Pythagorean cup - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_cup <comment><USER2> Beautiful. This has a modern application. When fed with a slow trickle of water, it will empty itself periodically, and formed the basis of automatic- flush urinals before the electronic valves became commonplace.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't a flush require that water be added fast enough to eliminate all the air from the bend? Otherwise, water will just trickle out at the same rate it trickles in.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it has to do that. The bend may have to be narrow enough for surface tension to have an effect.

I found this nice web page, the Virtual Lavatory:

[http://www.users.waitrose.com/~ttagrevatt/vlav/works_cistern...](http://www.users.waitrose.com/~ttagrevatt/vlav/works_cisterns.html)

<comment><USER4> Interesting, but goofy in spots:

 _Why did Britain evolve such a complex mechanism when this pattern seems so simple? Water economy: these valves can leak and can be kept permanently open, allowing precious gallons to be wasted._

I've never been to Britain, but my impression is that it's not a particularly dry place. Why would "water economy" be so much more important there than in e.g. Israel or California? Perhaps toilet technology is as path-dependent as any other evolutionary process?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just curious: I understand why titles might be reset to the raw title found on the page, but in this case it's just made the headline less useful.

I added a tiny bit of context when posting - to explain to people why this might be interesting to them. "Pythagorean 'greedy' cup - empties entirely if filled too much".

What's the purpose of reducing that to just the raw wikipedia title?

<comment><USER5> Your added context worked for me. I saw your original title but did not have time to read an article, but your title interested me enough that I noted to myself to come back and read it later.

I would have skipped it under the current title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I thought as much. I certainly noticed that it got a lot of votes - title changed - and it started to get much fewer upvotes, indicating that less people bothered to read it.

<comment><USER6> I was the same. I saw the full title in the morning and thought it looked interesting enought to read later. When I came back the title had changed and I wouldn't have clicked through had I not seen the explanation in the original title.

Glad I did, too, because it's such a clever "gadget"!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first thought was, wow, they could have had computers based on sets of these connected in different ways, as logic circuits. As I recall from the Stephenson version, Turing and co. were using something similar in the analog days.

<comment><USER8> Yup it's definitely possible [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clever, but isn't there some danger that if you tipped it the wrong way when drinking out of it, even before the "gluttony" level, that you'd start up the siphon action, causing it to empty out onto the floor? At the very least you can imagine you'd get a bit of wine trapped in the curve, which would then drip out of the hole at the bottom.

<comment><USER10> I don't think so, because the column is in the middle; as long as the tube in the middle is narrow, whichever way you tilt it the height in the centre will be the same as it was at the start and nothing comes out. I guess if you tilt it past horizontal to drink out of while the cup's more than half full then you have a problem - but that sounds more like a feature than a bug.

<comment><USER11> Yes, upon seeing this I immediately wanted a 'trick' cup that did this but had this, umm, feature more hidden by placing it in the side of the cup not the middle. But then an unsuspecting, but non-greedy, user may spill the entire cup just by sipping out of the wrong side! The central column should make it quite safe in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't it be easier to simply have a smaller cup? I mean, this is clever, but seems a tad impractical.

<comment><USER13> The point is to punish gluttony, but even that point isn't the point. The point is to demonstrate a system with a threshold. a tank fills to a point, and rather than overflowing the tank, completely empties it.

A more obvious subversion of this would be to stick your finger in the discharge at the bottom. Fill it as much as you want then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here is a 3d printable version :) Work in progress...enjoy.

[https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BwATmn6QdbBYeFM1b2to...](https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BwATmn6QdbBYeFM1b2tocGcwX2M&usp=sharing)

<comment><USER14> [http://shapedo.com/robosprout/pythagorean_cup](http://shapedo.com/robosprout/pythagorean_cup)

BTW, shapedo has a tool to migrate all your thingiverse items over with one click :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A good video explaining it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q9Jim1abMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q9Jim1abMo)

<comment><USER16> That is a copy. Here is the original video from the original channel: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb5N2wpYRJg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb5N2wpYRJg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love this idea! I wonder if someone could make a 3D model that could be easily printed of one.

</comment><comment><USER17> This principle is used in aquaponics in the form of a bell siphon. You don't want to keep the roots of your plans submerged for long periods of time, so this lets you flush out the water automatically.

</comment><comment><USER18> As noted on the article talk page, it's rather dubiously sourced that this device really goes back to Pythagoras. The tourist wares shown in the article photographs are of course much newer than that.

</comment><comment><USER19> It seems unlikely that this would have been used as a drinking cup, because it wouldn't work properly if it's moved around or tipped. Instead, it was probably a "temple magic" device, where a worshipper would have to buy some sacrificial wine and pour it into a mounted cup as a sacrifice. If they don't pour enough in, nothing happens, but once they pour enough the god "drinks" the wine. The wine probably fell down into a bucket attached to some mechanism that would make noise, or move something, or maybe open a door, to indicate that the god is satisfied with the sacrifice.

<comment><USER20> The water level in the center does not rise when you tip a cup. Sloshing back and forth does the same thing the only edge case banging the cup on a surface but given a small internal channel that's not going to do much either.

PS: My initial thought was incaseing the channel in the edge would be less obvious but that would have more issues with tipping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This cup seems like one of the trick cup that you give to your friends after they had a few pints of beer.

Those Greeks, funny guys!

</comment><comment><USER22> Wouldn't it be easier to have the hole go straight up through the center shaft without looping around?

<comment><USER23> Then it would only remove the excess, not the entire contents.

<comment><USER22> The linked design only removes the excess too.

<comment><USER23> It seemed to me that the linked design removed the entire contents: "Hydrostatic pressure then creates a siphon through the central column, causing the entire contents of the cup to be emptied through the hole at the bottom of the stem."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this how a regular toilet works too?

<comment><USER25> Yes, it's also based on communicating vessels and syphon effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I implemented this design in LiquidSketch game on iPad some time ago. Amazingly it worked.

</comment><comment><USER27> Cool concept, though not very practical (just like so many other ideas). Sounds like the Spork of it's time :).

</comment><comment><USER28> "imbibe" [http://monosnap.com/image/bdPaQiIKYaJ1Qpw19P9O2KZKcsEZyq](http://monosnap.com/image/bdPaQiIKYaJ1Qpw19P9O2KZKcsEZyq)</comment>


Show HN: Orbital Typo – HTML5 typing game that drills symbols and alphanumerics - <AUTHOR> https://orbitaltypo.com <comment><AUTHOR> I like to play typing games when I have a down minute, but I couldn't find a game that would let me practice the symbols I use in my day-to-day work as a programmer. I wrote Orbital Typo to fill that gap. It's my first web game. Marketing ideas would be much appreciated, as I don't have much experience in the advertising space.

The game itself is about 5KLOC of javascript code. I didn't use a game engine. Reasoning about the game structure and handling design dead-ends and workarounds was actually one of the more enjoyable aspects of the development process.</comment>


Can you get cp to give a progress bar like wget? - <AUTHOR> http://chris-lamb.co.uk/2008/01/24/can-you-get-cp-to-give-a-progress-bar-like-wget/ <comment><USER2>
      size=`wc -c a` ; cp a b & sleep 1 ; ETA 'wc -c b' $size

Every 10 seconds it runs the given command, then gives an ETA to the number you want. It's not a progress bar, but it is a projected time of completion and can easily be extended if you want.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149364>

ETA is like _pv_ but for those occasions when you don't have access to the data stream in a pipe. It can be used anytime you can compute a number that indicates how far along you are. Just give it the command to run for itself, or run the command and feed the values to ETA on _stdin_ and it will give you regular estimates of when it will hit the given target.

It also lets your _cp_ run at full speed, unlike when you copy through _pv,_ and is more generic than just checking on the progress of specifically a copy command. It lets you predict the completion time of anything measurable.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! that looks useful... I completely missed your submission the first time you posted it

<comment><USER2> You are not alone:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1151791>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Easier: install Pipe Viewer (<http://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml>) and, instead of

      cp a b

run

      pv < a > b

<comment><USER5> For those of you interested in making it a permanent replacement for cp, you can use this Python script:

        #!/usr/bin/env python
        from sys import argv
        from subprocess import Popen
        copy_from = open(argv[-2],'r')
        copy_to = open(argv[-1],'w')
        Popen("pv", stdin=copy_from, stdout=copy_to)
        copy_from.close()
        copy_to.close()

Just alias cp to it in Bash.

<comment><USER6> Alternatively, you could just write a shell function:

       cp() { pv < $1 > $2; }

(Or name the function something else if you want regular cp still available.)

<comment><USER7> Quote the variables.

<comment><USER6> Ah, good point. I'm personally used to zsh, which doesn't have that particular misfeature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This item has prompted me to investigate the strace command. It's one to put in the bag of things to try on occasion to make sure I don't forget it.

In the BUGS section of the man page you can find these items (amongst others):

      A traced process ignores SIGSTOP except on SVR4 platforms.

