FreeBSD 11.0 amd64 binaries - <AUTHOR> https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/amd64/11.0-RELEASE/ <comment><USER2> While this is not yet officially out, since there was no announcement made, we're very close to official release. Be aware, that this may, or may not, use the images available right now, so hold your horses until the announcement is made (or accept the risk).

Regardless of that, I'd like to remind everyone that FreeBSD is not 'just another OS out there' but an important piece of technology powering lots of things we often use: from Sony's PlayStation and WhatsApp, through Netflix and Yahoo, to Juniper and PFSense networking gear and EMC storage and FreeNAS appliance - and many, many more!

So, have you donated yet? We need FreeBSD and FreeBSD needs your support!

[https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/](https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/)

<comment><USER3> No offense meant, but knowing that a bunch of very profitable multinationals rely on FreeBSD doesn't make me more willing to donate my hard-earned paycheck :)

This comment on many OSS projects being essentially corporate welfare rings particularly true: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9112744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9112744)

<comment><USER4> You have that problem not just in OSS, but basically all infrastructure donations. That's actually part of the reason why I think infrastructure should be government-backed in the sense, that "if everyone uses it/benefits from it it might be worthwhile to make everyone pay for it". For a lot of those things usage kind of scales with income. Not always, but more than in other cases.

And indeed governments be it the European Union and DARPA for example invest in Open Source.

However since it also isn't really like FreeBSD has huge amounts of money each individual donation helps a lot. That's basically where the money that could be taxed goes.

Also you kind of ensure that the projects you enjoy a lot make progress, thereby creating more job opportunities where you can work with those technologies.

I agree that big corporations should donate more. Maybe writing emails to them makes sense. Kind of making a good press/bad press campaign.

Like Apple building products that are based on government sponsored research and therefor shouldn't do every little thing to avoid taxes.

Companies invest such big amounts into marketing, selling themselves as good corporate cititzens. I really think that people should put more effort into calling out socially bad companies and praising good behavior. Then they have the choice whether they make marketing to counter or maybe invest and start to be good.

Would even be a cool project to track those things. All good and bad stories of companies.

Of course companies could try to manipulate that, but they are already trying to cover up bad stuff. I think that could make companies to be more inclined to do the socially good thing.

I really hope that marketing will kind of become the showing of how great a company behaves on the planet. Not just making TV spots that look like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Speaking of FBSD releases, is this were everyone gets their ISO images via torrent now? I know 11.0 isn't there yet (probably because it isn't released yet)

[https://wiki.freebsd.org/Torrents](https://wiki.freebsd.org/Torrents)

Just wondering how 'official' this was. I know I can verify hashes, etc. Just curious, and I always like to seed new releases for a few months.

</comment><comment><USER6> The official announcement has not yet happened. Mods, can someone please update the title to include (unofficial)

Until final testing and verification had happened the release images can be re-generated.

</comment><comment><USER7> This release contains the necessary changes to run Apple's Swift under FreeBSD as well.

<comment><USER8> I'm trying it out just because of this. Thanks for the info =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The last time I ran FreeBSD, it seemed like the way the ports worked made it, in practice, something like running Arch or Gentoo. The ports tree didn't seem to branch into any kind of stable platform. It's been some years, and I do remember some VuXML thing for checking for packages with known security vulnerabilities so you could just upgrade those. This is in contrast with, say, NetBSD's pkgsrc, which it looks like they try to keep in a stable state and rotate quarterly. This is also in contrast to OpenBSD, where a version of the ports tree is synced to the OS itself. (You can upgrade to a -current ports tree and run it on -stable, but that's not "supported", despite typically working.)

So, is that still the current state of affairs? I'm just the sort of person that prefers packages held at a fixed version and patched for a while. In a lot of ways, I like FreeBSD, but it appears to be, de-facto, in terms typically used to described Linux, a rolling-release server distribution. Perhaps some derivative or other project tries holding a stable set of packages or ports on FreeBSD for some time?

<comment><USER6> Leaving packages at a fixed version and patching them is a terrible idea. This is a Linux mindset and while it was fun for a few years it does not scale and it is not sane. You're effectively forking the software by diverging from upstream and then you have the fun of creating new security vulnerabilities by incorrectly backporting fixes. Go look at the update history for Apache HTTPD on RHEL -- this has happened several times in the past.

