All Revenue Is Not Created Equal (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/05/24/all-revenue-is-not-created-equal-the-keys-to-the-10x-revenue-club/?utm_campaign=Mattermark+Daily&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=21369491&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-81yyCVpIOE9DmFaZpXGRW3aW651WpVLXfDeKj_aLGUTEROz_PyJOAEhsSvH3OySc4zHA2YiBq4N9YiZ3efdViv-nz10g&_hsmi=21369491 <comment><USER2> I find these two statements so contradictory and fundamental that I don't know which statement to believe:

 _There is a reason to save growth for last. While growth is quite important, and even thought we are in a market where growth is in particularly high demand, growth all by itself can be misleading. Here is the problem. Growth that can never translate into long-term positive cash flow will have a negative impact on a DCF model, not a positive one. This is known as "profitless prosperity."_ \- Bill Gurley

 _If you want to understand startups, understand growth. Growth drives everything in this world. Growth is why startups usually work on technology—because ideas for fast growing companies are so rare that the best way to find new ones is to discover those recently made viable by change, and technology is the best source of rapid change. Growth is why it 's a rational choice economically for so many founders to try starting a startup: growth makes the successful companies so valuable that the expected value is high even though the risk is too. Growth is why VCs want to invest in startups: not just because the returns are high but also because generating returns from capital gains is easier to manage than generating returns from dividends. _ \- pg [0]

P.S. - Dang can you add the (2011) tag?

[0] - [http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html)

<comment><USER3> There's a contextual cue that's missing between the two, but a strong hint is in the, "Growth that can never translate into long-term positive cash flow...", statement. That context is growth for what duration and what investing purpose.

If I'm investing into a business for the longer haul, like a pension fund might or maybe looking at a company to take a senior position in and stay in a job for years and years, etc. the viability of the business as a business becomes more important than if I'm investing for an exit 2-5 years down the road. If I'm a VC or similar looking for a relatively quick turnaround, in short two to five year window the company might become recognizable enough or have a popular technology etc. that the long term viability of the business qua business becomes less important than does who might want it for reasons other than current revenue or profitability.

Once you get the context, the quotes aren't so much contradictory as much as referring simply to different goals.

<comment><USER4> An interesting counter point, VC's as an industry average significantly lower ROI than the boring old S&P 500. One way to look at the VC industry is to realize VC's can make millions even if there portfolios have negative ROI. What they need is to manage lot's of money and being in on the ground floor of the Next Twitter buy's lot's of credibility.

In that context, a company that reaches 50 billion in 30 years is far less valuable to a VC than a company that hit's 10 billion in 3 years and then goes bust in 10 years.

<comment><USER5> The VC industry, like many others, follows the power law. The top ~5-10 firms(Benchmark, Sequoia, A16Z etc) will realise 95%+ of the returns for the entire industry. If 'they'don't at least return the fund, and just coast on management fees, 'they' will never be able to raise another one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Title is a total fail at DeMorgan's Law, because the following two statements differ in meaning.

       "All x is not y"

       "Not all x is y".

<comment><USER7> Post is a total fail at semantics, because the following two statements differ in meaning.

       "All x is not y"

       "Not all x is y".</comment></comment>


Frivolous, Empty, and Perfectly Delightful - never-the-bride https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/frivolous-empty-and-perfectly-delightful/ <comment><AUTHOR> Those interested in Wodehouse will also enjoy Stephen Fry's article on Wodehouse: [http://www.pgwodehousebooks.com/fry.htm](http://www.pgwodehousebooks.com/fry.htm)

Fry played Jeeves in the TV series _Jeeves and Wooster_ and quotes some of my favorite bits of Wodehouse, such as

> Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three > million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love > them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced > eye on its younger sons.

</comment><comment><USER2> My favourite single Wodehouse sentence, on the subject of Psmith's sudden realisation:

"For there was no doubt in his mind that in a world congested to overflowing with girls Eve Halliday stood entirely alone."

<comment><USER3> "The saddest words of tongue or pen are not 'It might have been', they are "joint checking account'."

(One of the Uncle Fred novels, read long ago.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps irrelevant to Wodehouse (who writes farce), but I'm a big fan of 'frivolous, empty, and perfectly delightful' popular sci-fi and fantasy novels, especially if they go multiple books! Sometimes you want an escape from the human condition. Good examples include Mistborn, Farseer, Belgariad (especially), the Martian, Ready Player One (although this was a bit shallow, even for me).

If anyone has other recommendations, would be much obliged.

<comment><USER5> I'm with you on sometimes wanting to just rip through a book, not having deep thoughts, but just turning page after page to find out what comes next.

Really enjoyed the Bobiverse series: [http://dennisetaylor.org/](http://dennisetaylor.org/). Reminded me a little of Greg Egan, but with a lot less maths and a lot more humour. Helps that the hero is a programmer ;_)

Also the Brilliance trilogy by Markus Sakey. Very entertaining..

<comment><USER6> I really liked those novels also. I listened to them via audible and they were lovely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _> Nobody dies in Wodehouse novels or stories. In his fiction there are no wars, economic depression, sex below the neck, little Sturm and even less Drang, with only satisfyingly happy endings awaiting at the close._

Yes. By keeping the world at arm's length he was able to make it a _better_ world.

</comment><comment><USER8> I assume this was posted so that we can trash the loading bar for being anti- web, punishing users on slow connections. There is no technical reason to hide the core content, which is transmitted in the first request, until every other asset has finished loading.

<comment><USER9> Saved by "open link in background tab" \- didn't even notice, except the center of the logo faded in before the rest of the logo.

<comment><USER10> Funny, for me it didn't show the loading indicator until I actually went to the tab and watched it 'load'. Very 90s/modern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a surprise, a HN article slobbering all over PG Wodehouse again.</comment>


An introductory look at the cryptography of identity on IPFS in plain Python - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/textileio/how-ipfs-peer-nodes-identify-each-other-on-the-distributed-web-8b5b6476aa5e <comment><AUTHOR> A fun one with Python snippets to play around with</comment>


The New iPad: Not That Much but More Than Enough - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/the_new_ipad_not_that_much_but_more_than_enough/ <comment><USER2> Macobserver treat HN like a link dump.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jmartellaro> <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=digiwizard> <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Semteksam> <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davethenerd>

</comment><comment><USER3> "The iPad total package, hardware and software and price, represents the absolute best tablet you can buy."

"I have not yet had a chance to judge the new display myself."</comment>


The crazy reason nearly every phone in Japan is waterproof - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/2016/11/17/waterproof-phones-japan/#HPkkq2f3QOqP <comment><USER2> while its nice to have the fact about why this article has a few slight issues namely to do with the articles need to reference samsung phones which are in fact not that popular in japan, from my experience the majority of japanese people have one of 3 phones, an iPhone, a Sony Xperia or a flip phone, the article then goes on to say that the galaxy s5 set the precedent for high end waterproof smartphones when it was actually Sony who set the bar for IP rated phones with the original xperia Z in early 2013

also the line which mentions the s5 is talking about non removable batteries, the s5 actually did have a removable battery but there was a rubber seal in its back cover (a feature i believe first seen on the galaxy S4 active) the s6 was samsungs first flagship to ditch removable batteries</comment>


Ask HN: I want an investment for my startup, where do I start? - <AUTHOR>

What's the best way to get in contact with an investor? I'm considering getting funding for my startup but have no idea who I need to get in touch with or what to look for. <comment><USER2> Can you give an idea of where you are with your start-up? Just because you 'want an investment' doesn't mean your ready. Many people suggest you should get introductions long before you actually need the money.

But to answer your question about how to contact investors, the best way is through personal contacts. Depending on where you live, this could be more or less difficult. You'll also need to 'sell' your start-up to the contacts first. I doubt a contact would do an introduction for you without knowing what they were introducing. Use this to your advantage. Pitch any contacts you have who might be able to introduce you to investors. This will also give you practice with your pitch and help you refine it.

You can also try AngelList, but my understanding (I've never tried it) is that you'll need to have social proof to really get anywhere on the platform.

Are there technology/entrepreneur meet-ups in your area? If so, go to them. You may not meet investors there (though you might), but you will meet other start-ups and somewhere somebody is getting an investment and they have contacts in the angel/VC community.

Lastly, keep in mind that it isn't about what 'you' want. You have to sell the investor on your business and you. It's what THEY want. Telling them that you want investment so you can grow your business, etc. etc. I'm told won't get you very far.

It is better to tell them what you're building, where it is going, why it is going to change the world and make a ton of money. Ask for advice, not investment. Ask for investment and you'll get advice, ask for advice and you'll get investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're near the end of development now. Maybe a couple more weeks before we're happy with the product.

I'm looking for some marketing help mainly. Although we are basically ready for launch I'm worried that without investment we won't have that initial boost which will kick start our user base, which is quite important as it's a social product.

I've attending one startup meetup in my area. I'll be attending some more next year. I'll have to see if I can get any contacts from them.

Thank you.

<comment><USER3> That's actually the wrong way to look at it. You should have iterated the idea with potential users (not just people who like the idea but are committed to using your product) before building it (at least ideally). I assume you didn't do this step from the way you made it sound.