Hmm. That's useful to note.

      A traced process which tries to block SIGTRAP will be sent
      a SIGSTOP in an attempt to force continuation of tracing.

I can understand that, although it could be surprising in practice for the unwary.

      A traced process runs slowly.

Understandable.

      Traced processes which are descended from command may be
      left running after an interrupt signal (CTRL-C).

That's definitely worth knowing.

      On Linux, exciting as it would be, tracing the init process
      is forbidden.

Damn.

<comment><USER8> _On Linux, exciting as it would be, tracing the init process is forbidden._

But of course, nothing is stopping you from commenting this check out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use rsync --progress as a cp replacement when I feel like I need to know how the cp is going.

<comment><USER10> I use rsync -avzP exclusively now over cp ever since I tried copying ~7000 files from a USB drive and found cp choked less than 10% through. rsync is wonderful.

<comment><USER11> The -z flag to rsync is not always the best choice, specifically when copying within one machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you feel the need to point out an alternative solution, then I think you have missed the entire point by a wide margin.

<comment><USER13> Nice hack. Hacks involving strace and awk are fun, the only thing that could have improved this is to somehow involve netcat too.

<comment><USER14> ...somehow involve netcat too.

I was thinking of slowing the copy operation down a bit more by roundtripping it through Australia...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Or you could just do:

cp $SOURCE /dev/stdout | pv | cp /dev/stdin $DEST

Edit: "pv <a >b" is simpler, but isn't the game to fit "cp" somewhere? :)

<comment><USER2> That doesn't give you a progress bar because it doesn't know how big the data stream will be. You need to pass in some options to pv to give it that information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> And now enjoy copying files at only half the usual speed.

<comment><USER17> A watched progress bar never reaches 100%.

<comment><USER18> I have a screenshot with one that reached 139%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some distributions of 'cp' have it built in: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/fedora/+source/coreutils/+bug/640...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/fedora/+source/coreutils/+bug/64067)

<comment><USER20> On some BSDs (including Mac OS X) there is a signal, SIGINFO, to which cp will respond by printing out a status report. You can send this signal by typing ^T.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> can also with

        $ rsync --progress file1 file2

<comment><USER22> I like your way best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> rsync -Pv from-file to-file</comment>


Huge floating device isn't trapping plastic in Pacific Ocean - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/great-pacific-garbage-patch-huge-floating-device-isnt-trapping-plastic-waste-in-pacific-ocean/ <comment><USER2> tldr: Fix is in the works. (bug fix will probably make it to prod faster than many enterprise applications do, and this is a physical device deployed thousands of miles away)

Love that this is being led by a young engineer (24) and came up with the idea 8 years ago. So great to see young people making a difference! (gosh I can't believe I just said "young people", I am 37 now...)</comment>


Shrine – A new solution for handling file uploads in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://twin.github.io/introducing-shrine/ <comment><USER2> The creator of carrierwave started the new project refile [1] as a better alternative. Is there a comparison between the two approaches, i.e, refile vs shrine?

[1]: [https://github.com/refile/refile](https://github.com/refile/refile)

<comment> janko-m I was actually contributing actively to Refile before, so in a lot of ways Shrine is similar to Refile (the idea of backends is basically the same). However, the main difference is that Refile does processing on-the-fly, while Shrine (and CarrierWave) do it upfront, so it goes in that direction. Basically in Shrine I added all of the features I was missing and wanted to change, which I wasn't able to add to Refile in a compatible way. One major addition is the support for background jobs, which I just couldn't see how it could be added to Refile. Also, I wanted Shrine to be far less opinionated than Refile, that you can have much more options how to do uploads.

<comment><USER3> Can you explain what you mean by "upfront" vs "on-the-fly"? I'm somehow not getting it.

This looks very nice. It'll need lots of docs with examples to understand how to put together the nicely flexible building blocks you provide.

<comment> janko-m "Upfront" processing means that you're doing the processing during upload, and on the "on-the-fly" processing means that you first upload the file, and then it's processed dynamically through the URL. For example, in Refile you make an URL to the uploaded file like this:

/attachments/sdkd/resize/300/300

That will make Refile trigger the specified processing at the moment the URL is requested. You should then put a CDN or a reverse proxy in front to kind of cache these processed files, so that they're not processed each time.

About the documentation, I wrote documentation for each of the plugins, and I linked them all on [http://shrinerb.com](http://shrinerb.com). The plugin names should hopefully indicate what feature they accomplish, and since they're all individual, it's up to the user to choose what features they want (i.e. combination of plugins).

<comment><USER3> So "up front" still includes doing the processing in a background job async, as long as it's triggered at point of upload, not at point of request?

"upfront" but async background does seem to be the best way to approach it to me, at least if you had to pick one -- that's what Shrine does?

<comment> janko-m Yes, you got it right, this is exactly what it means. Yeah, there are some rare use cases for on-the-fly processing (think a WYSIWYG editor where the user can choose the size of the image), but for me upfront definitely works best.

<comment><USER3> Cool. I'd call those two choices "upon upload" (instead of 'upfront'), and "upon first view" (instead of "on the fly"), but I'm sure my terminology would confuse someone else too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't done much Web work in Ruby, but in my head the first thing that comes to mind for file uploads is Paperclip[0]. I'd be curious to hear thoughts on the various alternatives (e.g. CarrierWave, Refile, Shrine).

[0] [https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip](https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip)

<comment><USER5> I've used Paperclip in production. It's good and does what it's supposed to. The main issue is if you have a lot of different image sizes. It will basically process all of the images inline + store them to s3, etc. My ideal flow for image processing is to create the thumbnail (which the user sees right away) and to throw the rest of the image processing work on a background queue.

This minimizes the time spent processing a request and keeps the front-end snappy.

<comment><USER6> You could do that with [https://github.com/jrgifford/delayed_paperclip/](https://github.com/jrgifford/delayed_paperclip/) I guess.

<comment> janko-m The part that I mind about both delayed_paperclip and carrierwave_backgrounder is that it doesn't really allow you to write your own job classes. This can be quite limiting for example if you want your jobs to send information to some monitoring services.

Another part that I mind is the user experience. Ok, both of these gems allow you to know when the backgrond job is in process, and then you can display some placeholder image until the processing is done. But that's not really nice user experience. In Shrine the user immediately sees the image they uploaded, because it _has_ that image already cached (usually on the filesystem), and then from the user's point of view the uploading is finished, before the background job even started. CarrierWave also has the cached image, but by design it's not possible to use it, while Paperclip doesn't cache images.

<comment><USER7> This looks like I very cool project, thank you for all the work you put in on it, I've definitely run into some of the problems you're trying to solve, and have come up with various custom-hacked solutions to make it work. I can't wait to try this out on a project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great work! This looks like it addresses my issues with image uploads, specifically the backgrounding. Thanks for open sourcing this. I'll throw it in my stack and give some feedback.</comment>


I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/fashion/02sabbath.html

<comment><USER2> Hmmm.. that might be overkill, but I find that just unplugging the ethernet cable when I really need to write something can be helpful.</comment>


Verifed GoDaddy Employee is conducting an AMA on reddit right now - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/nrptu/iama_real_godaddy_employee_amaa/

<comment><USER2> Go Daddy realizes it perfectly well the part Reddit played in this whole fiasco and how much of an effect it can potentially have in the future for its business, so it's very, very difficult to buy that this isn't a calculated PR move.

Everything from a delicately created image of a conscientious, personable, diligent, innocent worker who is ... well, just reiterating everything that has been said in the past by Go Daddy's official blogs and elsewhere (a back story to Parson killing the elephant that you don't know about, assurances that Go Daddy doesn't support SOPA, an acutely indifferent, and sometimes slightly apologetic explanation for the sexist ads--'they work!') ... to being aware of all the nuanced mannerisms compatible with Reddit's culture and playing them the right way. This is really actually their best damage- controlling PR move on this thing.

<comment><USER3> So being able to mimic nuanced mannerisms on reddit is now a marketable social media skill...

<comment><USER4> I'm sure there are PR flaks that would list that as a skill.

It's not a million miles away from startups and tech companies encouraging their most personable employees to hang out on HN and other places to help increase the profile of said company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> GoDaddy stories has been flooding Hacker News and technology.reddit.com for quite a while now. I don't think this will be their last PR move.

<comment><USER6> Why is everyone so cynical around here? Even if the guy is from PR, which I doubt, his story checks out. I know we all pride ourselves on being smarter than the rest around here but I think popular opinion is wrong on this one. The backlash against them for supporting SOPA seems to have put blinders on us all. Their support was wrong and when they took it back it wasn't very convincing. But they really didn't help write the bill. After they came out supporting SOPA the media grabbed on to the narrative we helped create and now all the stories are focused on them which is leading to a lot of this misinformation we're taking as truth. What's worse is that our anger towards them for supporting the bill won't allow us to see past the hype, realize that yeah, all registrars are exempt, and no, they didn't help write the bill.

