U.S. Meat Supply Is 'Perilously Close' to a Shortage, CEO Warns - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/13/833110486/u-s-meat-supply-is-perilously-close-to-a-shortage-ceo-warns <comment><USER2> It's crazy how inaccessible testing still is in the US today. We're completely deluding ourselves if we think we can just open everything back up in May or June and everything will return to normal if we still haven't figured testing out.

Who's going to want to risk themselves or their employees if we can't ensure our own safety? Don't get me wrong, it's great that we're seeing signs of the curve flattening. But we're still bungling the Covid response on a daily basis by not making testing easier and more accessible.

<comment><USER3> >Who's going to want to risk themselves or their employees if we can't ensure our own safety?

LOTS of people will, and we can reduce the risk with masks. Provide them to employees, require they wear them, maybe require customers wear them too.

<comment><USER4> I don't want a mask, or a test. I just want to be left alone to get a bad cough once in a while.

Remind me again how many flu deaths we had this season?

<comment><USER5> Flu (2020): About 600 deaths per day at peak, 14,000 total in US.

Coronavirus: 1400-2000 deaths per day now, 23,000 total so far, still climbing.[2]

USA #1 in coronavirus deaths! [1]

[1] [https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest](https://www.ft.com/coronavirus- latest)

[2] [https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus- death...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-deaths- united-states-each-day-2020-n1177936)

<comment><USER4> [https://twitter.com/PeterRQuinones/status/125020387852143820...](https://twitter.com/PeterRQuinones/status/1250203878521438208/photo/1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is might be great news from a societal healthcare perspective. Just like in England during WW2, meat was is short supply, and as a result people had to resolve to eating more vegetables etc. The end results was a generation (for those WW2 years) that never before or after has been as healthy.

Both life expectancy (excluding those in the military) and birth mortality went down

It's a great study in epigenetics.

<comment><USER7> > and as a result people had to resolve to eating more vegetables etc.

The "etc." is key here. "Cannibalism by necessity" was more common during World War 2 than most people realize. While it didn't hit the United States, we are still uncovering documentation of it happening on both sides of the war in Europe and Asia. You could make all sorts of dietary speculation about that as well.

But the reality is war kills the weak by numerous means and - surprise - you're left with a pretty healthy population.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I myself enjoy eating meat and while I need the protein, I've also understood that the taste, is it the umami combined with protein and fat, is what makes meat so delicious. So while I have experimented with some veggie food, mostly just beans, I don't know how to get a similar tasting food as easily as just buying sausages or frying chicken on a pan. Then add some rice and a nice salad. There was a veggie restaurant I used to go who knew how to make really good tasting veggie food, I wonder was it just using a lot of umami replacements like stock pots.

On the other hand an excessive meat-eating without any exercise or other reason than "because it tastes good" I don't understand. You are just clogging up your arteries and really starving your body of important vitamins that you need from veggies.

So while the situation is unfortunate, I am curious what those who enjoy their daily steaks will do when the meat runs out. Buy canned meat? Or some low-meat products like sausages? I guess they'll mostly just switch to fatty foods instead, like burgers and french fries and whatnot.

</comment><comment><USER9> this is not as bad as it sounds, people can discover many other sources (also lower cost) of protein. perhaps this leads to decreased meat consumption, not at all a bad thing.

<comment><USER10> If this was a simple change of preferences due to all the vegan/vegetarian talking points, I could agree with your premise. The thing I wonder about C19 is that what kinds of agricultural processes involve humans ensuring that beans/corn/greens/starches get from the fields into produce aisles and cans? The same reasoning on shutting down production for infection risk applies there as well.

<comment><USER7> Meat has the shortest shelf life of foods, so any impact on the food supply chain will be felt there first.

US Agriculture as a whole employs 22 million people. Of that, meet production is about 500,000. Fruits, vegetables, and grains take an order of magnitude more hands to make it to the table, so to speak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The press release seems very strange.

It announces that the plant is closing, yet in the statement by the CEO seems like he doesn't want the plant to close... but was forced to maybe?

I wonder if maybe their business liability insurer threatened to drop them if they remained open or something.

<comment><USER12> Sounded like a business executive pitching for higher rates.

Buy local. There aren't any less animals being born or heading to the butcher. Farmers around here are even skipping the middleman and selling directly. Eggs, grains, milk, and vegetables can also be obtained from nearly the source. If they can't, blame your local and state government for injecting needless regulations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If this is the case with plants across all the states, does this directly mean meat prices are about to skyrocket?</comment>


Dwitter – A social network for short JavaScript demos - <AUTHOR> https://www.dwitter.net/ <comment><USER2> Oh fun, didn't expect to see my side-project here :) A few of my personal favorites:

[https://www.dwitter.net/d/90](https://www.dwitter.net/d/90) [https://www.dwitter.net/d/406](https://www.dwitter.net/d/406) [https://www.dwitter.net/d/433](https://www.dwitter.net/d/433) [https://www.dwitter.net/d/617](https://www.dwitter.net/d/617)

<comment><USER3> Infinite loops (accidental in my case) should probably be catched in some way.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the halting problem has been around since 1936. You'd think someone would have solved it already!

<comment><USER5> if (time_elapsed > some_arbitrary_threshold) { interrupt_sandboxed_code(); }

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So I whipped up a standalone HTML page to use to develop Dwitter scripts without having to use their interface (which seems prone to crashing). Here's the source: [https://gist.github.com/russellbeattie/ef27709f7c916ea54454c...](https://gist.github.com/russellbeattie/ef27709f7c916ea54454cbc3866d4d2f) and you can see it live on my site: [http://www.russellbeattie.com/dwitterish.html](http://www.russellbeattie.com/dwitterish.html)

Interestingly, I found that some scripts _really_ don't like using eval(), so I modified the page to dynamically swap in new <script> elements with the code instead, and a flag to go back and forth.

