<https://github.com/jonas>) did. In some sense though, it makes Atlassian even more awesome that they wrote a blog post about a piece of software they didn't create.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely, all praise should go to Jonas for this great tool! I am merely a happy user sharing my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Atlassian, ironically, are the vendors of one of the best Git Gui tools for Mac OS X, 'SourceTree': <http://sourcetreeapp.com>

<comment><USER5> I use Tower ( <http://www.git-tower.com/> ) and love is so much that I have bought my own license. But I hit usability issues from time to time.

I will give SourceTree a try, it looks interesting.

<comment><USER6> Tower really helped me when I first started using git. Eventually I would move to the terminal, but still use Twoer for when I messed up or tried to do something more advanced.

I wish there was something just like it for Linux, all the ones I've found to try always have some strange UI, or something that just doesn't work quite 'right' in my mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks cool! One little nitpick: "Vim to your Emacs"... Er, maybe Vim to your Eclipse. I don't know if I'd put Emacs in the same camp as Firefox or (heaven forbid) Outlook.

Also, here's the manual: <http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/manual.html>

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure he's just trolling there.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that makes sense. It would have been a better troll/joke if he had said xemacs. I was honestly suggesting a better comparison, not suggesting it was a bad idea. ;-)

<comment><USER9> vim to your Sublime Text :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone needs to check out magit... <https://github.com/magit/magit>

<comment><USER11> Magit is fantastic. If you don't use emacs but instead use Vim, you should check out fugitive (<https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive>)

<comment><USER12> Fugitive is hugely useful and actually provides features above and beyond tig.

That said, tig has an innate simplicity that works for people who are not native vim-ers.

I primarily use screen windows for different functionality. While I can accomplish everything from vim-fugitive, I still maintain a "git" window purely for mind-segmentation and window-SRP reasons.

Thus, tig may open up a completely new concept of active git interfacing.

That said, it is yet another keystroke set to remember (albeit a small keyset).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The description of the status display is almost exactly what happens when you type ":Gstatus" while you are editing a file under a git repository in vim, if you have the _fugitive_ plugin installed. If you use vim, you might be interested in this - there is some extra smoothness you get when you don't have to leave your editor.

<comment><USER14> Yup, came here to second this recommendation. A lot of the benefits found in tig can be found in fugitive. One feature of fugitive I use all the time is Gdiff to allow quick and easy comparison of various versions of a file. Nonetheless, the history view and other features of tig are worth checking out.

[Edited for links] Fugitive: <https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive>

Some helpful screencasts can be found here between April and May 2011 <http://vimcasts.org/episodes/archive>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice, Atlassian continues to make my job much much easier in regards to Git. I love the work they've done on SourceTree, which was a promising and pretty app but very unstable before they bought it. It was hard to use it for critical work because it was crashing quite frequently. Now it's rock solid and I use it almost every day. I do know most of the command line tools but I like using a GUI because it makes my repo better when I have a visual overview of everything that's going on. It helps me group commits in logical order and I've reduced the amount of basically meaningless fixes and style commits greatly.

I'd never even heard of Tig but I am already in love after about 5 minutes of usage. I'm comfortable with the Git CL and if you toss Git log enough flags, it gives you a very nice printout, but you can't actually DO anything there. This is a nice solution when you're working on a remote server but I'd also bet that if SourceTree is not open, I'm going to find myself more and more dropping into Tig rather than using SourceTree.

<comment><USER16> You can thank Jonas for writing tig: <https://github.com/jonas>

Atlassian blogged about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those who want to stick to the CLI and have a beautiful history log, you may be interested in these two aliases: [https://github.com/Dinduks/dotfiles/blob/master/.gitconfig#L...](https://github.com/Dinduks/dotfiles/blob/master/.gitconfig#L14)

Otherwise, tig is neat. I personally won't have to do `git lga` + copy commit's SHA1 + `git show COPIED_SHA1` anymore.

The thing it lacks imo, is more VI-style shortcuts (such as "gg" and "G"), displaying the SHA1 of each commit, and a feature to copy the hash of a specific commit.