I know these facts cannot and never will be excusable but I think we need to start putting this into perspective. Okay, GoDaddy are assholes, let's not support them but let's also quit obsessing over them and get back to SOPA itself. I don't think there's anything else we can discuss about GoDaddy that will help defeat SOPA. Why not focus on what the committee is doing now because I promise GoDaddy isn't the secret hand behind it all and watching them isn't going to help us one bit.

<comment><USER7> Why is everyone so cynical around here? Because they think that PR is evil and deliberate and not just a part of day to day life. PR encompasses everything a company does publicly, not just spinning bad situations.

<comment><USER8> IMO, top-down control of the message is just fundamentally flawed nowadays. Moving away from it would go a long way toward allowing non-anonymous AMAs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe my tastes have just changed, but the quality of the discussion in that AMA is far worse than i remember them being. About half the root questions, and maybe 10% of the followup threads are decent. Maybe it's just because GoDaddy is a hot topic on reddit right now, and so drags out those without much to say, but it's sad to see.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. Usually on these kind of things I find that the crap gets hidden, but here it was very much present.

Only thing worth seeing: Employee: "... everyone I speak to at GoDaddy either opposes SOPA or doesn't know enough to have an opinion." Redditor: "That's odd. Among redditors it's usually both."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry for the dumb question: what is an AMA?

<comment><USER12> Ask me Anything discussion on reddit.com

<comment><USER11> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm so glad he came forward. Maybe now some of the hyperbole can stop. I've been reading stories of the following 2 types:

1\. Blogs offering commentary on another story about GoDaddy's role in this and pretty much saying "GoDaddy wrote the bill and gave themselves a bunch of perks".

2\. The actual sources of those original blogs. It's funny how the sources say no such thing and actually corroborate this GoDaddy employee's story.

If you just read the original sources you'll see that he's right in saying that GoDaddy didn't write the bill and really did just ask to redefine a few points. It's also totally true that all registrars get the exemption.

I've stopped commenting on these stories because the second someone introduces a little rationality into the discussion the downvotes and gang-up start flying. I'm no GoDaddy apologist. I think they're assholes for coming out in support of SOPA like everyone else. But why are we focusing so much on them? These stories aren't true. They simply mention GoDaddy and take on a life of their own. Ever since GoDaddy got brought up we've totally gotten distracted. Badly. I don't know why GoDaddy came out in support of SOPA. I'd guess it was so they could hedge their bets in case it passed. It's still wrong but I'm not about to go all conspiracy-theory and buy into any theory along the lines that imply GoDaddy is some sort of oppressive evil company for some mysterious reason.

Come on guys, let's be reasonable here. What the guy says is true. I've been a long time GoDaddy hater but even I can't get on board with a lot of this misinformation floating around. Sorry if it's not the popular opinion but it's the truth.

<comment><USER13> > I've stopped commenting on these stories

Really? Not very well.

> If you just read the original sources you'll see that he's right in saying > that GoDaddy didn't write the bill and really did just ask to redefine a few > points. It's also totally true that all registrars get the exemption.

Oh, no harm done then. They only refined it, they didn't create it from scratch.

> I'm no GoDaddy apologist. I think they're assholes for coming out in support > of SOPA like everyone else. But why are we focusing so much on them?

There's more than one other person on HN, and people can do more than one thing at once. "We" are focusing on a bunch of things.

> These stories aren't true. They simply mention GoDaddy and take on a life of > their own. Ever since GoDaddy got brought up we've totally gotten > distracted.

Not all of those stories are true, you mean. Because they did support SOPA. And they did make some refinements to SOPA. Maybe their CEO didn't practice satanic rituals before killing the elephant but the verified portions of the story are still damning enough.

> It's still wrong but I'm not about to go all conspiracy-theory and buy into > any theory along the lines that imply GoDaddy is some sort of oppressive > evil company for some mysterious reason.

Of course not. They're an oppressive evil company because it's profitable.

<comment><USER6> Granted, I have commented on a lot of these stories but there are so many of them filling up every page of HN lately that if you look at the bigger picture I really have stopped because they all pretty much repeat each other. It's a big echo chamber.

Now, I'm not saying there's "no harm done" because they only redefined the terms. What I'm saying is that it seems like we're focusing so narrowly on one SOPA related story and missing the larger picture. Hasn't the GoDaddy story played itself out? There are other angles than GoDaddy and I'd be surprised if anyone is learning anything new or benefitting at all from these new ones. After the first 3 days of almost all GoDaddy/SOPA stories around here I think we've said all there is to say about it. At this point its gone from constructive discussion to just a lot of repitition and whining.

And yeah, I did mean not _all_ the stories are true. Why do people have to nitpick? You obviously knew what I meant and I'm sure others are smart enough to get it too. The stories I was referring to we're the ones implying that GoDaddy wrote SOPA and that they gave themselves an exemption from it as if they're the only ones getting that exemption.

My original comment was a perfectly valid and reasonable point. If you start cherry picking tiny little details you don't agree with or that aren't perfectly worded then you're missing the whole point. Let me state the point very concisely and maybe you'll find you actually agree with me:

The GoDaddy stories have become repetitive and unproductive. The stories have been polluted with misinformation and false assumptions. We've said all there is to say and this is distracting us from stopping this bill from passing. Boycotting them is a great way to protest but let's talk about some other things we can do like we had been doing before the GoDaddy story broke.

This whole thing reminds me of how politicians use news cycles to their advantage. Sometimes you can't get around bad press so you pick out one aspect of a story to get the public all riled up this distracting them from the real story. What is the real story? I have no idea and I'm sure I couldn't find out on HN as it stands now because we're caught up in an infinite loop of the "GoDaddy wrote SOPA and gave itself exemptions" story.

<comment><USER13> > Let me state the point very concisely and maybe you'll find you actually > agree with me:

> The GoDaddy stories have become repetitive and unproductive. The stories > have been polluted with misinformation and false assumptions. We've said all > there is to say and this is distracting us from stopping this bill from > passing. Boycotting them is a great way to protest but let's talk about some > other things we can do like we had been doing before the GoDaddy story > broke.

I somewhat agree. But the reason I was nitpicking is because those details matter.

GoDaddy isn't blameless. In fact, while they didn't write specific exemptions for themselves they did tweak it for their own good (undoubtedly). If they merely get spanked a bit they'll be back to business as usual in a few weeks and will continue supporting SOPA even if quietly. If they get put out of business and every employee above janitorial is black-listed unless they specifically renounce SOPA and the GoDaddy leaders then future companies will be less willing to try this and future employees will be more willing to leave instead of trotting out "but then who'd feed my kids?" excuses. That sort of fear might actually change things.

In fact, I think we don't stand a chance in hell of stopping SOPA in the big picture. If we do stop this specific bill they'll reintroduce it with a kiddy- porn focus and we'll all be monsters for daring to speak out against it.

In the end our only hope is uncensorable technologies because as long as any group is in control of communications technologies they'll find a need to censor and limit them. Fighting SOPA seems to me like as much of a waste of time as fighting GoDaddy does to you.

But if we could exact real, lasting, damage to some of its supporters it would be harder for this sort of thing to be done again.

> Hasn't the GoDaddy story played itself out?

Does the CEO still get paid? If so, no.

> What I'm saying is that it seems like we're focusing so narrowly on one SOPA > related story and missing the larger picture.

Some of us, yes. Others, no. Why don't you stop exhorting others to do what you want, stop contributing to the noise, and go attack the bigger picture in your own way. Then you'd have something to post to HN and you might win supporters away from the GoDaddy hate-fest where you could never chase them away.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://www.historynet.com/us-torpedo-troubles-during-world-war-ii.htm <comment><USER3> > Because of this logistics fiasco, veteran submariner and historian Paul > Schratz said he 'was only one of many frustrated submariners who thought it > a violation of New Mexico scenery to test the A-bomb at Alamagordo when the > naval torpedo station was available.'

LOL.

Another interesting fact about the US torpedoes is that they were slow by WWII standards, especially compared to the Japanese torpedoes. This is normally a fairly bad flaw because it gives the enemy ship more time to dodge the torpedo, however in the Battle off Samar it turned out to be an advantage as they allowed the torpedoes fired by a tiny destroyer managed to scare the mighty battleship Yamato away from the battle for quite a long time because the torpedoes took so long to arrive that the Yamato was well out of position once they finally missed.

<comment><USER4> It's important to note that the torpedoes Japanese generally used we powered by compressed pure oxygen, making them faster & giving them more range.

But it also turned them into even bigger explosion hazard than normal torpedoes when the ship caring them is hit. As a result many Japanese ships are documented going down after what would normally be minor hits due to their oxygen torpedoes exploding and causing massive damage.

<comment><USER5> Why pure oxygen?

<comment><USER4> More energy stored in the same volume air tank. With normal air used by conventional torpedoes, you get just 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen, which is not useful for combustion.