Here's an example of a script which doesn't like eval() - it runs noticeably faster when embedded in a script: [https://www.dwitter.net/d/697](https://www.dwitter.net/d/697)

Edit: Added the ability to just embed the code in the URL: [http://www.russellbeattie.com/dwitterish.html#c.width%7C%3D0...](http://www.russellbeattie.com/dwitterish.html#c.width%7C%3D0%3Bfor\(n%3D200%3Bn-%3D1%2F64%3Bx.fillRect\(n%253*666%2Cn*5%2Ch%3D8-k%2Ch\)\)for\(r%3DC\(t*3\)%2Ci%3DS\(t*4\)%2Ck%3D28%3B --k%2Fr%3Bi%3Dj\)j%3D2*r*i%2B1-n%2F99%2Cr%3Dr*r-i*i%2B1-n%253)

(Note that I only tested this on Chrome, so feel free to modify if there's issues.)

<comment><USER7> We've gone full circle! This thing started as a stand-alone HTML page for dweets with ability to embed the code in the URL: [http://arkt.is/t](http://arkt.is/t) (hover to show editor). GitHub: [https://github.com/sigvef/arktis-tweet- demo](https://github.com/sigvef/arktis-tweet-demo) . Here it is with the same dweet embedded: [http://arkt.is/t/Yy53aWR0aHw9MDtmb3Iobj0yMDA7bi09MS82NDt4LmZ...](http://arkt.is/t/Yy53aWR0aHw9MDtmb3Iobj0yMDA7bi09MS82NDt4LmZpbGxSZWN0KG4lMyo2NjYsbio1LGg9OC1rLGgpKWZvcihyPUModCozKSxpPVModCo0KSxrPTI4Oy0tay9yO2k9ailqPTIqcippKzEtbi85OSxyPXIqci1pKmkrMS1uJTM=) .

Incidentally, this is where the "dwitter" name came from: "demos" as in the demoscene ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene)) and twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the coolest website I've seen in a long time. Awesome idea.

EDIT: one issue I'm running into is it's easy to accidentally write half- finished code that freezes my browser. It would be nice to have an option to only refresh the preview upon clicking some kind of button.

<comment><USER9> Sorry about your lost dweet :( Accidental infinite loops while editing can be a pain. A "reload" button isn't a bad idea, or a "recover dweet draft" functionality.

<comment><USER8> I managed to finish one! [https://www.dwitter.net/d/714](https://www.dwitter.net/d/714)

More suggestions:

\- in-browser minification tool

\- character counter would count using this output

\- larger textarea

That way, I can compose without relying on vim + yui-compressor.

Awesome little site.

<comment><USER9> Brilliant dweet! Part of the challenge is the manual minification. A larger textarea might be worth it especially as you can use linebreaks instead of ; for better readability

<comment><USER8> Aye, then I cheated. :0 I'll try doing it manually next time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The source is on GitHub: [https://github.com/lionleaf/dwitter](https://github.com/lionleaf/dwitter) \o/

</comment><comment><USER10> This is really cool, but executing other people's javascript in a page makes me nervous. What sort of restrictions are in place to prevent malicious exploits?

<comment><USER9> Makes me quite nervous too. So far each dweet is run in a sandboxed iframe loaded from a separate subdomain.

There are definitely things you can do, and I'm aware of some annoying ones. I'll just manually delete them at this point. Any security conscious person would view it with noscript and just read the javascript ;)

<comment><USER11> Why not make their javascript run in WebWorkers and provide a DOM-like interface for all the things? That way you can kill infinite loops etc.

<comment><USER9> That's something I've been thinking about. Webworkers don't have direct access to the Canvas though, but it seems like you can work around that by passing image data. Killing infinite loops would be great

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome! During one of the last hackathons I participated while at Tumblr, I made a Processing post type, that allowed people to have interactive posts using Processing code, and could be reblogged with edits - very much like this. Love seeing something similar to this idea!

</comment><comment><USER13> Woah, this is awesome but a bit misleading in the beginning. I spend my last 15 min trying it out: [https://www.dwitter.net/d/702](https://www.dwitter.net/d/702)

</comment><comment><USER14> Ended up with something totally different than what I was going for. This is fun.

[https://www.dwitter.net/d/778](https://www.dwitter.net/d/778)

</comment><comment><USER15> Check out my dweet :) [https://www.dwitter.net/d/734](https://www.dwitter.net/d/734)

</comment><comment><USER16> Prior art: [https://t.d3fc.io/](https://t.d3fc.io/)

<comment><USER9> Oh, that's cool! I like the integration with twitter

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The idea is much, much better than the name :)

</comment><comment><USER18> I enjoy the matrix theme falling letters (4th on the top-sorted list). Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER19> Opened page: _this is kinda lam....oooh that 's neat_.

* _scroll scroll scroll_ *

Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER20> In a similar style, but with WebGL: [https://www.shadertoy.com](https://www.shadertoy.com)

<comment><USER21> Yup, pretty similar but the limitation to plain JS and to 140 chars makes the code more fun :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is definitely fun... It'd be nice if it used Github to login and save to Gists. Also, I think it'd be better if the developer called u(t){}, rather than it being the content of the entire post, so it could set up variables, etc., and since it already has a few shortcuts like c,x,C,S,T,R, might as well add in a more complete API.

