Salvation (for Newspapers) Is at Hand - NYTimes Paywall - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/how-to-make-readers-pay-happily/?ref=opinion <comment><USER2> So... they're trusting information provided by the _user's browser_ (referral links, cookies, javascript... whatever) to determine whether or not the article should be displayed to the user....

This makes me want to pat the NYT on the head and tell them how adorable they are.

The fact that they're 1+ years away from implementing this may indicate that they have _some_ knowledge about how technologically stupid this idea is, but are hoping that investors don't figure that out.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, I'm not sure how much they care if they don't get to monetize the audience of people technical enough to forge a referrer (or even use an extension that does it for you). I suspect pretty much no one on HN even remembers what the web looked like pre-AdBlock, but it hasn't actually killed web advertising.

<comment><USER4> I don't use AdBlock. I use a popup blocker, but I think if I am looking at a website I should at least give them the basic revenue of viewing the advertizing. Sometimes I even click on one if I am feeling generous to the content holder. It's much the same with authors, when buying a book I like to click the link Amazon.com from their website because it maximizes their revenue.

PS: The problem with the newspaper model is it provides so little value. In the old days they survived on advertizing but there are far more locations for advertizing now, so the pay is far lower. Take the Haiti incident, there was a 7.0 earthquake which killed or injured a lot of people and destroyed most of their infrastructure. All the important information in an SMS post and everything after that point is just entertainment.

<comment><USER5> The problem with many ads is that they are designed to take attention away from the rest of the site. As a result, you get flashing, jiggling, talking ads that make many sites nearly unusable. Sure, you could avoid going to those sites, or you could just use adblock...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After all the bitching about how Google (and other aggregaters) are stealing their content they erect a paywall for everybody but search and referral links.

Disingenuous much?

</comment><comment><USER7> My reaction/question is, "what about the NYT's cost structure has been radically changed from what it was 5 years ago"?

Think about it, you have successful sites run with minimal overhead, such as 3-5 writers and 1 marketing/business/admin guy to handle the stuff the writers don't know how to do. Compare that to what NYT does.

<comment><USER8> It's not so much that their cost structure has changed--it's that their revenue streams have dried up. Fewer people are reading physical papers, and web ad revenue has been on the decline for the past couple of years.

You can't compare the New York Times to a website run by a couple of people. Most small news sites get their content from other small news sites or from larger organizations that do a lot of the actual reporting (like the New York Times).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are so many internet business models to explore. Why is it that newspapers are only focusing on the subscription based model?</comment>


Photo of a Nuclear Explosion Less than 1 Millisecond After Detonation - <AUTHOR> http://www.petapixel.com/2011/12/09/photo-of-a-nuclear-explosion-less-than-1-millisecond-after-detonation/ <comment><USER2> I love this photo. If I'm not mistaken, you can pick out the internal structure of the bomb. You can also see the plasma (?) running down the support structures ahead of the fireball.

Incredible photograph. Wish we could go back and re-shoot this same stuff in 5K stereo. Looking at this reminds me of the picture of the cosmic background radiation that one physicist called the "face of God" For some reason I intuitively feel that there's some deep mystery in this picture.

For any of you in the vicinity of New Mexico, I encourage you to go visit the Atomic Museum, which is now known as the "The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History"

<http://www.nuclearmuseum.org/>

<comment><USER3> There's also the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas <http://www.nationalatomictestingmuseum.org/>

<comment><USER4> Oh! I was just there! That place is a lot of fun. Unfortunately a bit smaller than I would have liked; it doesn't take long to get through it all, but still, lots of cool stuff to look at.

Plus, they sell "Communist mints" in the gift shop, which are pretty awesome. I also picked up my girlfriend a pair of fatman and littleboy earrings, which are equally awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The spikes on the bottom are the support wires for the staging tower vaporizing a bit faster than the atmosphere.

<comment><USER6> Something to do with the electromagnetic heating of the wire being quicker than the energy capture and incandescence of the air?

<comment><USER7> Right, the wires are more opaque in every part of the spectrum compared to air, so they soak up energy a lot faster.

<comment><USER6> Ah. I suppose being a conductor in normal conditions isn't a factor in this situation (plasma is plasma is plasma). Opacity being the main factor in heating makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Aggregator spam, actual (MUCH more verbose and in-depth) source is [http://www.damninteresting.com/rapatronic-nuclear- photograph...](http://www.damninteresting.com/rapatronic-nuclear-photographs/)

That source is even linked at the here submitted page as source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pointer - in case people want to see it and comment on it, now submitted over here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4759908>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to see the lack of symmetry in the photograph. I wonder how much of that results from the initial arrangement of fissile materials in the bomb, and how much from turbulence as the explosion occurred?

Photographs taken years ago at this level of time resolution must be helpful today in validating computer simulations of nuclear explosions. Simulations, rather than actual tests, are how the ongoing safety of the nuclear arsenals of the major nuclear powers is currently assessed.

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

<comment><USER10> The mottling is apparently from the bomb casing.

([http://www.damninteresting.com/rapatronic-nuclear- photograph...](http://www.damninteresting.com/rapatronic-nuclear- photographs/))

> _The resulting extraordinary photographs revealed intricate details of the > first instant of an atomic explosion, including a few surprises such as > irregular "mottling" caused primarily by variations in the density of the > bomb's casing. It also showed the detail of the "rope trick effect," where > the rapid vaporization of support cables caused curious lines to emanate > from the bottom of an explosion._

The camera is interesting - using an electronic not mechanical shutter. This was around 1944. (Bell Lab's transistor was around 1947.)

<comment><USER11> More interesting still -- the mottling is from the remains of the casing and the shot cab (the little building the bomb was housed in at the top of the tower) splashing against the shock front at the fireball's boundary.

(<http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Tumblers.html>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This Wikipedia article explains the shape of the fireball <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect>

The source article has more information about the camera and the inventor [http://www.damninteresting.com/rapatronic-nuclear- photograph...](http://www.damninteresting.com/rapatronic-nuclear-photographs/)

</comment><comment><USER13> So, if the article is correct that the explosion is ~20m in diameter, and the photo was taken 0.001 seconds after detonation...

Then the explosion is expanding at an instantaneous rate of:

(10 meters [radius] / 0.001 sec) = 10,000 meters per second = ~6.2 miles per second.

Obviously it won't sustain that velocity, but still. That's insane(ly awesome).

<comment><USER14> The way the explosion works isn't exactly a single, expanding nucleus of hot material. It's pretty complicated, but what's going on at this point is that the bomb is giving off x-ray radiation, which is absorbed the air, heating it up. As a consequence of air absorbing the radiation, air further from the bomb is shielded from the radiation. The sphere that you see is, approximately, the air close enough (un-blocked enough) to absorb enough heat to glow in the visible spectrum.

The upshot of this is that the entire sphere that you see comes into existence in a roughly simultaneous fashion, not in an expanding fashion. If you watch slow-motion videos, you will see that sphere stay at the same size and transition from dark to light, rather than start light and transitioning from small to large.

The explosion itself comes later, as that air (which is around 9000F) obeys basic gas laws, and tries to expand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is blogspam. Can we please instead link to the much better [http://www.damninteresting.com/rapatronic-nuclear- photograph...](http://www.damninteresting.com/rapatronic-nuclear-photographs/) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that was pointed out by aw3c2 here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4759809>

It's too late, but I have submitted that link here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4759908>

Doesn't do any good, the discussion is here already, and there's no way to merge or migrate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It says, "the fireball...is three times hotter than the surface of the sun". Won't you get toasted from only 7 miles afar? Or, maybe the fireball is ephemeral so the heat the fireball produced doesn't do damage?

<comment><USER17> The intensity of that heat is going to drop off rapidly with distance. I'm no physicist, but I'd bet it follows the Inverse-Square Law (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law>) just as light does.

Meaning that at 20m from the center of the explosion (the fireball was 20m diameter, or 10m radius) it should already be at 1/4 the intensity, already less than the surface of the sun. At 7 miles or 11200m, you're talking 1/(1120^2) or 7.97e-7 of the original intensity - effectively zero - if I've done that math right.

