Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/business/media/amazon-google-privacy-digital-assistants.html <comment><USER2> You can't trust the large companies who have a culture of profiting off your data to protect your privacy.

This is why we need AI at the edge, and not in the clouds, and Privacy-by- design thinking in our architectures. This is the only way for people to know their data won't be compromised and misused, because it never leaves their devices.

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of [https://snips.ai](https://snips.ai) and we are building a 100% on-device and private-by-design platform to build Voice AI assistants

We would be happy to know what you do with it! You can take a look at what some people have built with it already [https://github.com/snipsco/awesome- snips](https://github.com/snipsco/awesome-snips)

We are open-sourcing it over time, starting with the NLU: [https://medium.com/snips-ai/snips-nlu-is-an-open-source- priv...](https://medium.com/snips-ai/snips-nlu-is-an-open-source-private-by- design-alternative-to-dialogflow-amazon-lex-and-other-nlu-a95dbe16f4a1). Snips is available in English, French, German, and soon Japanese and Korean with more European languages coming this year.

You can start building your own private-by-design smart speaker on the platform in under 1h with this tutorial: [https://medium.com/snips- ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home...](https://medium.com/snips-ai/building- a-voice-controlled-home-sound-system-using-snips-and-sonos-2aaf16523ce9)

<comment><USER3> A bit OT:

What's up with the animated drawing on your front page of an alien poorly disguised as a human female at a picnic using voice to control her music player? It's kind of distracting--I keep staring at it instead of reading the site.

I infer that she's an alien for three reasons.

First, her head is on backwards compared to human heads.

Second, she appears to have only one upper arm, attached to her left shoulder, which forks at the elbow into two lower arms, one of which is going behind her back over to her right side. The forearms are also about twice as long as human forearms.

Third, the neck is way longer than human necks, but quite consistent with many the aliens some people have claimed to have seen.

Seriously...is this some recognized art style? I don't know much about art, but I do recall that around the late 19th/early 20th century there were some prominent artists and styles that took big liberties with human anatomy.

It's well drawn sufficiently (as are the other drawings on your site) that it gives the impression that the artist is referencing something known.

<comment><USER4> That's a really creepy design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The things people are willing to give up for the most minimal of conveniences are only going to get worse in the next decade.

I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home, even if it did something amazing, like extend my lifespan. The quality of my life is not significantly improved with these devices, and all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of times.

<comment><USER6> I'm seriously shocked by the number of people that are putting always on "assistants" in their home - but more so on the number of people that should know better, like HN people.

<comment><USER7> What's shocking about it? For just the Echo, Amazon claims to have sold 20 million devices so they are probably in at least 10 million homes. How many of the people that buy an Echo have been harmed so far?

I have an Echo and use it daily for music, weather, timers, home automation (ie controlling lights and fans), etc...

I also drive a car almost every day and that has a relatively high probability of killing me. Compared to that, having an Echo in my house seems somewhat harmless.

<comment><USER8> >How many of the people that buy an Echo have been harmed so far?

That entirely depends on your definition of "harm". Those of us who see intrinsic value in privacy would be grievously harmed.

<comment><USER9> I don't think there's any way to tell if there has been concrete harm, which is the biggest problem. You can't trust the platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In past discussions, I was led to believe we were safe from these devices, in terms of pervasive data collection, because the main processor that was always running was primitive and was only powerful enough to pick up a key phrase. This phrase would power the main processor which would then listen to your query, respond, and then deactivate. But now, as the article mentions, I realize that this initial processor could be made to listen for many key words like "love", "hate", or other words that would pick up on sensitive personal information. I really don't think these devices should exist.

<comment><USER11> > because the main processor that was always running was primitive and was > only powerful enough to pick up a key phrase

That's only true if you're trying to do complex analysis on the device. Cell phones in the early 1990s had even less computing power, but it was enough to encode speech down to 13.2 kbit/s[1] (or 5.6 kbit/s[2]). A simple noise gate[3] would reduce recording duty cycle down to maybe 1% while costing a trivial amount of CPU load.

Modern hardware - even tiny embedded devices - can probably do a _lot_ more than simple gat4ed+compressed audio.

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

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

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

<comment><USER12> So let's assume this is technically possible, and only examine the process under the lens of detectability. Assuming the codec is 8kbps, you'd see roughly 3MB upload for every hour of audio, and I would say it's not out of the question for the noise gate to be active from the television being on in the same room, or music playing. For an utterance, seeing a 3MB upstream would be super abnormal. It would be impossible to transmit all of this data for processing without somebody noticing.

<comment><USER13> Why would it record continiously? If I were developing such a device I'd use random sampling. Don't have use for _all_ the audio in every home, but a little bit from everywhere can be useful. Can be used to improve the acoustic model of the room maybe, or improve targetting of ads[1]. Some snippets from the minutes before and activation could be especially interesting, to understand the context.

1\. Or more nefarious things, of course.

<comment><USER14> Or record audio, do speech to text, some light analysis, and upload the metadata. Or just upload a basket of words and their frequency, "Toilet Paper, 2, tv, 7, online, 4,"

<comment><USER13> Detecting who speaks is also a (relatively) lightweight analysis. Combined with bag-of-words can build personality/interest profile. Speech based gender detection can also be done, probably also detecting kids from adults. Now have good data about demographics of the household.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > including an "algorithmic transparency requirement" that would help people > understand how their data was being used and what automated decisions were > then being made about them.

This needs to be required for any type of algorithmic decision making. Without algorithmic transparency ulterior motives, intentional or unintentional biases, and unnoticed mistakes are hidden from public review.

A common response is that we _don 't know_ how some types of machine learning make their decisions. I agree this is occasionally true. Find a way generate an explanation, or use a different algorithm; transparency is a critical requirement.

</comment><comment><USER15> Companies use patents defensively and the Times is fully aware of that so this comes across as cynical clickbait.

What I find interesting is that they keep quoting "consumer watchdog" an anti google organization turned anti technology (they're against self driving cars and robots now).

The scary thing is that mainstream respected news outlets casually traffic in technophobia as evident form articles about automation and AI for example and how every piece mentioning a tech company is permeated with FUD about their motivations or their "power".

<comment><USER16> That is a lot of buzzwords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why don't we have open-source voice-assistants yet? I mean, if we can have an open-source OS (e.g. Linux), then surely we can have open-source speech recognition, right?

<comment><USER2> We are building this at [https://snips.ai](https://snips.ai) (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder). You can build 100% on-device Voice AI assistants which are running on a Raspberry Pi 3, and we are open-sourcing the platform

You can take a look at our blog to get started if you want to build your own assistant: [https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled- home...](https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home-sound- system-using-snips-and-sonos-2aaf16523ce9)

<comment><USER17> Interesting!

Under what license are you open-sourcing the platform?

And what is your business model?

How well do you perform in benchmarks? (Assuming there _are_ benchmarks)

<comment><USER2> It will be mostly GPL, the business model is to sell licenses for industrial device builders!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With a court order can authorities turn on the microphone and just listen to everything? Seems easy to do but I haven't heard about it yet. I guess phones can do the same. Presumably the Russians and Chinese do this already. :)

<comment><USER11> A warrant is required only as long as "voice assistant" technology "is not in general public use"[1]. Kyllo v United States created a bright-line[3] test that removes the warrant requirement to see "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[2] when use of the technology is normalized.

Note that this removes the warrant requirement _in general_ , even if you personally don't own an Alexa/etc. The test is if the public expects audio in the home _might_ be recorded and sent to a 3rd party. If the answer is "yes", then the police can use their _own_ hardware to do the recording.

[1] [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme- court/533/27.html](http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html)

[2] Ibid.

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright- line_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright-line_rule)

<comment> shawn-butler Amazon resisted a warrant from a prosecutor seeking all Alexa recordings from a house that was the site of murder. Trial in Arkansas I believe.

I don't think it ever went anywhere precedent setting however because the defendant eventually gave permission to Amazon to turn it over.

Still pretty muddy waters. I would trust Amazon a little more than I would trust the smart tv makers, but that's just my bias.

<comment><USER19> You're right. They publicly resisted. But I have no qualms that they can also just quietly hand over a DVD to a prosecuted and say " here ya go".

In the end, this is their platform of which we are sharecroppers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you're not planning to release your own hardware, could you provide a list of devices that the software is tested with? I looked on the site a bit but the crazy art thing triggered my ADHD and OCD as well. I imagine the idea is that you can compile it for whatever device on any platform with some change but makes it harder for community engagement without a go to for sure platform to test some builds and POCs.

</comment><comment><USER21> _One application details how audio monitoring could help detect that a child is engaging in "mischief" at home by first using speech patterns and pitch to identify a child's presence, one filing said. A device could then try to sense movement while listening for whispers or silence, and even program a smart speaker to "provide a verbal warning."_

This worries me. First the children are watched 24/7, them the adults.

</comment><comment><USER22> I had a dream that Alexa recognized my voice when I was visiting a friend's house. Won't be long for that one.