<comment><USER22> Just set something on `this`:

        if (!this.mySettings) {
          this.mySettings = { value: 1 }
        }

<comment><USER6> 140 character limit, so that wastes like 60 of it. :-)

<comment><USER22> Ah, didn't realize, my bad! It's doable in fewer characters of course, but still a waste. Funny, I thought it was just a bit odd how terse some of these demos were, but given the 140 char limit that I somehow didn't notice at all it makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Neat concept. It reminds me of the Wolfram One-Liner competition [http://blog.wolfram.com/2016/11/09/the-2016-wolfram-one- line...](http://blog.wolfram.com/2016/11/09/the-2016-wolfram-one-liner- competition-winners/)

</comment><comment><USER24> How do I link to a specific post?

This one by mxfh looks very cool:

        d=x.getImageData(0,0,w=c.width=256,h=144);for(i=0;i<h;i++)for(j=0;j<w;j++)d.data[(i*w+j)*4+3]=(i-j&j+i)*t%w;x.putImageData(d,0,0)

Does anyone know how it works?

<comment><USER25> There's a share button on each of the "tweets" at least on my screen.

The direct link to the Sierpinski triangle inspired animation you're noting is below:

[https://www.dwitter.net/d/676](https://www.dwitter.net/d/676)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What resources to people recommend for learning about animating in canvas tags like on Dwitter? I'm already familiar with Javascript, but seeing what people are able to do here with 140 characters amazes me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thank you for this. It definitely stimulated my imagination and creativity.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm not understanding this. How is animation happening? What is S(t)? Can somebody please explain this project?

<comment><USER29> Scroll down:

      u(t) is called 60 times per second.
      t: elapsed time in seconds.
      c: A 1920x1080 canvas.
      x: A 2D context for that canvas.
      S: Math.sin
      C: Math.cos
      T: Math.tan
      R: Generates rgba-strings, ex.: R(255, 255, 255, 0.5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd appreciate for not auto running the demos. The fractal animation lagged whole page down to 5FPS.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just tried to register with username @H2O. Sent post request, after that got 500 error.

<comment><USER9> Oh, got the 500 error dump. It's the @ in your username, that'll teach me. For now avoid special characters in your username ;)

Edit: In case you were stuck in a 500-loop I quickly changed your username to H2O, hopefully it works now

<comment><USER32> I tried to register as "sfz-" and also got a 500. Is there a problem with a trailing dash? If so, can you fix my username as well to "sfz"? Thanks!

<comment><USER9> Changed to sfz :)

<comment><USER32> Sweet! Thanks! [https://www.dwitter.net/d/727](https://www.dwitter.net/d/727)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My MacBook Air is complaining after a few minutes of reading this site.

</comment><comment><USER11> I kind of love it!

Are they all in iframes?

<comment><USER21> Yup, as confirmed by the author[0]. Also, it's opensource, 'dweet card' template shows that it uses iframes[1].

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13702021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13702021)

[1] [https://github.com/lionleaf/dwitter/blob/master/dwitter/temp...](https://github.com/lionleaf/dwitter/blob/master/dwitter/templates/snippets/dweet_card.html#L6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This kills the Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER35> This reminds me a bit of ShaderToy -- very cool :)

</comment><comment><USER36> 12 hours until twitter name infringement

</comment><comment><USER37> Name does not pass bar test.

</comment><comment><USER38> within a half hour of playing around on this site, someone posted goatse. and there is no way to report, hide, downvote, etc.</comment>


Movies you should own: The Andromeda Strain - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/2008/03/movies_you_should_own_the_andromeda_strain.php <comment><USER3> I'd definitely recommend the book as well. His books are easy, fun reads and I personally enjoyed the fake scientific rigor (like fake citations) that get put into the books as mentioned in the linked article. Also of interest to any Michael Crichton fans like myself is that there was an authorized sequel written by a different author named the Andromeda Evolution just published in November 2019. It's not quite as good as the original since it deviates a little from the original "we're trapped in this facility with a virus that's trying to kill us", scientific drama into something more action movie-y - <USER2> don't think it's a spoiler to say that it involves a space station and space elevator along with exploring ancient structures. Even with that complaint, the sequel was still a pleasant way to pass a few hours on a plane for me!

<comment><USER4> I've been revisiting Crichton lately, and I guess I never realized how big of an impact he had on pop culture. Him and Tom Clancy were such a big part of the 90s, and I am enjoying their slight resurgence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my favorite aspects of _Andromeda Strain_ is the color coded levels of the underground laboratory, that correspond to different target emotional states for the research team (or something like that — it's been a while).

Watching _West World_ on HBO I'm struck by how they've captured some of Crichton's DNA in both the set design and the kind of hubris corporations have in his books.

<comment><USER6> Fun trivia about that: there was only one small section of hallway built for the movie. It was repainted different colors between each set of takes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Computer: "Please enter the decontamination chamber and be sterilized".

Dr Leavitt: "I'd rather be decontaminated!"

(Dr Leavitt played by the late great Kate Reid.)

This scene doesn't appear in the DVD, so I suspect it's the "airline" version of the movie. In-air movies were a big hit and airlines didn't want anything remotely objectionable to hurt their image. They appeared on a big screen in the front of the cabin and so everyone aboard saw the movie, even if they weren't listening.

</comment><comment><USER8> We watched that last night. Another good movie for these times is "The Omega Man"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUkU18MrBzU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUkU18MrBzU)

<comment><USER9> Also "The Quite Earth" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9KQrOx5cz8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9KQrOx5cz8), Logan's Run, Silent Running - that's what it feels like out in the streets at the moment!

<comment><USER10> Logan's Run is such a 70's scifi movie, but hey, Farrah Fawcett. Richard Jordan acted in this film and my favorite role he played was the Secretary of Defense in The Hunt for Red October "When I'm not kissin' babies, I'm stealing their lollipops."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _The Andromeda Strait_ is one of the best Crichton books/movies, along with _The Eaters of the Dead_ (skip the movie) and _The Great Train Robbery_. I also have a strange fondness for _Congo_ , but by that time Crichton had gone crazypants.

