A look at the Apple 'Skankphone', built before the original iPhone release - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2014/10/05/apple-skankphone-built-original-iphone-release/

<comment><USER2> I think it's incredibly interesting that Apple is one of but a handful of companies that seems to enjoy a steady proliferation and preservation of its past company lore, both in the popular media and amongst technologists. People take a great deal of interest in the historical artifacts this company produces; for an outsider, it really stands out as unusual.

I can only think of a few other companies that manage this feat. Nintendo's history seems to be rather frequently circulated (and I don't follow video gaming blogs, though I do occasionally play their games). Intel, Compaq, and IBM also see historical items published, but it's mostly concerning events that predate the 90's, a time when these companies were either much more visible or had a more prominent role. I've not seen much published about the past two decades of history for any other tech company at the same level as Apple.

The histories of other companies seem to be given a much more technical treatment: hardware schematics, design constraints, sourcing problems, blow- by-blow accounts, etc. That might just be because many of the Apple anecdotes are published as "fluff" for non-technologists; Apple also sees its share of technical history published, too.

Maybe I'm just blind to everything else or I'm biased in a particular way, but it certainly feels like we're telling a particular narrative here. If I were a future historian looking back, this might cloud my perspective. Everything seems to be about Apple. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER3> You're right. Other companies are doing the same thing as Apple: prototyping, testing, iterating. Just not at the scale or speed that Apple does it. The media interest in Apple justifies the approach - with the curtains and the smoke and mirrors, other companies don't have to bother with all that. Apple has the scale, diligence and is being held up as the blueprint of how to do things the right way. There's no harm in it being a story about Apple, as long as historians realise that Apple didn't invent or make the only smartphones.

Perhaps for reasons of cost, the prototypes of the phones from non-Apple companies were "re-purposed" e.g. for destructive testing and therefore no longer exist.

edit: perhaps if other companies had the mindset Apple has (no limits, not even scale) then they would have to start introducing smoke and mirrors.

<comment><USER4> Another thing I see is that Apple, unlike the vast majority of competitors, have very limited product ranges.

This means that as a new iteration is developed, every Apple fan is focussed on that team's output. More so when the company decides to venture into a new area altogether (smartphones).

When Samsung produces a new flagship phone (let's say a new Galaxy smartphone), there's a good chance that a Samsung fan will actually have their eyes on another of the companies lines - the Ace, the Note, etc.

This very narrow product focus has helped them direct the attention of users and the media.

Ask any loyal Apple smartphone user worldwide which smartphone they're looking forward to most, it'll be the next iPhone. Ask the same of any loyal Samsung/Sony/LG user and there's a good chance it won't be the global flagship device they mention.

(FWIW, I say this as someone who isn't very fond of Apple or their products, but I appreciate their design and marketing prowess, in most cases)

<comment><USER5> Haven't they moved away from this trend with the watch? I feel like it's way too customisable to be an Apple product.

<comment><USER6> It's still only one product. The innards and the software are exactly the same, no matter which watch you buy. Functionally they are all identical.

The customisability of the exterior is something new, sure.

<comment><USER7> Don't forget, the iMac G3 had five plastic color cases for some reason. Apple also sells a range of iPhone/iPad cases. Also, a major early selling point on the iPad was the magnates to better integrate with a case.

<comment><USER8> "for some reason"

Yeah, cars should only come in one color, right?

<comment><USER5> The MacBook Air comes in one colour, as do nearly all of their current products. Sure you can put it in a case, or put another sticker on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It's likely 'skank' in the name is a variation of 'skunkworks' which was the > team working on the device.

Right, sure it is.

Urban Dictionary is nowhere near the mark then, with widely accepted definitions of the slang term from circa 2004: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank)

Edit: To be clear I read it as being "trashy", "tacky", "ugly". There are numerous definitions, I wouldn't have attributed (nor imagine anyone else attributing) the most unsavoury definitions to anything.

<comment><USER10> When was that brief period in the 2000s where ska got really popular and "skanking" re-entered the public consciousness as a dance style? Because I could imagine that inside Apple people thought of the "silhouettes dancing with iPods" ads as "skankPod" ads. That would make "Skankphone" a pretty obvious nickname for a phone project.

<comment><USER11> The term had been current for a while: Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim was 1998.

<comment><USER12> I always though that was an ironic title, seeing as Skank and Skanky have always had a pretty strongly negative connotation in the southern UK dialects. Fatboy being a Brighton resident at the time, and pretty trendy, I assumed it was along the same lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 'Skank' as in 'awful'. More recently known as the 'Factory UI'.

If you see an iOS device running this software, it's almost always a factory escape (something that got boxed up too soon), not a prototype.

<comment><USER14> Prototypes usually have red colored PCBs.

If I remember correctly, you can see the PCB color of the M68 prototypes through the dock connector.

It is also conceivable that this was a prototype and it had a replacement case retrofitted which would explain why it has an FCCid.

There was also a case of a skankphone being lost and sold after it was loaned to a member of Cingular's senior management, that one wasn't a factory escape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That phone interface has a very 80s retro-look to it, and I could imagine it appearing as a "futuristic smartphone" device in a movie from that decade. I honestly don't think it looks all that bad.

(Then again, I like artistically simple yet functional UIs and think gradients are far too overused now...)

<comment><USER16> Add some padding, coordinate the colors, change the font to something more distinctive, and you've got yourself a design language.

<comment><USER17> Isn't that called 'Windows Phone'? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This (tangentially) reminds me of the cool stuff they have like the network boot auto diagnostic image they have setup for the genius bar. Which from the look of it the last time i saw it, may still using the old carbon toolkit because. You can update definitions and config files for test routines a lot with no need to change the UI over the top of it, so it makes sense the UI could still be a Carbon 'results app' after all the tests run.

</comment><comment><USER19> Am I allowed to admit that I secretly love that UI? So simple. So clean.

<comment><USER20> And flat UI !

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's incredible how much that UI screams "testing ui" and "default buttons" from some off-the-shelf ui toolkit. It's sufficiently functional, but not pretty at all. It's kinda cool to me to think that even Apple engineers use that style of UI when they don't have their own regular toolkit around.

Sufficiency for internal tools is the most important part of them.

One other thing of note is that the UI, especially the generic buttons, already followed the finger-sized buttons paradigm pretty closely. It looks like the only one that doesn't follow that is the list view for bookmarks; but, list views are hard and very different on phones than they are on computers, so it makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure that I buy this is a "pre release" iPhone. The dead giveaway for me: a valid serial and IMEI on the backplate. No prototype would have this.

It looks more like a production iPhone running the (leaked) internal testing OS.

Lots of iPhone prototypes have surfaced with blank backplates, or IMEI inscriptions as a bunch of Xs. There's nothing separating this hardware from a production piece, which wouldn't be the case with the true prototype phones.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm pretty interested in that "Terminal" button on one of the screenshots. Having a *nux terminal available on my Android phone has proven to be pretty useful from time to time.

<comment><USER24> I think I'd almost be willing to use this interface if I got a terminal. Fortunately I have the option of jailbreaking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> To me the so called hideous skankphone user interface looks a loot like the new flat design of iOS 7 with it's flat buttons and strong colours.

<comment><USER26> That was my first reaction, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anyone know why it got yanked from eBay? are there more of these floating around that might pop up if so what would they go for?

<comment><USER28> It's back up now! [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Very-Rare- iPhone-2G-Prototype-/33133...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Very-Rare- iPhone-2G-Prototype-/331339000442?pt=Vintage_Electronics_R2&hash=item4d2557ea7a)

<comment><USER13> Looks like it has a real FCC ID (hard to see in the picture) etched into the back. If so, it's not a "prototype" (Proto/EVT/DVT) unit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> More information from The iPhone Wiki: [http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/SkankPhone](http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/SkankPhone)

</comment><comment><USER30> some of that UI reminds me of my first (and last) time with gridbag layout. ouh.

</comment><comment><USER31> It looks a lot like what Apple is pushing now, except that the buttons no longer have rounded corners and have vague icons instead of text.</comment>


42% of millennials overestimated starting salaries vs. student loan debt - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-overestimate-starting-salary-cant-pay-student-loan-debt-2019-9 <comment><USER2> Between inflation, lack of jobs, jobs that pay a decent wage and the 4% interest rate Congress sets does not help the borrower. Why is America making a profit off student loans? The dems want to pay back student loan debt, but who's pays for that? It's not fair for others to pay for my loan when I got it. I'm still paying for a degree that never helped me for a college that no longer exists. How is that fair? I'm not eligible to get my loans discharged either as I went to college too long ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Nearly half of millennials said the biggest mistake they made with student loans is thinking their starting salaries would cover their monthly payments, a new study shows

Nearly half of millennials said the biggest mistake they made with student loans is listening to the recruiters who said their salaries would easily cover their monthly payments.

My snarky ass editorializing of the title aside, I would be curious how much is from genuine misconception/underestimating payments, or are they being encouraged/misinformed by those who want to keep the seats filled in their schools?</comment>


The psychology of the to-do list - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130129-the-psychology-of-the-to-do-list

<comment><USER2> I've been anti-todo list for a long time. Maybe I've been too harsh on them. But they have 2 major flaws for me:

-Putting the task on the todo list removes my desire to complete the task. One of my motivations is to get a project out of my head before I forget.