<comment><USER18> Let's not forget, apart from distance, the fireball is expanding in all directions. At 1" from the center, you're exposed to half the fireball. At 1 mile from the center, you're exposed to a tiny spherical arc of the fireball.

The energy is going in every direction, not just at you. With distance, you will receive a smaller portion of whatever energy made it 7 miles out.

<comment><USER19> That's what he just said, the inverse square law. You're describing the same phenomenon.

<comment><USER18> Oh, I thought he was talking about energy dropping off with distance the way a bullet loses speed with distance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I thought that was an awfully large explosion for one millisecond until I realized that light would travel 30,000 times that far in that time frame.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure if it was permanent, but there was an awesome H. Edgerton exhibit at the MIT Museum I remember visiting roughly six years ago. (he developed the camera that took this photo).

If you're in Boston and it's still there, definitely go check it out.

<comment><USER22> I don't think there is a current Edgerton exhibit at the MIT Museum although there may be some photos. Strobe Alley (fourth floor of Building 4) does however have a permanent exhibit of photographs and some other things.

(For others, the context here is that in addition to his work photographing and filming nuclear explosions, Edgerton also developed the electronic strobe along with developing lots of other interesting things, and going on Jacques Cousteau expeditions. (Also a wonderful teacher and person.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Somewhat related - imaging at a trillion frames per second.

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=trillion+fr...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=trillion+frames+per+second)

<comment><USER24> That (very nifty) technique only works for periodic phenomena, so it seems hard to apply here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It looks like a metroid!

[http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071202052451/metroid...](http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071202052451/metroid/images/c/c6/A-metroid.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER26> If you like that pic, there's a wonderful coffee table book full of them:

<http://www.michaellight.net/work100suns.html>

I got it for xmas from the girlfiend a few years back, she knows exactly he sort of combination of beautiful and eerie that I like...

</comment><comment><USER27> The time-sampling rate vs photo-sensitivity would seem difficult to get right without some trial and error. Is it pure luck to get an image of this quality? Its fascinating regarless, however.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have to admit that I misread the title the first go around as "Nuclear Explosion Less than 1 Mil[e outside of ...]" Being at the top of HN did not help much.

</comment><comment><USER29> So what's the tickrate for nature's physics simulations? I want to see it one tick after inception.

<comment><USER30> I might be wrong but I think it's this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time>

...which if my math is right, comes out to 1/100,000,000,000,000,000th of the amount of time post explosion of this photo...

I don't think it would like much!

<comment><USER31> its really interesting that a discrete time unit exists. Perhaps this could be construed as evidence that the world we live in is actually a simulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Pic could also be a Monday morning beer fart in a crowded elevator.

You just never know.

</comment><comment><USER33> Chilling.

</comment><comment><USER34> I just have to point to that thread's best comment!

Dave said:

"This is one of those images that is equally beautiful/horrible. Kim Kardashian pics are the same way......."</comment>


The Power of 'Good Enough' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/the-power-of-good-enough/387388/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits&single_page=true <comment><USER2> It's better than good, it's good enough.</comment>


Should we put websites to sleep - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jpaulneeley/night-night-%E3%81%BF%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA-fa37432fe0dd#.i27dg5tkq <comment><USER2> I've actually heard of some sites doing this. Not because they 'care' for anyone or are trying to make a point, but because their owners thought their sites should reflect the physical shop opening hours for some stupid reason.

It was a bad idea then and it's a bad idea now. Why? Well, a few to start off with:

1\. Night shift workers/other people with different waking hours

2\. Free time, because hey, they're at college or something and want to do something other than sleep or get drunk.

3\. People who wake up in the middle of the night because they just had a revelation about something and want to talk about it on the forums.

4\. Those who just forget they need to use the site until too late.

5\. Anyone who doesn't work but has a slightly different schedule to other people (like, maybe 2pm to 2am or something).

6\. Anyone who's caught travelling at a later hour due to a late flight or train or bus and wants to check something on the site.

7\. People getting ready to go to the airport

8\. Anyone who just wants to talk to/interact with people outside their current time zone.

9\. Someone who's screwed up the system clock.

Really though, websites being open all hours makes sense, and I don't think it's fair to try and tell people when they should be 'allowed' to use it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so obnoxious. There are a million legitimate reasons to be up late, and I would be _very_ annoyed to be babied by a website, especially if I needed to access the information on it.

<comment><USER4> There is a skip link. Yes, for many kinds of sites it would be annoying, but for some it might fit the feel.

(It also badly reminds me of sites "shutting down" because of TV-"watershed" rules or office hours or... really depends on context and motivation)

<comment><USER3> The fact that I didn't immediately see the skip link on the screenshot says something, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No.</comment>


I'm developing a daily network website - <AUTHOR> I have been working on this site for the last 7 months. I will launch this site by the end of next month. What are some opinions about it? I would like to get your feedback. My website Features : 1.users can upload photos, videos,  gifs.
2.users can update their status, share links, write articles.
3.users can sell/buy products.
4. users can vote for photos, links,  videos, articles
5. users can introduce their products & services  & more. <comment><USER2> I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but social networks aren't really a thing anymore. You already have 3 giants competing over every single user (Facebook, twitter and google+) and i'd say its very pointless to compete with them.

Plus your idea is too broad, its a sharing platform/social network/ Shop? I don't even advice on having a sharing platform for all medias, let alone an idea this broad, which would be almost impossible to identify, contain and brand. But nevertheless i wish you the best of luck

<comment><USER3> Furthermore, from what my friends who use Facebook and Google+ tell me, the feature they use the most is the chat/instant messaging, not the rest of the "social" stuff.

So if you don't even have a messaging platform, it'll be even harder to compete with networks that have already been established and have significant adoption.

Also, for what it's worth, I think that in order to really compete with the other networks, in addition to a messaging platform, you're also going to need mobile (iOS and Android) clients for your network so that users can engage while on the go.

Edit:

So you're going to need all of this to achieve basic feature parity with established networks, forgetting advanced features like Google Photos, and then you're going to reach the hardest part - convincing users to switch from the network that all their contacts are on to a brand new one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So do you want to make something like facebook + Amazon + Medium + Instagram + ProductHunt ?

I will suggest, make it short and simple.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> early design : [http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main- qimg-e61b97ffae3590c8aa22944...](http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main- qimg-e61b97ffae3590c8aa229446140aa0e5?convert_to_webp=true)

<comment><USER5> I think I've seen something like this before...

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of Google+</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Did YC accept a mere idea anymore? - <AUTHOR> I'm broke and can't afford to hire developer to make my MVP alive but I have a clear idea on what my MVP will look like with details interactive prototyping. I've also prepare a pitch deck with validation and a clear target on how to make money and everything.
But I'm afraid this will be not good enough, watching YC's portfolios getting larger and larger with more complex companies that looks like Fortune 500 with proven revenues, and with that I'm getting more and more intimidated to even bother to apply.
Do I even have a chance? <comment><USER2> These days it's probably easier to find a developer who'll work for equity than it is to get in to a decent accelerator without any traction.

</comment><comment><USER3> Learn to code. This will get you started on an MVP, and also looks good on an application.</comment>


Is it smart to link to your competitors? - <AUTHOR> http://www.policy.mcsquare.me/ I'm setting my ToS and privacy pilicy page, is it smart to link to your competitor in this section, suggesting your users to try the competition if they are not fully satisfy with your service? do you have any experience with this situation or any advice and suggestion? <comment><USER2> If you have a good product that you believe in, yep. What more could you want in a company than the honesty to say "if we're not what you want, fair enough, allow us to help you anyway"?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, that was also my idea, Thanks.</comment></comment>


Facebook's Libra must be stopped - <AUTHOR> https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/facebook-libra-must-be-stopped-by-katharina-pistor-2019-06 <comment><USER2> Be careful: Facebook's best weapon in these situations (as has been done wrt "we don't sell your data") is for people to create arguments in the zeitguest that are easily debunked. They are relying upon off-the-cuff hot takes to emerge which they can shoot down effectively so by the time a real analysis of what they're doing can result in a cogent, irrefutable argument, the skeptics have already been "debunked" and they can move forward.