</comment><comment><USER12> Such a good film. It's one of a short list of films that I keep on my iPad for long flights and can watch over again at the drop of a hat. The tone, the dialog, and the casting all work so well. I don't know how well-known the actors in it were at the time, but for me it actually works better that they're not know very well-known (at least to me)--it helps preserve the suspension of disbelief not to be looking at Al Pacino or Sean Connery and trying to forget who they are. (Of course, that said, one of the other movies on my iPad is 'Hunt for Red October', so...)

</comment><comment> Nevada-Smith ...and the movie with the most realistic portrayal for a post-apocalyptic world is "The Road"

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898367/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898367/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

<comment><USER13> This is the only movie I've watched that has left me feeling disturbed for weeks. I couldn't even watch all the parts and I haven't been able to watch again.

It is really well done.

</comment></comment><comment> Nevada-Smith Another terrific movie is "Warning Sign" (1985) starring Sam Waterston.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090293/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090293/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

</comment><comment><USER14> The 2008 remake scared the crap out of me as a kid. I should rewatch it sometime.

<comment><USER15> The original scared the crap out of me as a kid, too. That and Soylent Green.</comment></comment>


Kingmax flaunts world's first 64GB microSD card - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/26/kingmax-flaunts-worlds-first-64gb-microsd-card/

<comment><USER2> Crazy how they never initially planned for more than 32gb in the first place since microSDHC is only 5 years old. So now millions of devices are outdated.</comment>


Orbit – Distributed, serverless, peer-to-peer chat application on IPFS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/haadcode/orbit <comment><USER3> Interesting. Can someone explain how IPFS works? Is it like Tor? I don't have any interest in running some sort of distributed content farm that might place CP on my computer. Even if the chance of that happening is 0.00001%.

<comment><USER4> The best one-liner I've heard: it's like one giant git repo that's inside of one giant bittorrent.

My (imperfect) understanding is that it runs like a market: you temporarily store and forward blocks (<1MB) that are considered "valuable" (i.e. popular) in exchange for people forwarding you the blocks that you want. So there's a cache at each node where popular blocks are held - which I'm sure you can keep in RAM if you want. So while it's possible that content you don't want might pass through your IPFS node, it's pretty ephemeral.

In general, I don't think IPFS is a great place to do naughty things - it's not big on anonymity, and since blocks drop off the network if they're not being actively requested, to keep something up there you have to store it permanently _somewhere_, which is going to be traceable to the same degree that running a webserver is.

<comment><USER5> As far as my understanding goes (and I've spent a day discussing it with IPFS authors in person this September), IPFS doesn't store or forward anything you haven't explicitly requested. So you participate only in sharing things you're aware of (and bad things are rather easy to remove from that cache) — and that's a deliberate design decision.

Things in local IPFS cache can indeed be "garbage-collected" (and there's a CLI command to trigger GC manually) — but IPFS daemon has a concept of _pinning_, and pinned IPFS nodes won't be collected, and will remain stored (and being shared) as as the pinning goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The browser demo does seem to be working, however it seems very slow? Beautiful interface though! One of the best I've seen yet.

What is going on underneath? Are you guys using WebSocket or WebRTC? The reason I ask is because I wrote an interactive coding tutorial for building a distributed chat app ( [http://gun.js.org/converse.html](http://gun.js.org/converse.html) ), and it uses WebSockets to communicate with a federated relay peer server. I'm hoping to add WebRTC support but I'm curious what you guys are doing. Like, IPFS doesn't have pub/sub support right? So did you add this?

<comment><USER7> The version deployed at orbit.libp2p.io is using orbit-db which is using redis to do pubsub right now. However, pubsub is being worked on and exists in for example go-ipfs#master right now under a feature flag. Run `ipfs pubsub --help` after build from source to try it out. It's also being worked on getting into js-ipfs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Developer of Orbit here. Great to hear all the feedback, thank you!

Most questions have been already answered, but to clarify:

Orbit indeed uses IPFS pubsub ([https://github.com/ipfs/go- ipfs/pull/3202](https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/pull/3202)) for real-time message propagation, no servers are involved. In addition, it uses orbit-db ([https://github.com/haadcode/orbit-db](https://github.com/haadcode/orbit-db)) - a distributed database on IPFS - for the message history, so the messages are not ephemeral and the channel history can always be retrieved. This is a really nice property and allows Orbit to work in "disconnected" or split networks, as well as offline.

Orbit has been a testbed for IPFS applications and orbit-db came out of that work, enabling various types of distributed, p2p applications and use cases: comment systems, votes/likes/starring systems (with counters), feeds, etc. And now with IPFS pubsub, we're finally at a point of being completely serverless and distributed which is hugely exciting and opens so many doors for future work!

I recently gave a talk at Devcon2 about Orbit and developing distributed real- time applications ([https://ethereumfoundation.org/devcon/?session=orbit- distrib...](https://ethereumfoundation.org/devcon/?session=orbit-distributed- real-time-web3-apps-with-ipfs-and-ethereum)) and while the videos of the talk are not out yet (afaik coming very soon!), there's the uncut video of the talk here [http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTc1NjU1NzEyNA==.html?firsttim...](http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTc1NjU1NzEyNA==.html?firsttime=5172) if you're interested to learn more. Video of the demo I showed in the talk is here [https://ethereumfoundation.org/devcon/wp- content/uploads/201...](https://ethereumfoundation.org/devcon/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/Orbit_demo.mov).

I'll be hanging out on #ipfs in Orbit if you're interested to try it out. Note that the Electron app and the web version at orbit.libp2p.io don't talk to each other atm (we're working on this), so I would highly recommend to try out the Electron app.