<comment><USER23> Your phone already knows you visited your friend's house, why are you worried about Alexa knowing too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Alexa could enable subtle insider trading by both Amazon employees and Amazon AIs.</comment>


Mac hacker attack reminds us why Steve Jobs hated Java - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/20/apple-hacker-java-jobs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fortuneapple20+%28FORTUNE%3A+Apple+2.0%29 <comment><USER2> I suspect Steve Jobs hated client-side Java because of its appalling lack of fit and finish. I don't think there's much evidence he hated Java on servers given he marketed WebObjects for about ten years.

Security concerns are just vomit icing on a fecal cake.

<comment><USER3> Unpleasant and unnecessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seven years earlier, Steve Jobs, JavaOne Keynote 2000:

 _"We want to bring Java back to the desktop in a really big way. I am here today to personally tell you we are working hard to make Mac the best Java delivery vehicle on the planet. The biggest thing we are doing is we are going to bundle Java 2 SE into every single copy of Mac OS X that we ship later on this year."_

</comment><comment><USER5> Terrible article. The issue at hand is the Browser plugin, and not the programming language itself.

<comment><USER6> Java might be the best programming language since Sliced.bread and the Wheel# but if its VM and plugins are constantly having exploits found in them, it's a Serious Fucking Problem.

The portable document format might be a good way to exchange documents, but the most popular viewer is a huge (commonly exploited) attack surface.

The point is call your viewer, VM, or pluging something other then the name of the language so when it is found to be totally lacking security it doesn't reflect back on the language. Really the point should be to write your software correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think he hated it. They moved WebObjects to Java for one thing. Client side...he probably wasn't that happy with it because it didn't really "fit" the L&F of OSX.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there any evidence (eg: a direct quote) [1] that Steve Jobs actually "hated Java"?

I'm tired of this kind of sloppy nonsensical, and actually, dishonest attribution of opinions to Steve Jobs. It was bad enough when he was alive.

Jobs clearly talked about how first class support for Java in the Mac was important back when OS X came about. He clearly wanted "write once, run anywhere" to work. I once met one of the people whose job it was at Apple was to make Java look mac like in the UI. Obviously they put a lot of effort into supporting Java.

While Java may not have achieved what they hoped, it's absurd to just assume that "Steve Jobs hated Java" because its convenient for the reporter, and let's be honest, gives the reporter an excuse to put Job's name in the title.

[1] The quote in the title talks about the weight of it, and how it is a drag, but doesn't express any hatred. Dishonest characterizations like this (calling it "hatred") is not just sloppy writing, it shows a lack of integrity. It's why we have uninformed people thinking google is "open" while Apple is "closed" - a lot of reporters saying that who know nothing about the actual situation (which isn't that much different between them.)

<comment><USER9> I think part of the problem is the confusion in the article among several things: the Java language, the JVM, and the Java browser plugin. It seems to me that Jobs' comments about something heavy that nobody uses are directed toward the plugin (running Java applets in the browser) and are therefore justifiable. Not much to do with the JVM and the language on the desktop, which OSX supports reasonably well.</comment></comment>


The EU will treat Britain like Greece - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/the-eu-will-treat-britain-like-greece/ <comment><USER2> The article mentions very little of Greece, and what little it does sounds like the headline is wrong:

> Mr Juncker said; Greeks made plain [by the referendum on the third bailout] > they wanted to remain Europeans.

> No such goodwill exists for Britain, now an ex-member.

That sounds like the EU will _not_ treat Britain like Greece.</comment>


Sideways Dictionary - <AUTHOR> https://sidewaysdictionary.com/ <comment><USER2> I love the idea of explanations through analogies! Looking through them, it seems like there are some very good ones in here. That said, why not put all of these items in an existing database like urbandictionary?</comment>


Ask HN: What questions should I ask a founder before joining a 10 people startup - <AUTHOR>

Hi All - I have been working for a large storage/cloud company for around 4 years and currently looking for another job. I have been  interviewing for a while & have been talking to a lot of small size startups too (less than 10 people).<p>What questions should one ask the founders before joining them ? <comment><USER2> Can you show me where I'll be sitting? (I once thought I'd get a private office, but was made to sit in - I swear I'm not making this up! - "The Boiler Room".)

A company of just 10 people wouldn't have a lunchroom. Before you accept an offer - preferably before you interview - explore the neighborhood around the office, to determine whether there are good places for lunch, or for coffee or beer, if that is to your taste.

I would not consider working for a big company unless they had a good lunchroom. It's not that I can't go out to eat, or bring my own lunch, but there's something about a lousy lunchroom in my workplace that I find quite depressing.

If I drive, can you cover my parking, or alternatively will you cover public transit?

Do you have an employee library? (Most companies don't. That is the essence of stupidity. There should be at least a few technical books, for the languages, tools, platforms and APIs you use.)

Have any of your products been reviewed in the trade press? (Better if you find this out on your own, but you might not be able to find the reviews. The products might have online reviews though.)

Don't ask in the interview, but search around for dirt on the company principles. Like maybe they robbed a previous company blind, then invested their ill-gotten gains in the firm you are interviewing with. I actually worked for one such company.

Do you provide on-the-job training? (Even if you have the chops to fulfill your job description, work will get uninteresting if you don't get to learn anything new on the job.)

Do you pay for conference tickets or travel?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ! I suppose going on-site to the company sort of solves most of these issues. But how would you go about finding the following ?

"Like maybe they robbed a previous company blind, then invested their ill- gotten gains in the firm you are interviewing with. I actually worked for one such company."

Is it just a background check on the founders ?

<comment><USER2> While strictly speaking it's true that going on-site _can_ solve these issues, being on-site won't actually solve anything unless you pay attention to your surroundings.

In the "boiler room" case, I simply assumed I'd get a private office because everyone in the same hall as my manager had a private office. I simply assumed I'd be on that same hall.

Rather than explicitly asking about where you'd be sitting, what the lunch room is like and so on, perhaps it would be more diplomatic to request a guided tour around the facility.

It's quite common to be taken to lunch during job interviews. If that doesn't happen, maybe it's because the lunchroom sucks.

<comment><USER2> "pay attention to your surroundings"

For example, on your way to the room where you will be interviewed, have a look at the expressions on the faces of the employees. Do they look happy? Or do they look like "lifers" or "wage slaves"?

Do you see any technical books out in plain sight? You might not see the actual library, if there is one, but you might see books on the desks of the engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ask them about their journey from pain-point and idea to where they are today. Listen carefully and somewhat skeptically to this story. Ask yourself, where do you get the sense that they are exaggerating or glossing over something. Ask about pivots in product and strategy. Ask about financial near-death experiences. As you probe this story try to get a sense of how the founders handle tough circumstances.

Ask about false starts with co-founders or employees that just didn't work out. Try to get a sense of how the founder makes tough choices and deals with interpersonal conflict.

Do I think the company will get traction and grow? If I am employee #7 and I can credibly see how this becomes a company with 100 employees then there is room for me to grow and succeed with the company.

When the pressure is on, how does the founder treat employees? Is he quick to sacrifice their interests for his own? Does he take responsibility or is he quick to shift blame?

Is there a good fit for my skills such that I can make a noticeable difference in technology and business outcomes for the company over the next couple of years?

</comment><comment><USER4> What percentage of the company does my offered equity stake represent?

<comment><USER5> fully diluted percentage

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm .. I dont fully understand what diluted percentage is actually ? Looking it up ...

<comment><USER6> The social network offers a good example . . . [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlzlVegfbA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlzlVegfbA)

I'd recommend having a lawyer review all your contracts, vesting documents, etc initially and any future documents you are asked to sign.

Keep in mind not many startups are a home run or a rocket ship so usually it won't matter but you don't want to be on the outside looking in if it does take off.

Good luck in 2015.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is their exit plan? Are they trying to sell the business soon or are they in it for the long haul? Who are the potential buyers and how are they making the company appealing to those buyers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does stock come in the form of a restricted grant or options?</comment>


Jerusalem Syndrome - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_syndrome <comment><USER2> A magnet for the gullible and unstable of all cultures. Like a weaponized florida.</comment>


Zach Will's github public contributions pattern - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zachwill

<comment><AUTHOR> See that pattern there?</comment>


Here's How U.S. Spies Will Find You Through Your Pics - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/spies-find-you-through-pics/

<comment><USER2> For all the non-criminals out there who actually think they are entitled to privacy this is another good use case for Social Fortress[1][2].

[1] Disclaimer: I'm involved with Social Fortress

[2] Social Fortress protects messages and photos with transparent client side encryption directly within services such as Facebook, Google+, Outlook and others. It can be had for free from <https://www.socialfortress.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this a joke? Any halfway credible criminal would make sure to strip that info out before posting (or use a device that doesn't capture it).

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, which is why the article spends most of its time discussing how location can be determined through other means, such as Google Images, to find photos with similar geographic features to narrow possible locations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> US Intelligence is smart enough to check EXIF data now?</comment>


An Adult's Guide to Social Skills, for Those Who Were Never Taught - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/smarter-living/adults-guide-to-social-skills.html <comment><USER2> The recommendation that people talk more to strangers should be accompanied by a warning that it can be a significant annoyance to no longer be surrounded by complete strangers when in public, and instead have people you've voluntarily conversed with previously, and may expect you to not ignore them in the future.

I generally like to keep to myself and focus on my own interests. In the past I've dabbled with being more social with strangers at cafes I would frequent. The end result was I stopped going to those cafes because it became a nuisance, since I felt obligated to speak with the people I'd spoken with before, but really had zero interest in speaking with regularly. They would start sitting by me while I was at my laptop working, and wanting to make small talk whenever they saw me.