The absolute worst thing you can do when Facebook announces initiative X is, that afternoon, write a one-sided think piece based upon surface-level understanding and emotional appeal that does not methodically include counter- arguments pre-emptively to their inevitable response. With regards to Libra, this article fails completely to address the governance structure and the other fail safes involved to prevent the outcome the author mentioned. This does _not mean_ that insolvency is not an issue, but it does mean that this kind of analysis will be weaponized by Facebook to deflect from more serious analysis that will be forthcoming after experts digest the whitepaper, plan, etc.

<comment><USER3> It's already known that people advocating for one position will write poorly- defendable opposition pieces to specifically weaken their opponent's position. Forums for debate usually ban that behavior and encourage notifying moderators when it occurs, but at internet scale, I don't know if there's anything you can do about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The whole premise of this article is that Libra will be financially insolvent and will need to be bailed out.

This makes a pretty huge leap from "Facebook = bad" to the Libra foundation not having sufficient controls on their treasury and becoming insolvent because they didn't actually back every Libra coin with real currency.

Say what you will about Facebook, I'm certainly not a big fan of their track record on privacy, but they're doing this right. They're setting up an independent foundation with representation from 100 companies, and every one of them has an equal vote. The Foundation will be regulated by swiss banking law, which is one of the most strict in the world, so I would be highly skeptical of any claims that they will be "insolvent" any time soon.

<comment><USER3> The definition of cryptocurrency includes the language "operating independently of a central bank". These ~100 stakeholders sound somewhat analogous to federal reserve branches. It's a pseudo central bank. The U.S. should be raising huge red flags about Libra. If financial transactions in US dollars decline, and Libra increases, it reduces the United States' ability to conduct effective monetary policy. But, if Libra can't exist in a stable manner, as all other cryptocurrencies have failed to do, perhaps the problem will resolve itself, and the dominate nature of the U.S. Dollar will continue.

If you live in the United States, you don't want Libra to succeed. You don't want your paycheck in Libra, you don't want mortgage payments in Libra. You want a central bank that has some capacity of providing stability to our economy.

<comment><USER5> This is doubly true because zuck bucks will undermine the position of the Dollar as the world's reserve currency. Facebook is giving yen, euro, etc. a say in the value of the coin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have no financial background so forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but is there a way to treat runs that would expose insolvency (despite sufficient and careful financial planning) like DDoS attacks that would expose an exhaustion of resources?

I'm not saying Libra is good or bad. What I am interested in is how the article seems to focus on how a global currency could not stand up to a considerable proportion of users converting their holdings to a standard fiat currency. I just wonder if the technological aspect of the currency could help mitigate this in a similar way to how enterprises try to limit the impact of DDoS attacks on their systems.

Again, I know nothing about finance. There may be a really good reason why this is not a good analogy that I just lack the understanding of. But I am certainly curious to learn if that's the case.

<comment><USER7> One "solution" we tried here in Argentina in 2001 is the Corralito [koraˈlito] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito) : Each day you can only extract a small amount of cash from the bank, but you can still transfer the money to another person/sucker using debit or credit cards or checks. [Note: It didn't end well.]

The equivalent to cryptocurrencies is that you can only convert a small amount per day to hard money. With cryptocurrencies it is more difficult to enforce the restrictions "per person", but we had a few trick IRL here too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The worst part isn't that the currency has no state backing, it's that the currency incorporates the default risk of such a large basket of sovereign currencies and bonds. Illiquidity in any one component of the basket could endanger the liquidity of the entire basket.[1] Although it's hard to say that's definitely worse than the possibility of braniacs in Washington voting during the next downturn to bail out Mark Zuckerberg.

[1] [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/money- mar...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/money-market- reserve-fund-meltdown.asp)

</comment><comment><USER9> But now the cat is out of the bag. What if russia or china launch a similar payments system that bypasses banks? No no, facebook's libra must go through.

<comment><USER10> Russia did, it's called Mir [0]. Its initially in Russia, but expect it to be rolled out across the one belt, one road system.

We are going to be moving in a bi-polar moment very soon. Where in the west, we'll have VISA, SWIFT, etc. In the east you have Russia/China and OBOR countries all using a different payment systems not owned by the US.

[0]: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-cards/mir-card- pay...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-cards/mir-card-payment- system-looks-beyond-russia-idUSKCN1RV0KZ)

<comment><USER11> >expect it to be rolled out across the one belt, one road system

That's silly, China has plenty of homegrown payment systems, why would it ever need Mir? Nor does it need Russia for its silk road thing.

<comment><USER10> I don't have the time nor inclination to do a deep dive. At the D-Day celebrations who were together? Putin and Xi [0].

Even back in 2018 [1], China was worker for closer ties to Russia. I could probably find more videos discussing closer relations, but I'm gonna leave it here.

What you probably don't seem to realise or what to know. Russia and China are becoming ever so intertwined on various issues:

1) All border issues settled.

2) Military cooperation and investment into weapons.

3) Integration Payment systems. When Russians travel they use Mir. When China Travel they use UnionPay.

4) Investment from China into Russia.

5) Sharing of technology from both Russia and China to each other and working on the same projects. This is a HUGE one. Both Russia and China sharing technology to improve their economies and AI is a big one.

6) De-dollarizing from their respective economies and trading in Rubles and Yuan. Meaning that the US/EU cannot sanction them and they can trade with Turkey and Iran.

7) Organising the OBOR initiative to trade with those currencies, again circumventing US sanctions.

8) Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Germany, OBOR makes for a compelling case where both Russia and China share trade and both sit atop a large chunk of the world. Away from US influence.

[0]: [https://youtu.be/gdl1Rp6u09Y?t=151](https://youtu.be/gdl1Rp6u09Y?t=151)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V0_bKa4jng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V0_bKa4jng)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Libra is the worst of all worlds: all the supposed risks of "fiat" currencies the crypto-libertarians complain about, a cartel of VISA and other payment companies to earn from it, plus an added layer of centralization with the reigns in the hands of Facebook, the world's least trustworthy company since East India Co.

I have no idea why it should succeed. But it probably will because somehow the US still hasn't figured out how to easily pay back your friend the $10 they gave you the other day.

<comment><USER13> > "Facebook, the world's least trustworthy company since East India Co"

We've got big oil ruining the environment, big pharma extorting folks on prescriptions, big defense's insane government contracts, big telecom working with the NSA, credit reporting agencies vacuuming up our info and getting hacked, wells fargo's account fraud and redlining, and HBO with that game of thrones ending...

With all of that, we're really going with _facebook_ for least trustworthy? :)

<comment><USER14> If nothing else, I think Amazon or Google is more of a contender for East India Co 2.0, given their diverse product offerings :)

Facebook is not diversified (hence their frantic pivot to "crypto"). Amazon has a wide array of offerings. And Google is often painted as "just an advertising company" but Gsuite and Google Cloud are two independent revenue streams that don't rely on ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> WhatsApp is the defacto "the phone" in many countries. They will simply add Libra payments into it, copying WeChat but on global scale.

Re: the author of the silly article, on of the reasons of the downfall of the West is that women were given (still fortunately limited) decision power about money.

<comment><USER16> _on (sic) of the reasons of the downfall of the West is that women were given (still fortunately limited) decision power about money._

I missed where the OP discusses the downfall of the West (past tense) and/or the role of women being "given" economic power.

Did the author say this? If not, are you claiming this?

I don't want to rush to condemnation, please clarify what this statement is doing in your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What could possibly go wrong?

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Hehe.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great article. I've added the opinion piece / commentary to the Awesome Libra page / collection [1] to cover both sides (that is, for and against). [1]: [https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome- libra#articles](https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-libra#articles)</comment>


Show HN: Browsing a Remote Git Repo - <AUTHOR> https://begriffs.com/posts/2019-02-21-browsing-remote-git.html?hn=1 <comment><USER2> It is a cool idea</comment>


Show HN: Simple Strength Club - <AUTHOR> https://www.simplestrengthclub.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks! Happy Sunday. Hope everyone is doing great.

I made SSC to see if we could get an alternative to the traditional strength sporting organization. We have been using the same model for decades--top down, typically federated organizations.

SSC places power in the hands of its members. Members can alter the rules of the lifts. They are also the judges of lifts.