While you're at it, try drag & dropping files and folders to a channel, that's one of the coolest feature of Orbit atm imo :)

We're actively developing Orbit and making a push in the next few months, if you're interested to take part in the design and development, or would like to develop your own apps using the same tech, join us on Github [https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/issues](https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/issues).

Thanks for the comments everyone, much appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a perfect non-use-case for IPFS: ephemeral messages in a chat application.

<comment><USER10> What makes it ephemeral? Does not IPFS store all objects forever?

<comment><USER9> My point is that chat messages are meant to be ephemeral, so it was a waste to store them in IPFS and hash them and make them identifiable by a unique useless hash in the entire world forever.

But since I posted the comment I realized that this is actually a cool feature for a chat app to have.

<comment><USER11> When I choose to use a chat application, of my reasons to use it is so that there is an accessible record of the thing.

More concerning to me is with IPFS is privacy. I would want to encrypt it so that only my chat partner and I could read it. But then would it be interesting in enough to live for long on the network?

<comment><USER12> IPFS isn't in the business of providing storage for free to users. If you want it stored forever you should pin it or use a service that does the same. Just because the name is permanent doesn't mean the data is unless it's in demand from someone.

<comment><USER9> The name is misleading, you must concede.

<comment><USER12> What?

The name of a piece of data is cryptographically secure. It _is_ permanent, but the data that is being named doesn't have to continue to exist on a hard drive just because its name exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a list of some active channels I can join?

</comment><comment><USER14> I like ipfs this name. but what does ip in ipfs stand for?

<comment><USER15> interplanetary

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does IPFS provide HTTP adaptor ?

<comment><USER17> Yes there's an HTTP-to-IPFS gateway included in go-ipfs. It's what backs [https://ipfs.io](https://ipfs.io), for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another false headline. "serverless"? Nope. A redis server must be running.

<comment><USER19> I imagine an IPFS chat software could store it's necessary information in... IPFS. So why involve redis?

<comment><USER20> Because IPFS only does distributed _storage_. It has no processing power or logic to handle data transformations.

Now, one avenue to handle that is js-ipfs. In order to update things like IPNS records, you need the private key of the node you're trying to change. Interestingly enough, and machine with the pub/priv key can submit an IPNS change.

So effectively, you could have a shared repo like Usenet, where everyone has the pub/priv key and pushes updates via js-ipfs. Although, I could imagine easily how that could get super-heavy.

_________________________

Another idea I had, was to build something akin to AWS lambda, except using Tor Hidden Services, and Erlang. It would be effectively a private computation cloud. The reason for the HS is so each machine, regardless of their location, could always talk with each other, using Erlang's built--in networking support. (I am using non-standard applications of Tor Hidden Services - <USER2> more what I'm doing here: [https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite- homeofficehacker...](https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite- homeofficehackerspace-automation) )

<comment><USER21> That's very cool! Have you looked at OnionCat? I've managed a global LizardFS cluster on a PeerVPN network, overlayed on OnionCat IPv6. Latency is too high for erasure coding or XOR goals, but chunk-replication mode works reliably.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Seven Years of Source Code for Flickr.com Looks Like (video) - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5542882/what-seven-years-of-source-code-for-flickrcom-looks-like <comment><USER2> Beautiful.

It reminds me of <http://demos.thejit.org/example/rgraph/example1/>

Edit: also, [http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/visualising-the- hask...](http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/visualising-the-haskell- universe/)</comment>


Google vs. Tesla: Two different philosophies on self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> https://innovately.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/google-vs-tesla-two-different-philosophies-on-self-driving-cars/ <comment><USER2> Systems engineering (not to mention FMEA analysis) will probably drive car manufacturers to use a combination of sensors with independent failure modes: camera, radar, lidar & ultrasonics.

An unexpectedly interesting question is this: Where on the processing pipeline(s) should the point(s) of data fusion lie?, and how should we perform safety engineering on the post-fusion data flow pipeline....</comment>


Smartphone users on tablets - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pollfish.com/post/52789199652/lets-talk-about-tablets

<comment><USER2> Good grief, please hire a copywriter. I'm sure your polling app is great but you are undermining it with such poor grammar on your landing pages.</comment>


The sociological religion of no biological differences between the sexes - <AUTHOR> https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/the-sociological-religion-of-no-biological-differences-between-the-sexes/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what the point of all this blather is. Many people argue that the differences between the genders are largely irrelevant in a lot of situations, and that distinct differences between gender or race are only really relevant when talking about large groups on a statistical basis. Studying these differences doesn't produce anything profound or meaningful, either, just data that irritates people because it promotes thinking in generalities.

Whatever differences there are when dealing with averages are usually irrelevant in human-scale interactions between a handful of people that are, in many cases, randomly distributed across various criteria.

If group X was found to be _on average_ 5% higher in some particular measurement than another, what does that mean on a person-to-person basis? All it will do is bias people in their thinking. It's only when that percentage is quite extreme that it's actually significant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course 5% higher is practically meaningful. If group A is 160cm tall on average, 5% higher means 168cm tall on average. This difference can be easily observed by normal person. How would anybody think this difference is meaningless?

<comment><USER2> If you're designing furniture, cars, or clothing where every centimetre counts, sure, but in general practice that's almost irrelevant.

Does this affect things like who you should invite to a party? What effect does this have on ordinary life?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Apart from the interesting taboos of race and sex, there is another interesting thing I've wanted to talk about.

I don't believe the left and right are recent inventions, I think it is biological. Both the left and right have their own taboos. Those taboos spring immediately into existence when a topic such as sex or race is brought up. You automatically see both sides lining up against each other.

This is very interesting!