I think I might need to clarify - we are talking about a torpedo that is driven by combustion engine. It carries some sort of fuel and because it is under water, it needs to provide it's own oxidizer, which is where the high pressure pure oxygen comes in.

Also, unlike when using normal air, it should be possible for the combustion engine to be more powerful while being smaller, due to the more energetic reaction. Also the exhaust gasses don't contain nitrogen, which is apparently visible as a noticeable bubble trail, which might result in your target noticing the torpedo and dogging.

For more detail, see the Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I was a child, I played a DOS game called Silent Hunter I. Basically, it's a submarine warfare game which you play as a U.S. Navy submarine in World War II, cursing the Pacific Ocean and attacks Japanese warships. When playing the game, I was extremely frustrated about the Mark XIV torpedo onboard - After going through the painstaking process of calculating the projectile, hitting the fire button, I would watch the stopwatch and hoping for the best that the target won't change its course... finally it was the time... nothing! For every five fires or so, there would be one or two torpedoes that never explode - when you need it the most. I was not playing the "hard" mode, it happens even in a "moderate" difficulty setting.

I thought the game developers were making it unreasonable. And a few years later, I learned from a history book about the early unreliability of the torpedoes, and realized the torpedoes in the game were an accurate and realistic depiction of its historical performance. Kudos to the game developers.

Another tool in the game I felt strange was the "Torpedo Data Computer", which is something that you can simply enter the bearing, speed, etc., of your target via its tuning dials, and the machine automatically calculates the firing position for you. I thought it was just the hand-waving of the game developers to make the game more playable while making it unrealistic - <USER2> would a computer even exist in the 1940s? I believed it was all pencil-and- paper.

Later I learned it was real as well - totally mind-blowing. When I was a kid, I had no idea about the sophisticated historical mechanical fire control computers in the 1930s-1940s. There is a Hacker News submission of the documentation of the computer. [0]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12785113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12785113)

<comment><USER7> Here are a few fun videos related to this.

A 1943 USAF documentary about ground-based anti-aircraft fire: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zPNMqVi2E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zPNMqVi2E)

A short YouTube documentary about the failure of the German super-battleship Bismarck's anti-aircraft gunnery: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTO3JagV8gE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTO3JagV8gE)

In fact the Germans had been working quite seriously on guided surface-to-air missiles during WWII: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx_lsh0BJGs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx_lsh0BJGs) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Q92V5hK-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Q92V5hK-c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — The Department of Energy said tonight that approximately three‐quarters of the A‐1 model Polaris nuclear warheads deployed on submarines in the mid‐1960 's were probably "duds" because of mechanical defects._

[https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/02/archives/early-polaris- mi...](https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/02/archives/early-polaris-missile-had- defects-scientists-at-government-labs.html)

To be fair, the Japanese had really good torpedos at the start of WWII, but there were other things which were just as unproven and wonky. For one, the proposed tactic of letting battleship shells fall short, to target enemy ships underwater, was pretty much useless.

(Come to think of it, the initial performance of Sidewinder missiles in Vietnam was another example of this sort of military equipment failure.)

<comment><USER9> Another example is when the M16 rifle was first introduced in the Vietnam War, it was unreliable due to fouling.

<comment><USER10> One of the major issues with early versions of the M16 was that they used a different propellant for the ammunition than what it was designed with. This propellant caused increased fouling.

They were also initially issued without cleaning kits, because they were apparently "self cleaning", which is patent bullshit.

<comment><USER11> iirc the barrel linings also were not chromed for the first few years, which caused corrosion (half-remembered from chivers' _the gun_ )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It doesn't surprise me. I've seen WWII-era torpedoes and their innards at the Science of Museum and Industry in Chicago in the U-505 exhibit (seriously, if you're ever in Chicago to to the museum and pay the extra fee to go aboard U-505. Totally worth it) and there is a _lot_ going on in one of those.

Here's a low-ish quality photo of the innars of a torpedo in the exhibit (not mine) [https://www.reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/comments/1jxk7k...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/comments/1jxk7k/u505_torpedo_at_the_museum_of_science_and/)

Specifically in that thread these photos [https://imgur.com/a/zNry7](https://imgur.com/a/zNry7)

Sadly my photos from last year aren't any better, the cavern that U-505 is in has terrible lighting for photography.

I was quite surprised by the amount of gears, tubes, segments, weights, etc inside one. Even the amount of batteries initially caught me off guard because I'm used to thinking in modern lithium batteries and not lead acid.

I _think_ that is a G7e torpedo above. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G7e_torpedo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G7e_torpedo)

<comment><USER13> Wow, that is incredible. I had no idea they were that complex, or even that big.

<comment><USER12> The length was a bit hard to accept. Later I started looking into torpedoes and there are some real monsters that have existed, the Japanese Type 93 used in WWII is almost 30 feet long [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo) .

The more modern Russian Type 65 is roughly the same size as the Type 93 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_65_torpedo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_65_torpedo)

Russia also has that 'Poseidon' unmanned mini sub that's basically the nuclear powered sub version of a UAV that's something like 65 feet long and is believed to be able to be launched from another sub like a torpedo [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System)

<comment><USER14> If you're into this stuff and ever in the Seattle area I recommend visiting the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport. They have a good collection of torpedoes on display, including a Japanese Kaiten manned torpedo.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The WWII in Color series on Netflix has a Midway episode in which they indicate a 90% failure rate of the torpedoes to explode. The article says 70 percent rate but either way its pretty unreliable.

</comment><comment><USER16> They talk about it in the movie "Midway" (2019). It's definitely one of those things a lot of people thought was embellished to make the incoming battle of Midway look more drastic. However it was absolutely true. Without the dive bombers and code breaking they were able to do in the lead up Midway would have been a disaster for the Americans.

<comment><USER17> Ehhh. There's a lot of people that seem to think that Midway would have been a disaster for the US if they lost, but there's not much reason behind this. The only thing the US was really risking that _had a significant strategic impact_ were the carriers - if the island of Midway fell it would have been essentially unsupportable by Japanese forces (being _far_ past Japan's supply lines, when Japan was already facing logistical issues, and within B-17 range of bases in Hawaii) and even the carriers weren't absolutely critical must- not-lose assets for the US like they were for Japan. (The US commissioned 8 carriers in the year following Midway - four Essex class fleet carriers and four Independence class light carriers) Incidentally, this is part of why Midway was such a huge strategic blunder for the Japanese forces - it risked 2/3rds of their carriers for minimal gain.

If Midway fell, it would have extended the war another few months. But I'm not sure that that really qualifies as a disaster.

<comment><USER18> Strategically crucial in a Pacific that had seen most everything the Japan side of Midway fall. If Midway had fallen, New Guinea, Coral Sea and Fiji were next in line, putting Australia and New Zealand at risk. What you call minimal gain would, had Yamamoto's plan come off, have put over 60% of the Pacific under Imperial Japanese control.

US would have been fighting their way across the Pacific, island to island at a range that no longer permitted bombing the mainland of Japan. Which, as seen at the end of the war, was subject to colossal losses.

<comment><USER19> Granted, Yamamoto himself had no illusions re: a protracted struggle between Japanese industry, vs. American industry of the '30's/'40's era.

Assuming no loss of political will, I suspect even in a worse case scenario where the US lost all its 3 carriers, it would still have eventually produced enough to win the war. Just maybe it would have taken several years longer...

<comment><USER20> In 1943, the US was commissioning an Essex-class carrier more or less every month, so the extra time would have been closer to "several months longer" instead.

<comment><USER17> Yeah - the US commissioned 17 fleet carriers, 9 light carriers and a whopping _76_ escort carriers over the course of the war. Japan? 7, 1 and 4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _Maneuvering as close to a 90-degree track as possible, the submarine fired > three torpedoes against the rock cliffs. The first two exploded, but the > third threw up the familiar geyser of compressed air and water. Divers > carefully retrieved the activated yet unexploded torpedo. The valuable dud > was then hauled back to Pearl Harbor for examination._

Damn, for me any person who deals with any kind of unexploded ordnance is (as well) a hero.

</comment><comment><USER22> Previous HN discussion about a different article (focusing on politics and very superficial concerning the actual problems) about the same subject: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665422)

</comment><comment><USER23> If you're fans of alternative history fiction, the Destroyermen [1] series touches on the torpedo issues as well.

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

</comment><comment><USER24> It's very likely that the torpedoes did not work for the whole war really. It sometimes is scary to think about all the complaints sub commanders put in, only to be dismissed by the Department of the Navy as excuses for bad leadership or tactics. I get that you have to take this line sometimes but still...

That being said it should be noted US Naval strategy has never particularly relied on subs or been that great at it.

This has always fallen to the Eurasian powers such as Germany, Russia, and China/Japan.