That said, since FreeBSD 10.0 there is now a stable "quarterly" branch which is enabled by default. The goal is to relieve you from the rolling release trauma for 3 months at a time. You get security and bug fixes: if it's very trivial, it's a backported patch; if it's a minor update, we will not hesitate to do that instead; if it's a major update and we don't trust backporting the fix, we push that update. The goal is to prevent major changes that could break compatibility or default behavior when possible, but that's not always achievable.

Anyway, it works pretty well. We will continue to strive to be better, but it's very usable. We heavily rely on the community for feedback and notification if something has been overlooked. Please try it out and let us know if you have any problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Guys, I landed in state where I can't do any upgrade:

root@slave:/ # freebsd-update -v debug fetch -F Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... none found. Fetching public key from update.FreeBSD.org... fetch: [http://update.FreeBSD.org/11.0-ALPHA3/i386/pub.ssl](http://update.FreeBSD.org/11.0-ALPHA3/i386/pub.ssl): Not Found failed. No mirrors remaining, giving up.

Apparently there is no 11.0-ALPHA3 version published anywhere. How do I upgrade to RC3 now?

<comment><USER4> You want RC3, not ALPHA3?

freebsd-update upgrade -r 11.0-RC3

<comment><USER10> root@slave:/ # freebsd-update upgrade -r 11.0-RC3 -v debug Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... none found. Fetching public key from update.FreeBSD.org... fetch: [http://update.FreeBSD.org/11.0-ALPHA3/i386/pub.ssl](http://update.FreeBSD.org/11.0-ALPHA3/i386/pub.ssl): Not Found failed. No mirrors remaining, giving up.

<comment><USER11> My understanding is that upgrades are not supported for ALPHA releases. It's worked for me for the BETA and RC releases.

<comment><USER10> Do you know why is it trying to request ALPHA3 when I want to upgrade to RC3? Will I be able to upgrade to -RELEASE in a week?

<comment><USER11> Are you _on_ ALPHA3? What does freebsd-version show?

<comment><USER10> ALPHA3, I even dont know how I got this version!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't quite understand, the FreeBSD site has version 12 available and listed as it's current release where as 11 is only at rc3, which is strange that 11 is clearly older than 12?

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/12.0/

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/VM- IMAGES/12.0-CURRENT/amd64/Latest/

<comment><USER13> You should have a read of:

[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/current- stable.html](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/current-stable.html)

CURRENT and STABLE are development branches.

[http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/205089/whats-the- dif...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/205089/whats-the-difference- between-the-three-freebsd-versions)

<comment><USER12> wow that's confusing! Thanks for the links though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been trying up upgrade my VPS since yesterday, but none of the mirrors freebsd-update tries to contact seem to carry it, yet. :(

OTOH, the project homepage does not have an official announcement, yet, either.

Can anyone give me a _brief_ overview of what changes 11.0 will bring? I think I remember something about support for the Raspberry Pi (and other ARM-based systems), but my memory is not what it used to be...

<comment><USER15> A brief overview can be found here: [https://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD11](https://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD11)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is resumable ZFS send/receive included?

</comment><comment><USER10> OT: Quite a pity rust and cargo are not fully supported yet :<

<comment><USER17> What do you mean? Rust and cargo are in ports so you can just install them.

<comment><USER18> And there are probably packages as well if s/he doesn't want to wait a hour or so for rustc to build. This is a bit out of date but still:

[http://system.joekain.com/2015/07/04/rust-and-cargo-on- freeb...](http://system.joekain.com/2015/07/04/rust-and-cargo-on-freebsd.html)

It's probably even easier today.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, you don't need to do that anymore on FreeBSD: we officially distribute x86_64-unknown-freebsd (as tier 2) and i686-unknown-freebsd (as tier 3) versions of std, rustc, and cargo these days: [https://doc.rust- lang.org/stable/book/getting-started.html#p...](https://doc.rust- lang.org/stable/book/getting-started.html#platform-support)

<comment><USER10> Where can I download cargo for i686-unknown-freebsd ?

<comment><USER19> [https://static.rust-lang.org/dist/index.html](https://static.rust- lang.org/dist/index.html) is where all the builds are stored. [https://static.rust- lang.org/dist/rustc-1.11.0-i686-unknown-...](https://static.rust- lang.org/dist/rustc-1.11.0-i686-unknown-freebsd.tar.gz) should have both the rustc and cargo for 1.11.

<comment><USER10> It doesnt have cargo there, only rustc. cargo still doesnt build on FreeBSD platforms.