Next, once you've gotten your MVP built, the next major step should be to get those users together to try your MVP during a private beta. This will help you fix bugs, adjust the MVP, and add features that the early adopters suggests. This should be the step you guys should be working on now. You shouldn't be out there trying to do a massive launch, but rather find a small group of people willing to try your product out.

Once you're done with that, then you potentially will try to get the word out to the masses and garner traction. Without social proof, without any form of traction (user or revenue), and being first time entrepreneurs, you'll have a much harder time raising capital if you don't get at least have the above done (albeit anything is possible). You absolutely do not need funding to get that much done.

There is a saying that it is better to get a few users who absolutely love your product early on than a bunch of users who somewhat like your product. Focus on this.</comment></comment></comment>


Argentina May Have Figured Out How to Get GMOs Right - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/10/argentina-may-have-figured-out-how-to-get-gmos-right/ <comment><USER2> _Many people believe GMOs are dangerous to human health, environmentally destructive, and a tool for multinational corporations like Monsanto to control the global food supply._

Many people believe that vaccines cause autism, too.

The answer is better education, not pandering to the crowds.

<comment><USER3> The issue in the US is that GMO === Monsanto. And Monsanto is very clearly a company that does not care about the long term implications of its science (you think they'd sit on data like Exxon did with climate change data? I do, 100%). I fear Monsanto, so in the US I fear GMO. Remove hard core capitalism from our food supply science and I'll be less scared of it.

<comment><USER4> Fearing GMOs because you don't like Monsanto'spractices is like fearing computers in the 1990s because you don't like Microsoft's practices.

Not to mention, Monsanto is the biggest GMO -- or, really, seed, regardless of GMO status -- company everywhere, they aren't restricted to the US.

And there are plenty of non-Monsanto US companies doing GM and non-GM crop work, including companies working on the same kind of environmental tolerance traits that the Argentine firm, Bioceres, was discussed in the article as working on (one of those US companies, Arcadia Biosciences, actually has a joint venture, Verdeca, with Bioceres.)

<comment><USER3> > Fearing GMOs because you don't like Monsanto's practices is like fearing > computers in the 1990s because you don't like Microsoft's practices.

I disagree. I can live without a computer. I can't live without food.

I'm aware that there are other companies doing GMO work in the US, and that Monsanto is a global cancer. But the US is their place of greatest power and influence.

How many members of the EPA & FDA are former employees of Arcadia and Bioceres, and how much lobbyist money have they put into those pockets? You think Monsanto will let anyone try to succeed in "their" space without a brutal fight?

<comment><USER5> > How many members of the EPA & FDA are former employees of Arcadia and > Bioceres, and how much lobbyist money have they put into those pockets?

So the problem isn't "hardcore capitalism", it's a state so big that lobbying it is more effective/easier than competing in the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have all South American countries been forced into patent agreements with the United States? Is patent enforcement in Argentina taken to the same absurd extremes as it is here?

That's the real issue with GMOs. Monsanto has not been kind to farmers that happen to plant near GM crops and get their genes through pollination rather then by licensing seeds.

<comment><USER7> > Is patent enforcement in Argentina taken to the same absurd extremes as it > is here?

It depends on the sector of the economy and if there's enough money on the table. Monsanto often sues farmers who do what you say.

But in other sectors of the economy, some people could say there's almost no patent enforcement (same for trademark). That's one of the most frequent requests|demands our politicians receive from the US Embassy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the key in these GMOs is that the M is to address inorganic environmental challenges --so that they produce more under challenging conditions rather than addressing organic environmental challenges (like pests --which require dousing artificial chemicals --to which many people are allergic).

In the end, though, ironically, GMOs have the potential of being more environmentally friendly than the alternatively produced (traditional) hybrids. It's too bad they got a bad rap from the Monsanto shenanigans.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Today, he says, the costs of doing field trials of GM crops [...] are prohibitive for almost anyone who's not Monsanto or Syngenta. "The big multinationals can do these studies, but the public institutions or national businesses in developing countries can't," Herrera-Estrella says. That leaves some of the most useful GM applications—and the ones that'd help poor farmers, like disease resistance and drought tolerance—in limbo. They aren't profitable enough for multinationals; they're too expensive for everyone else._

I've never been a big proponent of GMOs, and if we're going to allow them at all, I'd like to see really thorough field trials to demonstrate their impact on the ecosystem, but this quote makes a really good point. If tests are too expensive, only the biggest companies with the most profit-driven crops can get approval, and that's the exact opposite of what I want. I'd rather see golden rice and this sunflower-soy, than Bt, Roundup-Ready and Terminator crops.

</comment><comment><USER10> GMO = genetically modified crops

<comment><USER11> organisms, not crops. There are gmo animals and bacteria as well.</comment></comment>


1 in 10 Iranian MPs have tested positive for coronavirus, deputy speaker said - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/matthewchampion/coronavirus-iran-mps-covid-19 <comment><USER2> ...assuming the eldest die, I wonder what political instability we'll see in Iran and other countries as a result.</comment>


Show HN: Xtrct.io – Automatic product data extraction - <AUTHOR> https://xtrct.io <comment><USER2> Awesome - I'll try this tomorrow and let you know if it works for our use case.

We currently pay a different provider £299 per month for 10k requests so we will definitely migrate if it does what we need.

A few questions, does it handle pages that are loaded by JS? And would it find something like a house price or job salary?

<comment><AUTHOR> We originally attempted to build something that works on any type of information on any page, but that was a little too broad to be shippable in a reasonable time.

So the current version will work on anything that looks like a traditional product page. Prices, variants, primary photos, comments/reviews (some of the time), etc.

Other pages may also produce results, but it's really tailored to product-like pages at the moment.

It runs a full Chrome browser, so if you can see it in Chrome, it'll be extractable by the engine. It renders JS, and dismisses any JS popups or modals so they don't contaminate the data.

If you give it a try and it doesn't produce the results you're hoping for, definitely let me know and I'll try to add your examples to the next batch of training data. Once a site is added to the training data the accuracy is very high.

But please give it a try and let me know what you think! firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER2> I've dropped you an email, it doesn't seem to handle jobs at the moment but I'd love to explore this with you further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just launched, still some improvement needed in the ML components, but works pretty well.

Want to gather some input so I know what kind of training data to add to the ML components, and if it's missing any features people are interested in.

Any feedback, advice, thoughts, would be great.

<comment><USER3> What technologies do you use to power this? Something like YOLO?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice work. What IP service do you use? I've found most of them to be of really poor quality.</comment>


Screencast + Blog: Multi-Cloud Deployment with Docker - <AUTHOR> http://nick.stinemat.es/#screencast

<comment><AUTHOR> In this blog post, I discuss the recent screencast I did with the Docker team. It was a ton of fun.

This may give you a sense of how I use containers, how and why I find them useful, and a practical example of doing deployment a different way.

Candid feedback (please, don't hold back!) is appreciated.</comment>


Researchers hide information in plain text - <AUTHOR> https://techxplore.com/news/2018-05-plain-text.html <comment><USER2> Hidden in "plain text" when _rendered using their special font_. The special font slightly changes the shape of each letter to encode additional information. Title is pretty clickbait. If you copy the "plain text" to ASCII or use a regular font this won't work.

<comment><USER3> _It works with common font families, such as Times Roman, Helvetica, and Calibri, and is compatible with most word processing programs, including Word and FrameMaker_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This could be a useful variation on a trick for tracking leakage of documents: distribute N paper "copies" of a document to a pool of suspected leakers, each "copy" with tracking data embedded, and when leaks occur, match the tracking data to the leaker. Old way: use apparent typos to track, this way: use font variations, next way: use variations in kerning between words.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of an old friend's paper from the late 90's, where you can change the actual words to synonyms to encode messages (rather than the font):

[http://web.mit.edu/keithw/tlex/lsteg.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/keithw/tlex/lsteg.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> textmark.io is doing something along these lines but in a different way. It's a very cool space to be in esp with advancements in machine learning. Disclaimer I am the founder.</comment>


Should I leave my current position? - <AUTHOR>

I am sure most of you will understand my reason to remain anonymous in this post, with that said: I have been offered the following posts, and am deliberating on their acceptance, your help would be very much appreciated.
Firstly, whoami: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=developer786
I am not a born coder, I know that, therefore for the second post, I will be working very very hard. Where I am currently, I am very comfortable.
Current Post - Windows/Linux Administrator / DevOP - Large Private Healthcare company with good financial backing / profitable. - Job Security: Medium/High - Environment: Working with a team of 30 2nd and 3rd line support - No Stock options or shares - Salary: $63K - The role: Little development experience, lots of Linux Admin Experience, training in any sysadmin courses provided once every 2 years.
New Post - Developer(bash/php/ruby/python) / Linux Administrator
- Private Telecommunications company with private shareholder backing / breaking even. - Job Security: Low/Medium - Environment: Working From Home - Stock options - Salary: $84K - The role: Developing bespoke applications in the above languages for a range of customer requirements. Developing and extending Linux based applications.<p>Your help, If I don't get to thank you later, is very much appreciated. <comment><USER2> (disclaimer: I have no mortage, no kids, and I'm a contractor with no job security)

More money, more family time, more learning + experience? I'd say go for it. Telco developers can pick up a lot of side-knowledge which may help you in future endeavours.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, agree.