We should be asking why do the left and right exist? Why is it so powerful and pervasive across all cultures and times?

My intuition tells me it is some sort of regulation mechanism, but I've never seen this subject discussed before.</comment>


What do you think of this? - <AUTHOR>

We would love to get your feedback on this project. It's a cause driven e-commerce platform. Think kickstarter meets amazon, but for cool stuff.  Essentially you find something you like and pre-order it, once the item has hit a number of pre-orders the item goes on sale and for each purchase of that item some of the sales go to a goal towards a cause.  It's a dead simple idea, but we are not entirely sure if it has been done right so were giving it a shot.
Here is our first project, some cool cufflinks that will help fund Oakland CA schools.
www.madlov.com/qa
We would love your feedback and ways we could improve this. <comment><USER2> The idea sounds pretty cool, you should make the "uncertainty" of the purchase clearer. I would also drop the word "preorder" and use a different word. Also you should consider displaying how many purchases more are required for the product to become available for sale, that might get your users to push for a product a bit more in their social circles.

Good luck with it!

<comment><USER3> Heelhook - nice idea.

What are some verbs that you'd replace with "Pre-Order" that would encourage action.

For exmaple:

"Get One" "Support"

I've submitted a new post to field some ideas:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3170082>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. Where do the items come from? Donated?

Absolutely love the charity or good cause aspect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hansy, the items are new or vintage items that come from their creators/brands, not necessarily donated. You could even go as far as to imagining ordering a baked pie for example that could either be delivered or shipped to you and part of the proceeds goes to a great cause. The types of items are either consumable or e-commerce goods.</comment></comment>


How we learnt React.js building Monod, our Markdown editor - <AUTHOR> https://tailordev.fr/blog/2016/04/15/le-lab-2-offline-first-document-sharing-templates-monod-is-back/ <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: The app is available at: [https://monod.lelab.tailordev.fr/](https://monod.lelab.tailordev.fr/) :)</comment>


Colors - A go library which produce colorful characters. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wsxiaoys/colors

<comment><AUTHOR> An online version for godoc: <http://gopkgdoc.appspot.com/pkg/github.com/wsxiaoys/colors></comment>


Ask YC: Has the economy changed the going rate for programmers? - <AUTHOR>

The going rate for good salaried programmers used to be 80K - 120K per year, with some stock option grants varying company to company. Has the economic crisis affected that at all? Does it depend on what part of the country (or what part of the world) you're in? <comment><USER3> Salaries are _very_ dependent on what part of the world you're in, obviously.

Here in central Japan many companies have seen bonus cuts. Typical compensation for a 20-something Japanese programmer might be:

$2,500 a month salary

\+ $200 single's living allowance

\+ $200 commute allowance

\+ overtime

So call their base monthly pay $3,000, plus overtime. Now twice a year they get a bonus, which is calculated as "X months of your base monthly pay", where X is determined by how well the company is doing. In good times, that might be X = 2.5 or X = 3. In leaner times, it can scale down or be eliminated.

If you assume that you earn 12 months pay from work and 5 months pay from bonuses, then a quick contraction in bonuses amounts to a substantial pay cut.

Bonuses at my company are down this year, by essentially rounding error, but some of my professional colleagues in the city have been cut all the way to zero.

These are not slouchy engineers, they just work for companies that supply a certain large automobile manufacturer, and that large automobile manufacturer has laid down the law: cut costs to us or find yourselves another large automobile manufacturer to give you 60% of your orders.

</comment><comment><USER4> i think that greatly depends on the way you define the word 'programmer'.

If programmer to you means someone that can code php and maybe do a bit of css work to help build web applications then yes, the economy has changed that, there are quite a few people like that looking for work right now so the going rate is down (my estimation about 20..30%).

If by programmer you mean somebody that can take a complex problem or specification and solve it or realize that spec then I think the market is unchanged, mostly because there always was - and probably always will be - <USER2> shortage of such people.

<comment><USER5> I love this as a definition of a strong programmer: "somebody that can take a complex problem or specification and solve it or realize that spec"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My previous job was at a company that ended recently, with the last paychecks in Dec. It's not yet the end of February, and three out of the four programmers employed there are working elsewhere, for the same or higher pay. Everyone keeps talking about the economy, but here in the metro DC area there hasn't been much effect.

<comment><USER7> Economics blogger Megan McArdle over at the Atlantic made the point a while back that politicians love recessions - their power grows, while that of the folks in the free market (their rivals) shrink.

 _Of course_ things in the metro DC area are good.

The flow of cash into the metro DC economy is larger than it's ever been.

The problems are out in the productive sectors of the economy.

<comment><USER6> No argument there. I didn't pay enough attention when we discussed it to find out if they're all working for govt or govt contractors, though I'm not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> not me. i got a good offer in late nov. right in the middle of the financial turmoil, but i also do mobile dev. and really good mobile devs. are rarely in the market. They either have already a job, or they are doing their own apps + some contracting on the side.

But the market is affecting some people. My previous company is having about 2% raises achross the board (last year was about the same), and they are underpaying most developers, and they can pull it off, as the market has cooled off, and there are less options out there.

The funny thing, is that the company is thinking that is gaining by having little raises, but i know from a fact that a lot of people are just working less, and are in a don't care mode/will do just enough not to get fired mode.

<comment><USER9> I got fired and then found a better job. It seems I'm not alone in this. Strange crisis.

May I ask what environment do you use for mobile? I accidentally did some J2ME three years ago and it was funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a UK view of salaries (based on job postings) look at <http://www.jobstats.co.uk/jobstats.d/Rates.html>

It indicates that 75% of postings are 23% cheaper than a year ago.

There is a big change in postings, as per the front page of the same site. Down from 18,000 to 5,000.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think it's really impacted the market for _great_ developers much at all.