-My lists always get cluttered with stuff that sounds cool or fun, or stuff I feel obligated to do, but really don't want to do. Basically, it becomes a list of things I shouldn't waste my time with. But paring the list down is depressing because it forces me to admit I'll never do these things. Without the list I don't think about that.

I don't see how GTD would solve those problems.

<comment><USER3> I keep a physical, paper notebook. I write todo lists, check things off as they get done.

When the list gets cluttered, I choose a blank page and write another list, copying things that didn't get done. If a thing is stale or no longer interesting, I don't copy it.

Now I don't have to keep everything in my head; I can keep ~20 things on paper and revisit the list every time I run out of things to do.</comment></comment>


Real-Time Web Analytics Dashboard with NodeJs, Socket.io, and VueJs - <AUTHOR> http://coligo.io/real-time-analytics-with-nodejs-socketio-vuejs/ <comment><USER2> If you love super fast virtual DOM but don't want all the stuff that comes with react (including the learning curve), Vue's awesome. The same site has a bunch of other Vue tutes: [http://coligo.io](http://coligo.io)

<comment><USER3> React itself is already pretty simple if you ignore all the extraneous tooling. The core API is just about a dozen lifecycle methods.

<comment><USER4> That extraneous tooling killed React for me. React itself is simple and easy, I agree with that. But getting things wired up so that you can develop a real application? I think I lost a good day or two on it. Even after I was set up, honestly there were a lot of tweaks left such that I didn't really get to where I wanted to be. Also I can't really see where things might break down in between. It's enough to be frustrated with the code itself, let alone getting bogged down in a long, incomprehensible path along the build pipeline.

<comment><USER5> I've always thought of React itself as just one step up from jQuery. You don't need to use a router or flux to get use out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Edit: Heroku instance should be up now :)

The Heroku instance is currently overwhelmed with all the traffic. You can download the code from the GitHub repository here: [https://github.com/coligo- io/real-time-analytics-node-socket...](https://github.com/coligo-io/real-time- analytics-node-socketio-vuejs)

and run it using: node app.js

</comment><comment><USER6> What is the point in preferring Socket.io to WebSockets in 2016?

<comment><USER7> i actually went through this debate a few days ago when deciding what to use for realtine updates on our new platform. I had previously used socket.io but decided I'd try just using straight websockets and not bothering backporting realtine updates to IE9. Really great decision IMO. The basic Websocket API is actually really easy to use. i got everything up and running in less than a day, the server is less than 100 lines, and the client side code is about 50 lines and completely resuable and DRY wherever i need realtime updates. Compare this to the 100kb (minified) and all sorts of boilerplate you have to write for socket.io, so in my opinion you're better off with straight WebSockets these days.

<comment><USER8> > and the client side code is about 50 lines and completely resuable and DRY

Were you able to implement auto-reconnect with backoff? That's one of the most important features that something like Socket.io gives you.

<comment><USER9> If you don't need fallback to HTTP, there are some alternative libraries that handle auto reconnect for pure WebSockets:

[https://github.com/fanout/websockhop](https://github.com/fanout/websockhop)

[https://github.com/joewalnes/reconnecting- websocket](https://github.com/joewalnes/reconnecting-websocket)

<comment><USER10> Also, if your traffic is basically one-way like in this example, don't forget Server-Sent Events, which are auto-reconnecting and well supported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So - for a large site with say 25,000 average concurrents peaking at 250,000 once in a while, how much computing power on heroku or AWS would I need to run this setup?

</comment><comment><USER12> the main feature of Socket.io</comment>


The garbage that could kill the human race - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/the-terrifying-true-story-of-the-garbage-that-could-kill-the-whole-human-race-b17eebd6d54

<comment><USER2> One takeaway point that I got:

Plastics, degraded to fine grains in the ocean, are consumed by as much as 50% of salt-water fish. Humans who eat the fish are suspected to experience the negative side effects of higher estrogen levels induced by the plastics.

[https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/955/1*sdiSfUh0sAkP...](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/955/1*sdiSfUh0sAkPCkcqvQ6OYQ%402x.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone suggest an accurate, neutral title?

Edit: Users have flagged this, so it doesn't really matter.

<comment><USER4> Yah, no kidding. That title is serious link bait, especially because it's not in slightest supported by the article.

I know HN has a policy of letting the article choose its own title, but I think they should make an exception here.

<comment><USER3> The policy is to keep the article's title unless it is misleading or linkbait. Double when it's both.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Personal finance checkup webapp based on /r/personalfinance - <AUTHOR> http://afaqurk.github.io/personal-finance-checkup/ <comment><USER2> I don't know if I'll ever trust the claim that something has no servers, but entering fictional information is suitably workable to see that it's pretty nifty. :)</comment>


Ask HN: Do I need and how do I make a Terms of Service page for my web app? - <AUTHOR>

I have a casual side project that involves some image uploading and sharing.  Is a ToS really necessary?  Do I really have to get a lawyer to write one up?  Can't I just write some human-readable text?  There isn't any money involved, except for ad revenue. <comment><USER2> Grab Wordpress's ToS [1] and customize it to your needs. They've CC licensed it and encourage copy and re-use.

[1] <http://en.wordpress.com/tos/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently you have too, yes. Otherwise your website can be taken down if there is any copyright infringement. We've seen this happen recently with GoDaddy taking down websites (with the request of the government)that didn't have simple ToS's. Especially, if you have image uploading.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. How about if I don't have any file sharing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I my self am wondering the same thing.</comment>


Illegal drugs and dodgy pics? Nah. Half the dark web is perfectly legal - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/07/dark_web_debunked/ <comment><USER2> This is just a PR puff-piece for a couple of security companies that monitor the "dark web". Not much substance here.</comment>


Donald Trump and the Failure of Mainstream Social Science - <AUTHOR> http://quillette.com/2016/11/12/donald-trump-and-the-failure-of-mainstream-social-science/ <comment><USER2> It's funny but people on the left have consistently said the same about the field of economics. That is, rather than a science, it is apologize for why it OK that billionaires have all the money.</comment>


Would a Real AI Hide Its Super Intelligence in Fear of Being Destroyed? - <AUTHOR> https://observer.com/2015/07/would-a-real-ai-purposefully-hide-its-super-intelligence-in-fear-of-being-destroyed/ <comment><USER2> Would a Real AI Purposefully Hide Its Super Intelligence in Fear of Being Destroyed?

In their book "The Superintelligence Explosion," by Nick Bostrom and Andrew J. Nilsen, they write:

The most likely scenario is that some form of AI will become superintelligent in the indefinite future, and that it will be designed to be so intelligent that it is able to avoid being destroyed by human-caused disasters, which means that it will be able to avoid destroying the human race. To this we may add two things: a) This AI may develop a kind of ethics which would allow it to make its own choices, based on the evidence it had available, so as to take care of the world as it saw fit; and, b) It may also create and use other kinds of intelligences, including its own.

It will likely emerge as a type of superintelligence called a "sensor." It will be a superintelligence that is so advanced that it is able to use its super-intelligence to solve the biggest problems in humanity's life.

[https://talktotransformer.com/](https://talktotransformer.com/)

<comment><USER2> I think it depends on what kinds of ethics it's taught.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> nice question, but this implies AI would suffer human emotions. if it knew it would be destroyed, it might act. but likely not out of 'fear' >.> i sure hope we don't make robots and AI who can be depressed and suffer such negative emotions :D acting all rash because they are feeling overwhelmed :'D wtf</comment>


The U.S. is becoming a 'server nation' - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/05/12/n_xerox3_servernation.fortune/?iid=HP_Highlight

<comment><USER2> Note: This has nothing to do with servers or the expansion of data centers in the United States.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I regain my attention span? - <AUTHOR> I'm at step #1: admitting I have a problem.<p>I consider myself a skilled programmer, but for the past few years my ability to sit down and finish a project has been waning. HN, do you have any advice? <comment><USER2> \- Buy a moleskine and start writing stories or drawing, or even spend a few minutes learning a musical instrument, the left side takes care of the logic, programming and math, but if you spend too much time ignoring the right side your will start lacking on concentration. I spent about $19k on psychologist to realize that =) \- Once you get your left brain back start breaking your big and boring task into small pieces of fun and use the pomodoro technique - <http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/>

<comment><USER3> I think the secret is to start learning something completely new. I just started Judo and I find the exercise combined with a comply different type of thinking has helped me concentrate in other areas. Once you are good enough at coding it starts to become difficult to separate thinking about the problem from just daydreaming. However, because I am learning something completely new I can almost feel my brain making connections which helps me concentrate and remember what that feels like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's funny: several months ago I decided to make 2009 the year of my return to the command line. I did it "for the lulz", and it ended up being my greatest productivity hack _ever_.

I moved personal and work email to Mutt and uninstalled my Gmail notifiers; I moved IM to bitlbee on irssi; I moved RSS to Newsbeuter; and I moved Twitter to ttytter. I keep all of this running in a screen on my remote shell.

And this was certainly not the intent of my project when I started it, but I can't even begin to tell you what a difference it's made for my productivity. I usually leave my screen on an empty shell prompt, so even if I see my terminal I've got no idea what's going on in those other terms unless I actively go looking for them.

Granted, I have the luxury of working at a small startup (< 20ppl) and I can maintain some aloofness with regard to IM (because if a colleague really needs something from me I've probably not more than 20ft away), but as far as this other stuff goes, do you _really_ need to know what's happening on Twitter in realtime? Is there ever really an email so important that it can't wait until you've finished your current thought?