Part of the reason I applied for this new role, is that I need the kick to get projects to completion. In the last 5 years, I have taken ideas to 85% completion without coding anything myself and then the oDesk/freelancer dev disappears/let me down.

Two months later, a weekend side project is posted here on HN or TC, which has launched successfully and become a funded start-up. Worse thing is, their app is doing EXACTLY what I was 12 months ago, in some cases better and in some, worse.

I am left gutted, demotivated, out of pocket (lucky I have a very understanding wife) and with code I cant understand and complete. It gets worse...100% of these start-ups which i have part complete, go on to get round B/C and or get swallowed. I am in losses close to $20K following my dream of creating a successful product and begging developers to code it.

That thought alone is pushing me to take the second job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having been in a similar position myself, It's hard to let go of a nice cushy position and it's not always about pay, but in this case, the pay is better in the new job, the risk is higher but then...no pain no gain!

go for it, take the risk!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Should mention I have a mortgage ($200K) and a family (2 beautiful kids) to support. I am also 35 so feel it may be too late to take the risk like this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems simple, if you want to go into development, pick 2. If you want to do Linux admin, pick 1.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, didnt make myself clear...have updated. I am already doing the first job, have been for a number of years. The challenge is still there, albeit not like what the second job offers i.e. a very steep climb.</comment></comment>


My mom's laptop crashed. 30 seconds later, an Indian man calls our house - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/fj8m6/my_moms_laptop_crashed_30_seconds_later_an_indian/

<comment><USER2> For those too lazy to read the comment thread, here's a sample:

> It could be some other trojan... No reason to think that it is Zeus > really...

>> "Ma'am, we've reason to believe you've a wooden horse in your home"

>>> We've traced the call and IT'S COMING FROM INSIDE THE HORSE.

<comment><USER3> People too lazy to read don't hang out here.</comment></comment>


The fantasy robots of Boston Dynamics - <AUTHOR> https://digboston.com/the-fantasy-robots-of-boston-dynamics/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article with good points, but some of it is pretty silly:

> To be fair, "Testing Robustness" is followed by a written comment indicating > that a "person (not shown) drives the robot up to the door, points the hand > at the door handle, then gives the 'GO' command, both at the beginning of > the video and again at 42 seconds." The rest of the time the robot > presumably executes its routine without human intervention. But this kind of > task-and-time-limited autonomy has been around for decades, while few people > know what "driving" the robot to the lab door means or that a teleoperator > is necessary for nearly all of its movements.

Come on. We know how to make robots that walk to doors. The whole point of the video is to show the robustness of the robot in attempting to open the door. I couldn't care less if someone drove it to the door then started the program.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love those videos. Maybe I'm jaded, but I never assumed they were autonomous... hell, it's hard enough to get a game AI character to open a 'door.' The mechanical aspect, on the other hand -- the balancing and movement -- is very impressive.

If it was me, I'd ditch the entire AI aspect, and just hire a thousand offshore workers at pennies an hour to remotely command my 1,000 ATLASes as they march across (insert name of country you want to invade.) Sort of like drones that fly across the Middle East while being piloted by humans from a nice, safe, air-conditioned office in, for instance, Lackland AFB.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Boston Dynamics has made little progress in robot autonomy, whatever we > might think of abandoning the old folks to nonhuman machines. It is simply > not its forte.

Eh? They are absolutely in the lead of autonomous, dynamic robotic motion.

There is just a long, long road to "full" autonomy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems like someone with a bone to pick. Maybe he is jealous he wasn't offered a job?</comment>


How to Learn to Love to Practice: Is there a secret to staying in the zone? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/how-to-learn-to-love-to-practice <comment><USER2> The ability to find (or manufacture) this "flow" state on a regular basis is probably one of the most underrated personal and professional skills (interestingly, it's also one that you can't really interview for in others).

This article seems to treat the ability to get in "flow" as an intrinsic quality of the individual or a superpower to unlock. In my experience, like everything else in life, there's no "secret", only an iterative process through which you learn and improve. These things have been the most helpful for me:

• Taking care of the rest of my life: trying to eat well, work out, get enough sleep, etc.

• Constantly identifying things that slow me down or cause mental exhaustion (tiring processes, poor work environment, poor tools), and making fixing them a priority

• Consciously hyping myself up; motivation doesn't always come easily. When I'm having a hard time focusing, envisioning a future self that's gone through this work and have achieved what I want to achieve helps orient and motivate me. If you're a competitive person like I am, treating it as a competition helps.

• Once deciding on a strategic direction and sitting down to work, staying focused only the next piece of work to complete. Similar to the "one game at a time" mantra from competitive sports.

• Cultivating an unwavering belief that I will succeed at <thing>, it's just a matter of practice and dedication.

</comment><comment><USER3> Focus and the ability to stay on a task aren't the same thing as flow.

Flow is much rarer than focus because for evolutionary reasons it has to be - flow is action without a lot of the self-monitoring that's necessary for learning. When you're in a knife fight, you'll flow 'cause learning isn't job one, surviving is job one. Learning a task so well that you can dispense with further learning also gets you to flow; but only a fool wants to get to that flow despite NOT actually having mastered the task.</comment>


Another software fail: Trapster loses emails & passwords - <AUTHOR> http://wl4.peer360.com/b/21149i2125JE276H0ogX/main.asp?hl=-1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=peer360&utm_campaign=Trapster+Compromised+Accounts+Messaging+-+D7&utm_content=trapster+header_600

<comment><USER2> I think it should be mandatory for any software/service that stores user data to have a security bootcamp before deploying their solutions teaching good robust design, how to approach writing secure code and have the necessary checks and balances to avoid vulnerabilities. It'll save them the heartburn and embarrassment to a good extent. Web Security is really under-rated by most developers and with the ease of deployment these days using services like AWS, it is just exacerbated.

I really hope I didn't go off on a slant here but with cases like Diaspora's design flaws, Gawker compromise, and now the Trapster fail, the trend's on the rise.

On that note, any recommendations or pointers on where to start from the security pros on here?! Thanks.

<comment><USER3> courtesy of tptacek's HN profile: <http://amzn.to/cthr46>

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link and Thanks to tptacek for creating such a list. I had a couple of books on there. Created a wish list for the rest of them!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use LastPass and generate random passwords, you'll just chuckle at the next company that does this rather than freak out...

<comment><USER5> Or try sha1_pass and _never_ bother remembering any password ever again.

<comment><USER6> Why not just throw together a quick command line one-liner?

Something like:

$ md5sum -s "This is my password for myspace.com" | sed -e 's/.*= //' cfef4c6930843c33660b7c2e407c09c5

Except you'd probably want to toss it through something to add more special characters, etc. Added bonus - available on any system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope they do a post-mortem and explain where they went wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great. Now LinkedIn are going to reset my password again.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd like some sort of "guarantee". I want to sign up on websites that have some sort of seal: "We store passwords according to the XYZ spec". Some combination of bcrypt and comprehensive salting. If user data is ever compromised, users recourse to sue. Of course, no site ever do this because users just don't care and it would be a near-valueless liability.

I just don't understand how anyone can store a password in clear text. I have peers in college that couldn't edit the world's simplest VB6 application, but they know not to store passwords in cleartext.

<comment><USER9> So you know: bcrypt is inherently randomized. You don't need to "comprehensively salt" it.

<comment><USER8> :) Exactly why someone else would be writing the spec! I know just enough to be dangerous, but meta-fortunately, I'm also aware of that fact.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What exactly does the Color app do? - <AUTHOR>

Okay, so Color is a photo sharing app - but it's not?... I get that they mine users' data extensively, but can someone give me a detailed example of how the app would actually be used?
I don't have a smart phone, so I can't just download the app.
Review quotes from http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/color/id427763573?mt=8&ls=1# :
"Three buttons - and no explanation of what they do and how to make them do what I want. No tutorial, no nothing."
"It's not usable. It's not attractive. Using it doesn't help you understand what it's for."
So apparently even people who download the app don't understand what it's for. <comment><USER2> Get a lot of hype.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I've noticed. But one way or the other they're going to have to get people to download and use the app. "We'll sell your personal data" isn't much of a selling point, so what exactly does the app do? Even color.com is vague about it. I sure as hell don't understand it.

<comment><USER3> It does look like they will be updating the app to try and resolve these issues. Although, one of their planned "fixes" are to stop the app from working at all when no one is around. I really hope they implement that properly because if they think they got backlash now, imagine if people try to open the app and it just closes on them, without a proper explanation of why.</comment></comment></comment>


Chinese Tech Giant's Office Party Featured Humiliating Simulated Blowjobs - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/chinese-tech-giants-office-party-featured-humiliating-s-1791209111 <comment><USER2> Wait, I missed the memo. When did blow jobs become demeaning???</comment>


ThumbDrive inventor out to prove he is no one-hit wonder - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/thumbdrive-inventor-out-to-prove-he-is-no-onehit-wonder-20101214-18wjm.html

<comment><USER2> I don't know if it's the best marketing strategy to name your product after something with a negative connotation like a virus.