People that can develop working, maintainable software that makes users happy seem to always be in demand.

<comment><USER12> _People that can develop working, maintainable software that makes users happy seem to always be in demand._

Omit "working,maintainable" and we're good. It needn't be either, but it must make someone happy. Whether this is a pointy haired boss or an end user is irrelevant to how much the developer is paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The consensus so far seems to be "no, not for _good_ developers, but it's affected everything else." Does that imply that good developers were accepting pay too low before?

Or is it just the way people are measuring? A good programmer should get better over time, so their work should be more valuable each year. Taking a new job is often similar to a salary renegotiation, so do the people reporting the same pay imply that either they're not a good developer (because they didn't get better), or that the economy has in fact affected the going rate of good programmers?

<comment><USER14> _good developers were accepting pay too low before?_

Yes, or rather: good programmers aren't always going for top dollar, but for interesting work. That prior behavior gives them two kinds of insulation from downward salary pressures:

\- at an established job, they are already recognized as especially valuable, so less likely to be affected by compensation or job cuts

\- if seeking new employment, they can marginally maintain income by sacrificing interestingness, if desired

On the other hand, a mercenary whose only criteria for accepting work was that it pays top dollar is especially vulnerable to economic pressure. Because of the winner's curse in auction processes, such mercenaries are likely to have been overpaid even before a downturn (and the companies overpaying them, likely to have been bubble creatures).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The curve has changed, but the overall range appears to have remained the same. For the people at the low and top ends of the spectrum, its basically business as usual.

It does seem as though the middle has fallen out some though. We recently had an opening for a short-term junior level position and we got a ton of responses from overqualified people who would ordinarily fall in the mid-range classification.

</comment><comment><USER16> Depends more on language than on anything, I think.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean programming language or native language of the programmer ?

<comment><USER16> Programming language.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Publish Startup Revenue Numbers? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen a number of startup and private companies lately participate in the process of posting their revenue and profit numbers for their businesses.  I sense that reason these organizations publish their revenue and profit numbers to emphasize their success - and I enjoy reading these postings and outlines.
In my case, I run a rather large online community that generates revenue from the "Fremium" model in addition to license revenue, advertising, and other sources.
So, my question to the HN community is: What advantages and disadvantages do you see in publishing this information to your community and the world?  Are you concerned that some folks may view this information in a negative light?  Would you expect an uptick in conversions to paid models when revenue numbers show that "others are doing it?"
In my case, I've always held my revenue and profit numbers close, but I'm curious as to other's experiences and concerns.
Thanks, <comment><USER2> _What advantages and disadvantages do you see in publishing this information to your community and the world?_

It makes for good linkbait, gives you a quick cut-through-the-noise hook (utility of that declines sharply with exposure), and especially for solo entrepreneurs I think it sort of helps with the crushing social isolation we're otherwise prone to.

People I respect (and respectfully disagree with) have said that it promotes small-time thinking, encourages competitors to come eat your lunch, and complicates your professional dealings with parties who may be concerned that you cannot stuff the genie back in the bottle. (For example, potential acquirers).

I would not expect any substantial increase in conversions from publishing numbers, since the people who are most interested in them are your professional peers rather than your customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> So that begs an important question.. where would/should you best publish your private corporation's revenue and profit numbers if you chose to? To your userbase? The media? Hacker News? :) The user base will ultimately see the information at some point, and I'm trying to understand _their_ reaction to the information.

<comment><USER2> _The user base will ultimately see the information at some point, and I'm trying to understand their reaction to the information._

I think you probably overestimate how much your userbase cares about you, unless you have cultivated an unusually close, personal relationship with them.

I mean, many of the companies that _you_ do business with publish all their financial information four times a year. Have you ever gone through, e.g., a Google earnings report because its _just so important_ to you? (Substitute with another company if you are not actually a Google customer.)

<comment><AUTHOR> _I think you probably overestimate how much your userbase cares about you, unless you have cultivated an unusually close, personal relationship with them._

There in-lies the issue.. this project started many years ago as a platform for a small hobby related concept to a major business operation today. Our revenue model started from donations and ultimately moved to the fremium model. All along the way I have been intimately involved with the user base, and still to this day I am directly involved with the userbase.

There are many long time members of the site that to this day believe that their subscriptions "support" the site's operations vs. puts food on the table for my family and pays my salary (many don't know I've moved on to run this business full time).

<comment><USER3> You obviously don't want to publish your financials. So don't. Patrick doesn't get to read Matasano's financials either. Most people don't publish their numbers, and many of them have very good reasons not to.

He's still probably right: your customers don't care about your numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you wonder what brought this on, see the following HN post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028418>

Thanks,</comment>


My Bathroom Mirror Is Smarter Than Yours - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@maxbraun/my-bathroom-mirror-is-smarter-than-yours-94b21c6671ba#.meovkpt31 <comment><USER2> _So I ordered myself a two-way mirror, a display panel and controller board, plus a bunch of components and arts & crafts supplies._

My bathroom mirror is _way_ smarter than his, because it doesn't contain any components that will inevitably break (or need upgrading in a few years), besides the mirror glass itself; it isn't connected to anything (and hence, is perfectly firewalled against the barrage of attacks that will inevitably befall this product once it is deployed at scale); and best of all: it doesn't assault me with streams of utterly pointless crap (like what Donald Trump said most recently) first thing in the morning when I'm hungover and am trying decide whether to shave, brush my teeth, or hit the can first.