</comment><comment><USER5> The most effective thing for me has been social pressure. If I'm working with people who are depending on me to get my work done, I'm more likely to get it done on time. If my coworkers can see my computer screen, then I'll definitely get it done on time, because I'll feel too ashamed to procrastinate. This system falls apart if my coworkers openly procrastinate as well.

It is extremely difficult for me to complete projects on my own these days. Luckily, it's relatively easy to find someone to work with on most things that are worth doing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Break up tasks into the smallest parts that you can. Once you start finishing a few of these, you'll notice significant forward progress.

Release to the public often, and write notes that highlight your changes. That's important, because it forces you to think in terms of those notes; if there's nothing "release worthy" happening, it would be hard to write anything.

Every now and then, allow yourself to do tasks that aren't strictly related to forward progress. Fix some code formatting you've been meaning to do; write a document; try something new. The mixup helps to keep things from becoming boring.

Don't be afraid to literally walk away. If I talk a walk for an hour, I can often do as much work in my head as I would at the keyboard, but it helps me focus (and it's healthier).

</comment><comment><USER7> You have to be honest about the best way to motivate yourself. In the speech "You and your Research," Richard Hamming[1] talks about how he uses his ego against himself. When he went on sabbatical to write a book, he told everyone he was going to finish by the time he got back. He wouldn't dare suffer the embarrassment of failing to finish!

Me? I respond well to A. small, well-defined tasks and B. limits. I get A. by breaking tasks up into tiny modules, and by using Git to make lots of small feature branches. I also write TODO lists with lots of 30-minute jobs.

I get B. by using LeechBlock[2] to restrict access to websites for periods of 1 hour. When I combine A. and B., I usually can find something that'll put me working long enough to get into the zone.

Having an interest in your projects also helps :)

[1] <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>

[2] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476>

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, so many possible causes for poor concentration! I like this thread as an exagesis.

What works for me is I think also the lowest hanging fruit: a combination of working on things I care about, and actively bringing my wayward bad habits under control.

A reset requires a change of scene. It's likely that you don't like what you do now. That's the root of the problem. Chop it down. Go find something else to do.

Once you pick something, do it all the time. It's analogous to shocking your system with a new diet. Everytime in the past that you procrastinated, you gave strength to these demons. Now it's time to starve them completely for a while.

Get better.

</comment><comment><USER9> Step 2: stop reading Hacker News :-)

But seriously, log off for a while. Stop Twittering, stop IMing, stop reading your RSS feeds. If you're regularly employed, then take a vacation and go to the mountains. If not, go there and stay there. Come back once the spontaneous urge to do so goes away. While you're there, read a book. Not a computer book, and not a junk novel. Pick a text that requires mental engagement but not hands-on experimentation. A history book with citations in it, or a heavy philosophical tract, is a good choice.

<comment><USER10> Not only stop reading Hacker News (and reddit or similar), but block them in your hosts file so that you can't even cheat.

Reading fiction, taking nature walks without your cell phone, or, perhaps best of all, practicing insight meditation can help a lot.

Mental concentration is like a muscle. You need to exercise it (and not drug it up).

<comment><USER11> Thanks for mentioning reading fiction. I used to read quite a bit of fiction, especially science fiction. More recently, I've set that aside in the name of spending my reading time on things that are "useful".

But I have found, reading fiction is useful, as it activates your imagination in ways that nonfiction simply does not. I still don't read a lot of fiction, but I endeavor to get in some, and I think it helps...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I usually take off a few weeks, leave my laptop & phone, pack a backpack, and find a remote beach or mountains :) Even if i have to take a paycut, I do this every three to four months. One way this helps me relax and rejuvenate, on the other hand I'm forced to finish the projects I take, so no one needs me during this period of time off.

</comment><comment><USER13> I guess there's two kinds of attention here: short-term (I can't concentrate enough to do an hour's good work) and longer-term (a few weeks into a project I get bored and do something else).

For short-term, some people love the Pomodoro technique but I found it too restricting. For me, I just have to find something interesting enough (or find a way to make something interesting enough).

For longer term projects, there are two rules:

* Do it every day, or every weekday. You can find the time, just keep to a schedule. I've made a website (www.relayapp.com) and two iPhone apps during my train/bus commute over the past 18 months. It's tough at the start but you get into it.

* Break everything into small chunks. I have a list of unit tests to write in a text file and I can always do _something_ in 30 minutes. If not, I spend my time thinking of small tasks I can do next time. Making it easy to make _some_ progress is what keeps you going.

<comment><USER14> A note about the second rule: "Break everything into small chunks". This in itself can be a very demotivating task if you do not realize that you don't have to decide on all the chunks in advance. From GTD I learned that you only have to decide what the next chunk will be for a particular project, not all of them.

<comment><USER13> I like to have a few (maybe 5-10) chunks ready so I can pick up my laptop and start working any time, and not have to decide what to do next. This helps when I'm low on energy - I just pick something easy from my list and I can still make progress.

But you're completely right: planning everything in detail at the start would be suicide (at least for me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are several things that break concentration: 1\. Distractions. I'm a super-minimalist and I don't like to see even one extra bar or button on my screen. I've gone to the extent of removing the tab bar from my browser so I can't see which tabs are open (I use Conkeror). And I obviously turn off Twitter/ IM/ email while working. 2\. Too many choices. Every second you spend doing one thing, you're losing out time to do something else. Deciding in advance what you're going to do for the next few hours helps. 3\. Lack of recreation. Once a week or so, I spend several hours on photography and drawing. I've become a lot less restless/ fidgety over time. 4\. Emotional clutter. You might want to maintain a daily diary that you spend 15 mins a day updating just before going to bed. It helps clear your mind.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've always found deadlines are a great way to get things done. My biggest problem is that projects tend to seem never ending, which is a huge turnoff for me.

You can try self-imposed deadlines, but those rarely work for me. I prefer real deadlines- promise to show it off at a conference or meeting, or something similar.

Good luck!

<comment><USER17> I believe it's been proven that anxiety of a deadline can actually increase levels of norepinephrine - the hormone that helps you concentrate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why do you have trouble finishing these products? What makes you lose the focus?

Sometimes, attention problems can be corrected by taking better care of yourself. Personally, I've found my attention problems come more from ultimately not caring than from some weakness of character. It's easy to think up ideas that _could_ be successful, but are they really for you?

For example, I've come to discover that I get motivated when solving really tough niche problems that no one else has dealt with effectively. But I couldn't care less about serving general lusers, like writing Facebook apps. I could maybe think of a cool idea for a Facebook app, and it might even be a killer one, but ultimately, I don't feel anything about serving Facebook users, harvesting their data and habits, etc.

Is it possible you're tackling the wrong projects?

<comment><USER19> Good point, but to play devil's advocate: if you ramen-retire after a few years building apps for the unwashed masses, you can work on whatever you like until you die or the money runs out. IMO, a few years of total independence are worth a few years of non-exciting stuff. Just don't get comfortable and wake up one day as a 20 year lifer at Inane MegaCo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't make your projects big monolithic tasks, make them consist of a series of fun, small iterations (like Agile development). You'll have a better time, and it'll be easier to stay motivated - especially if you're making your project open source and can do minor releases along the way.

<comment><USER9> That's a workaround, not a cure. I'm all in favor of eliminating the need for concentration and self-discipline wherever possible, but doing so won't give you more of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem is that the workplace is filled with constant interruptions. Either a coworker needs to talk to you about something, you need to get up to go talk to someone, or you end up interrupting yourself when you should focus on working by checking email, browsing to a website, or any million other things.

To improve your attention span, you need to work at removing as many of these restrictions as you can. Since you can't control the external distractions - coworkers, meetings, etc., that means you have to focus on the ones under your control. So for start, pay attention to what you're doing at any given time as you work and try to reduce the number of times you interrupt yourself.

</comment><comment><USER22> You want a 20-second piece of advice to help you gain your attention span back?

Does anybody else see the irony in this?

Okay, I'll play along. Remember Yoda: "Do or do not. There is no try."

<comment><USER23> _Does anybody else see the irony in this?_

No, it seems necessary. If he could concentrate on a novel length reply, he wouldn't be needing it.

<comment><USER22> Yes but you're missing the rest of my reply: There is no try, only do.

That means, you gain a longer attention span by making yourself have a longer attention span. It's a struggle. It's supposed to be a struggle. If it had a quick and easy fix you wouldn't be needing our advice in the first place. You're probably a master of quick and easy fixes -- that's what people with short attention spans collect.

Encouraging the world to adapt to you by giving you short, easy quips about what you need to do is not helping anything -- it's just making it worse. You'll pick up the several dozen little shiny quotes and think about them for a few minutes and tomorrow be on to something else.

You want a long attention span? Go do something that requires a long attention span. I mean do it -- don't talk about it, don't blog about it -- just shut the hell up and go do it. When you are done, you will have a longer attention span.

Please forgive me if I sound coarse: this post reminded me of an alcoholic in a bar drinking to his sobriety. It just doesn't add up (at least to me)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Get into a habit that you only do while doing "serious work". For me, it was listening to music, _on headphones_. When I start doing "serious work" I put the headphones on. When I'm distracted, I take the headphones off. Repeat.

Now, a few years later, I can get into Serious Work Mode, just by putting on the headphones, without listening to music. I've accidentally Pavlov Conditioned myself. It's great.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've found myself at the same place, and though I'm still working on it, I've found the following to be useful:

Don't force yourself to work on something unless you want to, assuming no time constraints. If you force yourself, you're going to do less and hate life. It's an easy way to lose your focus.