Nope.

<comment><USER3> I've always kind of wondered if in some near future, phones will be replaced by augmented reality glasses, allowing people to zone out and let the glasses manage your human interaction.

"WARNING, your spouse has asked you a question!"

Question was: "What do you think?" [1][2]

[1] subject is inviting Aunt Ellen to the family picnic next month.

[2] Aunt Ellen does not get along with Uncle Jerry, who will also be attending.

<comment><USER4> Sounds an awful lot like the giggles wore in Stephenson's Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell. People in the later years wore google that could do that to indicate status, interest, or just anonymize themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think I might have been in the University of Chicago/Nicholas Epley study mentioned at the end of the article, or at least a very similar study at Booth around that time. When I was an undergrad, volunteering as a guinea pig for studies (especially the ones at Booth) was a good way to make a little money, so I ended up participating in a lot of studies. But its funny to see one that I participated in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://archive.md/AwVIN](http://archive.md/AwVIN)

</comment><comment><USER7> Simple, no nonsense, no gimmick, respectful, blog/book for learning social skills:

improveyoursocialskills.com

</comment><comment><USER8> Non-paywalled link?</comment>


Microsoft applies for trademark on 'Mod' - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-applies-for-trademark-on-mod-7000024661/

<comment><USER2> The trademark applications are for Mod, Windows Mod, Office Mod, and Microsoft Office Mod.

This makes "Mod" look like the new consumer brand to replace the less favored "Live".

Speaking of branding, whatever happened to Microsoft losing the Sky in SkyDrive to BSkyB?

</comment><comment><USER3> Will the evangelists be known as the Mod Squad?

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't it far more likely to mean 'modification' and will be some sort of new marketplace to enhance the experiences of office & windows?

Like game mods and the modding community?

Seems far, far more likely than Mary's suggestion, guess she's not into gaming.

Also how can they file a trademark on a common computing term like mod?

<comment><USER5> Because trademarks are restricted to a single specific field or class of products/services. Thus there is a Delta which is an airline (trademark applies to the air travel industry) and a Delta which makes faucets (trademark applies to faucets) and a Delta which does dental insurance (trademark applies to dental insurance), and...

In other words, it'll basically only apply to the things they do with it, and to any products/services which could be confused for those things.

<comment><USER6> But "mod" is already in widespread use in Microsoft's industry and with the same meaning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is overrated, many companies register many trademarks and end up never using them.

I remember reading in 2009 that Nintendo had registered the trademarks for Pokémon Black, Pokémon Brown, Pokémon White, Pokémon Gray, Pokémon Purple, Pokémon Crimson and Sacrlet (and while black and white were used the others were not).

</comment><comment><USER8> Probably the name of the new programming language. Modulo? Modern?

</comment><comment><USER9> Short for "modern"?

<comment><USER10> Modern goes out of date. You don't call things modern, other people call your things modern.

'Module' is more likely. As in 'app' for 'application'. A 'module' implies something that works with other things so a 'calendar module' could work with a 'contacts module' in a 'modular way'. Apps just do their own thing and are standalone, modules integrate into a whole.

Anyway, this is a speculative story about nothing more than a filing for a name. They should put filings in there for things like 'rocket ship' just to get bloggers talking even more speculative nonsense.

<comment><USER11> > Modern goes out of date. You don't call things modern, other people call > your things modern.

Agreed, but MS already call the Windows 8 UI 'modern'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ah, acronym fun time...

Ministry of Disappointment

Machine of Delusion

Money only Dollars

Or do Android release "Rocker"?</comment>


Ask HN: What is the bus factor at your company? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Disturbingly high for the size of the company. I can point to several locations where one person is pivotal to core business functions and causes issues when they go on vacation.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't that be a disturbingly low bus factor?

<comment><USER2> Apparently yes, wasn't sure the scale :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a feeling people will be biased into thinking their bus factor is lower than it really is.

Day to day experience may make it seem like if John or Jane got hit by a bus, nothing can happen.

In reality businesses adapt and there are probably other people that can step in. Once they must, they will.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure the business could adapt to our low bus factor, but it would take months at least of nothing really happening, there is really only one person that knows some of the critical codebases and they're so spaghettified that I'm not sure if anyone else could learn it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 3 and increasing as new technical team lead keeps optimising for short term results and his own career development. I am not voicing much criticism as part of me wants him to fail even if it ends up hurting the product but I suspect he will leave us before the shit hits the fan.

</comment><comment><USER7> Zero. Nothing works anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> Probably 2 or higher at this point. We've made some real strides recently in getting everything documented somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER9> The what now?

<comment><USER10> Right? We called it the Mack Truck Factor back in the day.

<comment><USER11> We call it the lottery factor to try and put a more positive spin on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've worked at maybe two companies with a bus factor > 1\. Maybe.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1

</comment><comment><USER14> 1, its always Jane or James.

</comment><comment><USER15> 2

</comment><comment><USER16> One.</comment>


Microsoft is bringing Android and iOS apps to Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8511439/microsoft-windows-10-android-ios-apps-bridges

<comment><USER2> This move is so smart. Windows, which is app deficient, is now super easy to build to. I wonder how this will affect the Xamarin ecosystem.</comment>


Microsoft, Tesla say software-defined batteries could redirect power on the fly - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2988945/mobile/microsoft-tesla-say-software-defined-batteries-could-mix-and-match-power-on-the-fly.html <comment><USER2> This is a useful [white]paper in the sense that it has everything in one place, but the disgusting overuse of "software-defined" means I had to overcome a fully pegged internal B.S. meter while trying to read it.

What I mean is: surely a "software-defined" battery would be some kind of redox/flow battery where you can literally adjust the physical properties of the battery to suit the current SOC and current/anticipated system demands.

Don't get me wrong, we need more work like this, particularly if Tesla powerwall home batteries and the like are going to become a thing that we don't want filling landfills with avoidable charge/discharge cycles.

But wow, SDx. I mean, SDR is obvious; software-defined radios clearly replace fixed hardware with programmable IFs and tonnes of DSP. Similarly, networks can be software-defined if they replace discrete stand-alone equipment with fewer tiers of more capable hardware delineated more by connectivity/performance than function.

When it comes to this paper though, nothing is being replaced. And again, it's useful work, particularly in the context of consumer applications (cf. aerospace which has already had to produce systems that do funky, adaptive, predictive, cooperative load/charge management across multiple battery chemistries).

I don't know what I'm saying. It's an interesting paper, but as someone working on low-power systems and exploring different battery chemistries for different things, the whole SDx angle somehow cheapens it... but perhaps I'm just weird.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is just software _regulated_ or software _controlled_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why can't all of this just be done in the charge controller? The logic seems pretty simple. When plugged in, accept all power, charge the high capacity battery at its highest rate, any extra power available goes to the fast charging battery. On discharge, discharge the fast charging one first. Unless there are differences in charging efficiency between the batteries, I don't see how software with knowledge of my schedule could make things better?

<comment><USER5> Agreed. This story didn't provide any examples that made sense to me about why there would need to be different charging strategies in different situations. If you have your device plugged in overnight, then it will be fully charged no matter what strategy you use. If you have it plugged in for only a short time, you will have wanted it to charge as fast as possible during that time, so the battery should choose whatever charging pattern maximizes energy storage at the current charge levels.

I had expected this story to tell me that different battery chemistries react differently to different drain patterns, ie that low-drain usage might be better served by battery chemistry X and spiky high-drain usage by battery chemistry Y, and the OS could switch the power source between the batteries depending on the predicted near-future discharge pattern, based on what app was foregrounded or whatever.

But the idea that your battery would benefit by knowing your flight schedule seems to be reaching pretty far for a justification.

<comment><USER2> If you can bring yourself to get past the SDx marketing bandwagon, the paper covers multi-battery and multi-chemistry systems. Laptops aren't the obvious use-case for this. Given that Tesla is involved, they're thinking more along the lines of cars and home/office energy storage, where you have a large and diverse set of batteries to manage, and interesting real-time pressures you just don't see in a laptop.

BMS in a laptop mostly just has to keep the battery safe and avoid unnecessary charge/discharge cycles. In a more complex system trying to salvage every joule of energy and maximize lifespan of each cell, the fact that batteries are less efficient to charge (or discharge) the closer they are to full (or empty) might be taken into account when deciding which to charge/discharge (for example).

A car might dump sudden regenerative braking power into high-C batteries if the main batteries can't take that charge at a given instant.

Satellites often use exotic batteries able to fully charge and discharge 10 times a day for decades at a time, but these have enormous self-discharge rates measured in days. Every chemistry has a unique set of compromises. There is plenty of room for smarter BMS in consumer systems that manage complex battery storage arrays responding to thermal, aging, cycle count, charge and load pressures more intelligently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This has been suggested before, with combinations of ultracapacitors and batteries.[1] When a electric vehicle with regenerative braking brakes hard, that can produce more power than the battery can accept for charging. Dumping the energy into ultracapacitors is a good way to store it for a short period.

Laptops? Probably just a gimmick. It won't increase the stored energy.