That said, there was a while where floppy disks were too small for most things yet there wasn't an easy replacement for them, I remember burning a lot of CDs during that period and hating it. Then the USB drive became prominent... and there was great rejoicing. This is one smart guy, if he makes a great product that I find useful I don't really care what it's called.</comment>


Dancing with Go's Mutexes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@deckarep/dancing-with-go-s-mutexes-92407ae927bf <comment><USER2> Just a cursory reading, but I noticed the author embeds the mutex in their structs. I'd recommend against doing that by default, because that mutex's methods become part of your API. Maybe in some cases you desire that, but I argue that in most case you don't.

The fact that your struct be concurrency-safe through mutex is an implementation detail. You want to keep the locking/unlocking internal to your type, you don't want to expose it to outsiders. Exporting the methods of the mutex in your struct suggests that somehow, it's ok for users of the type to lock/unlock it. I doubt that this is true. In practice, if your struct is "concurrency-safe", it means using its methods is sufficient to obtain a safe behavior. If a user of the type never requires access to the mutex, don't export it. Especially since mutexes aren't reentrant, in most case if a user of your struct attempted to Lock the struct before calling a method, they'd deadlock themselves.

TL;DR: for API design reasons, don't embed a mutex in your struct.

<comment><USER3> Because others might not be up with the terminology: in a Go struct an "embedded field" or "anonymous field" is a member of a struct that you didn't give a name to.

        type MyType struct {
            sync.Mutex    // embedded/anonymous
            mu sync.Mutex // not embedded
        }

So AYBABTME's advice is to give the mutex a name.</comment></comment>


What are the most mind-blowing tricks used during any war? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-mind-blowing-tricks-used-during-any-war/answer/Mike-Chandler-1

<comment><USER2> Any way to get around the login? Can someone copy + paste the text?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, didn't know that Quora has a gate up.

""" Mike Chandler:

When the British captured senior German officers during WW2, they didn't put them in a prison camp. Instead they took them to a beautiful country mansion, and plied them with magnificent meals and drink, and allowed them to listen to German radio and read newspapers to keep up to date on the war. Each had his own room and a batman, and were treated like senior officers in the British Army.

Of course, the officers had much to talk about to each other, but unknown to them, the Brits had wired the entire mansion and had a team of intelligence officers working in the basement.

The intelligence they got was far more effective than pulling finger nails. They learnt a huge amount about the relationships between senior commanders and with Hitler. They also learnt a lot about German military strategy and tactics ... From the top. Now that's intelligence. """</comment></comment>


How to Handicap Hulu, Even Before a Sale - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20110623/how-to-handicap-hulu-even-before-a-sale/

<comment><USER2> You're not joking, jsherry. From the article: "And some of them will be cable TV subscribers who should be able to watch shows but can't deal with the hassle of proving that they're entitled."

Amen. I DO subscribe to cable, and I usually use Hulu rather than my DVR (that I also pay for) because I don't bother setting recording on it... But this kind of silliness is just enough to drive someone to piracy.

I know this is obviously a "first world problem," but I completely fail to understand how an industry that made its proverbial bones by giving away content for free thinks the smart move is to erect a pay wall. I'm really curious the number of views a show gets on average the first month it's on Hulu. (At least those put up the day after air.)

And that doesn't even touch on the region-blocking and delayed broadcasting in other nations.</comment>


Video analyzing demo - <AUTHOR> https://developer.ibm.com/openwhisk/2016/03/07/openwhisk-and-watson-video-app/ <comment><USER2> Now if they can combine this object tagging capability with audio-track tag extraction (speech-to-text), mash the two meta-index-tracks together and expose this as another Watson API they'll be able to tap into a more media- savvy and less technical audience.</comment>


New York I Love You, But US Immigration Policy Is Bringing Me Down - <AUTHOR> http://blog.untogether.co.uk/post/10730864649/new-york-i-love-you-but-us-immigration-policy-is

<comment><USER2> As someone currently going through my second H1B transfer in three years, I hope it works out quickly for you.

I'm in the process of drafting a letter to the Rep from my district about the nightmare that this process has been. I know its not going to change any overarching policy, but I'd at least like for the USCIS to keep the documentation I've already provided for my current visa on file so that I don't need to send them paperwork they've already seen for my first three applications.

Unfortunately, I suspect that somewhere at the heart of the USCIS system an entity relationship is enforced such that there is a one to one relationship between candidates and cases/visas and, thus, no interchange of information between one case/visa and the next. One advantage of this is that there is not likely to be much carryover of any errors between cases. This is purely speculation though.

A better model might result in a one to many relationship between candidates and cases/visas, where only one can be active at a time. This might result in an easier way for the immigration service to query each visa and tell me exactly what documentation is necessary for a transfer. However, this would also involve me trusting USCIS to actually manage and keep my data safe and secure. It would also involve me trusting them not to make any errors when inputting data to their system and for there to be an easy way to correct their data when they do make a mistake.

The one unfortunate thing that I'm sure about regarding immigration issues is that things are not going to change anytime soon. The lawyers who assemble and file visa applications at a very high cost for companies are not going to be happy if the system is made accessible for people to do by themselves. They, unfortunately, have a vested interest in keeping things as complicated as possible.

As for me, I'm going to do the same thing I've done with all my visa applications, I'm going to assemble everything associated with the application into one place (all paperwork, forms, emails, communications etc) and make a digital copy which will be encrypted and stored on a backup drive as well as a physical copy which will sit in my personal safe. Then, I'm going to start my new job and forget everything about the process and hope that I don't have to go through it again for a long time.

Good luck with everything!

</comment><comment><USER3> 'Guilty until proven innocent' is the method applied by US immigration.

I remember applying for a visa for my wife and it said so in plain words.

The government is basically saying to you: 'prove that you are not a terrorist/spy/fraud'

</comment><comment><USER4> I am a Canadian permanent resident. I am also an open source developer. Somewhat high in our (non)organization ladder. So I travel quite some to this and that conference, meet, code sprint, whatever. My chances of getting Canadian citizenship with a lifestyle like that? Naught :/

</comment><comment><USER5> Welcome to Bureaucracy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Come back to your own country where every one else paid for your education, your healthcare, your safety and your opportunities.

Start business. Employ people.

Pay it forward.

Problem solved.

<comment><USER7> Go and try to start a company in the UK, and then see if you're quite as enthusiastic about repatriating smart people.

Nothing about British society and culture is receptive to startups and entrepreneurs - it's an uphill struggle (both ways! in the snow!) to even get something simple started, let alone fully explore new ways of doing business.

The net result is that the entrepreneur has produced less value for the world than if they'd been able to build their idea in America, where there's far less friction in getting new ideas off the ground.

The US is (still) a unique and wonderful place for smart people to try to realize their potential. As a country in a global competition for talent, we should be doing everything in our power to attract and retain the smartest people in the world.

(UK emigrant)

<comment><USER8> Do you mean start a company, or build a product? As another UK expat in America, starting my first company here (and having run a company back home), the process for starting a company in the UK is slightly more efficient than in the US.

If you're talking about finding investment, that's a different matter. But finding investment is only "easy" in a few places in America. It's certainly no easier to find investment in the city in which I am based than it is in London.

Edit: (and I'm not so sure we should all be building companies that need hundreds of thousands of dollars to get off the ground. That places exist where we can do that in the world is great, but bootstrapping creates different types of worthwhile businesses.)

<comment><USER7> Finding investment, talent, or even just being able to tell people you're starting your own business without getting a look like you've just told them you've got a second head... the US (even the remoter parts) has a far better support network for entrepreneurs than even large UK cities.

Agreed about bootstrapping, but even that is easier in the US where people are more conditioned to pay for services, consultants, etc.

<comment><USER8> I can't say I've experienced anything like what you've talked about. What places in the UK and the US are you talking about/comparing ? My experiences have been in London, Bournemouth and Phoenix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> US immigration is just like a Monty Python sketch and contains some Yes/No questions, such as;

Have you ever committed Genocide?

Are you coming to the United States to practice Polygamy?

Are you coming to the United States to use or deal in illegal Drugs?

Have you ever been a part of a Terrorist organization?

Are you planning to overthrow the US government?

US immigration policy brings everyone down except maybe those from the Ministry of Silly Walks.

<comment><USER10> I found those questions fairly amusing when filling out forms. In retrospect, though, I'm guessing that they expect people who meet those criteria to lie. They're there to give them a legally simple way to throw undesirable people out of the country (you perjured on your entry application), should it come up in retrospect.</comment></comment>


Gordon Brown apologises to Alan Turing - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/gordon-brown/6170112/Gordon-Brown-Im-proud-to-say-sorry-to-a-real-war-hero.html

<comment><USER3> Congratulations jgrahamc!

(It was his campaign to effectiveness of which many, including me, were sceptical.)

Further discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=816217>

</comment><comment><USER4> Shame that some of the comments on the Telegraph article are so bitter and irrelevant. Glass half full, people!

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, yes - they weren't there when I posted the link. Swivel-eyed loons :o

<comment><USER5> Labour, the party in government, is a pretty bad lot, but the Tories, whose supporters traditionally read the Torygraph, are no better.

I have to live in this country, but I fear for its future. About the only party I can stomach voting for is the LibDems, but it's been a long time since they had a hand in government (assuming continuity with Liberal Party).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We know that Gordon Brown has no personal moral responsibility for the prosecution of Alan Turing but has nevertheless apologized to Turing, a person who no longer exists. But now everyone feels better and at no cost to themselves. This is a great bargain whereby one can score brownie points to promote one's moral stature. The urge to prepare a list (it'll be a long one) of suitable future recipients of our moral largesse.will be irresistible.