<comment><USER18> I suggest you put a new section in your .gitconfig

      [pretty]
        whatever = "tformat:%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d %Creset%s %Cgreen(%an %cr)%Creset"

and then:

      --pretty=whatever

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Author mentions tig is available for Homebrew, which is great. Happily it is available for MacPorts, and installed successfully for me on OS X 10.6.8:

      port install tig

[https://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/devel/tig/Por...](https://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/devel/tig/Portfile)

<comment><USER20> Slightly off-topic, but is there a particular reason you prefer MacPorts to Homebrew?

<comment><USER21> Let's do it the other way: I've used MacPorts since 2006 without a single issue, what problems will I be able to fix by switching to Homebrew?

<comment><USER22> I remember when I upgraded to Lion everything got messed up. I had to spend a whole day mucking about trying to fix thing. I remember the only solution was to get a list of everything installed, uninstall everything, reinstall the latest version of MacPorts and then reinstall all the original packages.

<comment><USER23> Migration is still required to reinstall ports as the underlying system libraries change on a major version upgrade of Mac OS X.

However, situation still improved a lot since then. If the licensing of the port and all dependencies allow it, MacPorts now even offers pre-compiled binary archives for Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion. Often you do not even have to compile software yourself anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Honest question: what is wrong with the built-in gitk and git-gui?

<comment><USER25> Most likely answer: they don't work in a text-only environment e.g. an ssh session

<comment><USER26> ssh -X is your friend. I used at least once per week

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there any reason SmartGit doesn't get more love? I've been using it for over a year now and much prefer it over every other git client I've ever used (and I've tried a lot) <http://www.syntevo.com/smartgithg/index.html>

<comment><USER28> I haven't tried most of the alternatives mentioned on this page. I primarily use: [a] the command line. [b] git gui, (occasionally) for reviewing commits. [c] meld, for all merge and diff-related tasks. [d] gitk, pretty much only for viewing the history of a specific file. [e] SmartGit, for cherry-picking and anything more complicated than my memory can handle.

There are very few times that I would not prefer using a GUI, when the alternative would be typing all or part of a hash. The hash is for machine consumption, not human consumption: let the machine deal with it. To that particular end, I have found SmartGit to be excellent, and would recommend it.

Re: complaints about GUI tools: Someone is going to have to tell me why you would be using git via a remote ssh session instead of having a local copy. I am sure there is a logical scenario for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am using tig all the time, really convenient, I share sentiment of the author, command line is most convenient. I do use Vim and awesome Tim Pope Fugitive for blame and such operations. I am glad this information is publicized.

</comment><comment><USER30> _Or worse: they're written in Tcl/Tk…_

What's wrong with that?

 _it is the mutt to your Outlook, the Vim to your Emacs, the w3m to your Firefox._

Not sure I can follow?!

<comment><USER31> > What's wrong with [Tcl/Tk]?

Not speaking for the author, but Tcl/Tk apps tend to be ugly. I use gitk from time to time, but it's ugly and has some usability problems.

> Not sure I can follow?!

Mutt is a terminal-based MUA. Where Outlook is a giant monstrosity of a mail client, mutt is fast and tiny.

Vim is [can be] a terminal-based text editor. The claim here is that emacs is big, ugly, and slow and vim is smaller & faster.

w3m is a terminal-based browser. In comparison, firefox is a slow, giant, memory sucking graphical browser.

<comment><USER30> _Vim is [can be] a terminal-based text editor. The claim here is that emacs is big, ugly, and slow and vim is smaller & faster._

Ahem.

Not to start any flame wars, but Emacs can be run inside a terminal as well. As a matter of fact, that's the only way I run it.

"Ugly" is a matter of opinion for sure, as beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Emacs can (and does) make use of terminal colors, fonts are freely configurable. I can't think of anything else that would be relevant for a text editor, except of course if by "ugly" you refer to its architecture, editing model, or something like that, rather than its appearance. If not, Emacs 24 allows you to install your favorite color scheme (solarized, zenburn, dawn, etc.) right through the built-in package manager.