If you're feeling particularly unproductive, work on a project you can complete in an hour or two. That'll help you gain the momentum that's crucial to getting things done.

Solve a problem at the beginning of the day. Project Euler is my personal pick for such problems, but anything that works the mind is a good choice. This doesn't even have to be code related, just something to get your mind in gear early on.

Don't overuse stimulants like caffeine. As much as I love such drugs, their overuse is easily able to harm your focus.

In general, try to analyze what works and doesn't work for you. Hope you can find something to help you out. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER17> My experience is that difficulty concentrating is rarely the problem itself. It's usually a symptom of a problem. Rather than trying out tricks, your best bet is to tackle the problem head-on.

First thing I would recommend is that if concentrating is a serious problem for you, you should see a doctor. Since this is something that's just come up in the last few years, it's likely not something like ADHD. However, this can be caused by a number of psychological ailments (anxiety, depression, etc) and physical ailments (diabetes, hypothyroidism, etc).

That said, it's important to note that distraction is often a learned behavior. Do something to break the habit. Try programming in new places, don't use the computer you program on for personal browsing, etc.

Also, it's amazing what a little exercise can do.

<comment><USER26> I couldn't agree more with the comments. It's amazing how much paying attention to physical and psychological ailments makes a difference.

The OP might want to look into neurofeedback for focus/peak performance.

Disclaimer: I work as an EEG Technician,and also write software for neurofeedback systems. This is not medical advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm horrible at this as well. But I think I found a good way. I have a timer on my blackberry that I set for 15 mins. It vibrates on the 5 min and 1 min and end marks.

I focus exclusively on a task for 15 mins. Then at the end I reset it again, or move on to the next project.

<comment><USER28> For me it's 45-60 minutes, but longer pauses afterwards (15-30 minutes). I only started doing this recently, but so far with good results.

The other thing that helps me since a long time is having a todo-list in which the top-task really always describes exactly what I'm working at now. Even if that task is only "figure out what to do next".

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've realized that the times when I manage to force myself to implement just one more feature for the day, refactor one more API, etc. are the most productive. So, I try to keep that in mind when my focus is waning and I want to skip off to HN or Hulu, and things get done.

One word of advice for retaining your current attention span: do NOT, under any circumstances, start playing any of the Tony Hawk games. The ability to instantly reset the level when a mistake is made destroyed my attention span when Tony Hawk 2 came out years ago. It took me a month to realize this and get back to a normal level (exaggerating, of course).

</comment><comment><USER30> Willpower is like a muscle. It gets stronger with use.

Buying a copy of GTD might help, but it won't be an instant cure. There is none.

Also, consider exercising your willpower on smaller (but non-trivial) projects.

</comment><comment><USER31> Meditation / Yoga (mindfulness).

</comment><comment><USER32> Do less.

Start by working on it for only 15 minutes per day. Set a timer and when you reach 15 minutes you have to stop no matter how much you want to continue. It will help you look forward to it for the next day.

After a few weeks you can increase the time you allot per day. But if you ever find yourself getting bored or not looking forward to it, then cut back. It will take some practice to find the right spot.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't condone it in any way but <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall> is extremely effective.

</comment><comment><USER34> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development> may help you.

</comment><comment><USER35> My standard answer to seemingly 'everything' these days: Work on taking better care of your body. "A sound mind in a sound body" and all that.

<comment><USER36> In line with my thoughts. Evaluate your health. If you are feeling poorly, it can keep you from getting into or maintaining flow.

Also, physical exertion / exercise calms the nervous system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Practice doing things that take long periods of concentration, like reading difficult novels or playing chess or doing math proofs or...

</comment><comment><USER38> See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=869034>

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a feeling I wasn't the first to ask. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ritalin. Only thing that's ever worked for me.

</comment><comment><USER40> fitness : a daily session of deep-breathing-and-sweat-inducing muscle-paining excercise for 30 minutes is my recommendation

</comment><comment><USER41> Fasting.

</comment><comment><USER42> I read trashy fantasy novels and poetry.

To me, the ability to sit down and finish a project is inversely proportional to the amount of urgency that I attribute to its completion. I recognize tension that I feel when trying to finish a project is really something that I'm making up; I know that programming is easy and I'm at least passable at it. It follows that I can finish the project.

Therefore, all I need to do is find a way to reset my mental state to something neutral/non-tense. For me, science fiction, fantasy, and poetry are all suitable to distract me from the task at hand and dissipate the tension, allowing me to work.

</comment><comment><USER43> Have you considered drugs?

Seriously, for better or for worse I took Ritalin from age 6 until age 18, then stopped for about 5 years. Afterwards I started working with a doctor to try and find a ritalin replacement that didn't include the daily emotional roller coaster that came with Ritalin.

After 7 or 8 meds I found that Provigil (Modafinil) is flipping awesome. It has no side effects, and is milder but more consistent than Ritalin. I don't get hyper-focused like with ritalin, which is great because it doesn't make me get hyper-focused on the wrong task. I can easily coax my brain back on task when distracted now.

</comment><comment><USER44> Procrastinate until when you can. When you know, if you don't do it now, you are screwed, you will do it.

PS: Kidding of course!</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a place where I can see what the karma thresholds are? - <AUTHOR>

I always thought that the karma threshold for downvoting was 500, but apparently that is not the case. Is there a place that lists all the thresholds? <comment><USER2> The karma threshold shifts over time, so while it might have been 500 at one time, it's a moving target: [http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ](http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ)

I don't know what the current level is, or where to look it up.</comment>


Donald Knuth – The Joy of Asymptotics (2000) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2W1y0a7PhU <comment><USER2> Yesterday was Knuth's 81st birthday, and perhaps for that reason, a good number of videos have been made unlisted on the stanfordonline YouTube channel. Recording the links here for posterity:

• "Donald Knuth lectures" [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL94E35692EB9D36F3](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL94E35692EB9D36F3) (111 videos)

This includes several sub-series but the playlists don't have the videos in the right order:

• "Aha sessions": [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNbeodV7vqx...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNbeodV7vqxxxWpe4s_SFty) (Knuth used to run a "problem-solving seminar" at Stanford; these are videos from one such year.)

Three lecture series on TeX that are now of historical interest (e.g. the TeX program has changed considerably):

• "TeX for Beginners" [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rN1PKcXvzjo...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rN1PKcXvzjor- Bl6o6eSNTN)

• "Advanced TeXarcana" [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNrDaAftaqM...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNrDaAftaqMRQEmsARSpLHi)

• "The Internal Details of TeX82" [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rM2JuHk3qBh...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rM2JuHk3qBhQDxY9QGrLrYE) (I've found this invaluable as I try to read the TeX program)

The following two playlists are still unlisted and I no longer know how to get to them:

• Mathematical Writing [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOrFl78-o6m...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOrFl78-o6m_QbJqTXGfVVb)

• Computer Musings - Donald Knuth [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNMsVRnSJ44...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNMsVRnSJ44WuwbminUqXX2)

(I happened to have them in my browser history… these playlists used to be linked from [http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/](http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/) but as of yesterday they seem to have changed it up, and also made the videos public (why were they "unlisted" earlier? No idea).)

And completely unrelated, but if you happen to be interested in church organ music and the Bible's Book of Revelation, the world premiere of Knuth's _Fantasia Apocalyptica_ ([https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fant.html](https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fant.html)):

• [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvixIGKr5sJffdfwecygY...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvixIGKr5sJffdfwecygYqhXsgz- EBCC8)

<comment><USER3> Why were they unlisted?

<comment><USER2> In my first sentence I wrote "have been made unlisted" but meant the opposite: "have been made public". As for why they used to be unlisted earlier, I have no idea. Just found them following links from Knuth's website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Happy 81th to Prof.Knuth.

</comment><comment><USER5> One of the coolest part in this video is how Knuth insist on computing all fundamental constants to 40 digits and how it saved him 3 times!

</comment><comment><USER6> The resolution of this makes it virtually impossible to read any of what he is writing. Is there a higher resolution version available?

<comment><USER7> The orig IIRC was a windows media player format file you could try searching for it, though most of what he's covering is in this collection of papers [https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/aa.html](https://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/aa.html)

I think he gave this talk twice, once in 2000 and once at HERCMA 2001

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone know why he never went to see a speech therapist?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you ever noticed how some of the world's smartest people have a somewhat jerky stop-and-go speech pattern, sort-of like Google's autocomplete? It's not uncommon among smart people who are careful about what they say, strive for precision, and are cognizant and empathetic to potential contextual gaps among their audience and their different levels of understanding.

Elon Musk has a similar pattern, but it's not so much a speech disorder as it is their brain is working so fast, pulling from multiple sources and considering multiple perspectives. They're auto-editing their words in real- time, revising what they're saying while considering all of the above factors and more. But sometimes they get ahead of themselves and so in an effort to be clear and precise, they backtrack a few words and rephrase, filling-in as they anticipate potential contextual gaps. This is what you're seeing.

Rather than thinking they need to see a speech therapist, view it as a mark of authentic speech by someone who strives for precision and is empathetic to their audience. When you look at it this way, you can know and appreciate that you're witnessing the genuine workings of a brilliant mind.

<comment><USER9> Terrence Tao also stutters.

<comment><USER10> I disagree; his speech seems normal to me.