[1] [http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/merit_revi...](http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/merit_review_2009/vehicles_and_systems_simulation/vss_15_bohn.pdf) [2] [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/417053/a-battery- ultrac...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/417053/a-battery- ultracapacitor-hybrid/)

</comment><comment><USER7> After seeing the associated considerations of forced obolescence/vendor lock- in, I'm not so convinced we should have more software in batteries... and that's not even getting into the basic idea that it's _yet another thing to go wrong_ , whether security-wise or else.

 _your device would learn how to charge, just as it learns your schedule, your voice, and other things about you_

...no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would prefer more manual control than trusting some kind of AI calendar understanding that a scheduled flight will require a charged battery, that also requires me to actually schedule the flight in said calendar. Case in point is lenovos charging algorithm, they tried to be smart, probably with same intentions as Microsoft is here, by only charging the battery to 83% on normal days because that supposedly reduces the wear of the battery if you frequently move the laptop. Problem is I was actually on my way to a flight and there was no override, I had plenty of time but the battery simply wouldn't go up any more. After the trip I found the option, in some obscure menu only available after installing a special battery control program, you choose between battery life and battery performance, guess which one does what..

With that said I don't think the concept itself is bad, its just that the execution will inevitably fail except under very regular circumstances such as carrying your laptop back and forth to the office each day. Volvo trucks has a similar thing to save fuel for their gearboxes that automatically chooses gear based on the performance you got the last time you drove that very route.

<comment><USER2> Statistically though, these approaches can really reduce cycle count - even if they sometimes get it wrong.

But it's not just anticipating demands by learning past behaviour. There's also the problem in any multi-battery system (which is what they cover), let alone with multiple types, optimizing what should take charge or load at a given time. Most people don't realize that many battery chemistries actually don't have a flat efficiency rating with charge: often, the closer to 100% charged you get, the less efficient (more loss) you have compared to what you'll be able to extract later.

For example, charging from 0 to 100% might be 85% efficient for a given battery type. But charging it from 80% to 100% full might only be 40% efficient.

And this variable efficiency also applies to discharge as well. And the variables all change with what recent battery demands have been, let alone the current loads - but also cell voltages, temperature, age and cycle count.

Even planning to cope with self-discharge over days, weeks or months might benefit from smarter BMS. Some battery management systems even take into consideration thermal management (taking into account the cost of ramping up active cooling or throttling charge rates to keep batteries at a temperature efficient for taking charge).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, I was looking forward to see what other acronym people can think of in the Software-Defined-Something family (SDx).

I'm wondering if other BMS (Battery Management Systems) used in other domains are not already doing what they propose in the paper.

</comment><comment><USER10> All this "smart" learning software feels really gimmicky to me. Anyone remember Windows Vista had this heavily marketed feature that would "learn" how you use your apps at certain time of the day, and therefore allow you to launch them faster by pre-caching a few minutes before your expected launch. This feels similar.

The Nest thermostat I have at home promised to save me energy by learning my schedule, and heating the house only when needed - I had to turn this off because it never really worked. People do not inherently have a predictable schedule anyway.

The leaving for the airport in 15 minutes example in this article is similarly contrived.

Perhaps using multiple types of batteries will be useful in the future, but I'm not sold on the software learning part ATM.

</comment><comment><USER11> tl dr; Low on substance and high on hype.</comment>


OKCupid stole FriendlyRank.com creator's idea with their "MyBestFace" release - <AUTHOR> http://friendlyrank.com/okstupid.html

<comment><USER2> from the OkCupid faq:

Are you interested in a "strategic partnership"?

      Not if it involves us paying you.

I have an idea. May I tell you?

      Sure! But you won't get anything for it, and we'll keep it
      to ourselves, and we'll use it to make millions. Possibly.
      You might want to keep your ideas to yourself.

(source <http://www.okcupid.com/faq> > Business)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, they stole a whole idea? Somebody call the cops, I can't believe it!

Seriously though, if you think your idea is that great, you should write it on a little note and keep it in a shoebox. Then, within days, weeks but at most years you'll find that somehow someone seems to have had magical access to your shoebox and managed to read right through the cardboard.

How did they do that?

Don't tell anybody your ideas if they're that good, they'll run with it and might even do a better job than you yourself ever will...

Especially somebody that is in a position to implement your idea overnight and make a bundle while doing it, that's tying the proverbial cat to the bacon and expecting the bacon to be there in the morning.

Nice story about ideas and how to make money of them:

Two gentlemen showed up at a notary public to see if he had a solution to their dilemma.

The first was a well known businessman, the second an inventor.

The businessman made matchboxes and the inventor had come up with an idea to save money on the production of the boxes, but realized that if he gave his idea the businessman would implement it and not pay him.

So he named his price, asked the businessman to deposit the money with the notary, and if the idea upon disclosure would be implemented within 5 years the money would flow to the inventor, otherwise it would go back to the businessman.

The idea was simple as can be: "only put the 'rubbing surface' on one side of the box", instant savings.

The businessman immediately realized the potential and the money was released, both parties happy.

So if you wish to 'sell your idea' use some kind of escrow to make sure that you get what's due to you, and if you don't, don't bitch.

<comment><USER4> >> So he named his price, asked the businessman to deposit the money with the notary, and if the idea upon disclosure would be implemented within 5 years the money would flow to the inventor, otherwise it would go back to the businessman.

Great story. I wondered why we don't see more of this in the real world, then realized that one of the scenarios doesn't end well.

If the businessman doesn't like the idea, he doesn't get his money back for 5 years. Ouch.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's the risk, you can express it in money by taking the going interest rate multiplied by the amount and the duration.

A common way to do stuff like this is with a bank-guarantee, which means you're good for the money but the money is not actually taken out of your account until the transaction completes. Should you default on the payment the bank will pay up.

Otoh it also is a matter of how big the amount is. If the price is reasonable the businessman would likely take the risk.

Ideas are worth something, but by themselves not a whole lot, so the seller and buyer would both be acting on the assumption that the deal would be good for both of them if it went through. And the time could be shorter or longer, there is quite a bit of play in the concept to allow adaptation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, the idea is obvious, and I actually made a journal post on okcupid about doing this on my own profile (uploading a bunch of pictures to hotornot.com, taking the highest rated couple to post onto okcupid) in January of 2008.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think every site out there needs to fully expect to have their ideas stolen and operate as if their competitors could duplicate their functionality tomorrow. If you have built anything worthwhile, it's going to happen.

A key to success is staying competitive and always improving on what's available to your marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER7> Given their January study in profile pictures [1] I'm surprised they require people to pick a picture manually in hot-or-not fashion.

A better idea would be to implement this feature as an A/B test Automatically rotate through the pictures and see which picture gets the most responses.

They have the data to do this and it would avoid any idea origination conflicts (with FriendlyRank anyway).

[1] [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/01/20/the-4-big- myths...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/01/20/the-4-big-myths-of- profile-pictures/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Frankly it's an obvious idea. I storyboarded up a dating site concept last year and came up with the same thing.

People already use sites like hotornot for precisely this purpose. I'd be surprised if there aren't already half a dozen sites out there doing exactly this. Googling for "rate my photo" brings up an easy handful, I'm sure more than a few have a rank your photos functionality.

</comment><comment><USER9> Let me help you out with a 3 step plan.

1\. Cry. 2\. Learn. 3\. Move on.

</comment><comment><USER10> So let me get this straight, they went to a business with the potential, brains, and resources to steal their idea, had virtually no barriers to entry, and told them about it freely?

There are several things you can cry poor sportsmanship for in business, this would not be one of them.

That said, I can't tell if they're truly bitter or just running with an opportunity for a marketing ploy that presented itself.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmm. Reading the descriptions of FriendlyRank + MyBestFace, I'm not sure they are in any way the same thing. OKCupid's product uses their own data to evaluate profile pictures. FriendlyRank explicitly asks users (which users? does FriendlyRank have a user base?) to rate photos.

This is a big difference. If the purpose is to rate photos based on their effectiveness in a social networking environment, I'd much rather use implicit social network data rather than deal with low response rate & terribly biased data from explicit surveys.

In short, OKCupid seems to have a much better source of data to achieve the goals common to both FriendlyRank + MyBestFace.

</comment><comment><USER12> I noticed at the bottom it says, "Patent Pending." Hah! Much of this site's concept was ripped off of hot or not.

<comment><USER13> Maybe they are trying to patent the concept of "Whining about someone ripping off obvious, non-novel idea."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dutch dating site paiq.nl (aka nextlover.nl) has had a similar feature for years. It's not a particularly novel idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> I believe the word they're looking for is called "competing" not stealing.

They had nothing _to license_. They didn't have rights on any particular technology, and they certainly didn't have rights to all "ways to pick a good profile picture."

Even if this site _does_ file a patent and get it, they likely STILL won't have the resources to then extract a licensing fee from anyone, as it isn't even clearly the same idea.

</comment><comment><USER16> Someone should post a similar letter, but swap out OkCupid & FriendlyRank with Microsoft & Apple. Or... gosh... so many examples, so little time to list them all...

</comment><comment><USER17> Maybe FriendlyRank shouldn't have been so easily reproducible.

</comment><comment><USER18> That which cannot be owned, cannot be stolen.