SSC is asynchronous by default--i.e., no need for colocated competitions (great in times of pandemics!).

Anyhow, I would love any feedback if you have the time.

Thanks! -Tyler

<comment><USER2> I'm not a lifter (nor do I compete in anything), but it's a persuasive video none the less!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words! Have a good one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The video doesn't explain what they do. But the man in the video looks pretty jacked and I agree with the initial thesis: these federations suck.

My experience is with IPF. Expensive meets. Stupid squat rack. Lots of lame C-suite dramas and litigation (see Wilkes v IPF). The equipment rules seemingly designed mostly to extort fees from manufacturers. The only good thing is having external judging of my squats, but heck, I can video myself and see if the squat is good or not. I decided IPF wasn't worth the money and I could peak better around my own schedule than their meet schedules.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the feedback! I will make sure to add more explanation of how it works to the video or at least have more text on the landing page. I feel as though I am terrible at both video and written content, so I tend to procrastinate or produce the minimum amount required.

It seems like _alot_ of us have had less than stellar experiences with traditional federations. SSC is my attempt at solving for the lack of value we've come to expect when we participate.

It comes down to why do we join a federation? There are a ton of reasons, but the two most salient in my personal experience are to win (or set records) and to engage with a community of like minded people to motivate myself to push more. Over the years, I have come to value the community aspect far more than winning.

Due to SSC being all judged via video, we will never have the rigor that a typical contest has--i.e., we cannot be assured the weight declared is the weight lifted.

My hypothesis is that 1) people rarely will do this considering they have paid to belong 2) the main attraction won't be your name atop a leaderboard rather it will be the interactions you have with the community (my experience).

That's my hope, anyhow. The space SSC occupies is somewhere between social network and traditional federation with a bias away from all the bs baked into the former.

RE: peaking. I have a feature idea whereby a member can "throw down a gauntlet" that would create a window for folks to submit lifts. For example, you could pick when is most convenient for you to peak and then create your own gauntlet to get some motivation when others sign up to join you. You all get your lifts in by the deadline and we can do a retrospective on it.

Thanks again for the feedback and have a great day!</comment></comment>


A Gluster developer's thoughts on Torus - <AUTHOR> http://pl.atyp.us/2016-06-torus.html <comment><USER2> This is a tough one. It's easy to be the expert and point out what will not work.

The crux of it is as he states the false advertising, and how many people will see this and start to use it without knowing what they are doing. However it's hard to separate false advertising, with overconfidence. Maybe they even do not have to be the different things in this context.

The author is correct, this is incredibly hard to get right. Without having some experts heavily contributing and steering a project like this (and, by experts, I mean distributed filesystem experts, not just general distributed application knowledge) it is going to be a long uphill battle, fraught with terror.

But, who's to say that they won't find that type of collaboration. They may just do that, and they may just pull off making a decent project in some years.

But is it hard, hell yes. Is it going to happen as fast as they claim, probably not. Is it a silly idea to build this and not contribute to prior art more? Probably. Is someone a little pissed off about this and taking to the internet to moan about it a bit? Probably.

At the end of the day, file systems are hard, and if your job is to deploy, manage, scale, or recover them, you won't just be blindly throwing your petabytes at a brand new project anyways, and if you are, you should be removed from your current position.

The type of folks that will be early adopters and contributors won't be putting their banking transactions on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Single-threaded sequential 1KB writes for a total of 4GB, without even oflag=sync? Bonnie++? Sorry, but these are not "good benchmarks to run" at all. They're garbage. People who know storage would never suggest these.

As a non-storage person: what should I be using instead of dd and bonnie++?

<comment><USER4> bonnie++ is, as Jeff says, well-known as a canonical example of a benchmark gone horribly wrong; see Brendan Gregg's excellent post on active benchmarking and bonnie++[1] for the gory details.

Beyond bonnie++, storage benchmarks are fraught with peril; years ago, I dismembered SPEC SFS as being similarly unsafe at any speed when benchmarking storage systems, albeit for much more subtle reasons than the glaring mechanical flaws in bonnie++.[2] And as for dd, I actually think it's okay as long as you explain clearly what it is (and isn't); Jeff's complaint is that they seem to be treating this single dd invocation as "write performance", when it fact the truth is subtler -- and things like blocksize and synchronicity matter a great deal.

More generally, anyone interested in storage benchmarks would be wise to read essentially everything that Brendan Gregg has written on the subject, starting with his five-part (!!) series on file system latency.[3][4][5][6][7]

[1] [http://www.brendangregg.com/ActiveBenchmarking/bonnie++.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/ActiveBenchmarking/bonnie++.html)

[2] [http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/02/02/eulogy-for-a- benchmar...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/02/02/eulogy-for-a-benchmark/)

[3] [http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/05/11/file-system- laten...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/05/11/file-system-latency- part-1/)

[4] [http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/05/13/file-system- laten...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/05/13/file-system-latency- part-2/)

[5] [http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/05/18/file-system- laten...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/05/18/file-system-latency- part-3/)

[6] [http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/05/24/file-system- laten...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/05/24/file-system-latency- part-4/)

[7] [http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/06/03/file-system- laten...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/06/03/file-system-latency- part-5/)

<comment><USER5> +1 for anything Brendan writes or says. Seriously, to those of us who do this stuff, he's idol material.

<comment><USER6> Ditto for Mr Cantrill, one of the fathers of DTrace fwiw

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        It's not true for Gluster. It's not true for Ceph. It's not true for Lustre,
        OrangeFS, and so on. It's not even true for Sheepdog, which Torus very strongly
        resembles. None of these systems were designed for small clusters.

That's true. There is no system that is easy to administrate and starts with 1 Node and then can Scale to 1, 3, 5, 7, etc.

No system addresses this (they don't want to or it's to hard whatever).

</comment><comment><USER8> It started off so nice and friendly, and then reads so hostile at the end. Sort of like a shit sandwich, except with the bottom slice of bread missing.

I am curious to understand how Torus is similar to Sheepdog [0].

From the Sheepdog website:

        Sheepdog is a distributed object storage system for
        volume and container services and manages the disks
        and nodes intelligently. Sheepdog features ease of use,
        simplicity of code and can scale out to thousands of
        nodes.

        The block level volume abstraction can be attached to
        QEMU virtual machines and Linux SCSI Target and supports
        advanced volume management features such as snapshot,
        cloning, and thin provisioning.

        The object level container abstraction is designed to
        be Openstack Swift and Amazon S3 API compatible and can
        be used to store and retrieve any amount of data with a
        simple web services interface.

[0] [https://sheepdog.github.io/sheepdog/](https://sheepdog.github.io/sheepdog/)

<comment><USER5> Try this link to see the similarity a bit more clearly.

[https://github.com/sheepdog/sheepdog/wiki/Sheepdog- Design](https://github.com/sheepdog/sheepdog/wiki/Sheepdog-Design)

They're both basically block storage, with similar approaches to sharding and replication. Sheepdog seems to be using the term "object" more than they used to, but it's important to note that sheepdog objects have semantics closer to files or virtual disks than to S3/Swift style objects. The two also use related approaches (consensus vs. virtual synchrony) for coordination. Most of the differences are related to the fact that Sheepdog has already evolved over several years to have many of the features that are still on Torus's nascent road map. Ceph's RADOS/RBD is only a bit further from either one than they are from each other. None of them are _identical_ , of course, and I never said they were, but from a purely technical perspective Torus's stated goals could have been achieved more quickly by contributing to Sheepdog than by starting a new project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Anybody who would suggest these is not a storage professional, and should > not be making any claims about how long it might take to implement > filesystem semantics on top of what Torus already has.

The entire post reeks of condescension and arrogance.

I also don't like the potshots at marketing. I think Torus is of to a very good start. It's a project after all and they are claiming things to set across their vision. They didn't "lie" about things being here already but it's going to happen in the near future. What's wrong with that? Because "storage experts" think it takes years to build ? Sorry, visionaries don't listen to "experts" and set out doing things.

<comment><USER10> > visionaries don't listen to "experts" and set out doing things.

I am stealing that quote. It is my new favorite sarcastic quote.