Re: "fast" - Emacs does not show any perceivable lag in everyday use, and my main computer these days is an old netbook. Still, Emacs feels fully reactive. If you refer, however, to startup times, then you may not be aware of the 'emacsclient' feature, which is the way a lot of serious Emacs users run their editor. You basically start an emacs daemon to which you then connect with thin interface clients, but I don't even feel the need for it, possibly because the usage model for Emacs is different from Vim: I usually open one editor window on a dedicated virtual desktop that stays open all the time, and where I live most of the time, while with Vim, people tend to quickly open a couple of instances in parallel. (Maybe these patterns have established themselves in the olden times where Vim clearly outpaced Emacs in terms of startup times, i.e., on older machines, and before 'emacsclient'.)

But you're certainly right about "smaller". As I said, I'm using an old netbook most of the time, but even on this limited machine, Emacs does not take up considerable disk space. Times have changed, and disks have grown. As for RAM, I've never noticed it, the hogs are usually others (I'm looking at you, Firefox!).

Vim is nice and small that you can install it even on very limited disk space, say on your stone-old mobile phone. (Enjoy using it there, too.) But that's not a typical scenario any more, diskspace is not longer an issue in modern computing, at least as long as we're talking about text editing..

I would still say that Vim has one great advantage over Emacs, namely that it is pretty much ubiquitous. You can log in to pretty much any server, and you can be quite sure that there's some variety of vi installed. That's really great. But if that was something the author of the original post referred to with his "analogy" is questionable.

That's why I wasn't sure I could follow :-)

<comment><USER31> :)

Long-time emacs user here ... I was trying to explain the context of the quote. I used "The claim here" to avoid making the statement myself and simply explain the comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Have used it for over a year at this stage, and did not realize the full potential until this article.

I have been using it as a direct replacement for git log, and its something that gets installed on any system I work on for any length of time.

<comment><USER33> Any time I install git, I install tig immediately after.

</comment></comment><comment> deepak-kumar Cool. Makes life easy. Accessing all info on command line is awesome. History/Diff view is best thing about it. Thanks for sharing. I see myself using it on daily basis.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't see why you can't direct link to the mode itself: <http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes it's useful to showcase some features to make people aware of how tools can be used.

I would consider this: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5667935> to be a good example of why that can be useful, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> i too like the fact that the makers of sourcetree write about it.

I've been using tig since the very first version. I have tried to find something similar for mercurial without luck. it's probably one of the main reasons why i prefer git over mercurial (usability wise anyway)

</comment><comment><USER36> Going to try it out. As an emacs user though, hard to beat vc-next-action and vc-dir.

[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ver...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Version- Control.html#Version-Control)

</comment><comment><USER37> Oh, I was looking for something like this today. Gitk is all well and good, but I have a whole heap of commands all tied into a custom Menu for Komodo Edit. I hope `tig' can work in it's output pane: it'll be a lifesaver if it does!

</comment><comment><USER38> If you're on a Mac with homebrew installed:

        $ brew install tig

</comment><comment><USER39> How to make tig absolutely monochrome? Didn't find an option, is the only way to set EVERY area like `color area white black`?

It's just burning my eyes with blue and magenta colors :)

<comment><USER39> Just FYI here's the config for monochrome but tig warns about `unknown color` on lines 8, 49, 51.

<https://pastee.org/tyk54>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I love this. I'm a command line junkie, as I'm sure a lot of you are.

I showed it to my boss and he told me I should've been born 20 years earlier (born in '91).

</comment><comment><USER41> I have to say, this is really, really cool. I'm also a lover of the command line. I'm excited to integrate this into my workflow.

</comment><comment><USER42> Great tool. Note that on OS X, it seems the UI drawing is buggy if you use the "ansi" terminal emulation. "xterm" works.

</comment><comment><USER43> Great writeup. I just started using git a month back for a pretty huge code base. tig will definitely help me out.

</comment><comment><USER44> I learned mercurial first, because it seemed much simpler.