</comment><comment><USER19> omg, you invented a/b testing!? and they stole it? Call the REACT team.</comment>


The Economics of AWS - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/12/the-economics-of-aws.html <comment><USER2> Using EC2 for anything but overflow is silly. The costs are extraordinarily high if you are doing decent volume ( read- if you have more than 3-5 servers )

Bandwidth is ridiculously expensive with them. You can get 3-4x cheaper per megabit going dedicated.

Servers are crazy expensive. Compare the most powerful machine they have vs something on 10tb / gigenet / theplanet for the price. You will definitely end up with a more powerful machine for half the price on either.

The only real advantage to using ec2 is the hourly billing. Make its perfect for overflow, but thats about it. I read about alot of startups that use ec2 for things like webservers or other servers that have 100% reliance.

Dont get me wrong. Some of Amazons offerings are great. The CDS and S3 can take the bullshit out of dealing with the complexitys of each and might save you a network engineer or 2. However, for EC2 there is no excuse. Its no more difficult to setup a normal dedicated server than it is a EC2 box.

/endrant

<comment><USER3> I agree it's more expensive, but I think you are undervaluing the instant provisioning capability EC2 gives you and overestimating the impact of the increased cost.

The way I look at it is if all these services were free, EC2 would win based upon features. So, the question is, does cost matter?

For us, a single engineer's salary costs more than our entire yearly EC2 bill. And, we're not even using cost saving measures like elasticity and reserved instances.

And, EC2 actually drives costs down in ways hosting does not. First, as you mentioned, it dramatically reduces the need for IT staff. (Though it doesn't eliminate it, of course.)

Second, and IMHO, more importantly, the constraints EC2 imposes on you forces you to build fault tolerant, shared-nothing systems. I'm sure many folks here have worked at companies with hosted servers to find machines that are chock full of random cron jobs, services, and so on. The instant provisioning capability of EC2 combined with the constraints makes it very hard for you to have these one off "god boxes" your system is hinging on. Beyond that, as things get too messy, you have the freedom to automate and shut-down and bring up fresh nodes instantly with no increase in cost. It's hard to me to estimate the amount of man-hours we've saved and disasters we've avoided due to this capability. It's allowed us to cleanly "refactor" our entire cluster over time since we can reprovision nodes on demand as we improve the services or architecture on those nodes.

<comment><USER2> I dont buy that ec2 relieves the employee need. Its just as difficult, if not MORE difficult to setup a ec2 instance than buying a dedicated server.

S3, SDB, CDS, etc.. Yes, those make things easier. EC2 Does not.

<comment><USER4> "Its just as difficult, if not MORE difficult to setup a ec2 instance than buying a dedicated server."

Is this from experience? If so, please share it.

<comment><USER2> Sure. I use EC2 to handle our overflow during peak hours. I had to literally look up guides to dealing with it. Its not exactly straight forward how the IP system works, and figuring out all the ec2 specific crap, images and storing the image in S3, etc. etc.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I buy this argument. You had to look up guides for how to set up something you are using because you find it valuable. How is this any different from any other tool you've found valuable and set up? I'm sure that too seemed arcane at first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree that the ec2 is more expensive but... What are your alternatives?

<comment><USER2> Dedicated, Colo, Other VPS's if you must.

Shop around.

<comment><USER6> bringing up a new ec2 instance takes about .5 secs

<comment><USER2> Well, you cant beat that logic. Spend away sheeple.

<comment><USER7> You're coming on a little strong, man. I appreciate your basic point, but you're calling people sheep because they weigh the pros and cons of cloud hosting differently than you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spectacles - Anonymous browsing for Quora  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benvinegar/Spectacles

<comment><USER2> I've been a Quora user for over two years. Since I'm normally logged in, didn't realize Quora did this to answers. Now I feel significantly less inclined to contribute content to them for free.

Edit: I just pulled up an incognito window and could still see answers. Is it only for certain answers?

<comment><USER3> Incognito does not delete any data (eg cookies) you accumulated from "regular" windows. It only deletes data collected while you were incognito. So it's likely Quora still recognized you as logged in.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't delete the cookies, but it doesn't send them to servers when accessed from the incognito window. That's why when you open an incognito window you're not logged into any sites.</comment></comment></comment>


Something I don't understand about homomorphic encryption - <AUTHOR> http://bosker.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/something-i-don%e2%80%99t-understand-about-homomorphic-encryption/ <comment><USER3> 1) computing arbitrary polynomials is _all you can do_ to data. Everything you do is somehow adding two numbers together, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing. At the very very worst, this is all your computer is doing - <USER2> could implement a computer on top of the encryption scheme. It would be horrendously wasteful, but it would work, and that's what really matters in all this. Improvements will come, or computers will speed up.

2) > _The result I get is still encrypted, but since there are only 128 possible values for an ascii character, I can encrypt each of these values and compare the result to the result of my computation._

And that's why keys of _one byte_ are a bad idea. Bad in symmetric, bad in asymmetric, just plain _bad_. This same attack is true for any block-level encryption - it doesn't make them insecure. And homomorphic encryption needs, if I remember right, _enormous_ relatively-prime numbers. Like, gigabytes worth. We're not talking small keys here.

3) The most dangerous part about _using_ homomorphic encryption is that, necessarily, how you operate on the data reveals something _about_ the data (and the search). Say you're Google, and you repeatedly see sequential access on blocks 123-345, 346-356, and 357-789. You can make a pretty strong claim that those are separate blocks of data that have been encrypted. The more you do to your encrypted data, the more someone else gets a peek at what you're doing. A very obfuscated peek, but a peek nonetheless. Add enough peeks, and you can get quite a bit of information. Or try something like a search through a binary search tree - the early locations you access will be touched by _many_ processes, in a linear fashion, always with branching behavior. What kind of data does it _look_ like?

But there are ways to combat this as well. If you're going to access 123-345, grab pieces out of it and others at random, overlap the edges, and split it across multiple operations. On the receiving edge, just toss out everything extra. All that can be seen is that you accessed a _lot_ of data, but they don't know which ones were important (unless you were _truly_ random, and then statistically the edges of that block can be seen).

<comment><USER4> _And that's why keys of one byte are a bad idea. Bad in symmetric, bad in asymmetric, just plain bad. This same attack is true for any block-level encryption - it doesn't make them insecure. And homomorphic encryption needs, if I remember right, enormous relatively-prime numbers. Like, gigabytes worth. We're not talking small keys here._

This is incorrect. The key size has nothing to do with extracting one byte. As mentioned later in the thread, if the encryption is not randomized (and Craig's scheme is, like all "semantically-secure" encryption schemes) then the ciphertext leaks no information about the plaintext _even if it were only one bit_. However, if the encryption is not randomized then trivially, your encryption is only as secure as your plaintext space.

Secondly, you say homomorphic encryption needs enormous relatively-prime numbers. This is not correct. Craig's sceme uses lattice-based cryptography. The keys are long because we don't have efficient reductions to hard problems and the best algorithms to solve lattice problems currently known are better than brute force (so we need to increase parameters to make the best algorithms known today take at least 2^80 time, if not more).

<comment><USER3> I'll have to look into lattice-based crypto some time, I know essentially nothing about how it works. Thanks for the corrections!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My understanding is that along with the addendum added to the post (having more than one possible representation of the same plain text for a given cypher), you also wouldn't be able to perform a re-encryption attack similar to how he describes. This is simply because to do that you would have to have the encryption key on the untrusted data center. Homomorphic encryption instead allows you to operate on the data without having either the encryption key or the decryption key (if it's an asymmetric cypher).

<comment><USER6> If you can perform arbitrary computations on the encrypted data (yielding encrypted results) then I think you can take advantage of that to encrypt whatever you like.

The idea is to evaluate a constant-valued function "inside the encryption", e.g. the function that ignores its input and always returns 'A'. The result of that will be an encrypted version of 'A'.

Is there something wrong with that argument?

<comment><USER7> This argument is valid... the flaw in the author's logic is rather the assumption that encryption is a function, i.e. that it is deterministic. In fact decryption is deterministic, but encryption is not, and that's what prevents this kind of attack. Yes, you can obtain an encryption of any given ASCII character using a constant-valued function "inside the encryption", but the important point is that it's just _an_ encryption, not _the_ encryption, of that character. The decryption function, which you do not have access to, will send all possible encrypted representations back to the same plaintext.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please note that I submitted this, I am not the author. Please address comment to the author, not me. I get disturbed when people think that items I submit were written by me, and address their comments to me.

I just think this is an interesting question, and I thought the HN audience/community would also find it - and any ensuing discussion - interesting.</comment>


Git2Go's 2015 sales numbers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/building-git2go/git2go-s-2015-sales-numbers-95280d7d5847#.gd0lhb3cm <comment><USER2> Just a quick comment: reading the article and also going to the Git2Go website I had a considerable amount of trouble understanding what this app does and why I would want it. It clones git repositories... where? To the phone? Why?

Not trying to be confrontational, just trying to be helpful ;-) If you could put some use cases front and center on your website and then obviously link to them from articles like this one, it would make it much easier for people like me to evaluate if I want to take a look at it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it enables you to clone Git repositories to your phone for you to change files, make new branches and push and pull changes.