<comment><USER11> It turns out that my 2 year old is a "visionary" \- who knew?</comment></comment></comment>


Monday Troll: Lisp and the syntax extension Myth - <AUTHOR> http://www.didierverna.com/sciblog/index.php?post/2012/05/14/Monday-Troll%3A-the-syntax-extension-myth

<comment><USER2> You can choose any color for your model T car as long as it's black.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, I'm pretty sure ou can do this with racket.</comment>


US Dept of Commerce puts 220% tariff on Bombardier - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-commerce-department-bombardier-tariff-219-trade-war-2017-9 <comment><AUTHOR> As background: the Quebec government bought $1B worth of the 'C Series program' (in terms of share value, who knows what that means, and it's a murky thing), which is the primary source of concern I believe.

Of course one could argue Boeing receives massive 'subsidies' from the US government in terms of pork-laden defence spending contracts. And other things, like incentives for various factories etc..

Airbus receives massive benefits from their network of R&D centres affiliated with Universities.

It's almost a farce to talk about aircraft manufacture as 'purely free trade' \- its de-facto a partly nationalized industry everywhere.

There would be 0 large planes in the sky if governments were not involved.

<comment><USER2> > Of course one could argue Boeing receives massive 'subsidies' from the US > government in terms of pork-laden defence spending contracts.

Were their defense programs (which includes clients outside the US, one of the interesting aspects of this move on their part, as they still want to sell Canada military planes) subsidizing their commercial operations, why would they not simply shut the commercial side down and keep more of that sweet, sweet, defense money as pure profit?

Of course, if it _doesn 't_, why doesn't Lockheed build out a commercial division? Do the technologies for each application just diverge too far to make it an irresistible combo?

<comment><USER3> Why throw good money away?

"subsidizing their commercial operations, why would they not simply shut the commercial side down and keep more of that sweet, sweet, defense money as pure profit?"

They are not subsidizing commercial operations with money, commercial operations is not operating on a loss long term. One small example, having billions of defense income makes your debt much cheaper. If they even need debt. From working in an enterprise company it's common to move money around on a zero interest rate basis. One part needs a billion $ to develop something or for marketing? Done. Some years later it gives that money "back". Zero interest. It was amazing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Getting cheaper debt means subsidization of one line of business from another.

Also - government spending is often more predictable and long term and provides a solid operating basis upon which to do other things.

And of course is the R&D and know-how overlap, in addition to all of the other things.

<comment><USER3> I'm not getting your argument

"They are not subsidizing commercial operations with money"

"Getting cheaper debt means subsidization of one line of business from another."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope Boeing has done their napkin math correctly, because the Canadian government has threatened to cancel their Super Hornet purchase over this dispute.

That's a $5 billion dollar order that may have just gone up in smoke:

 _Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threatening to scuttle the country 's plans to buy $5 billion worth of F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets from Boeing_

It would cost the Canadian government a lot of political capital to back down on this threat, so if the US is intent to apply an import tariff to the C-series I can absolutely see Canada cancelling the Super Hornet order.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a Canadian, I wish that were true, but our gov does not ever play hard ball. We fully play the nice guy routine. There's no face-saving for us. I'm even surprised they made the threat.

The other issue is - we are in a bind. We're buying F18's because we're not going to go for the F35s, at least for now. And switching temporarily to another vendor would be impossible ... and our 'long term commitment' is usually to the US when it comes to fighter jets etc.. It would be pretty interesting for Canada to go 'European' for the next 40 years, it would damage our relationship with the US.

This is going to be big news in Canada and cause some ire, surely.

<comment><USER5> Canada is perfectly happy to not have functioning hardware for extended periods of time. Especially now that it has entered a far more isolationist stance under Trudeau (in terms of military involvement).

<comment><USER6> It's funny, most people in the rest of the world don't even think Canada has a military. What do the Mounties need with F18s?

I am sure the Eurofighter consortium would be happy to take an order for some Typhoons tho'...

<comment><USER7> It seems like it would be an insanely huge task to start doing military contracts with a new supplier, get new parts, train servicemembers how to maintain the new planes, and deal with countless pieces of support equipment and infrastructure and software designed for one plane.

Then again, I really have no idea -- perhaps there are so few commonalities between an F/A-18 and an F-35 that it's just as easy to switch to another vendor.

<comment><USER6> There are barely any commonalities between F35 variants despite what was promised, it's another debacle of that programme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does Delta have to "import" the airplanes? As an airline, can't they pretend the planes are based elsewhere, and just fly inside the States? Must be a loophole here somewhere.

<comment><USER5> Foreign carriers aren't allowed to fly domestic routes but must have an international connection.

<comment><USER9> I remember hearing something identical to this about ships: The Jones Act [1] which requires all ships moving from US port to US port must be mostly US owned and mostly US crewed.

[1] [https://transportationinstitute.org/jones- act/](https://transportationinstitute.org/jones-act/)

<comment><USER10> Indian states often do this for intra-state trucking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Bombardier" seems like an unfortunate brand name for commercial aircraft.</comment>


OhLife Announces Premium Memberships - <AUTHOR> https://ohlife.com/getpremium/

<comment><USER2> I really like OhLife and i enoy the service. I don't really see a reason to go premium though. Also, this links to a 404...

<comment><AUTHOR> It didn't 404 for me... Not sure why it doesn't work.

I've used the service for well over a year now and love it. I'm going to sign up just to keep the service going.

<comment><USER2> When you're logged in the page shows up. When your not logged in the page displays:

"That page doesn't exist (404)! Sssh ... don't tell anyone but we haven't designed this page yet ..."

I wasn't supposed to tell though, so my b...</comment></comment></comment>


How to build a multiverse (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21573529 <comment><USER2> Paywalled.

<comment><USER3> I found the non-paywalled version: [http://pastebin.com/7NG6nRw5](http://pastebin.com/7NG6nRw5)</comment></comment>


Python is not context free (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://trevorjim.com/python-is-not-context-free/ <comment><USER2> There are some papers (which postdate this blog post) that add simple extensions to context-free grammars that are capable of expressing the grammars of indentation-based languages in a principled way: Principled Parsing for Indentation-Sensitive Languages (Michael Adams, 2013)[1] and Indentation-Sensitve Parsing for Parsec (Michael Adams, 2014)[2], which add support for indentation-based parsing to bottom-up parsers (specifically GLR and LR(k)) and top-down parsers (parser combinator-like systems and PEGs) respectively.

These techniques do not "make Python context-free", so the blog's content stands. However, they _do_ help address the final point of this blog post: they provide principled and limited tools which can express this kind of non- context-free grammar in a declarative way. Tools like these allow us to use simple lexers (i.e. without state hacks like Python's) while expressing indentation-based grammars using easy-to-understand-and-analyze BNF-like formalisms.

[1]: [https://michaeldadams.org/papers/layout_parsing/](https://michaeldadams.org/papers/layout_parsing/) [2]: [https://michaeldadams.org/papers/layout_parsing_2/](https://michaeldadams.org/papers/layout_parsing_2/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article...

I wrote a lexer for python as part of gpython: [https://github.com/go- python/gpython/blob/f100534592c96b7922...](https://github.com/go- python/gpython/blob/f100534592c96b7922c59660553ee77fbf217da1/parser/lexer.go#L375)

It is remarkably complex and has a huge amount of state including separate indent levels for parentheses, brackets and braces!

The lexer is extremely well defined in the python docs; I wrote my version entirely by looking at the docs and not at the CPython source code (unlike let's say the compiler!).

Shoving the complexity into the lexer does make the python grammar itself quite straight forward though.

</comment><comment><USER4> It feels to me like this is the thesis:

> Furthermore, a typical lexer will strip all whitespace from the token > stream, so the parser never sees it.

...but is that important in answering the underlying question?

Or, to ask it differently: can a lexer which ignores an entire class of legal characters (whitespace) ever be context free?

The fact that python performs minor gymnastics around whitespace in order to achieve its control structure pattern is not _per se_ pre-existing context in terms of its parser. If that's the conclusion that I'm being asked to reach, then I disagree with the argument.

<comment><USER5> > _Or, to ask it differently: can a lexer which ignores an entire class of > legal characters (whitespace) ever be context free?_

Sure.