<comment><USER7> Wow. That's got to be a record for cynicism. I see where you're coming from, but don't you think that it might actually be helping people that are discriminated against for their sexuality, race, gender or whatever people use to identify others by some irrelevant characteristic in order to prosecute them ?

The fact that there is 'no cost' is great, that means that it got done. The church took 400 years in some cases to recognize their wrongs, the British Government (at the prodding of John Graham-Cumming) took 'only' 50 years and change.

I'm all for pressing governments to admit their wrongdoings, and I'm all for shortening the time it takes them. The great news here is IT WORKED. They took notice, and within a fairly short time.

They stopped short of what was asked, but they didn't exactly do nothing either, that's the prime minister speaking in person there, not some two bit flunky.

Gordon Brown personifies the British government, in this case that could have gone only one step higher (the Queen) but apparently she couldn't be bothered, or Brown decided that it might help his re-election chances if he did it himself.

Whatever the truth of it is a cause for rejoicing.

Now let's hope some of this rubs off on his underlings, some of who are in a perfect position to show that they too understand that discrimination is wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What did Gordon Brown do to Alan Turing?

<comment><USER9> That is my point exactly. Did Gordon Brown kill him or condoned his killing? Furthermore, if he apologised on behalf of the government, is it the same government that killed him (seeing as how the parties/people in power changed).

If the latter is true, aren't there bigger things he can apologise about? The UK government did quite a few dastardly things during its long rule (as most governments did). It would be nice if they start apologising to every country and group that they oppressed during the colonial period.

<comment><USER10> _That is my point exactly. Did Gordon Brown kill him or condoned his killing?_

No, and if you read the statement, Gordon Brown took the opportunity to blow his own trumpet - "my how far we've come, things are so much better now" (I paraphrase). Quite a politically astute response, actually, since it makes them look good from a number of angles.

<comment><USER7> Brown is a very smooth operator, and for sure he would try to do everything to spin this to his own benefit.

That does not mean that nothing was achieved however.

In my opinion, now it is time to press on and demand a formal pardon in light of this apology I don't see how it could be refused. He's pretty much admitted they got it wrong, a pardon is the next logical step.

<comment><USER10> _He's pretty much admitted they got it wrong_

The language is ambiguous: If by "he" and "they" you are referring to the same entity, then no, no such admission has been made. And it's not clear that it should be.

More like "thousands of other gay men who were convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly ... I am proud that those days are gone ... " In other words "they got it wrong in the 1950s. We're better."

<comment><USER7> 'He' refers to Brown today, the head of the current government, 'they' refers to the British Government in the past.

Apologies for being ambiguous. Not sure what the downvote was all about, whether that was because of Brown being a smooth operator (he is), him trying to spin this in such a way that he benefits from it (he did, especially some of the words could have been a lot better chosen for an apology), whether they disagree that nothing was achieved (it was, there is an apology where there was none before) or whether they disagree with that this in my opinion is a first step (it is, it's my opinion, I should know ;) ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Political gimmick, but I remember the petition for this was posted here & I guess this apology was prompted by that campaign.

<comment><USER11> The guy can't win! If he hadn't he would have been done for not apologising, and now that he has it's a political gimmick.

When I read it I just thought it was a nice thing to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well perhaps 'gimmick' is a loaded word; what I meant was that a full pardon would have been more fitting, and also that he's apologising for something done by someone else long ago - I can't think of a better word, but I do take your point.

<comment><USER12> A full pardon IMHO is more of a gimmick than an apology. The guy is dead - pardoning him won't do him any good. On the other hand, a heartfelt apology communicates something explicitly, and might do some good for people who are facing similar discrimination today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not to split hairs, but a pardon is an action & implies regret - <USER2> communicates something tangible explicitly. Whereas an apology without pardon is 'just words' & implicitly declines the opportunity to pardon. I can't speak for those who are facing similar discrimination, but my guess is that a pardon would be a more tangible comfort.

Either way, due credit for making the statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No mention of his contributions to computing at all :/

</comment><comment><USER14> Congratulations to all of us who bravely rallied around the cause of a dead man, persuading the British government to do something that has no real meaning to it and then celebrating our common victory over, er, something-or- another. I'm not sure what we defeated or cause we moved forward, but it sure felt great!

Let's keep up the good work! We have a long list of horrible deeds done in the past to dead people by other dead people, and there's no limit to the amount of patting ourselves on the back we can achieve. After all, we are so morally superior to all of those folk, and it's time we told ourselves that.

Never mind that slavery still exists in the world, or imprisonment for gays, or genocide, or female genital mutilation. No point in addressing or doing something about actual, real evils that we can make an impact on. Nope! When you can score easy symbolic points, all of that real action seems kind of silly. Let's hear it for symbolism over substance! </sarcasm>

As a person of European descent, I would like to take this opportunity to request that the Italian government apologize for the Romans keeping so many of our ancestors as slaves. This is a wrong that's gone on way too long, and something superficial and symbolic must immediately be done so that I can feel better about it.

</comment><comment><USER15> He should apologise for using the terrorist law against Iceland (I'm Icelandic).</comment>


Ultra-efficient LED puts out more power than is pumped in - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/09/230-percent-efficient-leds

<comment><USER2> The headline is inaccurate. The LED outputs more power than the _electrical_ power input. The remainder of the energy comes in the form of heat from the surrounding environment. It works by applying slightly less voltage than the LED's bandgap and then relying on electron-phonon coupling to kick an electron to an orbital above the band gap.

That kills off a quanta of energy from whatever phonon mode gave the kick (which cools the LED), and the electron emits a photon when it relaxes back into the valence band. The LED is no longer in thermodynamic equilibrium with the surrounding environment, so heat flows into the LED.

<comment><USER3> Considering the expense we go to in order to cool things down, could this be scaled up to provide us with a light source and a cheaper way to cool things?

Right now, most energy that becomes heat is considered wasted because of limited applications in turning that heat back into usable energy.

<comment><USER4> That's what I'm thinking too. The first thing I thought of when reading about it was refrigerator/air-conditioner

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> the powers that be curate certain titles that sound incorrect, but not the ones that ARE incorrect..</comment>


House Antitrust Panel Seeks Documents from 4 Big Tech Firms - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/technology/amazon-apple-facebook-google-antitrust.html <comment><USER2> Am I the only one that finds it wild/crazy - and disappointing- that our elected/selected officials took this long to realize the effect of big tech on the human psyche and thus our individual behavior..?

</comment><comment><USER3> Are they insinuating that Amazon has tried to avoid keeping a permanent record of their most important communications?</comment>


The Argument Against Quantum Computers by Gil Kalai [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.02499 <comment><USER2> Anyone more in this field know if this has been reviewed by others, or the likelihood of it standing in the way of practical quantum computers? It sounds pretty damning to QC if true.

<comment><USER3> Gil Kalai has been beating this particular drum/dead horse for decades at this point. Having read the paper, it seems pretty consistent with his previous work ... it all crucially hinges on the postulate that, somehow, noise will prevent this from working, but he has yet to actually come up with a solid explanation for _how._

(Even this paper, ultimately, relies on Conjecture 4, which essentially comes down to saying that "Well, we've proven _this one particular system_ runs into noise issues, so we're just going to _assume_ that some grand physical principle will cause this to extend to every possible small noisy quantum system.")</comment></comment>


Bagel Boss guy's health problems should prompt some self-reflection - <AUTHOR> https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-what-we-did-to-the-bagel-boss-guy-20191118-ts5del44krevtdavdw5fe5unkm-story.html <comment><USER2> He doesn't deserve compassion because almost every video we see online is staged and fake and created by him. He's been making the rounds on Sirius and many podcasts.

I don't even know if I believe his health problems or his 'mental anguish' at this point.</comment>


www. is deprecated - <AUTHOR> http://no-www.org/ <comment><USER2> I hate including WWW and love short URLs: but there's a bit of a problem.

Technical things that are trivial for people reading this comment: knowing the difference between right and left clicks, copying and pasting, using keyboard shortcuts to find a bit of text on a page, or even recognizing that a URL is a URL without the context that WWW provides, is hard for many non-technical users. Really.

There are some people who will not understand what "Visit us at no-www.org to find out more!" means unless you write out www.no-www.org.

(And even then, there will still be some people who are confused and go and physically type in www.no-www.org.com into their web browser.)

<comment><USER3> It must be so because often enough I see really ugly website addresses in ads like www.promotion.brand.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why is this a thing? Why is someone trying to create a trend that we need to follow.

I make sure my sites work with and without www. In HTML documents it doesn't matter which you choose because the website address hidden in the link tag.

Verbally, I always omit the www, but when I communicate a website address via paper I prefer to use the www in order to make clear it is a website. I could use [https://](https://) instead but I like www more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think their "class B" makes the most sense: allow www, but redirect it to the same URL without www. I do that on my own sites, and no-www.org does the same. They explicitly say that making www not resolve at all "is not recommended for sites that serve the general public."

That said:

> I could use [https://](https://) instead but I like www more.