I'd like to convert myself to git though.

</comment><comment><USER45> I find the latest git-cola to be quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER46> Seriously, who uses GUI nowadays?

</comment><comment><USER47> Welcome to System V! :)

</comment><comment><USER48> Using tig all dayy

</comment><comment><USER49> tig was the reason I moved from monotone to Git.

</comment><comment><USER50> finally! this is great.

<comment><USER51> Probably beats egit

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> find of the week.

</comment><comment><USER53> "So, the best GUI for Git is a command-line based UI?" lol</comment>


Micro apartments – the solution to the housing problem in New York? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/micro-apartment-building-nyc-1.3523175 <comment><USER2> Not exactly a new thing. I live in such a building in London at the moment. My apartment is ~20 sqm (~215 square feet).

</comment><comment><USER3> These used to be called tenements.</comment>


Amazon 'to launch book rental service' - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/8757122/Amazon-to-launch-book-rental-service.html

<comment><USER2> The idea of 'rental' of a digital file is very strange to me. Generally rental is cheaper than purchase because at the end of the rental period, you return the thing and it can be lent again. Thus the marginal cost of sale is the cost of production plus admin, while the marginal cost of loaning is just the admin of managing the rental.

Renting is done because it has a lower marginal cost than selling.

But with a digital file the inverse is true. Renting must have _at least_ equal marginal cost to selling, because you still have to supply the bandwidth for the download, but then you have the potential extra cost of trying to ensure that the device stops allowing access to the file past a certain date.

tl;dr Digital files are not physical objects, and it doesn't make sense to treat them the same.</comment>


Alphabet Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2016 Results - <AUTHOR> https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2016/Q4_alphabet_earnings/ <comment><USER3> Net income before tax:

2012: $14,469 m

2013: $15,899 m (up 9.9%)

2014: $17,259 m (up 8.6%)

2015: $19,651 m (up 13.9%)

2016: $24,150 m (up 22.9%)

Impressive growth for such a big company.

Sources: [https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2016/Q4_alphabet_earn...](https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2016/Q4_alphabet_earnings/) and [https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOGL&fstype=ii&ei...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOGL&fstype=ii&ei=QeWKWJG5B8OJ0gSGsJKoBA)

<comment><USER4> The way I like to think of it is that Google has a wondrous faucet that constantly exudes liquid gold, about a cubic centimeter every second. It is our job to keep the faucet open. Occasionally we also do other cool stuff.

(19.32 gr/cm^3)(37.88 $/gr)(60 * 60 * 24 * 365 s/year) ~= $23B, close enough.

<comment><USER5> The density of gold at its melting point is actually 'only' 17.31 g/cm3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was due to a one time tax hit.

>Alphabet was forced to swallow a $586 million tax charge on the non-GAAP line related to its stock-based compensation, costing the company about 83 cents a share — the difference between a substantial earnings miss and a huge beat.

>The tax charge is the result of a rule change in the U.S. targeting companies' use of stock-based compensation to sweeten their adjusted earnings numbers. The Financial Accounting Standards Board last year implemented changes that force companies to better account for the tax benefits of paying employees in stock instead of cash, and the charge reflected the benefit Alphabet had realized for the full year.

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-tax-hit-that-made- googl...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-tax-hit-that-made-google-miss- on-earnings-and-the-big-change-that-will-keep-it-from-happening- again-2017-01-26)

<comment><USER7> > _This was due to a one time tax hit_

Was it a one-time hit or is this the new normal for stock-based compensation (SBC)?

<comment><USER8> I believe the "one time tax hit" is adjusting for their past fake non-GAPP earnings which pretended giving away billions in stock wasn't material (I am guessing, so I might be wrong).

The practice of excluding billions in stock giveaways for non-GAPP earning (as not a real cost) was long seen as misleading by me and many others [http://investing.curiouscatblog.net/2016/04/21/buybacks- give...](http://investing.curiouscatblog.net/2016/04/21/buybacks-giveaways-to- executives-and-non-gaap-earnings/)

They also decided to stop using that deceptive practice, so going forward the non-GAPP earnings will be less fake.