<comment><USER19> Very strange, I must have opened the wrong one. I thought I saw it? I wonder why the docs are wrong here, then...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This should be changed to the following load balanced version IMO:

[https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/amd64/11.0-RELEASE...](https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/amd64/11.0-RELEASE/)

<comment><USER20> Or maybe the .ISO directory?

[https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO- IMAGES/11.0/](https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO-IMAGES/11.0/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If I understand the schedule right, then the release announcement is scheduled for Wednesday (28 Sep).

[https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/schedule.html](https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/schedule.html)

<comment><USER4> Yeah and it's not the socially best thing to announce it here before that, not giving mirrors time to sync (note: it's the master mirror and not download.freebsd.org for example). Also because theoretically there could be updated images uploaded still, causing chaos.

Also it doesn't make a lot of sense to link to a download mirror in first place.

Maybe the link should be changed to release notes or download.freebsd.org for a load balanced version.

Release Notes:

[https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/relnotes.html](https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/relnotes.html)

<comment><USER22> People are doing this wrong for ages. It is brought up with every release. That will not change.

The only way to change it, is to adapt and change the release rollout process. If it would be really a big problem for the project, they would probably have done that a long time ago. Just my guess.</comment></comment></comment>


Why has Japan had better mobile phones than the United States? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Historically-why-has-Japan-had-better-mobile-phones-and-better-mobile-internet-access-than-the-United-States/answer/Benedict-Evans

<comment><USER2> The US market is as unique as the Japanese _(for different reasons)_. And when I arrived in US from UK in 2006 I was staggered at how behind the phone technology was.

In addition to the points raised in the Quora link, I think a lot of the reason US didn't innovate was because other than the NE corridor there isn't a public transport culture like there is in Japan and Europe - where people will sit on a train for 45 minutes and watch TV or engage with apps _(and thus be prepared to pay for them)_.

Sure the iPhone and Android have bought app culture to the US but I bet the amount of engagement they receive is much shorter than in Europe and Asia.

Here in the US I think a lot of Apps are task oriented - "I want to find a restaurant nearby"... 30 seconds later the app is closed and done. In Europe I might be on a train for half an hour so I'll engage with a video-on-demand app... I'll watch 5 news clips and read two articles which might be 10minutes + usage.

</comment><comment><USER3> This may have been true in the 90s/early 00s, but I'm not sure if it is anymore.

During a trip to Tokyo a few years back, I got to see some of the "advanced" phones up close: big, clunky, and plastic. The majority of phones are flip, with very few smart phone users.

There is a big difference in what the Japanese want out of phones for sure though. While we're fixated on Internet access and applications to pass the time, the biggest seller of phones in Japan is the ability to watch TV through 1seg: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-seg>

Wikipedia has another really interesting article on cell phone culture in Japan: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_mobile_phone_culture>

<comment> T-R I'd argue it's still true, but to a lesser degree. In addition to 1seg, I think FeliCa's a big one.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This makes no sense.

NTT is a telecom, and analogous to one of our companies: Verizon. They specify things to all manufacturers too, but things like V-Cast and buttons that "accidentally" launch the internet on their phones.

I think this has less to do with the "closed model" Evans idolizes, and more with a culture that embraces technical innovation, even at the corporate level. (Remember, he's ex telecom.)

<comment><USER2> No, you're not comparing apples to apples.

What NTTDoCoMo is specify _everything_ from the electronics through to the user experience. In other words it is a holistic approach.

What Verizon does is say to the handset OEMs "slap on some extra icons, applications and a button to your existing experience" if you want to get your phones on our network. It's anything but a holistic approach and simply degrades the original experience the OEM/OS provider made.

As referenced in the Quora answer, the carriers in Japan are making good ARPUs and so it is in their interest to be providing the end user with an overall good experience.

Verizon, like all of the carriers in the US market, makes slim ARPUs and so from a corporate perspective they are more incentivized to tack on up-sells to increase ARPU which is exactly what all the V-Cast stuff is about.

In many ways it's similar to the Apple experience vs Dell (+ all the pre- installed bloatware) experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live in Tokyo, as the CTO for a local startup.

Before the iPhone, Japanese mobiles were definitely a step ahead, but now that the iPhone, and its Android competition, are thriving around the world, everything that isn't one of the above feels about ten years behind.

Classic Japanese mobile phones don't support Javascript. Or cookies. A large number of handsets don't allow images at all on pages with SSL, or stylesheets of any kind -- you have to specify CSS in-line, with the 'style' attribute on each element you want to style.

Native apps exist, but if you want to develop them, be prepared to spend a shocking pile of money.