If your site uses https, communicate it with the https, because otherwise browsers will default to http. (That and get it on the hsts preload list so that some of them won't.)</comment></comment>


U.S. Cyber Command has no idea why it exists - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/26/meet-your-new-commander-in-gee

<comment><USER2> This article is awful. Instead of doing actual reporting, which would quickly have unearthed the actual purpose of a "cyber" (gag) - command --- which is to protect the integrity of critical information systems (particularly military and utilities) and to develop mechanisms to deny those capabilities to adversaries --- the writer of this piece contents himself with quips like "commander in geek" and "glasses-wearing general" and "world's most powerful IT guy".

I sympathize with Reason's philosophy in general (though I'm not a libertarian), but isn't a strong military one of the very few things that even libertarians agree we should be letting the government take care of?

<comment><USER3> _...but isn't a strong military one of the very few things that even libertarians agree we should be letting the government take care of?_

A fact, which is often lost in modern political discussions: goals != results. One can oppose a law or program because of poor implementation (or expected poor implementation) even while agreeing with it's goals.

For instance, I favor some banking regulation to reduce leverage and the possibility of contagion. However, I oppose the particular bill currently likely to be passed, because it makes speculation (particularly shorts) more difficult and codifies bailouts/government forced bankruptcy into law. Similarly, I expect the author of this article favors national defense, but opposes this program since it appears to be ineffective and potentially harmful.

<comment><USER2> If anything, the most painful complaint you can make about the modern military's role in information security is their _lack_ of involvement. We're far more likely to lose billions of dollars due to a concerted attack on our utilities or financial markets than China is.

So, while I see what you're saying, I don't think it's a coherent response to my comment or the article.

<comment><USER4> _the most painful complaint you can make about the modern military's role in information security is their lack of involvement._

On the contrary. Given that the Internet is the creation of DARPA, indeed, was once called "ARPAnet", they're already up to their eyeballs. And to their credit, they've done an excellent job. I don't have citations handy, but I recall reading over the past year about many supposed "cyber attacks", yet for the most part, we all go about our business and surfing without even noticing that anything was going on.

The folks that designed the protocols on which this network runs (everything from ethernet through TCP/IP through DNS) did a phenomenal job. The network just may be the most robust thing ever engineered by man.

So perhaps they've already done their job. The front-loaded engineering gave us something that can withstand huge amounts of abuse, and so doesn't require an army (literally) to babysit it.

<comment><USER2> You and I aren't having the same conversation. I tend to agree with everything you just said, but the issue isn't the government's role in _running_ the Internet. It's the government's role in offensive and defensive computer security. In other words: it's preventing China from paying 20 year olds to shut down the power grid (note: plausible) and directing research that would allow us to do that to China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeh, this is not a new problem. In the 80's there was a lot of "discussion" over who had exactly what jurisdiction on the internet.#

It's not really got much better since.

</comment><comment><USER6> It just seems like the Cyber Command is taking over functions traditionally reserved for the NSA. Consolidating efforts for reverse engineering malware and other software seems to be the primary focus at the moment.

<comment><USER2> Since NSA is going to keep doing all that stuff anyways, I doubt they mind too much; it just means the oversight is getting shifted away from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that somebody with not much of a clue has read some rather bad sci-fi novels, and now wants to make it a reality -- with not much of a clue as to what "it" really is.

<comment><USER2> I can't tell whether you're talking about the author of the article, or the federal government. If it's the author, I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nerds. With guns.

All snarky humor aside, the purpose here is to have a military commander to point the finger at if and when the nation has a crippling attack on internet infrastructure. When that happens, he'll be the guy getting lots of money.

I agree that it is a bit of a power grab, but the Air Force has been looking for more elbow room for a while. We don't need a lot of B-2 bombers to find OBL. The real question is how to determine if they are doing a good job or not? It's kind of an important thing to know. Especially if you spending a lot of money.

So I support some kind of planning/organization, but I'm not sure an entire command should have been created.

There are some very interesting things going on in the cyber warfare arena. I've seen enough to know it is a risk. We need to pay somebody to keep an eye on it and prepare for contingencies.

I'm just not happy with the Air Force. Something about the match of that agency with that mission doesn't sit well with me. I see lots of expensive cyber warfare computer infrastructure in the near future. I'd rather see DoD do some kind of SecDef skunkworks project sub rosa with some of the incredible tech companies in the states than set up a command. This is time for maximum impact, not structure. You guys have any idea what kind of BS goes with a command? It's the wrong move with the wrong guys.

<comment><USER2> Of the three major service agencies, the Air Force has always been closest to internet security. They're a feeder for network security people in the industry, and they've been in the middle of "cybercrime" investigations since Operation Sun Devil in the early '90s.

So really, you need to start with the question of, "should the DoD be running information security, or should intelligence"? If it's military, then it's naturally going to be the Air Force.

Incidentally: this is _not_ an area where the government can simply collaborate with private industry. Too much of what's required to be effective (start with intensely sensitive information sharing) is off the table for private companies.

<comment><USER8> I agree with all of that.

Part of the question is whether cyber activities are domestic in nature or foreign. While it might seem like a moot point to folks from other countries, we make a distinction about which agencies can do what and where. There needs to be some thinking about how an actual cyber war would happen. Would Air Force personnel physically take out internet backbones located inside the Continental U.S.? Would they serve search warrants? If not, would they direct the FBI to do so? Can they detain or investigate people?

We focus on the logical structure of a cyber-attack: computers, code, vectors, etc. But there a are a lot of physical components as well, and they can be located anywhere.

I completely agree that the AF is best of all the services to do this. If anything, the eventual solution should probably end up as an equal to DoD and not as a subordinate -- this subject area is just a weird duck when it comes to constitutional law. I just don't think taking the idea of a _command_ and applying it here makes much sense. Sounds like the old "I have the solution, what is your problem" scenario.

And I can't get into your second point without becoming uncomfortable. Yes, we're not talking some kind of loose collaboration. But there's a long way from simple collaboration with industry to having a GS-12 potentially decide the fate of billions of dollars of e-commerce. The career track here does not match at all with the other services.

Or to put this in a personal story, I knew a guy who worked with very sensitive information for the Navy back in the day. He had a PhD from MIT and never wore a Navy uniform. He showed up to work everyday in sandals and Bermuda shorts. While he was incredibly effective for the Navy, he also did not fit into the traditional roles at DoD whatsoever. They had an inspection and he was supposed to have a uniform. He had no idea what a uniform looked like or how to wear one, and it was quite an adventure making it all happen on time. All of the paperwork and procedures the Navy required made absolutely no sense to him -- so he had other people take care of it.

Now you can get away with this for a while in small isolated units where the rest of the organization can "cover" for them, but it's another thing entirely if 90% of the guys doing the work don't fit into the cookie-cutter mold they are supposed to.

An organization structured to hone young people into super responsible war- fighting roles, doing so in ways it has learned in wars since Sparta, is going to have a lot of problems with the people, personalities, and experiences necessary to fulfill this particular mission. In my opinion.

EDIT: Or to put this in terms of my original joke, which was meant to be insightful, I'm not so sure that an organization dedicated to cyber warfare needs to be part of the _armed_ forces.

<comment><USER2> Your second graf is very sensible and raises many of the big questions here. At the same time: the threat we're talking about is very real --- it may be the most cost-effective way to hit the US today. We've done much dumber things in the name of national security than anything the "Cyber Command" could possibly execute on.

We're way behind the eight ball here --- at least in terms of the stuff we're allowed to know about --- and I think it's probably best to reserve criticism until we actually have something up and running to oversee.

<comment><USER8> I like criticism, so I'll take issue there, but for the rest of your comment I wish I could upvote you about a dozen times.

And that may be the first time that has happened :)

<comment><USER2> The problem I have is that the notion of "cyber war" is so open-ended, and runs from immediate practical reality to pure science fiction, that a discussion of a "Cyber Command" is just going to waste a lot of time on BS like the government's secret plan to take over civilian computing systems, or to install spyware on everyone's computer.

Irony: the crazy-sounding stuff, like remote-destroying people's pacemakers or turning off the power to a whole country --- _more plausible_ than the government takeover of the Internet.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gitnub — GitHub: OSX gui for git - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/Caged/gitnub/wikis/home <comment><USER2> A native app is nice, but it has fewer features than other available tools like QGit, which feels pretty native already.

It's still pre-1.0, though, so who knows.</comment>


Walmart suddenly closes Sam's Club stores - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-suddenly-closes-sams-club-stores-2018-1 <comment><USER2> And they've been selling memberships on Groupon lately.</comment>


New Heroku Dynos Get 2.5GB RAM - <AUTHOR> https://devcenter.heroku.com/changelog-items/696 <comment><USER2> Is there anyone using Heroku that wishes they didn't start out using it? A lot of my friends in hacker schools end up using Heroku which I think is great but later on don't understand how to really deploy an application outside of Heroku's platform.

Had pricing ever been an issue for any of you?

<comment><USER3> Your question is framed at someone who "learned" deployments via heroku. I will answer it from a different perspective. I recently started at a company who began their staging and production hosting on heroku. I would have a very hard time recommending it to anyone.