Nothing has been downed by a torpedo in actual combat for the last 75 years, so realize that there are so many unknowns today in submarine warfare that you don't see in say land warfare. That being said it looks like Underwater Unmanned Autonamous Drones is where sub warfare is heading. Supposedly China is way ahead of the pack here much like they are in the drone space (supposedly again) as well. The 2016 capture of a US Navy UUAV really was not good for the USA and marked a shift in the balance of power.

<comment><USER25> HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser Belgrano with torpedoes

<comment><USER17> With a torpedo introduced to service in _1927_ , though. She avoided using her homing torpedoes (the Mark 24 Tigerfish) due to fears that they were unreliable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There have been similar concerns about the US nuclear arsenal which are decades old and aging.

<comment><USER27> Which is why the nuclear test ban is, IMHO, a bad idea. A nuclear deterrent must be credible to be effective. If an adversary comes to believe that, say, 80% of our warheads are duds and most of theirs work, the logic of retaliation may come to favor a first strike.

<comment><AUTHOR> The logic behind test bans (in conjunction with numerical caps on warheads) is to create uncertainty in the reliability of one's own arsenal to discourage either side from contemplating a first-strike.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure about that. What if you're convinced that _your_ brilliant scientists have created working warheads while you think the enemy's dolts haven't been able to keep their arsenal working? What if your enemy thinks the same thing in reverse? I think there's always a temptation to overestimate one's own capability and underestimate the sophistication of others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _Two completely different devices, each responsible for checking the other, > deviated identically for vastly different reasons._

Happens frequently. "The tests are broken but I'm positive the software is correct so I'm going to fix the tests"

<comment><USER29> That's one reason I hate complexity in tests. Your tests have to be dumb enough that you are 99% sure the code under test is at fault.

<comment><USER30> By definition, tests have to be more complex than the underlying code. The test have to setup the conditions, execute the action and validate it. Don't confuse complexity with shitty unreliable tests (timing-based tests)

<comment><USER31> Depends on the type of test. What you guys are talking about are unit tests, and are designed to test individual methods/functions. You write a separate test for each one.

There's other types of testing, integration tests sound like what you are both complaining about. Integration tests test the interaction between components of a system, and are thus far more complex and likely to break as you're developing (which is a huge pain).

However integration tests have their place - just because the function works doesn't mean it's being called from the web client correctly.

<comment><USER32> But you also have to test the whole system.

<comment><USER31> For sure. There's dozens of types of tests (although many don't apply to certain use cases). In a healthy system you should be using a lot of them. And they don't stop at deployment, you need to be tracking exceptions (after all, production is the final, and best test environment).

This article has some nice diagrams of the different kinds of tests [https://medium.com/@copyconstruct/testing-in-production- the-...](https://medium.com/@copyconstruct/testing-in-production-the-safe- way-18ca102d0ef1)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it time for a Greatest Hits? - <AUTHOR>

I see the same classic documents being pulled up repeatedly over the years -- today,  it's _Reflections on Trusting Trust_. Perhaps HN should have a Greatest Hits* page where links that have met some criteria are available, and then stop allowing them for submission?
The advantages would be that (a) new people might have their eyes drawn towards them, (b) it's easier to reference them when they become relevant in a thread, and (c) it makes a little more space for the new submissions.
Drawbacks would largely be related to visual clutter and curation costs, I think.
* Or call it Well-Known Works, or Classics, or what have you. <comment><USER2> For people who mainly come to HN to read stories, maybe a list of _you must read these links_ works. For people who find the significant value in HN's discussions, probably not.

Thompson's Turing Award Lecture is evergreen because it is so damn thought provoking. I'm always curious to see the comments it elicits...and I'm always reminded of my own sense of wonder the first time I read it...and posted a link. It's theme is fundamentally why I read HN. Why I comment is of course another matter.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link to this lecture? I would be interested in reading it.

<comment><USER2> _Trusting Trust_ which triggered this thread is Thompson's Turing Award Lecture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, this would be interesting. There are a couple ways to get hits [1, 2], but these seem to be in the recent past, so it would be interesting if these reached back a few years. Or, if there is a some type of user curated Hits list.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/best](https://news.ycombinator.com/best)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=300](https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=300)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is an ordered best-of-list of Hacker News "Evergreens", e.g. stories that were originally from a different year:

[http://blog.contextly.com/2014/11/hacker-news-evergreen- stor...](http://blog.contextly.com/2014/11/hacker-news-evergreen-stories- ordered-score/)</comment>


Waste Lands: America's forgotten nuclear legacy - <AUTHOR> http://projects.wsj.com/waste-lands/

<comment><AUTHOR> The maps here are bananas. The world's first nuclear reactor is apparently buried walking distance from my parents' house!</comment>


Scott Aaronson's Recap of IBM's Quantum Computing Panel in Davos - <AUTHOR> https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/#jan23 <comment><AUTHOR> The headline of this section in his journal is a - for our purposes - <USER2> meaningless "Thursday January 23", so forgive me editorializing the title to something more descriptive. I tried to keep it as objective as possible.</comment>


Real-Time Garbage Collection Is Real - <AUTHOR> http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/06/03/real-time-garbage-collection-is-real.html <comment><USER2> _our running programs may exceed the amount of space we want them to take_

The majority of real-time systems are the small embedded ones where both speed and size are usually highly constrained, so this doesn't look as useful as it may seem. It's well known that GC overhead decreases with increasing available memory, so the result shouldn't be so surprising. A relevant phrase I've heard is "garbage collection is free only if memory is worth nothing."

Limiting the amount of work the GC can do also means that some quite subtle bugs can arise from exceeding the "allocation rate" that it can handle, which is something that might not be as easy to determine in GC-using code.

 _but not the amount of space that we estimate they could possibly take_

I think it's a bad sign when the word "estimate" is used in talking about a real-time system... this is an area of guarantees and proofs, not educated guesses.

<comment><USER3> It is not only useful for embed system with hard real-time constraints but may also, for example, improve server systems with (very) soft real-time constraints by reducing response time jitter due to garbage collection cycles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > It turns out that RTGC is very real, and research on it is very active.

I remember being promised the same stuff at JavaOne in 1997. It's a solved problem, we're just waiting on an implementation.

We're still waiting.

That doesn't mean any of this stuff isn't interesting (though I gotta be honest it's getting less so for me every year), or that such a thing is impossible. But that title is dancing around a rather different definition for "real" than most of us use.

<comment><USER5> Why waiting?

[http://www.atego.com/de/products/atego- perc/](http://www.atego.com/de/products/atego-perc/)

[https://www.aicas.com/cms/en/JamaicaVM](https://www.aicas.com/cms/en/JamaicaVM)

One good thing about Java is the vendor eco-system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think more languages should adopt Swift and Objective-C's automatic reference counting. The only downside to ARC is retain cycle's which rarely happen in my experiance. A deterministic object life cycle just feels right.

<comment><USER7> I prefer well known memory lifetimes, but I'm undecided about ARC (or somewhat equivalently: std::shared_ptr, etc.). It can be a little confusing and overwrought at times, and I don't think the lifetimes are as clear as they could be.

IMO, more languages shouldn't assume that there is a single memory allocator. That's one of the worst assumptions I see in systems languages -- even C++ (before C++11) got this entirely wrong. Swift gets this wrong, Go gets this wrong. Rust is probably a little better because it actually has a static idea of memory scope, but I haven't seen a way to swap out the memory allocator in various contexts.

Most projects I've been involved with have used region/arena allocators. Not only do you mostly avoid the non-determism of your average GC, but you avoid the hassle of fine grained reference counting (in most cases). This relies on you choosing the scopes for your regions appropriately, but there usually is a clear scope to attach things to (e.g. frames, iteration of an event loop, etc.).

<comment><USER8> Maybe you're referring to something else, but std::allocator was in c++98

<comment><USER7> Yes, but (according to the spec) it was stateless -- which made it worthless for the purposes I'm describing. The original purpose was to support custom static _strategies_ for allocation (e.g. i86 near/far pointers or one memory pool for one kind of object for the whole program), not dynamic memory pools and arenas. C++11 fixed that, which is why I mentioned it.

That said, by C++03, most STL implementations supported stateful allocators (and that's what I've used when I've had to use C++), but the standard took a while to catch up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd love to try implementing C4 or Metronome or Staccato, and I have some interesting applications for them too. The problem is all this development is sponsored by Azul, Microsoft, and IBM. All the Bacon papers have corresponding IBM patents, all the Petrank papers have corresponding Microsoft patents. It sucks. Even if I come up with something new, it'll look like a slight variant on something someone else has done and I don't want to get sued!

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the reasons why Lisp is fading into irrelevance is that GC is obsolete tech. You should be using RAII, smart pointers, or ARC for all dynamic- lifetime resource management depending on language and toolset for completely deterministic object lifetimes.

This is also a factor in why Android phones are orders of magnitude slower than equivalently-specced iPhones, even with the new ART.

<comment><USER11> > One of the reasons why Lisp is fading into irrelevance is that GC is > obsolete tech.