None of this holds for the iPhone or Android-derived devices over here, but those are no better then their foreign counterparts.

In terms of features, the only truly useful thing that I can think of that Japanese mobiles have is mobile Suica -- it's nice to be able to have your commuter pass integrated with your phone. Charging it up with cash can be a pain in the ass, as the web-based tools are crap, but it's nice nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER6> I read an article years ago, which I can't seem to find, that gave a completely different reason for this phenomenon. Real estate is so expensive that large numbers of teens and twenty somethings have no hope of moving out of their parents' apartment even if they are working. This means there is an entire demographic with plenty of cash to spend on high end (preferably compact) technology. I have no way of knowing if this is actually the case, but I don't think the OP does either.

</comment><comment><USER7> For people arguing that Japanese phones are not very good, what would you say about the European Market vs the USA?

</comment><comment><USER8> Given the time period mentioned in the quora post, yes the Japanese (at least in Tokyo) had more advanced phones than we readily had access to here in the US until 2007. However, I was in Japan a little over a year ago, and I can tell you affirmatively that the common phones people were using were less- advanced than my iPhone 3G at the time.

The typical phone was a long skinny thing with a tiny elongated screen and dozens of impossibly tiny buttons crammed together to make something like a keyboard. They had cameras of inferior quality, inferior internet access, etc. I'll grant that some of their phones had things like NFC, but that's the exception that proves the rule. And my, was my little touchscreen phone popular with the ladies.

Its hard to disagree that Apple alone has completely shaped what it means to be a smartphone in the last 4 years. Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone 7 did not exist before iOS came out. Android _has_ become the marginal market leader in the last 6 months or so in terms of overall phones sold, but that's a fragmented OS market now. The WebOS phones failed, and WP7(a pretty cool OS, imho) is having trouble getting traction. Right now, biggest and most unified smart phone market is simply iOS.

But to put everything into perspective, the model described by in the QP is remarkably similar to Apple's model in many ways. About 10 years ago, DoCoMo said "these are the specs that you will support on your phones", and because DoCoMo had the marketshare of customers, that's what happened. In the US, you don't see a red Verizon logo on the iPhone, right? Apple controls the software and hardware, aka "the specs" of their phones. They have dictated what the carriers will support for things like Visual Voicemail.

The sad part is that DoCoMo seems to have been innovating for a while, which helped give Japan (Tokyo?) the cache of having the best phones in the world. However, that hasn't been true for a long time and now the most popular phones in Japan are iPhones.

<comment><USER9> I had a pretty different experience, I been to Japan probably around 7 times over last 10 years. Last couple times (within last 2 years) IPhone became big, but.. many people actually own 2 phones if they have iphone. I think huge reason is that in packed subway you want to be able to type with one hand. Other stuff like TV etc is also quite important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Meh. I spent a lot of time shopping for mobile phones in Japan last year. _Nothing_ was even close to the iPhone (other than the iPhone).

Some aspects of Japanese cell phones were better than some aspects of American phones. Simplifying it to DoCoMo having a lot of sway is, IMO, ignoring an awful lot. Tokyo has tremendous population density. Demand was high for mobile Internet access because not everyone has the space for a home computer, and people spend a lot of time out and about. People send emails like mad because it's cheaper and because it's more polite than yelling into your handset while on the train. Payment chips got integrated because the local McDonald's might pass a hundred times the number of customers per day than your local American one.

Of all the things driving Japanese cell phone technology, the ones listed seem pretty minor. Give that sort of focused demand to US carriers and I think you'd see far faster adoption of specific technologies.

By the way, my Japanese cell phone has a built-in TV receiver _and_ recorder. And as near as I can tell, SoftBank voicemail isn't voicemail at all; it's an actual answering machine built into my handset. Weird.

<comment><USER11> That was pretty much my experience when I visited the place in the summer of 2005. I remember they were _just_ introducing camera phones, and thinking to myself, hasn't the US had camera phones for like 3-4 years now?

<comment> T-R My impression has been exactly the opposite - aside from full-internet on smartphones (not to say it isn't a big deal), new features in the US lag by something like 5 to 10 years. QR code reading and easy contact transfer(like 赤外線) still aren't out-of-the-box features (hacked in by third party software like Bump), and most Americans don't know what a QR code is. We still can't pay for things at the grocery store or buy train tickets with a cell phone, whereas Japan has had FeliCa Mobile for 7 years now. Live TV on a cell phone is also non-existent in the US. In Japan, these are all so common that they're available on the free-with-plan phones.