What does ignoring "an entire class of legal characters" has to do with being context-free (which just means that each production rule doesn't need further context to work)?

You can trivially ignore "an entire class of legal characters with (regular language compatible) regular expressions - and if so, you can express that processing as a context-free grammar...

<comment><USER4> Righto - that's the exact point I was trying to make.

The article seems to extrapolate that because Python's syntax requires that _it not ignore_ whitespace characters, that this distinction represents context.

<comment><USER6> The point is that it requires the lexer to count whitespaces.

In practice it is very uniform and can be easily converted to a context-free language as indentation and parenthesis are equivalent.

The typical example is that a context-free language cannot remember numbers so a context-free parser cannot group together indentation levels. In general this tries to match something like (w^n a)* for a fixed n, which is not context free

<comment><USER4> ...but how is this any different than a '{}' language "remembering" whether a control structure is opening, and requiring a '}' to close it?

Don't these both represent the exact same amount of context (which reasonable people might disagree over which is "zero" or "non-zero")?

<comment><USER6> yes, the difference is that indentation is accepting ||1||2||3||4 and |||1|||2|||3|||4 but not ||1|||2|||3||4. Here the context is remembering how many bars had the last "line".

every correct indentation can be easily converted to parenthesis and viceversa (simply increase in indentation are opening brackets and decreasing are closing brackets), but it cannot be done by a context-free parser.

>Don't these both represent the exact same amount of context (which reasonable people might disagree over which is "zero" or "non-zero")?

the difference is in what kind of state the lexer can access. with parenthesis you remember in with a stack, you know what in what kind of block you are but know nothing of where you were. with indentation you need to remember the whitespaces on the previous line.

(Haskell for example has both a indentation based syntax and a {,} context- free equivalent syntax. In this sense focusing on being context-free is slightly meaningless.

(there is another category of languages which is very close to context free with the restriction that every token cannot be both "opening" and "closing" at the same time, as it is almost always the case. This category of languages can be operated on like regular languages, which is very nice)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you found this article interesting, you might find interesting Guido's blog post series about PEG parsers: [https://medium.com/@gvanrossum_83706/peg- parsing-series-de5d...](https://medium.com/@gvanrossum_83706/peg-parsing- series-de5d41b2ed60)

</comment><comment><USER8> > It's pretty obvious that most programming languages are not context free if > you consider them as languages over sequences of characters.

Not obvious to me. Can someone explain this?

<comment><USER9> Let's say you are parsing a language that contains both negative numbers, and the "minus" symbol. Most languages use the same ASCII glyph for both of those, but they mean very different things, and are parsed as parts of different tokens.

So, I believe the author's point is that in cases like these, you have to remember surrounding context in order to correctly classify which type of (and which) token a character belongs to.

<comment><USER10> Many mainstream languages don't actually have negative number literals. They lex `-42` as two tokens: the operator `-` and the integer literal `42`.

<comment><USER11> The unary minus operator is still different from the binary minus operator depending on context in languages that tackle it that way.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but that's a parsing-time distinction. The lexer does not need to care. And even though the token's syntactic meaning "depends on the context", the grammar itself can be (and usually is) perfectly context-free!

<comment><USER11> That depends a lot on your parser. Personally if I write a parser I don't generally bother with having a separate tokenizing/lexing stage. Tokenizing happens as-needed and inline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > the parser component is a context-free parser

> The Python lexer ... is the canonical non-regular, context-free language!

So we have a context-free lexer and a context-free parser. How come the total is not context free?

<comment><USER13> The lexer isn't context-free, and you should re-read the paragraph. The part that you left out in the dots is crucial:

> The Python lexer keeps, in addition, a stack of counters for the indentation > levels. Moreover, it keeps track of the nesting of parentheses; and the > language of balanced parentheses is the canonical non-regular, context-free > language! So in this design, there is no clear separation of the context- > free part and the context-sensitive part, and the context-sensitive part > goes well beyond what a typical lexer can do.</comment></comment>


1984 Steve Wozniak visit to NEOAC - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/44609839

<comment><USER2> Lol. "Their creative abilities are allowed to flourish by Steve Jobs' approach, seeking excellence in the products he is after. As long as it's his creation he believes it's excellent."</comment>


Man flies 737 from his garage - <AUTHOR> http://photos.mercurynews.com/2012/04/video-pleasanton-man-flies-a-boeing-737-in-his-garage/9029/ <comment><USER2> I'm waiting for homeland security to visit him and ask him what the hell he thinks he is doing building a terrorist training device in secret.

Jokes aside that's a pretty sweet setup, I'd like to see one for driving a car or flying a helicopter.

</comment><comment><USER3> So he's not remote controlling a 737, he's built a flight simulator in his garage. HN title makes the article a letdown.

<comment><USER4> Instead of remote controlling a 737 with, and not much more is needed theoretically client-side, a PC, he rebuilt the entire flight deck of one.

I hardly see this as a letdown.

<comment><USER5> You could remote control a 737 with an iPad. This is just to make a flight simulator more engaging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My favourite hackers are the ones who do it for fun. I don't imagine he has any aspirations of being acquired by Google. He does it because he loves it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I love these stories of nerds who take their hobbies to the next level. Reminds me of the guy who built a Lamborghini in his basement: [http://www.geekologie.com/2008/10/man-builds-lamborghini- cou...](http://www.geekologie.com/2008/10/man-builds-lamborghini-countac.php)

There's also this incredible miniature airport someone built: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8bZbC-xfMg>

<comment><USER8> The miniature airport is in Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg: <http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com> World's largest model railway.

<comment><USER9> That layout never fails to impress me. So detailed it has miniature traffic accidents, miniature bank robberies, and one time I think I saw a miniature terrorist incident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would anyone happen to know the requirements for simulators built for flight training use? You need quite a few hours on the simulator before you can really get to work on your pilot's license, renting the thing out during work hours to certified flight instructors/schools during the day would be a hell of a side business.

<comment><USER11> If you need something FAA certified, it's going to cost you a whole lot more than a non-certified one. X-Plane flight sim is available with certification for flight instruction use. It costs more than the desktop version.

For a private pilot's licence you're not required to have any sim time, but it's a very good idea anyway. But if you just want to practice your upcoming flying lesson with an instructor in a real airplane, pretty much any modern flight simulator is good enough for basic training. Off the shelf gaming controllers are good enough. You don't need a certified sim for that.

For commercial pilots flying passenger jets, there are big simulators that are different beasts.

<comment><USER12> Last I remember, the FAA doesn't certify software. A certified simulator is a hardware installation. There's really nothing specific required of the software; early "certified" simulators were just instrument gauges and a trivially simple flight model. There are some FlightGear-based training devices too.

<comment><USER11> It may be that you need a certification for each hardware installation separately. However, there are software requirements for FAA certification. This is from X-Plane Professional description: "It provides hardware and frame-rate checks required for FAA certification of the simulator".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The video was a letdown - all that talking and not one detail about how it was put together (other than the part about it being a boeing nose cone, but that was obvious).

<comment><USER14> Here's the most detail he has: <http://www.737simguy.com/OldSite/tools.htm>

He posted 2 weeks ago that he's working on a new site: <http://www.737simguy.com/>

<comment><USER15> Considering the praise he heaps on the EPIC input controller, the website for that product (<http://www.mindspring.com/~rrelect/epic/info/teaser.shtml>) is, dare I say it, almost epically underwhelming. :| I tried to find out a) what it looks like and b) how much it costs, just out of general interest, and failed on both.

<comment><USER5> With 300+ buttons, I don't think it's a controller like your thinking of. So much as an interface you can attach your own buttons to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sweden's IDG.se had an article recently on some enthusiasts building a 737 simulator. Article in Swedish, Google Translate might be helpful: [http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.441624/sa-bygger-du-din-egen- flyg...](http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.441624/sa-bygger-du-din-egen-flygsimulator ---del-1)

The web site of the society who built it: <http://www.swesim.se/>

The 737 isn't the only simulator they've got, among others they have a Viggen simulator (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_37_Viggen>).

(edit: formatting)

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder after 3 years of work on something like this how do you protect and/or insure it from fire or mischief as only one example? Security wise seems to be an issue making something like this so public (although I can certainly understand why you would want to show what you have built.)