RAII, smart pointers and ARC aren't free lunches, which is why people had moved from them to GC in the first place.

Of the top 10 languages on github [1] that require memory management, 7 of them use GC [2].

> This is also a factor in why Android phones are orders of magnitude slower > than equivalently-specced iPhones

That's a pretty nutty assertion to make without data.

1: [http://adambard.com/blog/top-github- languages-2014/](http://adambard.com/blog/top-github-languages-2014/)

2: Discluding CSS and shell since they don't require memory management. Python's default implementation actually has both RC and GC.

<comment><USER12> > RAII, smart pointers and ARC aren't free lunches, which is why people had > moved from them to GC in the first place.

Yet GC solves 10% of the problem that RAII solves. Tbh I would call them "similar". GC has the advantage of being much more tolerant of sloppy programming, but if you compare the complexity of GC with the complexity of RAII, I'd say RAII has a clear advantage.

<comment><USER5> Most RAII use cases can be taken with using/with/try/lambdas

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This site could be improved for narrower viewports by changing the .site width to max-width. Combine with something like `padding: 0 0.5em;` for better results.

</comment><comment><USER14> I feel like GC is an evolutionary dead end. Too much indeterminism and action- at-a-distance. Rust and virtual reality are two clear indicators to me that we're exiting the age of GC; the opposition isn't just Apple anymore, though they dealt the first blow.

<comment><USER15> what's virtual reality in this context?

<comment><USER14> Oculus Rift and friends. VR needs extremely consistent latency and has very tight deadlines. Ideally, you render 90 FPS and never miss a frame.

GC pauses are out of the question, so if you're going to use GC, you need to be real-time without any degenerate stop-the-world cases. The linked article ostensibly delivers this, but there's no real-world evidence. Given your tight time budget, you also don't want to pay the "GC tax". GC just makes your life harder in this environment.

There also isn't really any good reason to write a 3D engine in GC'd languages given a) existing C++ engines and b) sightings of Rust on the horizon.

<comment><USER5> I know of missile control systems done in Real Time Java.

Just one example,

[http://www.atego.com/pressreleases/pressitem/aonix-perc- ultr...](http://www.atego.com/pressreleases/pressitem/aonix-perc-ultra- virtual-machine-passes-muster-on-modernized-guided-missile)

Better no GC jitter....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How does regions fit into this? IIRC regions have deterministic lifetimes, and all values/objects allocated in a region are freed in bulk when the region is freed (so it seems to only depend on how complex the underlying allocation is).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region- based_memory_management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region- based_memory_management)

</comment><comment><USER17> man 3 free

<comment><USER18> A typical implementation of free(3) does not give real-time guarantees; whether you use GC or not, you need to know things about your allocator to have any kind of latency guarantees. I get a little disturbed when people treat malloc() and free() as if they were constant-time operations.

<comment><USER19> Reminder: There are real-time allocators available, they just tend to not be used because the average case is worse.

* [http://repository-of-projects.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/docum...](http://repository-of-projects.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/document/c_c++/memory/TLSF/Two-Level%20Segregated%20Fit.pdf) * [http://www.ijera.com/papers/Vol2_issue3/GR2311511156.pdf](http://www.ijera.com/papers/Vol2_issue3/GR2311511156.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


Black Mail - <AUTHOR> https://telegra.ph/Black-mail-04-14 <comment><USER2> I received those too, and I ignored them. Some (usually old) sites storage passwords as plain text, and if that kind of database gets hacked, they spam you those black mails, often assuming you use the same password everywhere. As a safety measure, changing the password should be enough, and in the future use throw-away e-mails for shady sites, and two-factor authentication for trustful ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for suggestion

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have received this email from unknown sender. Should I ignore this email? Since he mention my really old password on email.

<comment><USER3> Ignore it. They got the password from a data breach somewhere.

Change the password on any other site that you use that password for.

Using a password manager makes it much easier to use unique, complex passwords for each site you have a login for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, anyway I have changed all the password since that time.</comment></comment></comment>


Is blekko doomed from the start? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/blekko-doomed

<comment><USER2> I signed up for the beta and made it my home page. I tried hard to adopt. I exchanged emails w/ one of the guys there (he was super nice and replied quickly) when I had to revert to Google searches to find what I was looking for (80% of the time), but then gave up. If the basic search results quality/ranking was close to that of Google, I would have stuck with it.

The slashtags are pretty cool. But like the article says, search isn't broken, and putting a cool extra on top of so-so core functionality won't work. And if slashtags did take off, it would be super easy for Google to add that in. (Unless I'm missing some kind of patent stuff.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. I don't want to know or learn or care what a slashtag is.

Back to work..</comment>


Start-up Book List - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@KatAlexPas/an-hour-and-a-half-a-day-of-reading-business-books-db503a79fa0f#.ouhch3pz3 <comment><USER2> Really excellent list. Might add that Nassim Taleb's Incerto series (while an effort at times) offers insights that dovetail nicely with the startup journey.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Black Swan by Taleb has been recommended to me before, will make it my next read.</comment></comment>


Shorter .uk Internet domain proposed by Nominet - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19767014

<comment><USER2> I don't think the benefits are worth the cost of the need to duplicate .co.uk/org.uk/me.uk/ac.uk domains in the .uk space plus the disputes over who should get it.

Suspect its a Nominet money grab having seen the recent TLD process.

<comment><USER3> yup. after Nominet realised how easy it is to raise dough after raising £3m on 1/2letter .co.uk auctions last October, and getting in the global trend of .names, they are now eagerly looking forward to earn much more millions from touting .uk to the swallowing public. And Nominet plans to sabotage everyone, who is happily trading under .co.uk at the moment, either by: a) selling .uk version to their competitors, if .co.uk owners do not have trademark or b) forcing them to 'sunrise' auctions, competing with every willing registered trademark or 'unregistered rights' holder and bidding against each other paying up thousands to Nominet. All that is just to secure .uk, so they can continue trading uninterrupted.

<comment><USER3> From Nominet's 'consultation paper' FAQ:

Q: Are you just forcing businesses to buy another name? A: This proposal is about offering greater choice with a new secure service that is tailored to meet the needs of anyone doing business online. The proposed features are likely to mean that the service may not be suitable for everyone. Businesses would not be forced to change from their existing .co.uk domain name but would have the option of buying a .uk with additional features if they believe it would benefit them.

Now, their planned 'additional features' are DNSSEC, hitting website every X days to do viruses/malware detections, giving domain owners a graphic 'badge' to place in the footer (lame lame lame), verifying registrant`s 'contact data' (require address to be in the UK posting there a 'PIN code' from time to time). And that's it!

This is pathetic to say the least, as those features are nothing of a real necessity or improvement. It is just a sham to do something to make it at least look like it is something of a value. But the real reason is of course too obvious.

Q: Why don't you just introduce these features to all .co.uk domains? A: It would be unfair to retrospectively impose a new suite of features and requirements on co.uk. .co.uk is already very successful and not all of the existing registrants would want or need the features we are proposing to include in the new service.

Of course it is more fair to let those owners to pay up, not because they need these nice features, but because they have no other choice if they still want to be on top of the .uk namespace (as .co.uk still is).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reads like a nice revenue grab by Nominet.

You'll still need to own your .co.uk if you're a business, or else you'll have a squatter on it before you can blink, but now you'll be paying Nominet's fee of around £20 a year for a .uk, and £3.50 for your .co.uk

<comment><USER5> The article does say that any additional earnings derived would be passed onto an independent trust to invest in improving internet access and security. Nominet itself is not-for-profit. And there's at least some support for this URL-shortening change in this thread.

It doesn't seem like a revenue grab to me.

<comment><USER2> The fact that it is not for profit doesn't mean that it doesn't want to grow revenue. More money for salaries, more staff, more prestige for managing a big organisation. Plus their direct customers who they have relationships with are the registrars who have a profit motive in selling more domains.

It is quite possible for a not-for-profit to become a self expanding bureaucracy especially when it is gatekeeper/distributor over a resource. That said I'd take Nominet over getting Verisign to do it. The same risks apply in a commercial setting plus the push to profit.

Now I don't know the realities of Nominet or this particular proposal but I wanted to point out that in a case like this being not-for-profit is an insufficient defence against claims it is a revenue grab.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems to be a lot of money grabbing going on recently with .xxx and the new GTLDS.

If this is seriously a problem (which I honestly feel it isn't, considering we have gov.uk, nhs.uk, and sch.uk to name a few so .co.uk seems well places for companies within the uk) then why not just allow them to come in tandem? so when you purchase a .co.uk you automatically get the .uk variant as well included in the price.

Controlling a GTLD seems like a really good idea at the moment considering you can effectively just create a market for yourself based on other peoples desired to protect there brand. If you care about your brand your going to have to stump up another yearly registration fee when someones else decides to sell your brand name variant under there GTLD to the highest bidder

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what the remainder of the UK would be called if Scotland secedes after the referendum for independence in 2014.