Also, according to the Japanese Wikipedia article, the first camera phone was DDI(Wilcom)'s VP-210 in 1999, and they exploded in popularity with Sharp's J-SH04 on J-Phone(Softbank) in 2000.[1] The US, by contrast, got their first camera phone in 2002.

[1] <http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/カメラ付き携帯電話>

<comment><USER12> QR Code support seems like a software and cultural issue; they have public awareness in Japan and are thus useful. But it's not like most phones don't have the horsepower to read the things.

TV on phones is a matter of the local broadcast technology making it easier to support smaller recievers (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1seg>). And also (again) a cultural issue; what's the use case for watching TV on your phone in the states? In Japan, it's so you can watch baseball when you're on the train.

But I'm with you about payment. I got a special iPhone case with a slot for my train card (icoca) just so I could feel modern. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What to expect if your startup is featured on the front page of Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://checkmint.posterous.com/aftermath-of-our-pre-launch

<comment><USER2> Sounds like you guys are getting what you deserve. Lots of interest in a great product. Keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER3> The original HN post was <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202781> and it had 19 points.

</comment><comment><USER4> How many uniques did it send?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we were on the front of the site for about 45 minutes. We saw over 2k uniques within that time.

Then we saw another wave late that night when Europe woke up and started tweeting. The "social sharing" confirmation page continues to bring traffic, but it's slowed considerably after the first two days.</comment></comment>


"How to replace the editor with a computer" - algorithms for news sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10804121

<comment><USER2> "For the average editor, that analogy might seem abstruse. But what it means in practice is that if you run a website, you would be wise to learn more about exactly how interest in your stories cools off, if you want to display those stories in a way that will entice the largest number of people to read them. You digg?"

Isn't this exactly what the folks at digg have dug? And haven't the redditors made alternative, but related, decisions?

That's not to criticize the story, but can't a writer at the Economist get someone from any of the companies on the phone to discuss exactly these strategies? Seems like a weird place to end things.

<comment><USER3> That's where the Economist ends the story, and Slashdot picks it up.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. But the sub-title leads with "How" and the review of research goes into a bit of detail (for a popular account). How hard could it be to get a few quotes from Rose or Steve, esp for a writer at the Economist?</comment></comment></comment>


The Unmaking and Remaking of Sierra On-Line - <AUTHOR> http://www.filfre.net/2013/07/the-unmaking-and-remaking-of-sierra-on-line/ <comment><USER2> PCjr and Tandy 1000 graphics and sound made Sierra games better than the PC CGA and speaker. That was until VGA and Soundblasters came out.</comment>


What do you do for living? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if every Hacker News reader here works in technology or codes for living.<p>I work at an investment bank, but my friends and I are working on a web startup on weekends. I was wondering if anyone else is in a similar situation. <comment><USER2> Developer by day. Programmer by night.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mechanical Engineer, but on software related tasks,

and "as usual" :) coding on nights and weekends for a web startup

</comment><comment><USER4> Electrical engineer - doing circuit design and firmware...

other coding projects on nights/weekends

</comment><comment><USER5> Programming and some system administration.

I avoid using computers on the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was a depth geophysicist until a couple months back.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was in technical sales till a couple of months back.</comment>


Life and Death Online: Who Controls a Digital Legacy?  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324677204578188220364231346-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwNTEwNDUyWj.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _U.S. and Canadian laws, which are similar for the most part, don't treat digital assets like physical ones that can be distributed according to wills. In 1986, Congress passed a law forbidding consumer electronic-communications companies from disclosing content without its owner's consent or a government order like a police investigation. Although that law predates the rise of the commercial Internet, courts and companies have largely interpreted it to mean that the families can't force companies to let them access the deceased's data or their accounts._

\-- Key Empirical Fact about digital 'Assets'</comment>


BitTorrent Troll Admits Its All About Making Even More Money - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-troll-admits-its-all-about-making-even-more-money-120417/

<comment><USER2> For a moment I thought TF was coming clean!</comment>


Ask HN: Advertising networks for small web apps? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to monetize a small web app. Its quite new but getting around three hundred hits per day. I tried applying for Adsense but got rejected because the site isn't content based and also because of the site didn't meet some age requirement.<p>The web app is located at http://videodropper.ep.io. Do you have any suggestions for ad networks that's suitable for small non-content based sites? <comment><USER2> To answer the question you actually asked: try Project Wonderful, which works very well for small publishers. 300 hits per day should get you some reasonable ad prices.