If this is the way Google product engineers think generally about people's pressing needs are, and what our "promised" future looks like -- that company is definitely doomed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Similar project: [https://github.com/HannahMitt/HomeMirror](https://github.com/HannahMitt/HomeMirror)</comment>


Ask HN: Keeping ip logs for my web site, am I obligated to do that ? - <AUTHOR>

Question to fellow HNrs, am I obligated by law in US to keep logs of visitors to my web site, i.e keep all access logs and ip addresses ? and if the answer is yes for how far back in history ? <comment><USER2> No.</comment>


Geek rants on git - <AUTHOR> http://www.thefuriousgeek.com/2013/10/02/git-github-wow-what-a-peice-of-shit/

<comment><USER2> Silly rant, it sounds misguided if you know git.

But, two things:

The author is, of course wrong about git vs svn safety. Once you really know git, it is more forgiving than anything else. Almost all mistakes are recoverable. Not so for svn.

The author is right about git having a usability problem. Git is hard to learn. I'm sure some of us had the same initial reaction. Personally, I'd love to see someone put a gui skin on git that uses different terminology, picks the most newbie friendly defaults, and makes the workflows easier. P4v, for example, is easier to use than Sourcetree or Tower or other GUIs that basically only give you menu options for the things git does. Not saying that p4v is the awesomest, but I've watched artists manage with p4v, and artists largely don't in git.

<comment><USER3> It took me a while to come around, but now I'm so sure that git won't lose anything I am _much_ more willing to try things I don't quite understand than I ever was with any other version control. Yes, sometimes recovering can involve some opaque incantations, but I know whatever I wanted is still there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Remember you aren't the universal use case."

Just because something failed for you, doesn't mean it failed for everyone. One of the author's main points is talking about GIT GUI's, which I think is his/her primary problem. Terminal based programs, nmap, git, gcc, emacs, vim, etc. Don't lend themselves to GUI-ization easily. To attempt to categorize their vast functionality in terms of drop down, or pop up menus and buttons is largely an exercise in futility.

Personally, I'm more excited to see a blog post from the author working on a headless server for the first time. I think he could give a wonderful review of the Bourne Again Shell.

</comment><comment><USER5> Waste of parsing time from my part. Save yourself 20 seconds and don't read this.

<comment><USER6> You can't read it anyway.

"Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 3670016) (tried to allocate 7680 bytes) in /home/auroand/public_html/thefuriousgeek.com/wp-includes/l10n.php on line 530"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Git is complex because version control is inherently a complex problem. Let's look at some of the Git complexity that people don't like, and why they should:

Branches: Especially if you work on a team, but even if you work alone, you definitely want branches. Often you'll want to work on an experimental or not- production-ready feature or refactoring. Yet you'll still need to be able to jump to the production codebase and maintain it, e.g. when a high-priority bug is found. Branches assist you in this and other scenarios.

Local commits: You shouldn't need to rely on the network just to save your progress.

Cloning: Every developer's Git repo is a complete copy of the main repo. That gives you an automatic backup system for every project. If you've ever seen corruption in a central SVN repo, you know how important backups are. Yes, with SVN you could implement your own backups for the central repo, but with Git, it's one fewer thing I have to do.

Adding a.k.a. staging: If you've changed a bunch of files but only want to commit a subset of the changes, it's nice to be able to add them incrementally. The alternative is to have to type out all the paths in one big commit command, which isn't as user-friendly.

</comment><comment> j-hernandez [https://help.github.com/articles/support-for-subversion- clie...](https://help.github.com/articles/support-for-subversion-clients)

For anyone who would like to work with Github but prefers svn. I can't personally speak to how well this works but it is available.

(OT: I first found out about svn support from a presentation by Zach Holman, I believe you can find it here: [http://zachholman.com/talk/git-github- secrets/](http://zachholman.com/talk/git-github-secrets/) Some interesting bits in there. )

Edit: fixed spelling

</comment><comment><USER8> I hated git and felt much like the author did when I first started using it. Git has some problems. Of course some of the problems stem from its features. To me its biggest feature is "branching" and I'm guessing this is why many people like it. It makes it trivial to work on multiple bugs fixes at one time, without mixing code. Checking in locally can be nice, but I agree, why do I have to do that when I'm networked? But the power of the simple branches pretty much outweighs all the negatives. And of course it would be nice to have some good GUIs

</comment><comment><USER9> Tower is, in my opinion, the best and most full-featured Git GUI. Having used it within multiple teams, I've found that it helps users understand what's happening under the hood (esp. regarding remotes). Unfortunately, the author seems to be a Windows user and Tower is, as of today, only available for OS X.

Find it here: [http://git-tower.com](http://git-tower.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> I love reading rants like this. You can see just how little experience the author has with working with a team or production code.

</comment><comment><USER11> While I don't agree with the post I do think anyone that can meld the power of git with the simplicity of dropbox will have a killer service. But I'm assuming thats like having your cake and eating it to.

Are there any notable projects that try to accomplish this?

<comment><USER12> Although I don't use it, Sparkleshare [1] comes to mind. It essentially is Dropbox + Git.

[1] [http://sparkleshare.org/](http://sparkleshare.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I didn't read the whole article, but from what I had read - I disagree with.

Yes, Git has complex UI but so does Microsoft Word - if you want to be efficient at using those, you need to spent some time learning.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this satire? or a real rant!? I get that git has a bit of a learning curve to learn " _all_ " of the techniques, but it's really not that hard to get the basics going.

<comment><USER8> I'm assuming this is a real rant, as he touches on a lot of the problems with Git. Git does have a steeper learning curve than other source control systems. And many of its features are not exactly intuitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would replace "rants" with "whining" at the title. Skip this if you haven't read it yet.</comment>


Tinder must stop charging its older California users more for "Plus" features - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/tinder-must-stop-charging-its-older-california-users-more-for-plus-features/?comments=1&start=40 <comment><USER2> duplicate, please check before submitting: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16274114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16274114)</comment>