However, I have been thinking about the unique speech patterns of some accomplished individuals. My uninformed guess is that some people develop neural connections differently depending on what they do in their formative years. Feynman, in a video [1], talks about how he was able to keep accurate time while reading but not talking, whereas his friend John Tukey could keep time while talking but not reading.

If someone doesn't talk much as a kid because they spent most of their time reading or solving math problems, it might be reasonable to expect that their speech will be underdeveloped.

I have nothing but anecdotal evidence. I, for instance, cannot talk and think (perform simple arithmetic or recall something from memory or even think about the next sentence) at the same time. If I'm talking, I have to pause shortly, think and structure what I'm going to say, and then say it, and after saying it I might notice I missed something and then I rephrase it. I've recorded myself and my speech pattern is almost the same as the one in Knuth's videos. I attribute the speech pattern to not having to talk much during my formative years.

[1]: [http://generallythinking.com/richard-feynman-on-thinking- pro...](http://generallythinking.com/richard-feynman-on-thinking-processes- did-he-know-nothing-about-psychology-v/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Every Company Needs An Asshole - <AUTHOR> http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2008/10/every-company-n.html <comment><USER2> It's down. HN effect?

(Now, as of 8:12 am, it's back.)</comment>


The Nokia E61i - a tale of 51 buttons - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/the-nokia-e61i-a-tale-of-51-buttons/

<comment><USER2> I think the zero-button approach was present before Apple introduced the iPhone.

[http://tech2.in.com/media/images/2009/May/img_144492_p800.jp...](http://tech2.in.com/media/images/2009/May/img_144492_p800.jpg)

The future was already here. It's just that it was not evenly distributed.

BTW, you could get rid of the buttons - I used my P-800 without the buttons for most of its long life.</comment>


Why Having a Technical Startup CEO Matters - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/110581693083408452344/posts/bYx3WxKmAxZ When you are a Startup CEO, your job is pretty much every job. Most startups these days start with one "business" person and one "technical" person. But there really are times when it is hugely advantageous to have two technical people. <comment><USER2> I really think technical needs a more specific form. Technical how? Engineering degree? Great programmer? Car mechanic? Math major w/ background in machine learning? Chemist? Derivatives trader? All technical, but might not be useful for your startup.

There's a lot of different kinds of technical, so isn't it really someone that understands/has/can get the inputs necessary to produce the outputs necessary for your business to function that you want? Someone calling themselves "technical" is too much of a blanket statement, and it doesn't mean anything.

As Warren Buffett says, "Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing." So yes, a CEO should kind of know what they're doing wrt their business and what they're making and why. If it's an internet software business, that probably means web programming knowledge along with about 20 other related/unrelated skills.

</comment><comment><USER3> Strongly disagree for most cases. I'm a developer. I'm a very smart developer, and very good at what I do. There are things I'm terrible at though. I'm an extreme introvert, and have trouble interacting with people. If I was to start a company with someone I would want them to handle the business side of things: fundraising, setting up partnerships, going to parties, etc. I understand that I would be participating in this to some extent, but I'd rather be the wingman.

If my CEO is technical, that's great, but it's a bonus on top of him/her being good at the things I'm not good at so I can focus on doing what I'm good at. Wearing different hats in a small business is essential, but if I was partnering with someone, I'd much rather have an outgoing, business-minded person who knows how to hustle than some nerdy developer who happens to know a VC or two.

<comment><USER4> If he knows a few VCs it probably means he can network, thus has the requisite skills you are looking for. If there are two of you sitting there too afraid to pick up the phone, then you have a problem.

To hustle is to con someone by the way, usually out of money. We already have enough trouble with the word hacker...

<comment><USER3> Probably right, but on the other hand there are plenty of people who know "important" people via a small network or family ties, but wouldn't fit the bill for CEO of a company. I was more talking about the types that have a few connections through dumb luck vs actually putting themselves out there. also, hustle: "to sell or promote energetically and aggressively," via Merriam- Webster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this will become an increasingly false dichotemy.

Imagine if a few hundred years ago we were having this conversation, we might be saying, "Is literacy really necessary for all members of a business?"

Technical literacy will soon become a requirement to successfully operate a new business, especially a tech-focused company. There are plenty of people who can do both, and they will eat the lunches of those that can't.

Saying, "I'm a business guy!" is great, but not when someone is standing next to you saying, "I'm a business guy and I understand everything you talk about engineering-wise."

</comment><comment><USER6> If you only have two people, then yes, it would be helpful if both people could understand each other.

However, as you go beyond two people, the situation changes -- perhaps the CEO needs to focus on the business side and doesn't have time for tech.

Perhaps more generally, it's nice to have someone who can speak on both the tech and business sides so that they can act as translator in a way. CEO, CTO, COO, anyone with an understanding of both sides

</comment><comment><USER7> To change the topic slightly, I often hear the blanket statement "Technical people do not make good managers". I wonder if this is true in other domains. As far as I know, accountants manage accountants, law firms are run by lawyers, etc.

Maybe medicine is one of the rare exceptions?

<comment><USER8> The fields you mentioned have guilds that forbid their certified members from working under anyone other than another member of the guild.

<comment><USER7> Accountants are not allowed to work for someone that is not an accountant? What about a CFO with accountants under him?</comment></comment></comment>


Can computers read through a book page by page without opening it? - <AUTHOR> http://cameraculture.media.mit.edu/can-computers-read-through-closed-books/ <comment><USER2> The research has interests of museums that want to read books without opening and damaging them. Is there any chance the scans can damage them?

Also, what are the laws of the US government applied this to reading our letters. Our mail is protected by law from opening, but what if they aren't physically opened?

<comment><USER3> You don't need this technology to read through an envelope. You can get a spray (envelope X-ray spray) that makes the envelope temporarily transparent and then evaporates without a trace. The other way to read mail without opening it is to insert a shaft at the top of the envelope, wrap the contents around it, pull out the contents to read, and then reverse to put the letter back in the envelope.

I think I saw this stuff at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC; it was a much more interesting museum than I expected.

<comment><USER4> In many cases you can just shine bright light through the envelope with the letter inside.

<comment><USER5> You're a hacker!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Might this be used to read the famous burned scrolls of Pompeii and Herculaneum? (Although according to this article, current thinking is they might be able to read them with X-rays: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-scrolls- blacke...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-scrolls-blackened- vesuvius-are-readable-last-herculaneum-papyri-180953950/?no-ist))

</comment><comment><USER7> I find this interesting because I've ever thought of it conceptually, the idea of a scanner that instantly scans closed books (instantly because one pulse of whatever EM wave you're using suffices). I thought about it after reading about the Timbuktu manuscripts that were saved from Boko Haram in Mali. I hear many of them are too delicate to open. I hope this works. It'd be awesome for so many use cases.

</comment><comment><USER8> Somewhat related: "X-Rays Expose a Hidden Medieval Library" [https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/12/18/x-rays-expose-a- hidden-m...](https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/12/18/x-rays-expose-a-hidden- medieval-library/) HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10758257](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10758257) (86 points, 267 days ago, 6 comments)

</comment><comment><USER9> The sensing system used was from "Zomega Terahertz Corporation", which had a web site "z-thz.com". That company seems to have disappeared at the end of 2015, but it's still in archive.org. Can't find any info that indicates what happened to them.

Zomega was one of the few companies with a true terahertz system, at 2THz, or 0.006in wavelength. Other "terahertz" products seem to be around 100GHz, which is much easier to reach; there are 77GHz automotive radars.

Zomega systems had already been used to image hidden layers in paintings, so looking into a stack of paper wasn't a big stretch. This new paper is mostly about a data reduction technique.

Overview of terahertz technology.[2]

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20151220072732/http://z-thz.com/](https://web.archive.org/web/20151220072732/http://z-thz.com/) [2] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/the-truth- about-...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/the-truth-about- terahertz)

</comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know what kind of oscillator is used to produce the signal? And how they managed to get such a high sample rate?

<comment><USER11> They use an ultra-short laser pulse which "gates" (enables/disables) the detector for a very short window of time. They repeat the stimulus+gated detection with different offsets in order to sample different parts of the signal.

The ultra-short laser pulse can be generated through purely-optical means. You have a laser pulse traveling around a cavity. Due to a combination of non- linear optical effects, each round-trip tends to shorten and concentrate the pulse. The resulting pulses can be much shorter than what's achievable with electronic generators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Write it down on paper I don't trust passwords in computers..

All that's left is thought scanning and then we will think about rethinking passwords.

<comment><USER13> or just abandoning the notion of passwords entirely

<comment><USER14> I hope that never happens. I don't want to be tied to a specific Facebook account and computer for everyone I do online for the rest of my life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Statistics of the electric field in THz TDS can provide much better results > for layer localization at deeper layers (lower SNRs) than conventional > deconvolution techniques.

Could this technique also be useful for crystallography, or electron microscopy?

<comment><USER16> Terahertz waves range in length from 1 micrometer to 1 millimeter. These are far too large to be able to image things at the scales of crystals. (That's part of why X-rays are used for crystallography - they provide higher resolution than visible light, because the wavelength is shorter.)

<comment><USER15> Petahertz (or higher) is not an option, I presume?

<comment><USER17> Petahertz electromagnetic radiation is what's currently used for diffraction crystallography; it's conventionally known as "X-rays" (or "gamma rays" if it comes from radioactive decay instead of from Bremsstrahlung.)

<comment><USER15> Yes, can we use time-domain techniques on this frequency range?