It is sad Google used such deceptive practices. I believe it was forced into being less deceptive by accounting standards not by some decision to be less deceptive going forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there any reason someone would look at non-GAAP earnings instead of GAAP given that companies muck around non-GAAP deciding whatever costs to exclude depending on a whim?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Editorializing:

Paid clicks on Google properties +43% - "yaaay we're driving more paid search!"

Cost-per-click on Google properties -16% - "ouch our advertisers are seeing less value on these add'l clicks!"

To me the second part of this is going to be most interesting to watch - <USER2> the clicks they are onboarding are lower quality, this is going to be a net negative.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't work like that. Lower CPC does not mean lower value. It just means Google pushing into new eco-systems where CPCs are different from desktop search (e.g. mobile, YT, new publishers/partners) and it may take some time to reach equilibrium among the various actors depending on the ROI of the medium for the respective actors.

<comment><USER11> Precisely that. Change in Google's CPCs is a great example of Simpson's Paradox. CPCs on every property separately are growing, but aggregate is declining due to much faster growth in areas where CPCs started low

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting the effective tax rate went from 5% last year to 22% this year.

What would cause that?

<comment><USER13> Someone else will have to explain what on earth it means, but last year's press release said

> _For Q4 2015, our effective tax rate reflects impact of certain one-time > items in the U.S., specifically the resolution of a multi-year audit with an > ETR impact of 9%, as well as the full year impact of the R &D tax credit > with an ETR impact of 8%._

[https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnin...](https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnings/)

<comment><USER14> ETR = effective tax rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So crazy these numbers aren't in thousands like most companies' financials but in millions...

<comment><USER16> The financial statements of these companies boggle my mind sometimes. In addition to Google's, I saw this bit on Microsoft's today:

> Accounts receivable, net of allowance for doubtful accounts of $426 and $335

What they're saying is, that's $426 _million_ dollars they're owed that they expect to not get, because of defaults and deadbeat customers. And it's just a line item!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there some way to see how well Google Fiber is doing? It's really worrying that they seem to be slowing it down. Without such disruption and newly corrupted FCC, we might be entering pretty bad times for the ISP users.

<comment><USER18> I guess you missed the news: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/10/googl...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/10/google-fiber-laying-off-9-of-staff-will-pause-plans- for-10-cities/)

<comment><USER17> I didn't miss it. But it doesn't provide any financial info. And quotes like "Larry Page got tired of it" which were floating around the time that article came out, weren't really helpful. What I want to understand, is Google Fiber profitable or not? Just being "tired" because it grows slower than they expected, isn't a good reason to gut it.

<comment><USER19> > What I want to understand, is Google Fiber profitable or not? Just being > "tired" because it grows slower than they expected, isn't a good reason to > gut it.

Why is it not a good reason? Even if Google Fiber is profitable, it can still be a bad idea after you consider opportunity cost.

<comment><USER17> Because it shows they they didn't really mean it. If it's profitable, and they really wanted to disrupt the stale ISP market, they should have persisted. Otherwise they just showed that they aren't any better than incumbents.

<comment><USER20> It can be profitable on paper but be a net loss after opportunity costs are factored.

If it makes $500 million a year in profit, but the resources devoted to it could be used on a project that is reasonably believes to offer (for example) $700 million a year in profit, it makes financial sense to kill Fiber.

<comment><USER17> That's what incumbents say about not upgrading their users to better network, and instead spending crazy money on buying media companies. Later offer more profits, and greed drives their decisions.

The whole point Google Fiber was trying to make (at least Google hyped it this way), was that it's possible to have a profitable ISP that offers cutting edge network. But if Google think the same way as incumbents, then they didn't just fail to prove the point, they proved the opposite. I.e. that greed stops progress.