In addition to uncompetitive pricing, the "add-on" architecture is itself expensive and inflexible. Redis feels artificially limited, and the scheduler's timing options are, i kid you not: Daily, Hourly, Every 10 minutes.

To people who know linux hosting: avoid heroku. To people who don't know linux hosting: spend some time gaining a serviceable linux hosting skillset.

<comment><USER4> don't use heroku's scheduler - it's a best effort scheduler that doesn't guarantee it will even execute your jobs at the times you set.

the company i work for runs a rails app and we've ported almost everything over to running with the clock gem instead of with heroku's scheduler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Neat! That's five hundred MB more than my cellphone.

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I correct that this represents a 10x cost over an IaaS provider like Digital Ocean? What features in the Heroku platform justify that? Not trolling, but looking for some brief and logical input that'll give me that 'aha' moment

<comment><USER7> Isn't Digital Ocean just a VPS provider? I'd encourage you to give Heroku a try (it's free to play with). It's pretty cool that with really minimal planning on your part you can "git push heroku" and have a working app.

I don't know if this is an "aha" moment for you -- it might depend on how much you enjoy provisioning servers yourself -- but when it works it's pretty cool.

I suspect there are people who are running apps "themselves" on heroku that would otherwise require them to pay a server administrator.

<comment><USER6> That's the disconnect for me. There have to be prebuilt Amazon AMIs with push to deploy functionality for various stack flavors. I guess the simplicity and allure of Heroku's git integration makes it easy for developers to forego research on those. It still seems one hell of a price to pay especially when coupled with vendor lock-in (Disclaimer: I don't know if Heroku PaaS locks you in as much as say, GAE)

<comment><USER8> _Disclaimer: I don 't know if Heroku PaaS locks you in as much as say, GAE_

In my (limited) experience: not by a long shot. Heroku setups may seem locked in, but GAE is obscene. No outgoing HTTP requests, no normal DB, basically everything is GAE specific. Heroku is not the most generic thing out there, but, by God, it's still miles better than GAE.

<comment><USER9> No outgoing HTTP requests? GAE has URL Fetch API from first day.

Also, GAE can now run docker and also connect to MySQL running on Google Cloud infrastructure, which is a separate offering.

<comment><USER8> Sorry for not being explicit. My point was: you need to use a special API to do outgoing HTTP requests. This leads to vendor lock-in. In Heroku, you just do it.

<comment><USER9> No you don't. You still use your language's standard library. But GAE uses their own version behind the scenes. You code still uses urllib if on Python and net/http if using Go.

So in GAE too, you just do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want to know, in general, what Heroku is, don't bother with their web pages. It's marketing fluff.

The first paragraph in Wikipedia is a concise explanation. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroku)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm wondering what people need this much RAM for? Wouldn't it make more sense to just spin up more dyno's with fewer instances of your app running on each dyno?

<comment><USER12> Depends on what you're doing. I've worked on systems where we had 72gb and 96gb of RAM, and we tuned them within an inch of their lives.

But hey, 512k is good enough for anyone, Bill Gates once said.

edit: If I was doing something memory-intensive or performance-intensive, I wouldn't be on Heroku anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Worth noting that you can get 16GB RAM on AWS or Digital Ocean using Cloud66 and have almost the same deployment experience, for less.

</comment><comment><USER14> Off topic: What's the best free alternative for small side projects?

<comment><USER15> Closest thing with a "full" free tier I know about is OpenShift. (For some stuff, heroku's free tier still can work out fine)

<comment><USER16> Yeah. I think Heroku is the best choice right now. A web dyno and a worker dyno running 18h/day for free

<comment><USER14> How is time calculated? Is it actual hours in a day or actually calculated when a dyno is serving something? For example if the app sits idle for a couple hours a day would it still server content for 24hours?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Node Object compression library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fed135/compactr <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I started this project, and it's now at a usable stage, but I would _really_ enjoy some criticism and some input on how to further optimize this.

This library works in the same way as Protocol buffers do - schema-based compression of JS objects. With the twist that it doesn't rely on proto files, but rather attempts to re-use JS/JSON DB Schemas (DRY). Also, this has NO dependencies!</comment>


Sony: No Plans For PS3-type Investment For Future Consoles - <AUTHOR> http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/05/27/sony_earnings/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sony usually plans to have a console last 7-10 years.

About a year after the launch of a console, there are off-the-shelf computer systems for the same price that are just as powerful. And of course, 7 years after, the console is completely blown away.

I wonder if they finally realized what die-hard gamers have known for a decade, or if they just can't take the losses any more and don't have a choice?

<comment><USER2> In the meantime a given console hardware is able to push from one to three orders of magnitude more polygons than the supposedly overpowering PC. This too has been known for decades.

I've experienced both sides (Computer vs Console) and I'm sick of those arguments. about which is supposedly better. I don't care. I just want my experience to be hitch-free and not having to jump through horrendous hoops (video cards, DRM and whatnot) to enjoy games.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is wrong with this git workflow? - <AUTHOR> http://davidyang.posterous.com/git-and-workflow

<comment><USER2> Why wait 2-3 months to merge everything back into master? Why not do it every day? Or better yet, do it whenever a good bit of functionality (a story) is completed, which can be several times a day?

It's better to see where the dependencies are up front instead of waiting until the very end of the iteration.

Here's the ideal Git workflow, described by three different people but all pretty much recommending the same thing:

[http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/2008/12/18/agile-git-and- the-...](http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/2008/12/18/agile-git-and-the-story- branch-pattern)

<http://gweezlebur.com/2009/01/19/my-git-workflow.html>

[http://reinh.com/blog/2009/03/02/a-git-workflow-for-agile- te...](http://reinh.com/blog/2009/03/02/a-git-workflow-for-agile-teams.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Continuous integration should help to get rid of your merging headaches. I would merge way more often. The moment a developer has implemented and tested a bit of code -> Merge and resolve conflicts. 2-3 months are very long iterations. I think you should break your problems down into smaller parts.

</comment><comment><USER4> In a nutshell, merge more and rebase less.

If you can avoid it, don't maintain long-lived actively-developed branches - especially several at once. You are certain to produce conflicts this way, and they will require some amount of manual resolution no matter what SCM you are using.

So my main suggestion is for everyone push their work onto the master much more frequently throughout the development period (whenever it's at a point where all tests are passing and it won't break things for other developers). Anyone working on a long-lived branch can then pull periodically (like, daily) from master and deal with the merge conflicts incrementally, before they've diverged too much.

"Often, what happens in a release is that topic branch 1 relies on commits from topic branch 2. We're not exactly sure how to best handle this, if we start sending patches from topic branch 1 into topic branch 2, will that make it harder for us to merge topic branch 2 into the system test branch?"

No, it won't make it harder. The developer of branch2 can merge from branch1. Git will see in the history that branch2 now contains commits from branch1 and that will help it with later merges.

"Is there a way to move the resolution of the conflicts back into the topic branches? I know this sounds ridiculous but instead of resolving the conflicts in the merge commit, is there a way we could push the resolutions into the proper branches so that the merged version really holds no real state?"

Yes. Instead of checking out master and doing "merge branch1" or "pull branch1", checkout branch1 and do "merge master" or "pull master". (As I suggest above, you should actually do this frequently throughout the development of branch1.) Then when you eventually finish with the branch1 and merge it back into master, all (or almost all) of the merging is already done and you won't have any conflicts.

"Where are the resolutions of the conflict stored right now?"

They're stored in the merge commits - any commit with more than one parent. But if you rebase instead of merging, you lose this information. That's why I say you should rebase less, and instead do "real" merges.

"If I start with a master branch, split off into four topic branches, then merge them back into master, it does a 3-way merge of the end points of each topic branch. If I do a rebase from the merge onto the original master branch, it seems to replay the topic branch lines in sequential order of commits on that line time-sorted by which topic branch was first spun off... is there a way to compress these multiple topic branches and conflict into one patch?"

If you really want to destroy all the branch history and squash everything down into one commit, you could continually "git pull --rebase" from 'master' to 'topic' during development, and then "git merge --squash topic" onto master when development is finished. You'll end up with just one commit.

But I wouldn't do that. If you're doing that, it says that you care more about _how the history looks_ than about your actual development process. Merges may look "ugly" and make it take longer to read through your project history, but that ugliness reflects the reality of concurrent, multi-person development, and merge commits retain accurate history that helps tools like "git merge" work better with fewer conflicts.

<comment><USER5> I think you've covered the important stuff here, but I'd like to add one point:

 _We do this because we have a requirement that we need to be able to rip out a topic branch at any time from this release_

It's nice to be able to rip out topic branches at any time, but I would submit that once the topic branch is complete and its time to merge, the decision of whether to use it or not needs to be finalized. If you don't do that you're inflicting mental overhead on the developers to support the project manager's waffling. Depending on the nature of the topic and how modular and well- factored the code is, it may be more or less of a chore to maintain multiple branches, but unless both you're going to release both versions of the software, I say merge the branch ASAP and save yourself the trouble.

<comment><USER4> Yes, definitely. No software is going to make it easy to rip out any of five or six branches late in development. With five branches, this means that you might ship any of 2^5 == 32 different products, and you don't know which until right before it's released.