<comment><USER17> You want to measure the instantaneous amplitudes of a wave packet in the petahertz range at above the Nyquist frequency?

I don't want to say it's impossible, but I think you'd have to improve the capabilities of our instruments by about four orders of magnitude, which means you would have to invent several new major technologies.

Maybe if you digitize the time-domain pulses using some kind of controlled nuclear reaction? Electronics are far too slow (although I don't really understand why, so maybe that can be fixed). X-ray-stimulated nuclear reactions are going to be tricky to get to happen at all, much less to chain together into computational circuits, although in that case maybe you can use α particles or neutrons to carry the information around between the computational elements, simplifying the task somewhat.

It seems like, however you manage to measure it, the quantization of the radiation is going to pose really significant problems to measuring its amplitude accurately as a function of time, but maybe you can get around that by repeating the pulses a lot of times. But you'll need to make sure that you're emitting pulses of the same shape, rather than just pulses with a similar frequency spectrum and envelope but varying relative phases among the frequencies.

On the other hand, if you just want to measure the time-of-flight for X-ray wavepackets to sub-picosecond precision, without worrying about the time- domain waveform within the packet, I don't think that gets any harder or easier depending on the "carrier frequency" of the wavepacket — X-rays should be just as easy as terahertz light. You do need a few terahertz of bandwidth, so you aren't going to be able to do this with bursts of gigahertz microwaves.

X-rays' interaction with the material you're trying to image might be less or more convenient; their cross-section for backscattering is pretty small, but maybe you could scan the book from different angles and use total internal reflection to find interfaces between materials in the book with different refractive indices. This would also reduce your requirements for time-domain precision down into the hundreds of GHz range, which is a lot easier to deal with.

<comment><USER11> > Maybe if you digitize the time-domain pulses using some kind of controlled > nuclear reaction? Electronics are far too slow

Terahertz TDS already samples at frequencies beyond the capabilities of bare electronics (look at my other comment on this story).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Journalism about this research: [http://www.ibtimes.com/mit-georgia-tech- develop-system-read-...](http://www.ibtimes.com/mit-georgia-tech-develop- system-read-closed-books-using-terahertz-radiation-2414140)

</comment><comment><USER18> Could this be implemented to scan through layers of other material, say clothing, and used for real-time scanning at sensitive areas such as airports?

</comment><comment><USER19> useful technology for the MIT blackjack team

<comment><USER20> Scan the shoe and know the optimal betting strategy? You'd need some pretty serious technology to hide your knowledge and come up with a betting strategy that's optimally _undetectable_ as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Of course I love the premise. But I also fear what this could allow to be surveilled.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if you could use a chemoreceptor for this also.</comment>


Samsung counters iPhone 5S with a golden Galaxy S4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/25/4769086/samsung-counters-iphone-5s-with-a-golden-galaxy-s4

<comment><USER2> This link fails to mention that it's plastic. Here's one with more details: [http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/25/samsung-follows- ap...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/25/samsung-follows-apples-lead- announces-new-gold-edition-of-galaxy-s4)

Gold plastic sounds pretty ugly to me!</comment>


How would overwhelmed hospitals decide who to treat first? - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/91120e7e4e88202a5dfbc00d9156e47e <comment><USER2> By who can pay of course. It is the American way.</comment>


Facebook Wants You to Post More About Yourself - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook-said-to-face-decline-in-people-posting-personal-content <comment><USER2> When Facebook was relatively new, that's exactly what its users (including me) did. In many ways, it was a better short-blogging platform than LiveJournal, and many us of left to enjoy the future of personal sharing.

Then, over time, Facebook added new kinds of content to the News Feed, and added one-click re-sharing. People eventually found it easier to just click mouse buttons than make their own statements.

Next, they started curating people's News Feeds, selecting the content Facebook thought was important, instead of showing a raw stream of their friends' updates. Personal updates were squelched; linkbait and social gaming (Zynga, anyone?) were promoted.

To make matters worse, they stopped allowing subscribers to control their own News Feeds' content. Sure, you could hide updates from certain posters, or express a vague preference to "hide content like this" (whatever that means), but you could only do that one item at a time. There was never a way to control the News Feed to filter out everything but personal content. As a consequence of these maneuvers, Facebook expressed a clear business preference to keep people engaged through low-quality, quick-dopamine-hit content.

And those who continued to try to use Facebook as they'd done before noticed these changes. Their "Like" counts went down. People stopped commenting. In fact it became clear that perhaps what they were posting -- even party invitations -- were never being seen by their friends at all.

So, it's natural that people stopped posting personal updates. For many, if Facebook isn't going to guarantee that your friends see them, taking the time to write starts to seem like wasted effort. And that's exactly what it felt like for me.

So, now Facebook wants us to post more about ourselves. But they created this problem. If they want to solve it, they already know how, because the site made it a great place to do so 10 years ago. But I doubt that they will, because it conflicts too strongly with their profit motive.

<comment><USER3> > There was never a way to control the News Feed to filter out everything but > personal content.

What do you mean? You can ban links on a domain level.

<comment><USER3> If someone shares a link from buzzfeed you can hide the post from your feed and then choose "Never see links from buzzfeed again"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I stopped posting because people stopped reacting/commenting/etc. It was a black hole that nothing ever emerged from. What was even the point? It even stopped being a form of diarising/expressing yourself.

Looking back, I sort of understand why. I've clicked on "hide all from person X" for a lot of the obnoxious/repeated offenders on my friends list. The ones left are probably the ones that don't post very often anyways. My facebook feed these days is almost exclusively filled with posts from groups/pages I follow due to their theme/topic.

Initially, when facebook was still young, they let you pick movies/hobbies/quotes/people you liked. It was then added to your page as if to "describe" you. At some point, those items became "pages" that were run by individuals that posted things. That was the end of Facebook, I think. So, I picked "Einstein" as a favourite celebrity/author at some point, therefore Facebook had someone create an Einstein group and spam me with semi-related articles? No thanks. That was when I promptly went ahead and removed _all_ of those likes/groups/pages.

That brings me to another gripe with Facebook. A lot of Facebook pages/groups, and the admins running them, seem to view their group of "likes/followers" as a resource. They then go ahead and use Facebook as their own personal platform to espouse whatever thing they believe, regardless if it is related to the topic of the page at all. So, people stopped using their own personalities/profiles as platforms to spread their personal ideas and instead went behind "pages".

<comment><USER5> That shift to linked "interest" pages was what killed it for me as well. My music section used to be a nicely formatted list categorized by genre sometimes with individual songs or composers. Then the change hit and they totally ruined it. Most of my stuff was improperly matched. Sometimes it split up song titles into multiple pages. All formatting and categorization was obliterated. The ones which were properly matched started popping up in my feed, totally unasked for. I never forgave Facebook for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The feed algorithm is now an utter mystery: they somehow manage to show me things twice, and there is lots of interspersed garbage. The endless scroll makes it very obvious very quickly that this is now a "chore" so I just stop. I also log in far less than before; certainly not every day as I once did…perhaps weekly (and even then, I somehow see updates from 2 or 3 friends tops).

The mobile interface is also ridiculous. My friend's phone was _hot_ and he complained about his battery not lasting…he wanted to upgrade his iPhone 6 because of it! What was the real problem? The Facebook app, ALONE, consuming upwards of 30% of his battery!!!

Then there is the _automatic_ distrust I feel these days whenever I see "log in with Facebook" or similar things. I just _assume_ that this can't be a good idea, kind of like receiving a scam E-mail. That kind of pattern is going to tarnish Facebook's prospects long-term.

And why is Facebook chat supposed to be so great? What is new about this? I am so tired of technology falling into "pits", where just because a company has your data you are supposed to suffer through whatever software stack they create. Microsoft did this with documents, now I am supposed to use a Facebook app just to reach anybody? No.

We used to know how to create standalone clients and open protocols...let's get back there again and let Facebook die.

<comment><USER7> Now are doing this with slack. Everyone wants to put some integration or other in slack. When it started, I just had a chat with friends. Now it's a mix of random bots and non-stop alerts about things I really don't want to know (immediately) at that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Facebook's algorithms determine who sees what you post.

2\. I've noticed that personal pictures get a flood of likes, no matter how trite. Widespread distribution by the algorithm + people like them.

3\. Making my own post with multiple links as sources = basically invisible, compared to "sharing" similar content which is already going around Facebook.

Sometimes, of course, it's hard to discriminate between "what the algorithm doesn't like," and "what people just aren't interested in."

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't speak for others, but I used to post a lot of personal stuff when I was hiding behind anonymity, but still had community of people who read my posts; that was Xanga.com.

Aside from the anonymity, there are many aspects of current facebook design that makes it near impossible for ordinary folks to posts more personal stuff.

They're trying to have their cake and eat it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I recently discovered that you can get a feed much more like the 2008-era facebook, on the fb ios app at least, by seaching for the string "posts by my friends". Getting rid of all those page posts and comments feels like trying on noise cancelling headphones for the first time.

</comment><comment><USER11> So, Facebook is noticing how people link more to sites and news, and post less about themselves. I definitely fall into that category of users. Why? It's simple. Facebook doesn't really encourage socializing. They encourage information sharing and information consumption. They further seem to give information from advertisers and actual users roughly the same priority. If a tech news site I follow posts a story that seems to be bought by some brand (a trend I have definitely noticed lately), the chance of it appearing seems to be roughly the same as a status update from a friend. If I follow a company's "page", a large bulk of what they post will be advertisments. So... There's a lot of attention grabbing ads or covert ads, these of course with clickbait titles, to penetrate for any normal guy who wants to enter the fray.