So no, it doesn't make sense to kill Fiber if Google's intentions and declarations were true. If they lied, then yeah, it's easy to understand what happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Also, Alphabet(GOOG) missed expectations. [https://finance.yahoo.com/m/e866d713-3773-3b26-83ce-07bb214b...](https://finance.yahoo.com/m/e866d713-3773-3b26-83ce-07bb214b9b7a/ss_live- blog%3A-alphabet-stock.html)

<comment><USER22> Personal pet peeve: the map is not the territory. Alphabet didn't miss anything; the analysts mispredicted performance.

<comment><USER23> >Alphabet didn't miss anything; the analysts mispredicted performance.

Taken to the extreme, no company ever underperforms and every unrealized expectation is the fault of the analysts.

<comment><USER24> False.

Most companies provide guidance. They under perform if they do worse than guidance.

Alphabet on the other hand does not provide guidance. And frankly it's quite silly to call 20+% growth a miss.

<comment><USER25> And yet in after-market trading the stock is down some 3%. I do think though it'd be cheaper for Google to find a way to diversify away from ads now that it's likely having more competition from the likes of Facebook and Snapchat but I'm no MBA nor an analyst so what do I know.

<comment><USER25> if you're going to down vote, please respond with why

<comment><USER26> 3% is a normal daily up and down for GOOG. In the past 15 minutes, it's regained 1/3rd of that loss in after-hours trading. The share price is still basically sitting at its all-time high. Your comment is potentially misleading, confusingly worded, and it's unclear what point you were trying to make. Some combination of those things should explain any downvotes.

<comment><USER25> Some data to back up the closing price (all but useless given the after-hours price and the apparent open for tomorrow being pretty much what it was today before earnings): I took the last 20 days of adjusted closing prices for GOOG from finance.yahoo.com, and a -2.18% change is 2.76 std-deviations away from the average fluctuation. Not significant but still a lot.

Thanks for response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Revenue is up 22% but EPS is up only 7%. I would normally expect Google's EPS growth to be higher than revenue growth. Where are they spending all that extra income?

<comment><USER27> They did increase headcount by more than 10k (from ~62k to ~72k). Headcount tends to produce more revenue eventually, but there's a lag. Staffing up by that much indicates that they're predicting significant growth.

<comment><USER28> (I'm an employee, with clear biases)

Precisely this. Large scale infrastructure growth also costs quite a bit, especially when you pay for your own network and other works in progress [https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/](https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/)

<comment><USER3> No, that doesn't explain it. Some cost has to be going up by _much more_ than 22%. Headcount only went up 16% - ie. from 62k to 72k.

<comment><USER29> Market rate for engineers has outpaced inflation for some time. That accounts for some of that gap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> You can see Ruth Porat (Google and Alphabet CFO) and Sundar Pichai (Google CEO) review their results on an hour-long webcast: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Gqd_r-8ng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Gqd_r-8ng)

</comment><comment><USER31> so Adwords is literally a money printing machine that shows no sign of slowing....

</comment><comment><USER32> Are we not going to talk about the fact that they are on abc.xyz? I think it's hilarious.

<comment><USER33> It's just their corporate domain name isn't it?

<comment><USER34> Yes, it's the alphabet website.

<comment><USER33> ...so why's it hilarious?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sony sells more than 2.1 million PS4s - <AUTHOR> http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/12/03/ps4-global-sales-update/

<comment><USER2> Thanks to the entire Sony PlayStation team for taking the console to the next level. The gaming world wouldn't be the same without you!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is good. Hope the momentum continues into the next year too. Well done, Sony.</comment>


Selling Fonts.zip - <AUTHOR> https://neil.computer/notes/selling-fonts-zip/ <comment><USER2> Giving the file listing of a font zip is a good selling point I guess.

On one hand, it makes it dead simple for someone to just Google for the filenames and download it elsewhere. On the other hand, they at least have a chance of having searches for the file name end up on their site if someone is looking for the original source.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. It's not easy to stop font piracy, most companies and legitimate users that want to use the font will buy it. I think they might as well make it easy for the revenue-generating customers and stop worrying about potential customers that weren't likely to buy their fonts anyways; DRM makes things worse for the paying customers.</comment></comment>