Merging late optimizes for the case where no branches are included, but as you've learned it makes it painful for the normal case where all (or most) do ship. Merging early optimizes for the case where all (or most) branches are included, but yes it makes it harder to remove a branch later on. Or you could always maintain each of the 32 possible release branches, and merge each topic branch continually with 16 of them... :)

As a compromize, you can merge frequently from master to topic, but then merge topic back to master only when you are fairly confident in it. (Hopefully this will be early for at least some topic branches, so that any conflicts with other topics can be resolved early.) And I totally agree with the other commenters who suggest shorter iterations and continuous integration.</comment></comment></comment>


Happy 91st Birthday, Ray Bradbury - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury

<comment><AUTHOR> "I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - <USER2> can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories." -Ray Bradbury

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." -Ray Bradbury</comment>


The lies Comcast allegedly told customers to hide full cost of service - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/the-lies-comcast-allegedly-told-customers-to-hide-full-cost-of-service/ <comment><USER2> Comcast might have to give _refunds_? The Law sure can be harsh. Hopefully this severe punishment will make them think twice before committing large- scale fraud again.</comment>


RethinkDB Expands Beyond SSDs, Launches Its Speedy Database To The Public - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/06/rethinkdb-expands-beyond-ssds-launches-its-speedy-database-to-the-public/

<comment><USER2> This looks like an interesting product for cache-like use cases.

Have you considered including Redis in your benchmarks? From the FAQ it sounds like there are some use cases where both Redis and RethinkDB would be suitable. The main functional differences I can see are:

* RethinkDB supports datasets larger than RAM, whereas Redis doesn't really. This could be big, for some use cases.

* Redis supports lists, sets, priority queues etc, whereas RethinkDB values can only be strings for now (if I understand correctly?).

* With Redis, writes are not immediately durable by default (though they can be configured that way at a performance cost), whereas with RethinkDB they are? (In particular I'd like to see RethinkDB benchmarked against Redis with 'appendonly yes' and 'appendfsync always'.)

* Redis has built-in master-slave replication, whereas RethinkDB does not yet.

* Redis is open-source; RethinkDB you have to pay for updates. (Will updates eventually trickle down to the free plan, or is 1.0 all she wrote for free users?)

One more question, based on your hint that "support for more protocols is coming". Salvatore has said he considers Redis to be a protocol first and a database second (<http://antirez.com/post/redis-manifesto.html>). Have you considered implementing the Redis protocol in RethinkDB? That would actually be awesome, to be able to switch between Redis and RethinkDB as requirements changed.

<comment><USER3> _Have you considered including Redis in your benchmarks?_

Yes. The trouble is that doing performance benchmarks correctly is incredibly time consuming. Most of the time people aren't actually measuring what they think they're measuring, so most benchmarks end up comparing apples to oranges. We spend a lot of time to make sure that our benchmarks measure the right things and expose the right data, at the expense of doing more benchmarks. Naturally, this requires learning a great deal about the products we're benchmarking against. We're working to automate much of this process and putting an organizational infrastructure in place to add more (hopefully almost all) competitors, but it will take some time.

 _Redis supports lists, sets, priority queues etc, whereas RethinkDB values can only be strings for now (if I understand correctly?)._

Correct. We think of RethinkDB as a database first, and a protocol second. We've built really good, largely protocol-independent technology that allows to execute most protocols with very high performance. We think _that_ part is hard, while protocols are easy (in a sense most people can implement a known protocol, but few people can build a system that makes them all run fast in the same product). We'll be adding more protocols shortly, and Redis is definitely on the list (among Cassandra, Hadoop, and beyond).

 _With Redis, writes are not immediately durable by default (though they can be configured that way at a performance cost), whereas with RethinkDB they are?_

This is fully configurable. See here: <http://rethinkdb.com/docs/#durability>

_Redis has built-in master-slave replication, whereas RethinkDB does not yet._

Correct. RethinkDB 1.1 (currently in QA) has full support for master-slave replication, automatic failover, and range queries (via memcached rget extension).

 _Redis is open-source; RethinkDB you have to pay for updates. (Will updates eventually trickle down to the free plan, or is 1.0 all she wrote for free users?)_

Our strategy is to set up the pricing structure in such a way that companies that have the money and the demand will have to pay for the product, and customers that don't have the money (companies + individuals) will be able to use it for free. Getting the details on the pricing structure is difficult - we're working it out now, so I can't share the details yet.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your responses! All makes a lot of sense.

 _We'll be adding more protocols shortly, and Redis is definitely on the list (among Cassandra, Hadoop, and beyond)._

Great to hear!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have little experience with databases, please forgive me: How useful is a database with no horizontal scaling support? Is your target market small businesses and using it as a caching tier? I can imagine that everyone dreaming of a popular website eventually needs to scale beyond a single server pc. I think a very strong selling point of Cassandra and MongoDB are

1\. sharding (distributed database load over multiple machines)

2\. replication (simultaneously running backup databases over multiple machines)

Am I correct that I would have to make my own [nightly] backups of my database?

<comment><USER3> At the moment our target customers do horizontal scaling in the application layer, and we built exactly what they need (they wouldn't use the horizontal scaling features).

V1.1 of RethinkDB (currently in QA) will include replication. V1.2 will include full-blown clustering support (currently in development).

<comment><USER4> Which of these features will require the premium support?

<comment><USER3> We're working through this now. I expect that we'll only charge for the functionality that really advanced customers need (multidatacenter support, multitenancy, resource quotas, etc.) but we haven't finalized this yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Best of luck, guys. I like super-ambitious projects that make things go fast!

</comment><comment><USER6> Congrats on the launch!</comment>


Show HN: SaaS product showcase - <AUTHOR>

Do you have a web service that you run (CRM, Dashboards, Gamification etc.) and possibly have an API for? Showcase it in this thread by adding a link and a one sentence description. <comment><USER2> Performable (<http://www.performable.com/>) a unified view of your customers & fans.

</comment><comment><USER3> Certify (<http://www.certify.com>) Turns mobile captured receipts into easy to manage expense reports.

</comment><comment><USER4> zferral.com (<http://zferral.com>) custom referral programs for your website.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://droplo.com/> \- drag&drop subversion on the cloud.</comment>


Unlocking India's printed heritage: Historic books to be made available online - <AUTHOR> http://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2015/november/unlocking-indias-printed-heritage <comment><USER2> It looks like archive.org already has their flagship work digitized, possibly thanks to Cambridge University: [https://archive.org/details/AGrammarOfTheBengalLanguage](https://archive.org/details/AGrammarOfTheBengalLanguage) \+ [http://assets.cambridge.org/97811080/56359/copyright/9781108...](http://assets.cambridge.org/97811080/56359/copyright/9781108056359_copyright_info.pdf)

Also, what is up with this hyprocrisy? "It is the mission of the British Library to make the vast intellectual and cultural resources we hold accessible to anyone, anywhere" vs. "Unless stated otherwise, media content on the press area of our website, including images, is protected by third-party rights such as copyright or trademarks. The British Library is permitted to make the content available to you for promoting associated British Library's exhibitions, events or activities. If you are not using images to promote a British Library activity, you must clear all rights for your use of any in- copyright material beyond uses permitted under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988."

In the 21st century: caring is sharing. PDF or it didn't happen!</comment>


BookKeeper: High-availability scalable distributed logging - <AUTHOR> http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2014/09/paper-summary-high-availability.html

<comment><USER2> Kafka can be compared to HedWig, which uses BookKeeper internally to store data.

HedWig is closer to the traditional message broker model where the broker (Hub in case of HedWig) keeps track of the subscriptions and what's been consumed so far. Kafka, on the other hand, uses a stateless broker model where the consumers maintain the subscription state about what has been consumed.

HedWig Hubs keep track of all subscriptions and once all consumers "consume" a given message Hubs delete the message. Kafka doesn't do that. It allows its consumers to start all over again even if the messages have been consumed (as long as the message is not too old).

HedWig is also slower because of its focus on high durability. Earlier versions of Kafka didn't care about durability as much, so Kafka was much faster.

HedWig is also design to work with a large number of topics and a few consumers for those topics. Kafka can do a better job supporting a large number of consumers (given its stateless broker design).

</comment><comment><USER3> The post mentions Tango, which has a novel consistency algorithm, but doesn't mention how BookKeeper differs from Kafka (also an Apache project). Can anyone comment on the difference?</comment>


Why Are Men Still Explaining Things to Women? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/us/why-are-men-still-explaining-things-to-women-mansplaining-authority-gender.html <comment><USER2> I know women who do this too. Seems like sexist stereotyping to label it in the way they did. Not to mention it's not gender identity friendly.

<comment><USER2> Why is this downvoted?

<comment><USER3> Only one side is allowed to use anecdotal evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >>After he discovers that Ms. Solnit's latest book was about the British photographer Eadweard Muybridge, he cuts her off, to pontificate, relentlessly, on a "very important" Muybridge book he thinks she should read.

Turns out, it was her book. And he hadn't read it.

lol</comment>


Kinda cool - How to Obscure Any URL (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pc-help.org/obscure.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Modern browsers automatically decode encoded URLs (ie, if you enter %20 into your address bar - it'll change it to the space that represents) IE (at least) won't let you use the auth@domain format either Using the IP almost in any form won't help - as most sites are name-bound

what do you use today to do this</comment>