Perhaps the Former United Kingdom?

<comment><USER8> The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after Southern Ireland gained independence. After Scottish independence, I expect it would change to the United Kingdom of Southern Britain and Northern Ireland.

<comment><USER9> Surely if Scotland chose to leave Great Britain, it would still remain Great Britain?

<comment><USER10> Great Britain is the island. Scotland would find it very hard to leave it.

<comment><USER7> Well, there are two Great Britains - the Kingdom that was created by the Acts of Union in 1707 and lasted for about a century until Ireland joined, and the island:

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Excellent! I remember Stephen Fry proposing this about 5 years ago in an impassioned plea about the tiresomeness of typing ".co" repeatedly. (I think he wanted rid of "www." at the start of URLs too)

At the time I thought "that'd be a good idea". And I still think it is!

<comment><USER12> "(I think he wanted rid of "www." at the start of URLs too)"

I am rather surprised the "web." movement never really took off to replace "www.".

Just glad folks no longer include the "http..." part when saying URLs now on radio and tv, and are less likely to say "www." too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not a problem and it does not need fixing. Lots of countries have second-level domain names.

What are the benefits of this?

<comment><USER14> Lots of countries gave up bothering, like Germany where everything is top level now but used not to be. There is not even a standard for what the second level abbreviations are (eg .com.au vs .co.uk).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I detest all .co.*'s - I'm not sure why they implemented this in the first place?!

<comment><USER16> To give some context for an otherwise abstract label? Like .ac.uk is likely to be a school or university, .gov.uk is something government related. To me, .co.uk is the wild west of the UK domains, so be a bit more guarded.

<comment><USER17> Would .UK not serve the same purpose from your POV? It's the no-context UK domain, just like .com is the no context internet domain.

<comment><USER14> there is some potential for confusion though. I imagine scammers would love .edu.uk for fake university sites...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Names like .gov.uk currently have special status. If something ends .gov.uk then I know it has that special status that separates it from .co.uk. The implication is that it's vetted.

Allowing non-special commercial entities to claim their own .uk names will undermine this. government.co.uk is currently squatted but is obviously a commercial entity and not the Government. What will happen when government.uk gets squatted? What about all the other combinations?

Allowing direct .uk registrations will increase confusion and reduce security.

</comment><comment><USER19> The 'additional security features' seems unworkable. The premise is that pure .UK have UK point of presence checks, etc, but consumers will not easily be educated that .UK is 'more secure' than .co.uk

<comment><USER20> It feels like Nominet have tried to find a bunch of premium features which they can sell as premium for new domains, but which don't actually cost that much to maintain.

There's no real need for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yes please. I detest our use of .co.uk where .uk will suffice.

</comment><comment><USER17> How innovative and forward thinking. They should most assuredly receive all the praise and accolades that accompany such unique creativity.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Applicants would have to prove they had a UK presence and pay a higher fee.

HAHAHAHAHA yeah no thanks, I'll stick with my .com

</comment><comment><USER23> Go home Nominet, you're drunk.

<comment><USER23> Downvoted for this :-0

This is clearly a way to extort money from UK businesses. You can't choose not to register the .co.uk, so now you'll have to register the .co.uk AND the .uk.

Then there's the mess and confusion of deciding who gets the .uk when there's a dispute.

And the fun and game when johnny user gets redirected to the dodgy knock-off version or a porn site placeholder instead of my-nice-widget-company because they got confused between the .co.uk and the .uk version of the name. Good job I didn't register my-nice-widget-co.co.uk too.

Clearly Nominet was drunk... resolve my downvotes!</comment></comment>


My mother's vegetarian diet contributed to her early death - <AUTHOR> https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/my-mothers-vegetarian-diet-contributed-to-her-early-death-we-should-all-learn-from-it/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think the title is misleading. The article mentions ultra-processed foods and high sugar consumption. Even then, at best they can only form an association from this n=1 scenario. More likely than not, stress must have played a vital role in longevity.</comment>


A striking relationship between obesity and driving - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/obesity-and-driving?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/roadhogs <comment><USER2> More driving means less walking.

I try to detour from my subway commute in NYC a few times a week and walk several miles on my way home. It's pleasant, doesn't take much time (30-60 minutes), and effective. When I don't do this (the winter), I can feel the difference in my health.

There is a lot of effort expended trying to get people to "exercise" (at parks, gyms, etc.). But if you're not trying to be an athlete, it's easy to burn out on "exercise." Certainly if you're already obese.

But 2-5 mile walks that:

* go to/from a useful destination

* don't go through pedestrian unfriendly areas (highways and strip malls with no shade and no sidewalk)

* don't go through the ghetto

are not easily found in most of America. It's a shame. I think that's really all most people need.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article really should get some sort of award for most incoherent graphical data. What in the living blue blazes is "correlation lagged by six years"? The data all go up, the prediction turns sharply downward. That's right, we're all going to be slim...tomorrow.

<comment> mkr-hn I think some people get so caught up in putting data to graphs that they don't stop to consider the meaningfulness of the information or the usability of the graph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems to be related to sitting, nothing particular about sitting in a car or outside it.</comment>


Ask HN: Terminology: differentiating a project and a startup - <AUTHOR>

I'm increasingly seeing the two words above used interchangeably, or more accurately, a project being referred to as a startup. Am I out of touch, or is this correct terminology? I've always <i>loosely</i> characterized a startup as being a company (pre- or post-documentation), intent on producing a product(s), full- or part-time, with an exit strategy. On the other hand, something done for fun that might make a few dollars on the side (with the potential of turning into a startup) would be considered a project. The reason I ask- when I hear someone say "I'm on my 8th startup," one of three things goes through my mind: "Wow, you've been at this for 40+ years," "In 4 years? I wonder if this is really your cup of tea," or "I don't think you're using that term correctly." Yay or nay? <comment><USER2> Color me the pessimist, but my response to the "8th startup" would be "why'd you quit on the other 7 and decide to do it again?"

For me, a startup is something you throw everything into: time, (your own) money, and aggressively focus on. It's filed, you have customer focus, and you're not doing it as a hobby. Sorry, I'm over the "startup" (project) that's building something fascinating...but has no focus on generating revenue. It's a hobby. Not a startup.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it an important differentiation to make?

It seems to me that the two are interchangeable, because often startups are add-ons/features of existing infrastructure; and this could equally be a project.

<comment><USER4> I think the difference in motivation is important. Early adoption of startups is based in part on trying out something that could be the next big thing. Is that something just one of many side projects, or maybe a one-night coding session that someone uploaded and has no plans for iteration or pivot based on feedback/market development?

Especially in the age of Facebook Connect, I am becoming increasingly wary of trying out most new apps because I'm having difficulty gauging the motivation of the founder(s).

In truth, I usually go through several pages of an app's development blog before I even think of trying something out. If there's no dev blog, I generally assume that it's just a "project", and not something that will grow or change too much.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Beatnik – Streaming Music Sharing - <AUTHOR> https://www.beatnikapp.com <comment><USER2> This is a "FINALLY!" app for me; something that I've talked about for years among friends, former Rdio colleagues, etc.

The soundcloud resolution is hit-or-miss, and I would be interested to see youtube in there, but the "auto-redirect" option is solid; if you managed to figure out a "cookie-dependent embed", where the auto-redirect setting also decides which service's player to embed in Twitter or Discourse, this would be magical.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah Soundcloud has been tough, a lot of things aren't available via the API so I'm trying to scrape their site. I'm hoping to improve Soundcloud support soon.

That's a good idea, I'll investigate some sort of embedding strategy that would support that!

<comment><USER2> Another thought here, perhaps more urgent than the rest: bandcamp or label site links where available, so that you can also promote buying and supporting artists. E.g. [https://www.beatnikapp.com/music/514](https://www.beatnikapp.com/music/514) should also link to [https://bigbigbusiness.bandcamp.com/album/the-beast-you- are](https://bigbigbusiness.bandcamp.com/album/the-beast-you-are)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of the service that Tomahawk Music Player used to offer. [0] The rationale is, your friends don't have the same streaming service as you have, but you want to share a track. Solution: Generate a track URL that would map to any of the streaming services.

[0] [https://github.com/tomahawk-player/tomahawk](https://github.com/tomahawk- player/tomahawk)

</comment><comment><USER4> The name triggered memories of the Beatnik music player from a couple of decades ago which was created with the promise of high quality wavetable synthesis at a time when cheap sounding General MIDI was common - where you could bundle your own samples with control if I recall right.

Sigh!

</comment><comment><USER5> Where is the modern day Napster for music streaming?

<comment><USER6> More than a modern-day Napster, I'd love to see a modern day AudioGalaxy as it was initially conceived. Genres and sub-genres linked organically and visually. You could explore for hours and hours and hours and find new music to try.