Possible use cases: \- make a quick edit to a pull request you made \- blog using Jekyll \- see what your team has been up to while you are on your way \- look at code where a computer is just not convenient to use, e.g. while commuting

Just to be sure we are not talking on iPhone only, as it is a universal app it runs on iPad and particularly the iPad pro too. The iPad pro focuses on producing rather than consuming and Git2Go fits perfectly into this scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The 'expenses' part is not really fair. The developers need to eat, and they probably need to pay income tax. The expenses are probably much hire if you factor in that time is not free and that making money is also not free. I also don't need them mention the Apple iOS developer program membership fee, or the costs of macbooks.

<comment><USER3> That is true, we didn't list the equipment as it is not Git2Go specific. I already had the membership for the program because of other apps, my MacBook I had anyways and did not buy it for Git2Go. Income Tax applies that is true but is set for each person individually. This is still revenue, so everything we got paid by Apple not our income tax report. The only cost that was Git2Go specific was the GitHub membership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting. Is there a collection of posts detailing SAAS sales numbers anywhere?

<comment><USER6> Git2Go isn't SAAS

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I will say that it's really disconcerting for an American to see the European "comma for decimal, period for thousands" notation alongside the dollar sign.

<comment><USER8> It's a bizarre style choice. Especially if they chose to express the numbers in dollars to make the amounts more relatable to international readers.

<comment><USER9> Why? A currency symbol does not come with a decimal/thousands separator _convention_.

<comment><USER7> Doesn't it? People typically use the currency symbol for their country.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bertrand Russell's "The Principles of Mathematics" in PDF and HTML Formats - <AUTHOR> http://people.umass.edu/klement/pom/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also:

Intro to Mathematical Philosophy: [http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell- imp.html](http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html)

and Tractacus: Logico-Philosophicus: [http://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/](http://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/)</comment>


Apache httpd ignores DNT header from MS IE 10 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apache/httpd/commit/a381ff35fa4d50a5f7b9f64300dfd98859dee8d0

<comment><USER2> The discussion on the pull request is interesting, and illustrates the trouble with DNT being "default" -- ignore it, and users who opted into actual DNT are now harmed.

</comment><comment><USER3> lovely.</comment>


Amazon Writing Style Tips - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/destraynor/status/1258372157706510336 <comment><USER2> The very first sentence of the very first tip uses "less" instead of "fewer".</comment>


Britain pulls out spies as Russia, China crack Snowden files – report - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/14/britain-security-idUSKBN0OU02420150614 <comment><USER3> This story is very dubious. Timing very suspect. No official willing to say any of this on record yet they do a simultaneous briefing to the BBC and Sunday Times?

China and Russia both decrypting the cache? Notice how none of the actual quotes say that China/Russia decrypted anything or have access to info not in the public domain.

"It is the case that Russians and Chinese have information. It has meant agents have had to be moved and that knowledge of how we operate has stopped us getting vital information. There is no evidence of anyone being harmed."

The Sunday Times article can't even get some basic facts right:

"David Miranda, the boyfriend of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was seized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 "highly classified" intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow."

Not true. He was visiting Poitras in Berlin.

I'm gonna need more evidence than 'anonymous government sources' for this.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand how this could be orchestrated (NSA letters?) and yet no orchestration be done against comments like yours and HN in general? Too quick to be censored?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The BBC article has a few more details: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33125068](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33125068)

I'm British, and it seems to me that if British Intelligence need to move spies as a result of what an unprivileged contractor like Snowden could find out, they've done a really poor job of ensuring that critical information was only available to people who needed to know. Maybe Snowden has done them a favour by revealing how poor their internal security is, without (as the BBC article says) harming anyone. Now the real question the media should be asking is who at MI6 should take responsibility for their poor internal security?

<comment><USER6> Also note the absence of even a single concrete example where actual harm for the security and safety of a western countrie's citizens was caused.

One would assume, given all the propaganda, that it should be easy to document a dozen impressive cases (of the hundreds allegedly existing) in a convincing way...

<comment><USER7> > Also note the absence of even a single concrete example where actual harm > for the security and safety of a western countrie's citizens was caused.

I'm no expert on geopolitics (none of us are), but I'm fairly certain that kind of thing cannot be quantified. It's like trying to quantify how much love you have for someone. The harm isn't direct and measurable, any harm would be almost entirely indirect.

Before the leaks, maybe Russia wouldn't have invaded Crimea because they were unsure what the U.S/NATO plans are or were and didn't have enough information to move. After the leaks, they had all the information they needed and moved forward with their plan. Or maybe they invaded precisely because they had the evidence which showed the U.S would be unlikely to act.

Those kinds of things aren't inherently measurable so quantifying them is a futile endeavor. I'm no fan of the government but to pretend there are zero negative consequences for us as a country is ignorant and naive. Like it or not, there is a bigger picture and ignoring it doesn't mean it goes away or ceases to exist.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that the NSA really deals with plans about military operations. And also the original article mainly concerns itself with agents that had to leave hostile countries once their cover has been blown.

But yes, certainly some of the information in the Snowden revelations might have been valuable, but one would have to compare their impact with the constant stream of information obtained by reciprocal spying which is going on all of the time and (I'm convinced) is highly targeted...

<comment><USER8> The NSA is under the Department of Defense and, by their charter, provides information to the USG about military operations. You are also confusing the issue of what NSA produces vs. what information they have access to.

I'm also not sure that I follow this second argument. Snowden's revelations are clearly supplemental to any espionage that might have been going on against the U.S.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The timing of this seems a little convenient, coming as it does after a week in which a huge data breach has occurred. Also, it seems that when Greenwalds partner was detained the UK could not decrypt what he was carrying, so the suggestion seems to be that Russia and China can crack what the UK and US cannot. Finally, the Snowden data is now pretty old, so odd that this should come up now.

Of course, as suggested below, Snowden data may have leaked via a media organisation with lesser OpSec, but if so then perhaps best to say so.

For my own part, I think that Snowden did us a service on balance, but he can expect to be the scapegoat in every data breach of this sort for years to come.

<comment><USER10> Or, Russia/China cracking the NSA Snowden files were responsible for both OPM breaches and this.

Maybe those countries gained access to OPM data via the Snowden data?

<comment><USER11> The mismanagement of security at OPM predates Snowden's disclosures. However, it's pretty much target #1 for any foreign intelligence agency.

The OPM data contains enough details that would allow a good intelligence agency to track down damn near every agent under non-official cover, and blackmail damn near every official under official cover. It should never have been on any network, ever.

If _any_ element of this story is true - and I'm entirely unconvinced about it - then it's not Snowden's data that's caused this, but the OPM breach.

Don't insult our intelligence, JTRIG. This is some oldschool Правда shite. You've gotten sloppy. I'm very disappointed in you all. You don't have to wag your tail every time Theresa May barks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Listening to BBC news on the radio this morning, the presenter said something along the lines of "we have in on the highest authority from Downing Street and Security Services insiders."

No proof, no named sources, just a parroting of the government line. Something sounds a bit fishy to me.

Edit: spelling, grammar, give me a break it's Sunday morning!

<comment><USER13> From the same people who gave us Saddam's WMDs.

If The Sunday Times had shown hard proof that Snowden's files have been decrypted, I would have sat up and noticed. But at this point in time, western governments have lost all credibility. Would it have mattered if the sources were named? Colin Powell gave "evidence" at the UN of possible reasons to invade Iraq. All of it was bullshit.

Hard proof, or GTFO.

<comment><USER14> > Hard proof, or GTFO.

So the Bush administration's failure to prevent 911 was completely reasonable and couldn't be criticised, right?

<comment><USER13> Not sure what you're implying. I never mentioned 9/11

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >> citing unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Home Office (interior ministry) and security services.

\</comment><comment>--

So the sources of these claims are the exact same people who are a significant part of the mass surveillance which Snowden exposed. There is some substantially flawed journalism going on here.

Also, in other news, apparently China and Russia are allies now. Or did they just happen to simultaneously crack these files on the exact same day?

<comment><USER9> Yes, the scattergun "Russia _and_ China" line seems to be over-egging it a bit.

<comment><USER16> Soon we'll be hearing about how North Korea and the Galactic Empire have also gained access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Glenn Greenwald's reaction to the article:

"That Sun Times article is filled with so many factual errors- demonstrable ones- along w/the worst journalism. Will be fun writing about it."

[https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/609912455419011...](https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/609912455419011072)

Followed by a retweet of the following response:

"unsourced, unverifiable nonsense smears by a group that knows it's losing, the spying fascists"

</comment><comment><USER18> Where is the hard evidence? The media has to stop being so gullible and do some actually journalism. The wild accusations can start wars!

<comment><USER19> Actual journalism costs more money because you actually have to invest the time to dig, and comes with the added cost of getting reduced access to senior government officials, which makes it even more expensive to keep up with the competition.

When the public appears to not care whether their news consists of parroted lines or actual journalism, there's little incentive for most of the press to dig, and many incentives not to.

My favourite recent example was when a Norwegian newspaper published documents from the Snowden files that appears to show extensive surveillance in Norway. This was underlined by the fact that others have admitted to surveillance based on the exact same documents.

What followed was surreal: Norway has two main security agencies, the Police Security Service, responsible for internal intelligence, and the Security Service (Etteretningstjenesten), which is external intelligence. The latter used to pretty much never talk to the press.