However, I'd also suggest looking into alternative sources of funding, or alternatively just treating it as a hobby. Also note that numerous video downloaders already exist; "send to Dropbox" does not necessarily make yours stand out, and it will cost you quite a bit of bandwidth.

You might also look into hosting which provides unmetered bandwidth, such as gandi.net.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not trying to make this my main stream of income, I just want to monetize it so that it can pay its own bills. What other sources of funding do you recommend?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I liked the idea of your service although I was reluctand to give it access to my dropbox as I wasn't sure what that meant. Would you be able to see all my files ?

In terms of monitization I think you're screwed, unless you got down the banner ads route which is going to make the site look terrible.

</comment><comment><USER4> love coincidences, I have just published my own network for betas and startups ( right now it' s under your post in the hn ask page ). Maybe it' s not exactly what you are looking for, also because it' so new that there are not many people in it. But i think it's worth checking out :) Best wishes and good look for your app, which i like a lot by the way!

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it help me monetize my site? Or is it just link exchange?

<comment><USER4> Auomated link exchange, i' m afraid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You could try influads.com , their ads are great and the network is pretty solid and targeted. Not cheap, though

<comment><USER5> I think samrat is looking to put ads in his app rather than advertise the app, so there is no cost - although influads are definitely not "cheap" for advertisers...

In any case, I would recommend influads as well. They are currently working with quite a few people with the same situation as you - people that have an app with moderate success and are looking to incorporate some non-intrusive, good-looking, and relevant advertisements.</comment></comment>


FCC chair: ISPs should be able to charge Netflix for Internet fast lane - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/fcc-chair-isps-should-be-able-to-charge-netflix-for-internet-fast-lane/

<comment><USER2> Wait, why isn't this topic front of HN?! This seems much more important than some of the other front pages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. Wasn't the FCC one of the stongest proponents of net.neutrality? What happend? Can anyone explain?

<comment><USER4> New FCC chair. Fresh off the job as a lobbyist for ISPs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> and I'd be fine with this if my choices of internet providers was greater than 2.</comment>


Use a config file to SSH into a server - <AUTHOR> http://ikarandeep.tumblr.com/post/84604658821/use-a-config-file-to-ssh-into-a-server

<comment><USER2> Why does no one ever mention ssh-copy-id?! Is part of Openssh and copies across your default pub key to the server in question.

ssh-copy-id user@server

Edit: Add more info

<comment><USER3> because is not present in the mac default installation

<comment><USER2> Does osx not use Openssh Package? On Fedora here so had always wondered why all these setup guides included this step.. the osx thing might explain it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great!

Some other things about ssh that everyone knew but me (until I found out):

-scp supports bash completion for files on the server if you use a key pair.

-Keychain ([http://www.funtoo.org/Keychain](http://www.funtoo.org/Keychain)) makes having a password on your private key less of a hassle by prompting for your password when you first log in to your local account and using that when you ssh. (ssh-agent alone is similar but requires your password for every new login session).

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice article, you could add this for added wow factor

[https://github.com/emre/storm](https://github.com/emre/storm)

</comment><comment><USER6> Usually after setting up ssh RSA keys, I'll alias it to something significantly shorter. Works pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would love a kind of launcher for hosts in config file. Say, something like:

        ~ sshlaunch[enter]
        Select host:
        [0] Test1
        [1] Test2
        [2] Test3
        Enter host number and hit enter:

<comment><USER8> This probably isn't to difficult to implement, hell I could even try to write something like that right now and put it on github. (I would have simply sent you an email but you don't have one in your profile)

EDIT: You will need python3 since I used input(), and this probably is my first python script so it's a bit messy:

[https://gist.github.com/anonymous/e13d3d743c77bc1e39e6](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/e13d3d743c77bc1e39e6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> what's next? tail(1)?

<comment><USER10> Had to upvote. Exactly my sentiments</comment></comment>


Get more out of your startup reading - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/1/11/get-more-out-of-your-startup-reading

<comment><USER2> I've been taking notes too. I can't publish most of them because I use note- taking as a way of heavily criticising articles, which contain mostly fluff or wrong conclusions. It helps me think thoughts which, if I shared with others, would almost definitely offend them.

It's hard to criticise people's work seriously without hurting their egos.

So, I hope to turn it into a comic one day.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had hoped that people would do things like that (summaries, discussions) on SqueezedBooks.com but now I've sold it (although I retain some interest in it) and am not sure where it's going to go right now.

<comment><USER2> That looks like a great site with lots of good content. Does it bring in much revenue?