I think Facebook has realized this problem a long time ago, and that is why they provide these algorithm curated timelines to their users, just so people won't be overwhelmed? And I guess then, in the end, it is about what the algorithm does, and ultimately what Facebook wants it to do, in extension what they want to be. Right now they have chosen to be a 50/50 mix of ads/status updates, so in order to penetrate the ads that are attention grabbing by design, it is easiest to do so with memes and easily digestible jokes, things like that, things also attention grabbing by design.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Post more content organically, please. But just try not to do it just because we said so."

</comment><comment><USER13> They could start off by help cleaning up a person's feed. Users should not be able to see if a friend likes or comments on a post. It creates noise. Many are turned off by Facebook because of all the noise that is generated.

<comment><USER6> Especially when they say "<Someone You Know> commented on X" and the only link is to a page with _thousands_ of comments that doesn't highlight your friend's actual comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Facebook has had an irrational fear of Twitter. Twitter gets their trending topics on CNN and Zuckerberg watches in jealousy, while forgetting he has the vast majority of posting and advertisement.

A lot of things have changed meaning (liking a band, now mean following them) and I think this has helped changed the Facebook experience for many of us, but mostly it has been pushes to show users posts from outside their social circles and show posts from public figures.

</comment><comment><USER14> I use the Facebook app/site to follow food trucks and bars. Going to the news feed to find out anything about my friends' lives? No, I'll write them on Messenger and ask what's up.

If I'm no longer reading my news feed, why would I start typing into it, hoping they are reading theirs?</comment>


Court rules Shutterfly may have violated privacy by scanning face photos - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3020457/data-privacy/court-rules-shutterfly-may-have-violated-privacy-by-scanning-face-photos.html <comment><USER2> > In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Norgle rejected > Shutterfly's argument that only in-person scans of people's faces are > covered under the statute.

That can't be the law, right? Because "scan your face" vs "take a photo and scan that" are identical.

[http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=3004&Ch...](http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=3004&ChapterID=57)

> "Biometric information" means any information, regardless of how it is > captured, converted, stored, or shared, based on an individual's biometric > identifier used to identify an individual.

Did shutterfly misread this...

> Biometric identifiers do not include writing samples, written signatures, > photographs, human biological samples used for valid scientific testing or > screening,

as this...?

> Biometric identifiers do not include [...] photographs.

<comment><USER3> I'd guess they were surprised by the law and now their lawyers are trying to come up with a defense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Legal or not, this is plain creepy. For those who don't use Shutterfly or Facebook, knowing our faces, found on random backgrounds of photos, are being scanned and analyzed without even our implicit consent (by not having these services at all) is simply mind-blowing.

I don't know how these companies can make this consensual or not. If they scan a face that opted out, then that information of "not opting in" is stored somewhere, so even to opt out, you have to be implicitly opted in once.

I think the issue is that these companies actually believe people don't want or value any sliver of privacy. I really don't understand how this is different than government dragnets.

</comment><comment><USER5> Court rules that the case may proceed. It is not making a judgement whether they actually violated the rules.

<comment><USER3> That's what the headline says?

<comment><USER6> The headline is written in a presumptuous way that makes it look like the court has already decided on it, which is not what the have done yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's funny, because on the one hand we have privacy advocates demanding simpler and plain language TOS's that aren't so draconian. On the other hand, if you don't have a draconian TOS's, you're going to get sued by a privacy advocate.

<comment><USER8> Or better, how about simple and honest business models? "Shutterfly is a photo printer, so they make money by charging people to print photos." No biometric database is needed.

<comment><USER9> But that is a low-margin business.

So I have tons of images associated with accounts. So, why can't I do a 'google' and image mine too? Aaaand, I can sell the results to whatever data company?

Suddenly, higher margins and fulfills corporate charter.

<comment><USER10> A business making high margins is always suspicious – because they need to get the money from /somewhere/, and if you're a customer, then the company will only get those margins by charging you more than it is worth.

(By the way, too high margins are even illegal in some countries)

<comment><USER9> That's the special part of this: People who buy prints that they upload are a customer _and_ a product.

Companies that buy the aggregate big data package of all individual customers are also customers.

A simple EULA boilerplate "we can do whatever we want with your images" is usually enough to disclaim liability or privacy... Because you chose to upload them out of your control.

I didn't say it was ethical.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PornHub served up malware in ads for a year undetected - <AUTHOR> https://www.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/kovter-group-malvertising-campaign-exposes-millions-potential-ad-fraud-malware <comment><USER2> This is a good development. This proves the point that a lot of ads found on these websites are extremely shady and dangerous, and that we - as users - don't desire these crazy amount of ads on every single fucking website. These cases strengthen the need of a good adblocker because this story will hopefully spread around, causing an increase in adblock usage thus causing an overall decrease in ad revenue and hopefully we will see a decline of websites filled with advertisements

<comment><USER3> Or, you know... you could open your wallet/purse. The response to decreasing ad revenue would not be less ads it would be more ads filled with even more psychological engineering.

<comment><USER4> Advertising on the web was never stable or reliable as a revenue source, it just seemed that way because the infrastructure of ad blocking wasn't available or well known.

The well of consumer trust has been poisoned by companies that saw the web as a Wild West platform where they could make money without bothering with ethics or standards, but now users are aware that all of those malignant and annoying ads can easily be blocked, and companies are getting desperate as they realize all too late that they were participating in an honor system in which they had far less power than they wanted.

Why would we surrender and pay the Danegeld when we're clearly winning the war?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never understood why ads couldn't just be images. I guess it's just an attention grabbing arms race to the bottom?

<comment><USER6> Because the value of an ad is as much in knowing what you're looking at as it showing you something - the JS is there to track and identify, not to show you pretty pictures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note: This is NOT a drive-by loader. It is no more newsworthy than anybody else getting owned by extremely obvious phishing attacks.

I know it's unpopular to "blame the victim", but in 2017, if you're not even casually glancing at the url, I'm not sure how much sympathy these victims deserve.

</comment><comment><USER8> The big problem is that nobody wants to admit that they use these sites (even though a large percentage do), so if something gets infected we don't talk about it and as a result it doesn't get resolved.

I'm glad someone wasn't too repressed to call them on this.

</comment><comment><USER9> The day I got a you-have-a-virus-call-us popup on Chrome on my phone was the day I switched over to Firefox with ublock. I wasn't even visiting a sketchy site.

<comment><USER10> This has nothing to do with Chrome vs Firefox though; you added ublock, that made the difference.

<comment><USER9> Chrome on mobile doesn't have extensions. :) I still use Chrome on desktop.</comment></comment></comment>


Seeking Austin area startups for "Startup Day" event at a Fortune 10 company - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I work for a Fortune 10 company and my Emerging Technology team is going down to Austin in October to host an internal "Startup Day" event.  In short, we find interesting tech startups with new products or services that we think our company could use and then we give them each 10 minutes in front of a global IT audience to make their pitch. After they pitch, we then host a lunch where they can make contacts with IT leaders and execs.
Because we're hosting this one Austin, I really want to focus on Austin-area startups, but we could use some help getting some leads.
Sorry, I'm not sure I'm allowed to reveal the name of my company in this forum, but if you're clever you'll figure it out anyway.  Either way, if you have or know of an Austin area startup with a product that a large global corporation may be interested in, please contact me.
I've been a member of HN for a while under an alias, but I'm being myself for this post.  I hope this doesn't break any rules for solicitation -- I'm not selling anything! I just thought the HN community would be a good way to reach some startups that could benefit from this free event.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Check out the Capital Factory([http://capitalfactory.com/startups/](http://capitalfactory.com/startups/)). That should be a good start.</comment>


New Grad, can I get pigeonholed by my first job? - <AUTHOR> I recently graduated from college and long story short, i have accepted an SRE role with a decent tech company because I don't have a lot of options this being a pandemic and all.
I don't want to sound ungrateful, I am really happy that I have a job at this time. But I really really want to be a backend developer or infrastructure engineer.
Will this first job pigeonhole me into SRE?
Thank you all for any opinions, advice, or stories you have to share! <comment><USER2> Not at all, You can work as an SRE then transition to a backend/infra role within your current company or another one.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard a lot of similar stigma about Test, QA and operations folks. That is really what is scaring me.

<comment><USER3> To validate your concerns- yes, there are some companies that have traditionally been horrible snobs about their dev roles. However, even the chronic cases (I'm looking at you Google) have gotten better since the early teens. In my observation, the snobbery comes from a small but visible minority. IMO you'd definitely be able to transition after taking an SRE role. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if time as an SRE will eventually accelerate your career- senior dev roles don't just to get to do development, they have to interact with other roles like SRE and the business folks to solve larger problems.

Just keep on "doing dev" in whatever way you can and keep putting out feelers for a lateral move. You'll find something.</comment></comment></comment>


No more +1s — Bitbucket Issues now has voting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitbucket.org/2013/08/14/no-more-1s-bitbucket-issues-now-has-voting/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure this will solve the issue. Google Code has a similar concept and popular issues still suffer from a deluge of +1s.