</comment><comment><USER18> He uses Flight Simulator 2002 via networked machines for each screen!... I'm surprised he couldn't get one rig to run all the screens now. Really impressive setup.

<comment><USER11> He might need proprietary software to power his cockpit, and that might not be available for newer versions of Flight Simulator (w/ multi screen support).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How much did he pay (time and cost)?

You can rent and buy these sort if simulators. Prices range from a few grand per month to millions.

Obviously you miss out on the build process.

<comment><USER20> The video says he spent 3 years building it, nothing about the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was gonna say, is this about John Travolta?

</comment><comment><USER21> This guy = Hacker all of fame.

todo: pay him a visit.

</comment><comment><USER22> This guy is no 501 programmer!!!</comment>


Acer begs Microsoft to 'think twice' about Surface tablet - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57487883-75/acer-begs-microsoft-to-think-twice-about-surface-tablet/

<comment><USER2> Is there a company that better epitomizes the problems Microsoft has had over the last five years? Acer consistently puts out inferior quality machines made up of the cheapest components they can find. Then they install bloatware.

Consumers are getting the picture too. Acer's revenues have fallen for six straight quarters.

Acer shouldn't look for alternatives to Windows, (What alternatives!? I can't imagine what Acer would do to a Linux distro.) it should stop making bad products.

<comment><USER3> I don't see the problem. They are giving you the option of cheap hardware. A clean install fixes the bloatware issue. (Unless I'm overlooking that the hardware drivers are dependent on the bloatware for Acer laptops.) This is awesome for students.

A clean install is what a lot of power users do on buying a bloatware ridden laptop.

The main issue seems to be lack of knowledge for a majority of 'naive' consumer on how easy it is to do a clean install.

(Maybe someone can make a 10thingstodowhen.com, if it doesn't already exist.

This could not only include a list of things for '10 things to do when you buy a laptop' but other misc stuff like '10things to do when you install ubuntu 12.04' etc

Currently such lists are scattered all over the place.)

Edit: Looks like someone snapped it up :)

Creation date: 07 Aug 2012 15:44:00

Expiration date: 07 Aug 2013 07:44:00

[http://www.namecheap.com/domains/whois.aspx?domain=10thingst...](http://www.namecheap.com/domains/whois.aspx?domain=10thingstodowhen.com)

<comment><USER4> I bought a cheap Acer mini-desktop -- an Intel i3, microATX motherboard in a case just large enough for an optical drive, a hard disk and two low-height PCIe slots. It runs Debian very nicely, and acts as a MythTV client and web browser for my kids. Really, I have no complaints about the hardware.

My anecdote is just a datum, not data.

<comment><USER5> If we're giving anecdotes, anyone I've known who's owned an Acer laptop (n=4) has replaced it with something else within a year or two, because it broke. (Personally, I've had good experiences with Asus; it's a pity the names sound so much alike.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I smell fear. I am not a Microsoft fan-boy... far from it, but I have been wondering for years if Microsoft is ever going to drop the hammer and get some control on their software distribution by designing hardware with the intention of allowing the software to run as intended.

For many years I watched the bloatware that totally ruined the user experience, especially at the turn of the century.

Can Microsoft make quality hardware to compliment their software and in turn make their software feel "better" to the many of those who have turned away from it? They have the capital to figure it out.

The only "huge negative impact" that I can see from this is pushing the hardware manufacturers to innovate harder and do better with the use and distribution of the software. It is going to thin the herd for sure. I think this is necessary for Microsoft to gain some control over the user experience.

Yes, resellers and hardware manufacturers helped make Microsoft the huge corporation it is today, but the time has come. I think Microsoft only has to gain from this--if they do the hardware right.

<comment><USER7> It's not like this is the first time MS have done the hardware/software combo (which has been pretty successful for them)... xbox anyone?

<comment><USER8> If the Surface is like the Xbox, Microsoft has a problem. The Xbox did cost billions and took years until it made a profit. When the Surface costs billions for years and at the same time Microsoft pisses off the hardware producers they will focus on Ubuntu/Android/ChromeOS devices. This would hurt the big cash cow Windows licenses and make Microsoft weaker than ever.

<comment><USER9> Xbox did lose Microsoft billion(s) and take years to become profitable. But now it is profitable and one of their key products. They could lose billions on the Surface but they can also afford to lose billions. They have lost billions on terrible acquisitions in the last decade. I think it is better to spend the money on products that could help them be competitive.

<comment><USER10> The Xbox 360 also had significant hardware problems that weren't alleviated until price did not become an issue for MS which is how it's always been on consoles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please Microsoft! If you provide consumers with a high quality first-party experience, they might start to realize that we've been selling them shitware all along! Think Twice about this!!

<comment><USER12> Yeah, this. OEM's whine about Microsoft pushing them out of the game, except they've been busily harming the brand and giving opponents ammo by selling crap hardware with crap software preloaded.

You guys (OEMs) had roughly the better part of a decade to get it right. It should come as a surprise to precisely nobody that you're now being made irrelevant.

<comment><USER13> I can't understand how OEM:s think it is a good idea to get paid to preinstall trial versions. When I pay for aproduct, I don't want to be treated as their property to be sold to advertisers.

It's the same when I want to watch a movie trailer on the largest cinema chain here in Sweden. I have to watch an ad before I am allowed to watch the ad for the product they sell. It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER14> You have not used a Verizon phone then I assume. Not only does it come with trial versions, you cant uninstall the trial versions either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Microsoft is leaving its options open by developing its own slate hardware. By doing so it will obtain direct feedback from consumers and distribution channels in order to choose between the two general long term strategies - keeping the hardware in house like Xbox or moving to a software ecosystem model like Windows Phone.

When discussing Microsoft strategy, it is hard to over emphasize how long term their view tends to be. They spent a billion or more on Kin just to learn the mobile market. They spent billions on the Red Ring of Death to retain consumers. Its hard to recognize this philosophy because it is so different from the quarter to quarter strategies of the companies to which they are unfavorably compared - Wall Street would have thrown a tantrum if Apple had spent a billion on Ping in order to learn "Social". Just look at the heat Google took for Wave.

<comment><USER16> Spending a billion on something then killing it in under a year.... not sure how much you can 'learn' from that. And they can't do that forever (or even a lot). Spending, say, 15 billion over a year to 'learn' about 10 new ecosystems/industries - even MS can't sustain that pace for very long.

And what did they 'learn' about 'mobile' that many of their employees (especially rank and file) probably already knew? There's usually far more cost-effective and less public ways to 'learn' about stuff without making your company look totally inept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My mother once bought an Acer laptop. I've never seen a computer with more bloatware on it.

<comment><USER3> Did you see it after she used it for a week?

/Sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would really _love_ for MS to get in to the full hardware game, both on tablets, but also maybe smaller phone-form devices and maybe eventually desktops/laptops. Let them create what they consider the 'best' MS/windows experience. It might bring some people back to the MS camp, assuming it's good (and I suspect it would be).

The damage done to the MS brand over the past decade or so by manufacturers bundling crap on cheap hardware is enormous, and it may take MS either getting in to the hardware game directly, or tightening control over what can have Windows shipped on it, before we see a reversal of that. The same thing is playing out with Android - not sure why they didn't learn from the MS story.

This is not suggesting everyone should always and only make their own hardware, but without sufficient quality controls in place, the brand gets tarnished pretty quickly.

<comment><USER15> _"The same thing is playing out with Android - not sure why they didn't learn from the MS story."_

Who is "they" and will it be easier to get Android on the phone than it is to get Europe?

The financial viability of Android does not depend on the quality of the user experience. Just on data collection.

<comment><USER16> they = google (sorry).

oh, and the data collection won't be as good if people don't use it as much because the hardware/software combos are subpar.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure it's any easier to get Google on the phone than Europe (in Kissinger's sense, not in the way we might apply it to smartphones).

As for the second part, crapware increases data collection. That's one of the things that makes it crapware in a mobile context. It collects everything from location to the contents of one's video downloads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Acer should be scared. I've already sworn them off after every Acer PC myself or a friend has owned in the past six years has failed in one way or another long before it should have. Anyone that knows how to make quality hardware has much less to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER19> Acer basically dropped the ball on Tablets by firing their Italian CEO who wanted to invest heavily in touch and tablet design and double engineering staff. You reap what you sow JT Wang.