But after that article, they suddenly got chatty, and all of their own accord they invited to a press conference to "admit" that yes, _they_ were responsible for the surveillance in question. Never mind that for all other countries that have made admissions the documents in question have indicated _internal_ surveillance, and that the Security Service "admitted" that this was surveillance in Afghanistan, where Norway according to this admission are intercepting metadata for pretty much every call. But nowhere else.

At this point you'd think the press would have some _questions_ , such as "why are you revealing to the press - and thus implicitly to Taliban etc. - <USER2> Norway is intercepting all calls in Afghanistan?" or "why would the numbers for Norway refer to interception in Afghanistan when there's a separate entry for Afghanistan in the same numbers?" and "why would the NSA depend on _Norway_ for surveillance in Afghanistan?" and "how much money does this surveillance in Afghanistan cost us?" and "if we have the capability to conduct surveillance in Afghanistan on this scale, why is that the _only_ place, we're conducting this kind of surveillance?"

Not least "why, when the article talked about internal Norwegian surveillance did you feel compelled to host a press conference to reveal details about your notoriously secretive operations instead of letting the Police Security Service deny the allegations". Heck, if it really was the Security Service that this document referred to, the Police Security Service could just state that they invite the parliamentary oversight committee to audit, and that they will naturally find no such surveillance.

You'd also expect they'd go back to the Police Security Service and ask them "why should we believe you're not doing this, when your predecessor in name, operated by most of the same people, were caught having conducted illegal political surveillance for several decades not that many years ago?"

Nothing. No follow up at all. Instead the single press conference was enough to make the paper that broke the story backtrack and apologise.

A few months later it became clear that the NSA were in fact _recording_ most calls in Afghanistan, which makes the idea that the NSA would explicitly call out vast amounts of _metadata_ collection by our Security Service as valuable even more silly.

Still no follow up from Norwegian press.

Basically they don't want to rock the boat. When they don't rock the boat, they get to get spoon fed information they'd otherwise have to work for and/or read about in the competitors papers. When they don't rock the boat they get exclusive interviews and photo ops.

It's a fantastic lesson in "soft" censorship: Don't outlaw publishing material you want to suppress. Instead make it economical and professional suicide. Make journalists that dig sacrifice their career by making sure everyone know they will never get any kind of inside access. Make papers or tv channels that publish too hard hitting stories know they'll lose any chance at access, interviews and photo ops. Soon enough, large parts of the press will self- regulate.

This is part of why we used to have a politically affiliated press, where political parties would fund papers that would be paid explicitly to provide viewpoints that weren't popular even if that viewpoint was unprofitable. Sure that have flaws too, but those flaws were counteracted by having a wide range of them publishing alternative viewpoints. That more and more media outlets have gone "independent" means more and more of them are no implicitly beholden to play to government interests, or at least staying not straying _too_ far from the script, to be profitable.

(sorry for the long rant - the above story still makes me angry)

<comment><USER18> This is infuriating and sadly turning into the norm. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks like Snowden smear campaign. There were never reports of anyone besides the journalists of getting their hands on the documents.

</comment><comment><USER21> If this is true, surely the bigger story is that AES-256 isn't safe anymore.

</comment><comment><USER22> So how do they know Russia and China cracked the files in the first place? Seems like a smear.

</comment><comment><USER23> Lets see... recently USG had all files from federal employees stolen, including background check information which as I heard included spies [1]. Germany's Prime Minister had a Trojan on her computer [2]. Government networks are falling like flies and all the sudden some 5 eyes countries are pulling their spies out, and blaming it on snowden?

1\. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/security-clearance- information-l...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/security-clearance-information- likely-stolen-during-breach-of-government-agency-1434143820) 2\. [http://rt.com/news/267070-trojan-bundestag-merkel- computer/](http://rt.com/news/267070-trojan-bundestag-merkel-computer/)

</comment><comment><USER24> This is all rather short on context. What encrypted files are these exactly? Are these something Snowden took with him? How did they get them from him? If they took a copy by force, why didn't they ask for an encryption key by force? How exactly would they go about cracking it? Is there something we don't know (and Snowden didn't know) about the state of the art of cryptography?

</comment><comment><USER25> Garbage story, the Intercept addresses it well: [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday- times-r...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report- snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't understand the story. From what I can tell, Snowden had information taken from the US which could compromise its apparently closest ally's spy networks. But didn't tell the UK that? More over, the UK had no idea that the US has such info? I would like to believe that as soon as the Snowden breach happened, the US told the UK, and the UK took measures to mitigate it. I would also like to think that the UK assumed it anyway. Or did the UK leave its networks vulnerable for all this time? Or did the US assure the UK that its encryption couldn't be broken?

Perhaps, the UK moved its spies some time ago, and decided to keep it quiet until the Russians and Chinese broke the encryption.

I have great difficulty taking this story at face value.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9712820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9712820)

</comment><comment><USER27> Just assume for one second this is a genuine revelation and not recycled propaganda from mid 2013. Couldn't someone entrusted with the Snowden cache just dump it online now? If the trove is already circulating between hostile intelligence agencies, that seriously skews the risk/reward calculation regarding mass dissemination.

</comment><comment><USER28> Full text of the original Sunday Times article (primary source is paywalled):

[https://archive.is/BkuMM](https://archive.is/BkuMM)

[http://pastebin.com/UJpJxDnj](http://pastebin.com/UJpJxDnj)

Statements from the article that seem questionable:

 _> Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden_

Both? Seems a little strange that they would independently do this simultaneously, unless they had been working together on it (though this is plausible).

 _> Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files held by the former American security contractor_

The only reason Snowden is in Russia is because the US state department cancelled his passport on his route to Ecuador. Russia was not his intended destination, but his presence there has been extremely helpful for his opponents to paint him as being in collaboration with them. And if it _is_ indeed true that they have gained access to the info (either through his co- operation or otherwise), then perhaps cancelling his passport while in transit and forcing him into exile there wasn't such a great idea.

 _> One senior Home Office official accused Snowden of having "blood on his hands", although Downing Street said there was "no evidence of anyone being harmed"._

So which is it?

 _> David Cameron's aides confirmed the material was now in the hands of spy chiefs in Moscow and Beijing_

Where's the evidence? The only sources of the article are from the US/British government, who have given only unsubstantiated claims.

 _> people are being pulled back and operations where people are exposed are having to be shut down_

Perhaps this might be due to the US Office of Personnel management (OPM) being unable to keep the data of millions of federal employees protected? The Chinese hack got this information directly from the agency that held it: [http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/12/office-of- pers...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/12/office-of-personnel- management-hack-china/71146452/)

 _> David Miranda, the boyfriend of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was seized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 "highly classified" intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow._

They can't even get basic facts straight. He had been in Berlin visiting Laura Poitras, not in Moscow visiting Snowden: [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-m...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david- miranda-detained-uk-nsa)

</comment><comment><USER29> Imagine if the NSA had spent more of its grey matter and money on IT security rather than shameless spying of western citizens.

<comment><USER30> > shameless spying of western citizens

should be

> shameless spying on innocent people all around the world

<comment><USER31> Right on. The way I always saw it was that the NSA were the thieves, collecting data they did not own. Snowden, while accused of stealing secrets, actually set them free.</comment></comment></comment>


agentzh's Nginx Tutorials - <AUTHOR> http://agentzh.org/misc/nginx/agentzh-nginx-tutorials-enuk.html

<comment><USER2> There's two of us at 37signals building projects on top of the HttpLua / ngx_lua module. The OpenResty (<http://www.openresty.org>) project is absolutely worth a look if you are willing to live on the edge and you wan't incredibly fast performance. I can't say enough good things about the work agentzh and chaoslawful have been up to lately -- just check out their Github profiles.

<comment><USER3> I really like lua and have been lookin at getting my hands dirty with this.. Sounds like I have my weekend planned then!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who don't know, agentzh and chaoslawful made these super-awesome tools around nginx to power Taobao, the largest e-commerce site in China. agentzh left Taobao to work fulltime on OpenResty now. Stay tuned for what's to come from them!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The source repository is here <https://github.com/agentzh/nginx-tutorials>

<comment><USER5> Strangely, even though it has a public Github repository, you're not allowed to copy it according to agentzh's copyright notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I worked with agentzh on a module at one point, and he was extremely helpful in validating my ideas and helping me out. He answered all my questions by thorough example and explanation, which is why I'm excited that I saw this post. Hats off to agentzh!

</comment><comment><USER7> I was looking forward to learning nginx, until I read this...

It's very nicely written and explains things well, but it doesn't so much teach nginx as it does point out all the contradictory and unexpected behaviors. That doesn't look fun to learn (or work with) at all.

Edit: I just looked in to agentzh's other project OpenResty, and I take everything back. It may be difficult, but it's extremely powerful, and seemingly worth dealing with the 'gotchas'.

</comment><comment><USER8> His and chaoslawful's github projects are worth taking a look at. I slapped on a Lua scripted cache layer on top of Nginx, which ended up boosting a response into low ms.