<comment><USER3> Nope.

<comment><USER2> How did you manage to sell it then? Much traffic?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it gets a reasonable amount of traffic, and ranks fairly well on Google for summaries of some of the books. I was never able to do a good job of translating that into active participants, advertising dollars, or Amazon referral fees either. Part of the reason I sold it and retained some interest in it is to see if someone else could do a better job.

<comment><USER2> I've noticed a few interesting book sites recently -

<http://7bks.com>

<http://www.hn-books.com/>

<http://anynewbooks.com/>

<http://bookflavor.com>

Maybe you could partner up with one of them?

<comment><USER4> I'm open to suggestions and partnerships (for AnyNewBooks.com).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I take notes, but mainly from the books I read. I did see a site that gave a condensed version of business books, but I can't seem to find it off-hand. What I think would be useful would be a site like Read Later, but where you could annotate and others could find your notes prior to reading the full article. Personally I never read a HN article before I read the notes to see whether its worth reading!

<comment><USER2> Is this the site you can't find? <http://sivers.org/book>

<comment><USER5> Wow, it's not but that's a great find. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Taking notes definitely helps. The problem is I always forget to revisit them. That's exactly why me and some friends built thoughtback.com. It's a micro- journaling tool with mac and web apps that automatically re-exposes you to your thoughts.

PS - I'm really not sure if it's appropriate to post a link to a service that's relevant to the article in the comments if I made it. Should I not do this again?

</comment><comment><USER7> Brilliant post there. Jotting down what you have learnt is not only important for others, but also for you. Writing stuff down means putting your thoughts to order, means better view on your product or company.

<comment><USER7> it least this is the case for what I am working on ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my opinion, the most difficult part of this kind of endeavor is to continuously update the site with insightful summaries of the articles/books.

</comment><comment><USER9> He does describe an important problem, but, gee, I thought that everyone on Hacker News long since had a good solution if only as a special case of how they keep track of information more generally! :)!

But, not for the first time, apparently I was wrong!

So, here's my solution to the problem described in the blog, my 'Personal Information Management 101 for Dummies'. I describe my solution in four parts below:

(1) Text

I like text, in English.

There is a fundamental reason: So far there is essentially only one way to communicate information, and that is text, e.g., English, hopefully in complete sentences in well organized paragraphs. Sorry, guys, seriously, in English, that's the only way that works. Math? Actually it is not an exception (I omit details on just why). Mathematical physics? Engineering? Computer science? The same.

So, text is necessary.

Nicely enough, simple text is also sufficient (unless are writing math in which case it's also very nice to have Knuth's TeX).

So, text is necessary and sufficient for communicating all information except for math where also need, say, TeX.

Graphs? Tables? Pictures? Those are often helpful, nearly always not crucial to the information, and can never replace text. Computer language code? Similar. And, yes, computer people, code can never replace text in complete English sentences.

So, fantastic news: Now one of the things current computing is the very best at is handling simple text. FANTASTIC. So, I exploit that fantastic news.

So, while I have a long list of three letter file extensions on my computer's hard disk, I make sure, usually with minimal effort, that nearly all the 'information' is in just simple text.

By analogy, simple text solves the Tower of Bable problem of many different sources of information; even if keep a copy of the original, just convert it all to simple text.

(2) Text Editor

Okay, in a kitchen, two of the very best tools are a quite sharp French chef's knife and a maple cutting board.

Well, in close analogy, in handling text, the best tool is a good text editor. I use KEdit on Windows XP, and before converting to Windows used KEdit also on OS/2 and MS/DOS. Before that I used the very similar XEDIT on VM/CMS. KEdit is a good text editor.

KEdit is by a wide margin my most heavily used tool in computing.

While KEdit is a good (excellent?) text editor, in part its glory is its macro language, basically M. Cowlishaw's elegant Rexx. So, in a cooking analogy, I can have a macro for slicing carrots -- given a bunch of carrots, type the name of the carrot macro, and, presto, washed, peeled, sliced carrots.

For spell checking, I use Aspell that comes with at least one TeX distribution. Aspell is terrific. Since, really, I want just one personal 'addendum' dictionary, I use Aspell for as much as possible of my spelling corrections.

Related is that I use ObjectRexx as a text window scripting language, and, yes, it can drive KEdit.

So, I use KEdit for as much as possible of my typing, for forum posts such as this one, e-mail I send, software for KEdit macros, scripts, Visual Basic .NET, C, Fortran, T-SQL, HTML via ASP.MET, input to Knuth's TeX, own notes of wide variety, etc.