Alternately, I'd love to be able to tweak the parameters of Soundcloud's recommendation engine, so that it was less like "You listed to 3 songs like this last week... here's 25 more songs very similar to those."

I know they acqui-hired Paul Lamere (of Infinite Jukebox and Boil the Frog fame), I'd love to be able to get automagic "everything-in-between" for a variety of songs from my recent past. My tastes trend broader than they do deep, though, so I reckon I'm an outlier.

Music discovery has always been a hard problem, but I think AG back in the day had it mostly solved.

(Edit: fixed the spelling of Paul's name.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Help me understand what I am missing here. The majority of my friends use Spotify, which already has a "share" feature to drop a song I want them to check out to the FB Messenger app for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> If that's the case for you, I don't think you'll get much utility out of Beatnik. It's intended for people whose friends don't all use the same service. Mobile support is also not quite at the place I'd like it to be, but it's definitely on the roadmap!

<comment><USER7> Thanks Nick!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is interesting. Although an individual song is fairly easy to find. Any plans for playlists?

(for a second I saw the title and thought it was a grooveshark like service, those were fun days)

<comment><AUTHOR> Playlists are definitely on the roadmap, along with adding more services (Youtube Music, Pandora, etc.).

<comment><USER9> Would definitely use this if it supported YT/YTM.

I use YT/YTM (I have GPM subscription but have been trying to transition to the YTM ecosystem because believe they'll be migrating GPM to YTM at some point and figure it will be less painful if I do as much as possible in YTM), but most of my peers use Spotify, so if I want to share a song I'm listening to in YTM, I have to open Spotify and search for the song or album and grab the Spotify link, which is a pain in the ass.

Realistically though, how is grabbing the YTM link (once you support it), and then inputting it into you app/website, to get a different platform link, any faster than my current process? Unless there is some kind of plugin to your app in the various music clients (which I doubt would be allowed) ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great, but please, add an ATOM feed!

<comment><AUTHOR> I will add this to the roadmap. Thanks for the suggestion!

<comment><USER10> Thanks so much! :-) Ideally, one could state in the URI, how much results one wants back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice app, congratulations on launching! Any plans on sharing the data on MusicBrainz or other similar services?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

I've been meaning to look into MusicBrainz, I definitely intend to do some integration with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What does "streaming" mean here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Streaming in the context of music streaming services such as Spotify.

<comment><USER12> Ah okay, it's a reference to the idea that streaming music services exist, not that you've implemented any type of streaming in your app. Cool enough though.</comment></comment></comment>


10 apps in 50 days - <AUTHOR> http://terrorified.com/?p=786

<comment><USER2> I think this is a great goal but maybe not ten? I am sure you know a lot about this but:

Along with building apps consider using best known practices to show you can go from concept to delivery including using mockups for GUIs, Gherkin (cucumber/specflow) for features and stories, a backlog manager for the mockups and features (pivotaltracker is ok for this but there are others: check them out), use a repository of some kind (I like git), setup a continual integration server, stick your solutions on a cloud service (<http://aws.amazon.com/free/>, Heroku is free too).

Read about Customer Development (The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank) or I am sure there are other approaches (this one just makes sense to me).

Report back on your success to HN.</comment>


Purge site data when site identified via old tracking cookies - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1599262 <comment><USER2> I wouldn't mind going back to a JavaScript-less web experience. I know not all tracking is based on JS, but the browser provides so many heuristics this way: screen size, cursor location, installed plugins. Give me reasonably formatted HTML, and something a little bit more powerful than curl.

<comment><USER3> > I wouldn't mind going back to a JavaScript-less web experience.

My default policy is to not allow JS to run, so my experience is already mostly Javascriptless. And, I have to say, my user experience on most web sites is actually better when I don't allow Javascript to execute.

<comment><USER4> I run a similar sort of policy but I would say the number of sites I visit that display nothing but a blank page without javascript is more than half.

Sites that function without it are the exception, not the rule.

<comment><USER5> I've found that about half of the sites that render a blank page without JS are just setting style="visibility: hidden" on the <body> element. I cannot think of any good reason for browsers to continue to allow that CSS property to be set on that element. "Flash of unstyled content" is not a valid concern here.

<comment><USER6> _" Flash of unstyled content" is not a valid concern here._

Except it really is. Most websites are attached to businesses in some way. If you see statistics that the flash of unstyled content means 10% of your traffic leaves the site after less than a second you do what you can to fix it, and unfortunately that's often hiding everything until it's ready.

Pragmatically, most businesses would give up users who don't like tracking _long before_ they give up users who care about styling, because there are just a lot more people who care about styling. It's an unfortunate fact of web life.

<comment><USER7> > flash of unstyled content means 10% of your traffic leaves the site after > less than a second

Really?

Why does this happen at all? After all the "visible=false" is a styling..

<comment><USER6> Some people decide whether or not a site is worth looking at extremely quickly - if it looks "old" or "broken" they hit the back button immediately. They will wait for the first paint though, so it can be better to delay anything appearing until everything is ready. The impact depends a lot on demographics.

<comment><USER7> And the second part - where does the bug lie that this happens at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The relevant code comment from the bug-linked changes is:

> _This loops through all cookies saved in the database and checks if they are > a tracking cookie, if it is it checks that they have an interaction > permission which is still valid. If the Permission is not valid we delete > all data associated with the site that owns that cookie._

</comment><comment><USER9> And in v80 in alternate universe, Firefox will purge the sites from the Internet, after the data.

Somebody please point me to the portal...

<comment><USER10> That's called pi-hole and having it network wide is a game changer. 30% of all dns requests are blocked.

<comment><USER9> Pi-hole is on my TODO list for quite some time. Yeah, its definitelly a portal I should get to fast (summon, not get to, hence the TODO entry). Currently using uMatrix and friends but its not network wide and that sux a lot.

<comment><USER11> NextDNS works well without setting up anything new, too. I use it instead of pi-hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Try Baitblock [https://baitblock.app](https://baitblock.app) Baitblock has tracking resistance that also deletes first party cookies/other tracking mechanisms when it detects that you're not logged into a website.

<comment><USER13> It's a pity it's chrome only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's rather neat to be able to read a short diff, including a test, to see exactly what that means.

From my limited understanding: it purges cookies and localStorage, if the storage access API permission was not granted?

</comment><comment><USER15> So the next race is going to be pinging all these cookies to keep them alive

<comment><USER3> Nah. The adtech people are already talking about persistent identification mechanisms to allow the same identification in the absence of third party cookies.

If you're privacy-minded, it's worth keeping an eye on these efforts, as some of them involve getting publishers to require a login and an email address or phone number from their users, then using that as the persistent identifier.

If that idea takes root, then we'll probably want to cancel accounts and avoid making new ones.

<comment><USER16> Or a sign-in with Apple-like system so tracking is limited to each site.

<comment><USER17> Best decision I have made so far is setting up a catch-all polic for my domain. firstname.lastname@example.com is saved in a "dummy" inbox, I check it from time to time and give different emails for different services to identify who sold my email.

instagram is email@example.com, netflix is email@example.com etc.

If someone needs pointers: I use webfaction for MX, setup mailboxes with catch-all policy and setup a rule to forward these email to my gmail and have a filter on gmail to skip inbox and save in "dummy" category.

p.s. if someone has a better alternative to webfaction for email only stuff, please let me know, not sure if I can do it with an other provider that is cheaper.

<comment><USER18> I've used migadu.com for well over a year now and been very happy with them. They let you setup multiple regex based catchalls, so I can create any address prefixed with shop and have it forwarded to one address, while ones prefixed with game get forwarded to another. If you aren't planning on sending any emails from the domain, their free single domain plan might work very well for you.

<comment><USER17> Occasionally I have to send emails especially when I have to respond to a customer care response. But will take a look, I am willing to pay for this(I am already paying for webfaction).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, another popup notification to add site's cookies to whitelist.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have been using "Cookies Autodelete" for years. Except for a short list of 20 sites, nothing can store data on my Firefox.

These tracking sites would not be able to show me ads anyway because I have "uBlock origin"

And finally "I don't care about cookies" to automatically dismiss these stupid GDPR "we're going to use cookies" prompts.

Without these the Internet feels broken.

<comment><USER21> >I have been using "Cookies Autodelete" for years. Except for a short list of 20 sites, nothing can store data on my Firefox.

Not really. It doesn't delete indexeddb for instance.

<comment><USER22>
        delete indexedDB;

in userjs is all it takes in Chrome to disable indexedDB permanently

<comment><USER23> It is still possible for websites to access indexedDB by using Web Workers:

      new Worker("data:application/javascript,console.log('indexedDB: ', indexedDB)")

This works since userscripts only run in top-level websites and frames, but the above code runs JS code in a seperate thread with no attached DOM.

<comment><USER22>
        if ('serviceWorker' in window.navigator) navigator.serviceWorker.register = () => new Promise( function(resolve, reject) {} );

disables webworkers from ever working.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>