[http://www.cultofmac.com/94454/acer-former-ceo-trade- blame-f...](http://www.cultofmac.com/94454/acer-former-ceo-trade-blame-for- low-end-pc-sales-slump/)

 _The firm did not blame its sales slowdown on Acer chairman JT Wang, who in 2010 predicted the iPad share of the tablet market would plummet from 100 percent to 30 percent as soon as alternative devices appeared. So far, with Motorola, RIM, HP and others introducing rival tablets, the iPad market share still hovers around 80 percent.

Acer also did not blame its sales slowdown on its own strategy reversal, first embracing the idea of volume, then rejecting it when the company's founder, Stan Shih, announced a more Apple-like future. PC makers "should not single- mindedly pursue volume growth, and should extend its operation to the field of service, just like Apple has done."_

</comment><comment><USER20> I really hope the reaction by third party hardware partners is to start partnering with linux distros.

It would be great to have cheaply priced computers as an alternative to the Mac and upcoming MS ecosystems.

<comment><USER11> For linux's sake, I'd hope they don't partner with Acer.

<comment><USER20> Fair enough. They would most likely fill it with bloatware. I guess I'm hoping Lenovo and other reputable firms would start selling Linux boxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sounds like a healthy relationship.

</comment><comment><USER22> It sounds like MS hasn't gotten its way in the tablet and mobile OS market (by loosing to Android as the vendor choice), so it has tried to enter this end of the market itself. For the vendors to turnaround and say, stay off our new turf, or we might not choose your OS in the laptop and PC market is a ballsy move.

This move by MS might be their final demise (fingers crossed).

<comment><USER13> To what OS would they turn instead? There is no real alternative.

<comment><USER22> Linux is already a pre-installed choice for some vendors -- Dell for example.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker House Disappears - <AUTHOR> https://hacker.house/ <comment><USER2> Disappears how ? Working fine for me.</comment>


Doman registration scam: 35 million names registered in April. 32 million were part of a kiting scheme. - <AUTHOR> http://www.bobparsons.com/DomainKiting.html

<comment><USER2> 2006 called. It wants its article back.

</comment><comment><USER3> a little late to the game, but it's pretty sad that it's _still_ happening in 2008

</comment><comment><USER4> I work for a company that does domain tasting. It's perfectly legitimate. We have over a million domain names in our portfolio.</comment>


Small is Beautiful - <AUTHOR> http://synthcode.com/blog/2009/06/Small_is_Beautiful

<comment><USER3> I'll buy it, save for the music. Simple music is .. simple, `if it sounds good, it is good`.

Who after a certain age can sit down, turn on the radio and honestly enjoy the new cookie cutter tunes pushed out of LA? Good music changes the rules. See the hair standing on your arms - you didn't expect that chord change.

It goes further than that - Take a favorite piece. find a *.mid version of it. load it into a sequencer, take out all the dynamics and rhythm so the song is just chord changes, one per measure. It's unbearable. Unlistenable - <USER2> maybe to a student of music theory.

It takes a human ear to bend the sound and forge emotion clearly enough that the receiving end gleans something from it.

anyways, in music, more nuance is always better.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. I think the more primal idea (to be taken with all the requisite salt) is that you need to make things as simple as possible but no simpler.

[Maybe attributed to Einstein? I'm not sure]

In music "more nuance" often can go to far. I went to a concert a few days ago that was had a green noise-pop band as an opener. I really enjoyed their concept, but I wanted to go up there and physically remove some of their nuance. It was too layered, too complex, too cerebral.

The pivotal thing though is that I liked their concept. I think the things they were trying to build, and the emotions they were trying to invoke were great. They just needed to spend more time whittling away to that solid core and less time playing with loops on their laptops.

So yeah. "If it sounds good, it is good." But that's the kind of statement that takes "simpler is better" more or less axiomatically.

<comment><USER3> by nuance, I mean the precision of that moment, not layers of masks, which I agree take away from the whole thing. -- A slight accent staggered across multiple instruments, the subtlety and artfulness of the performers. So maybe resolution would a better term, surely who could argue against too much resolution?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the best criticisms of the Scheme philosophy is that making the language so "simple" doesn't actually simplify programs you would want to write in it--it just pushes the complexity somewhere else. It's still Lisp, you can extend the language to be suitable, but it requires a surprising amount of work.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious if anybody has thoughts regarding the work of maximalists. The only person coming to mind right now is the prolix writer David Foster Wallace. Is his method of writing entirely flawed? Or are there cases where being over-the-top is preferable?

<comment><USER4> I think if adherence to simplicity prevents you from creating what you want to create they you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER7> mos def! "as simple as possible" might in fact be quite complex. the mantra is more of an implementation of how to be direct and efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Keep it Simple and Scalable.

</comment><comment><USER9> Simple is beautiful.

<comment><USER10> Only if it's not too simple. "Too simple" -- subjective -- YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That is not what she said! (go ahead vote me down)

</comment><comment><USER12> Great post!</comment>


U.S. Border Patrol Hasn't Validated E-Passport Data for Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/us-border-patrol-hasnt-validated-e-passport-data-for-years/ <comment><USER2> Typical US administration. First they mandate everybody who wants to visit to have a machine readable passport. And more than 10 years later they still don't have appropriate readers.

(There are incompetent and slow administrations in many countries, I don't deny that. But few have the power to dictate changes with worldwide impact.)</comment>


New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/04/28/new-study-shows-mass-surveillance-breeds-meekness-fear-and-self-censorship/ <comment><USER2> I don't think I've ever been this paranoid around privacy in my life for a couple personal and interesting reasons.

-I disclosed a major security failure at comcast yesterday. It was surprisingly effectively handled and fixed, but in the process I tweeted their CISO after not being able to find any contact for her or even their security team (their security team told me they're going try to fix process this now). She blocked my twitter account the next day, but followed/unfollowed me sometime much later in the day. I can't help shake a weird feeling from that on so many levels. [https://imgur.com/ghT0t8o](https://imgur.com/ghT0t8o)

-Suin' the mayor of Chicago next week for his phone records after struggling to go through FOIA for about a year and a half. In the process, they were willing to disclose phone numbers of non-government phones to me with the last four digits redacted. They won't give me government owned phone numbers dialed for "privacy concerns" (HAH). FOIA specifically mentions that their privacy shouldn't be considered for redaction/non-disclosure. Lots of other things and I'd like to write something up on it after it's all done, but I can't help shake a visceral paranoia when I walk outside or do internets at the moment.

I'm not going to let that paranoia turn into meekness, though, and if anything, it's made me much more open about my concerns and has even thrown me deeper into these rabbit holes. I've had lawyers, friends and family ask me I'm afraid that something bad will happen, and the answer is mostly "yes, but it's just a fear for the unknown and not for my life, etc". Being open about it seems to reduce that fear.

</comment><comment><USER3> Long ago after taking a class on computer security that included more than its fair share of stories of espionage and intrigue, a paranoid part of my brain started to think that maybe they were indeed watching everything happening online, all the time. But another part of my brain, let's call that paranoia- self-restraint, pushed that back for years. After Snowden, that paranoia-self- restraint voice doesn't get much airtime.

</comment><comment> and-can So, it's working as designed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Related: "Training" societies in tolerating interceptions [http://bit.ly/1aDqyIP](http://bit.ly/1aDqyIP)</comment>


Crypterium – Cryptobank for Cryptopeople - <AUTHOR> https://tokensale.crypterium.io/?ref=f008981a174d24484ee536a1 <comment><USER2> "Use your token as a gas and get reward in CRPT from all users transactions every month" from [https://crypterium.io/](https://crypterium.io/) \--Unfortunately that statement makes it a security. As HN is based in the US (with an awesome worldwide community), that's not a good thing... have a read of this [https://www.sec.gov/investor/alerts/ia_solicitation.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/investor/alerts/ia_solicitation.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: What color does your hat have? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> i have a dark blue hat and a stripy one, but this question is odd enough that I feel like it might be a code or reference which I am not getting.</comment>