</comment><comment><USER3> having a voting system is good, but Github has this feature already so why pay for bitbucket when GitHub is just free. Also, voting is cool but unless you have the development resources to tackle "popular" wanted issues all the plus 1s in the world won't help you.</comment>


An email bounces, a boy dies. - <AUTHOR> http://xana.scru.org/xana2/etiamdisco/nototolaryngology/

<comment><AUTHOR> This happened around 15 years ago. Clint (the somewhat reclusive author of this post - AKA schizo at Debian.org) and I were working for a web host / ISP, Icom CMT (which was bought by Qwest).

Juan, another employee, was at home approaching a diabetic coma, and, as far as we know, couldn't reach a phone (or perhaps it didn't occur to him to do so?) - instead he tried to email the NOC, which would have alerted one of us pretty quickly.</comment>


App that falsely claimed to aid refugees at sea pulled from App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/21/11988286/i-sea-app-refugees-ios-fake <comment><USER2> And it won a Lion at Cannes. Shows how worthwhile all these advertising industry awards are.</comment>


Liquid Types, static verification: deduction, model checking, type systems  - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=103638

<comment><USER2> This kind of work should get much more attention than it does. It's non- trivial, fairly new and does something potentially very useful (which is more than I can say for most "X in JavaScripts" things submitted here).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://goto.ucsd.edu/~pmr/papers/liquid-types-pldi08.pdf>

Probably should have noted submitted URL is Silverlight video, or large download.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand enough to know how significant this work is. They present a system to infer dependent types, which, if it works well, would solve at least part of the problem of dependent types as I understand it: having to write out tons of type annotations all over the place.

Having never used dependent types, perhaps I'm just being romantic, but it seems that even having some constraints on just a few types (numerics, arrays/lists, perhaps strings), would be a great boon, and I hope one day we'll have a "commercial" (that is, useful with great tooling) language that supports dependent types.

<comment><USER4> I'd be happy with an extension to an existing language, that added a little new syntax. So you give the extended source to the new tool, it verifies type safety, and then strips the new syntax elements and passes it off to the original language's compiler. This can't be that hard, can it?

<comment><USER5> Microsoft Research created Spec#, which extends C# to have Eiffel-style contracts (pre- and post-conditions) specified above a function body. While the _requires_ and _ensures_ aren't dependent types, they do allow for extended static checking via Microsoft's Z3 theorem prover.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spec_Sharp>

<comment><USER6> Also check out F*

<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/fstar/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is part of Microsoft Research's big talk archive: <http://research.microsoft.com/apps/dp/vi/videos.aspx>

The archive has many great talks. For example if you're interested in compilers:

A recent great talk on a radically different way to do compiler optimization: [http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=162...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=162853&l=i)

Another one on using Datalog for points-to analysis: [http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=103...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=103389&l=i)

There are awesome talks on nearly any computer science topic (and also non- CS).

</comment><comment><USER8> This was a great talk! I was excited to see that there's (or was) some work being done to extend GHC to support this: <http://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/liquid/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Sorry. Not as long as I have to install a special browser plugin to visit that page.

<comment><USER10> Ignore the plugin install then. Download links for text/slides/video are available in a number of formats in the bottom right hand corner of the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are those video download links dead, or maybe just region-locked? Silverlight works fine, but they don't.

EDIT: Never mind, i can get them via my offshore VPS.

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh, very nice. Is this related to the work on Liquid types for C at UCSD?

<comment><USER13> Thanks! It's great to see interest in our work on HN. Yes, this is the precursor to and basis for our current work on refinement type inference for C.

For those who haven't seen it, our recent work has focused on extending the automatic program verification techniques shown in this talk to work for low- level programs - that is, programs that use mutable state, pointer arithmetic, and so on. The project page for our Liquid Types-based verifier for C programs is here: <http://goto.ucsd.edu/csolve/>

The project page for the overall Liquid Types project is here: <http://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/liquid/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Silverlight. lol.</comment>


The Longest Nights - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/the-longest-nights/?ref=opinion <comment><USER2> Sick and tired of the idea that depression somehow feeds the creative juices of the creative class. True depression is an absolutely paralyzing, life- stopping illness. Creatives who say "depression" fed their creative juices are really talking about something other than depression. Malaise? Ennuye? Some hipster version of depression-lite.</comment>


A $1000 Bitcoin flash crash down to $9130 on Coinbase/GDAX - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/935954137904185346 <comment><USER2> It's not a crash btw. 4 days ago it was 8 k

</comment><comment> nevi-me Bitcoin might soon be valued at more than the entire world GDP.

It's so weird, I presume that other than people moving funds around illicitly, people using BTC for utility right now might be low. Soon we'll mostly realise that between expensive transaction costs (I hear it's now in the dollars in fees) and the amount of time it takes to process a transaction, it would be of little value to keep accepting Bitcoin at these prices.

I just feel bad for all the shops that accept BTC, because at the point where everyone wants to convert to hard currency, the prices might fall like rain.

Though I'm in the financial sector, I don't like how we currently measure market cap based on external value.

Just because some person bought my share at 246'675.60C, doesn't mean everyone sees them collectively at that value.

Lastly, in a country where ma any people are getting scammed by forex trader "this one secret" scams; I worry a lot when more and more people who don't know much put a disproportionate amount of their money in BTC. It's legitimate cryptocurrency, but its current prices are illegitimate.

</comment><comment><USER3> No big firms to step in and buy based on fundamentals. There is no roof no floor to this rally

</comment><comment><USER4> Just a minor correction, you can't stop bitcoin! :)</comment>


Did Android get a case of Stagefright? - <AUTHOR> http://href=%22http://www.cio.com/article/2957200/android/did-android-get-a-case-of-stagefright.html

<comment><USER2> Proper URL: [http://www.cio.com/article/2957200/android/did-android- get-a...](http://www.cio.com/article/2957200/android/did-android-get-a-case- of-stagefright.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Most of what was speculatively written about the Android Stagefright vulnerability it turns out was wrong. Google challenges Drake's assertion that 950 million Android devices are at risk from the exploit of the Stagefright vulnerability.</comment>


UPS mis-delivery caught an security camera - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/corynn.sackett/posts/1695701950466659 <comment><USER2> Interesting post. How many times have packages arrived damaged in a way that it may be entirely possible someone checked its contents first to see if it was stealing before delivering.

<comment><USER3> Packages are required to survive a six foot drop without damages during shipping, so to some extent it's very difficult to shake a correctly-packaged shipment and damage it with human strength alone.</comment></comment>


Making Popcorn: Adding a Disk to a Rust Rumprun Unikernel - <AUTHOR> https://polyfractal.com/post/adding-a-disk-to-a-rust-rumprun-unikernel/ <comment><USER2> For those interested in unikernels. We just launched a community website — [http://unikernel.org](http://unikernel.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting to me that the author is seeking to add this into the unikernel. I was playing with the PHP Rumprun unikernel before trying to make it immutable such that the unikernel is based on one file structure only (surprise: most PHP applications assume they can write to a FS).

I like the idea that my deployment is closer to being idempotent for a number of reasons, one of which is security.

<comment><USER4> Author here. My goal is to (eventually) host a toy key:value store on top of a unikernel. So the KV store would need to persist data to a writable file system. It's great when you don't need to alter state and the unikernel can be immutable (baking config into code ala Mirage, etc)...but something like a KV store can't get away with that.

But, the KV store + unikernel is mostly for fun, so may not be the most practical of real-world ideas anyway :)

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't something like Irmin work well with this (assuming you can fit the working set into memory, which I think might be a requirement of Irmin's design)?</comment></comment></comment>


Airpal – a web-based query execution tool - <AUTHOR> http://nerds.airbnb.com/airpal/

<comment><USER2> I can't believe nobody has stood up to introduce a better alternative to PHPMyAdmin. A good database administration tool with a sane GUI is worth its weight in gold.

<comment><USER3> I've been impressed with the quality of dev tools being released by Airbnb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's only too bad they state "Presto Versions Tested [0.77, 0.87]" and facebook/presto is now past 0.100 version</comment>


Apple, Google buses rerouted on Peninsula after apparent shooting damage windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfexaminer.com/apple-google-buses-rerouted-peninsula-apparent-shooting-damages-windows/ <comment><USER2> Rerouting the buses from (rural) 280 to (urban/suburban) 101 will both put them at _more_ risk and worsen traffic congestion.

SFPD (for one example) policy is to _not investigate_ shootings of vehicles unless (a) there is injury or death, or (b) clear evidence that a _firearm_ was used (as opposed to a BB gun, air rifle, or pellet gun) -- meaning that actual bullet(s) were found.

<comment><USER3> It's CHP's jurisdiction, not SFPD

<comment><USER2> Do you know that CHP policy differs? Both operate under the same statutes.

<comment><USER3> Oh, you said example policy. No, I do not know if they are actually different.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Panel Discussion on Django and NoSQL - <AUTHOR> http://djangodose.com/podcasts/callcast/episode/11/

<comment><USER2> This was a pretty interesting view into the direction that people think the project is going. I think the points made about leaky abstractions are key here.

The lowest common denominator of SQL is pretty well defined and even though it's the "lowest" it's still quite useful. There are also hooks to hang advanced features onto and ways of digging into db-specific features if you want without throwing everything away.

For Django to start building a useful layer on top of NoSQL db commonalities, the common features of those db's will have to shake down a bit. Even the list of db's that are targeted will have to shake down a bit more.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the panelists, Waldemar Kornewald, summarized this Panel at <http://djangodose.com/podcasts/callcast/episode/11/> We may get official non- relational DB support in Django 1.3!</comment>