</comment><comment><USER9> agentzh is a great mentor. He has helped me number of times, often looking at my configurations and getting into my systems and tweaking things around to make them work. He even installed the powerful openresty on one of my machines to demonstrate how it can solve my problems and did some benchmarks for me. Respect to agentzh!! cant wait to see it evolve from here

</comment><comment><USER10> Are there any tutorials on how to start a vps as a beginner from scratch? I mean in one place rather than looking for a tutorial in linux then another on apache or nginx and so on...

<comment><USER11> There's <http://library.linode.com/>

But I'd highly suggest learning how to administer a Linux installation from the command line locally before you create a VPS and open yourself up to be hacked as you try to learn how to do everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That font is almost impossible to read.

<comment><USER13> Fix your browser/OS default font settings. This page have 0 styling and page with 0 styling should look perfect on your screen if you have everything configured correctly.

<comment><USER14> That page declares lang="zh" in the html tag. So it's probably not using the default font for Western or Unicode, but whatever the browser maps to Simplified Chinese.

In my case that was much uglier, and I had to fix it to read the page.

<comment><USER13> I see this as valid reason. Although, did not see difference on ubuntu and windows. What browser + OS you use?

While this is a reasonable explanation, I see many cases where system fonts set wrong and as a result an unstyled page look terrible.

<comment><USER14> _> What browser + OS you use?_

I saw the problem with Firefox 10 on CentOS. My default font was specifically configured to Bitstream Vera Serif.

Setting the default font in the Preferences seems to only change it for the encoding in the active tab (unless you go into the Advanced dialog). For several Asian languages it wanted to use "serif", which appears to be the 20-year-old X11 default version.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


UK Brexit Party Privacy Policy - <AUTHOR> https://www.thebrexitparty.org/privacy-policy/ <comment><AUTHOR> For those who think the EU has strong data privacy laws, you might want to read what exemptions each country has.

I'm pretty confident the Brexit Party are still failing to meet privacy law, but to see this, following the Brexit mess with Cambridge Analytica, I'm left wondering ... did anything change?

 _Profiling – The Brexit Party aim to create and maintain a profile for each registered voter in the UK. We will do this by merging the Electoral Register(s) with other data that maybe lawfully available to us. For more detailed information about this type of processing, you may wish to read the ICO Draft framework code of practice for the use of personal data in political campaigning. If you wish, you can ask us not to maintain a profile in your name using the contact details above and we will take steps to remove you from our systems._</comment>


Ask HN: What makes a great freelance portfolio? - <AUTHOR>

We're building a new kind of portfolio site specifically for freelance developers. A place where top freelancers can share, showcase, and find high quality freelance gigs. Here's a demo of what we've built. https://theworkmob.com/demo/ <comment><USER3> We've buried this thread for two reasons: the use of (to put it charitably) misleading material [1], and the sockpuppets posting in this thread.

I hope it's obvious that such tactics are not ok here.

1\. [https://theworkmob.com/demo/#/projects/hackernews- stability](https://theworkmob.com/demo/#/projects/hackernews-stability)

<comment><AUTHOR> Felt it right to respond to the bury. The Hacker News Stability project on the linked demo was not meant to mislead, only to be a sample and show planned product features. No harm or false representation was intended.

Respectfully - <USER2>

<comment><USER4> Sorry, _The Hacker News Stability project on the linked demo was not meant to mislead_

How could it not mislead? With a obviously fake quote from PG?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone hip-deep in professional services: consider whether the answer to "freelancing sites are terrible for software developers" is "we need better freelancer sites", or whether instead the answer is "freelancer matchmaking sites are generally not in the best interests of freelancers".

In this rare instance I think I'll try speaking for Patrick McKenzie, a fellow consultant, along with myself: we think the answer is the latter.

If you're aiming for the most lucrative work, the conversation you want to be having with prospective clients has very little to do with anything you'd put on a developer portfolio, and a lot more to do with (a) being able to speak the language of business (ie: making a credible benefits-focused pitch and understanding how "customer service" principles apply to our kind of work) and (b) being able to tailor a case study or two to a client.

The latter might sound like something you could profitably host on a freelancer site, but the kind of case study I'm talking about works more like a resume cover letter than the resume itself.

<comment><USER6> Thomas wrote substantially what I wanted to write.

Edit to expand:

So some of the features of WorkMob were easy for you to write, but are not in the best interests of many people who could potentially work for you. If your design showcases to clients that "Number of OSS projects" or "Number of Github followers" are how you rate developers, your clients might actually develop the impression that those two numbers a) matter and b) matter quite a lot.

Instead of being inspired by freelance portfolios, which devote 95% of the emphasis to What and 5% of the emphasis to Why, maybe you should look at case studies by consulting firms who are good at what they do.

One I wrote which drove substantial additional business for me: [http://blog.fogcreek.com/our-marketing-is-up-fog-creek- and-w...](http://blog.fogcreek.com/our-marketing-is-up-fog-creek-and-what-we- did-about-it/)

One which I was not involved with, but which I routinely recommend for people when they ask "How do I write a case study?": [http://www.conversion-rate- experts.com/seomoz-case-study/](http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz- case-study/)

You'll note that neither of these is particularly intensive from a features- required-to-support-the-case-study perspective. All you need is a blogging engine that lets you add images. For bonus points, email capture.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the detailed response Patrick,

I see your point. We're finding that we want to focus in on real validated feedback from past clients and simple case studies of the work.

We're still thinking through the actual metrics that make sense to profile, and I can definitely see that Github scores might not be very important.

I'd love to go deeper in how we can create a framework for case studies if you're free to connect offline. email@example.com

<comment><USER8> I hope this conversation can continue _on_ line. There's a lot to be learned from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone with little technical skills when it comes to software development, I like that I can see a person's past work and read reviews from people he/she has worked with in the past.

<comment><USER7> What would you like to see specifically about a developers past work? Code? A walkthrough of what was built? What would be most useful?

<comment><USER9> A walk through of what was built would be helpful to better understand what the project looked like (or how it functioned) before the developer came on board and what the project looked like/functioned after.

Also, knowing how a developer works best would be useful. For example, does the developer like to check in regularly or does he/she prefer a hands off experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd say that a great freelance portfolio would be one that conveys the freelancer's skills to a prospective client regardless of that clients' level of technical understanding.

It would be great to have a portfolio that could showcase a variety of different information (dynamically) catered to the person looking at that that profile.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://theworkmob.com/demo](https://theworkmob.com/demo)

</comment><comment><USER11> What seems to be the problem with current portfolio sites?

<comment><USER7> (WorkMob Founder) We found that todays portfolio sites are great for freelance designers but suck for freelance software development. When work isn't visual most of todays options are not ideal. We also wanted a way to show real validated feedback from our past clients instead of having to send out referrals to every new potential client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> are you competing with freelancer sites?

<comment><USER13> Based on the HN discussion 3 days ago, it seems that freelancer sites are ripe for disruption.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7857315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7857315)

<comment><USER4> My opinion is that they are ripe for extinction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We've found some awesome designers on dribble, I hope you guys can do the same for freelance dev's!

<comment><USER15> Good lord, a Dribble for Devs would be absolutely wonderful.

I hate hiring devs on oDesk / Elance / etc - alternatives would be marvellous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great use of Angular.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Top freelancers". So begginer ones arent welcome?

<comment><USER7> We're definitely built for more experienced freelancers over beginners, but we're focused on talent over age or time : )

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great looking design. However, instead of outsourcing my portfolio I just got a domain and added my own stuff. check out [http://appsonify.com](http://appsonify.com), curious to know some actionable steps I can take to improve it. The whole thing is hosted on Amazon S3 bucket and it cost me like 50 cents in traffic so far. No need to run a static http server, just point your domain through route 53 and point it to amazon bucket.

<comment><USER19> I can give you some feedback if you want. In the past I have searched freelancers in the web, app and design space. For each position I maybe look at ~200 freelancers. That means a freelancer is out on average in maybe 10 - 20 seconds.

What I like:

* You have a website

* Design is very easy and clean

* You show your references

* There's an e-mail address

What could be better:

* Your picture. If you don't want to show your face just leave it out. Otherwise take a nice picture and put it up without any effects / filters

* I don't know what you did on each of your projects. Normally, I assume that you either did the whole site or a minimal part.

Stuff that depends (if you mainly sell to technical or non-technical people):

* Your services part doesn't really describe technologies / frameworks. However, if I look for a freelancer I look for somebody knowing Django, Magento or whatever.

* Same goes for the projects

<comment><USER18> those are great pointers, thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Full disclosure / shameless plug: I've worked with these guys for a few months now, and they're a great team. They're freelance devs who built a site and service for freelance devs. Their approach -- matching portfolios, profiles, and feedback to available jobs -- is a good one.

There are a handful of similar services out there, and to be honest, I wish all of them well. This approach has worked for design-freelancing sites, and properly adapted and adjusted, it could work well for development projects. In the long run, the big win here will be in recommendations and semi-automation of matching portfolio signal with job characteristics. They're also doing interesting work on making the job posting, scoping, and selection process easier for nontechnical to mildly technical hirers.</comment>


When Are "Fair" ML Algorithms Better Than Accurate Ones? With Osonde Osoba - <AUTHOR> https://innovationforallcast.com/2018/10/24/when-are-fair-algorithms-better-than-accurate-ones-with-osonde-osoba/ <comment><USER2> I have listened to quite a few of these episodes lately. This guy's from RAND.</comment>