One of the best single ways to get work organized, lacking anything else, is just time and date. So I have little macros that insert time and date lines wherever useful. In a programming language, the line is inserted as a comment in that language.

In a text file, if a line has a tree name or a URL, then one keystroke tells KEdit to 'do the right thing', usually 'open' that file. So, my programming source code is awash in such 'links'.

Yes, just a few lines of the KEdit macro language can use old serial port COM1 to send to my FAX modem card an old AT code with a phone number. Since my land line desk phone goes through that FAX modem card, one keystroke in KEdit dials the phone number. Darned useful.

Once I wrote some simple POP3 e-mail software and used it for years. Then, if I was editing a file in KEdit and that file had a line with an e-mail header line, e.g.,

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:01:38 -0500

then one keystroke in KEdit would display that e-mail message. Darned useful, and I need to get back to something like that.

Yes, one reason simple text and KEdit work so well is that such text is easy for both me and the macros I write.

(3) Taxonomic Hierarchy

As we know, going way back through MS/DOS and Unix to Multics, now hierarchical file systems are a standard feature of computing.

So, I use the hierarchical file system to implement a 'taxonomic' hierarchy of information in my work. Just with the hierarchy, I can find nearly anything I have quickly.

In each file system directory (no, I avoid 'folders'), say, with name x, there is a file x.DOC, yes, in plain text, not from Microsoft's program Word, that indicates the purpose of the directory and documents the files in it.

For a file I downloaded, typically I have the original URL, its title, some of its text, and some of my notes on its relevance to the purpose of the directory.

This DOC file can also record some relevant cross references among files and directories on my hard disks.

So, the top two nodes in my taxonomic hierarchy are PROJECTS and TOPICS. The first is for work that is really just mine, and the second is for information from others. Directory PROJECTS has 59 subdirectories, and TOPICS has 65. Yes, I have some simple command line 'tree walking' scripts I like much better than anything from Microsoft.

Yes, I use text windows and command lines heavily -- again, they are easy for both me and the scripts I write.

(4) Directory Listing.

The scripting language ObjectRexx has a function SysFileTree that will give an 'array' with one array 'component' for each file or directory in a file system subtree along with time and date last changed, length in bytes (modulo 2 __32, for files), the usual file system 'attributes' such as system, hidden, archived, read-only, and directory, and the fully qualified tree name.

I have a simple script that writes this 'array' to a file, typically in the root directory of the file system subtree it describes, with one line for each array 'component'.

The file is in 'fixed fields' and, thus, in KEdit is easily sorted on any of the fields.

And, of course, KEdit has terrific means of 'selecting' lines from the file, and it is easy to write macros, even for just one use, for much more in 'selecting' desired lines.

This file is often very useful for finding things and manipulating files and directories, especially when further processed with macros or scripts.

(4) Facts

I also have a file, and, now, really a small 'system', for ready access to 'facts' or little points someone with a phenomenal memory would just keep in their head.

The 'system' is dirt simple and works GREAT. It's shocking, and even intriguing, how successful such a simple system can be.

Yes, the whole thing is used and maintained using KEdit and with a grand total, please sit down for this, of two (2) macros particular to Facts.

The file is SMALL: It currently is just 812,965 bytes, 26,915 lines, 1,395 separate 'fact' entries, since

Friday, September 2nd, 2005.

That is, 1,958 days, for about

1,395 / 1,958 = 0.71

facts per day.

A typical fact entry is:

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

:Created at. 21:18:47 on Tuesday, January 11th, 2011.

:Keys. viral CloudSponge

CloudSponge is supposed to help viral growth.

With promo code TWIVC from Mark Suster, might get freebe for 3 months.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

So, for the problem in the blog post, as I read Hacker News, etc., if I find an article, blog post, fact, etc. that, as in the blog post, I believe might be useful to me, then I put some relevant data on my disk. For an HTML file, typically I will pick an appropriate directory in my taxonomic hierarchy, in a text window use my tree walking scripts to get to the directory, use a KEdit macro to pick a name for the file and put its tree name on the clipboard, have my favorite Web browser get the tree name from the clipboard and save the file as that tree name. Then I have another KEdit macro help me put an entry in the DOC file for that directory describing the file.

So, to find things, a first approach, which usually works, is just to do some tree walking in my taxonomic hierarchy.

If that fails, then using Microsoft's program FINDSTR (a weak version of a good version of the standard Unix program GREP -- there is likely a good version of GREP for Windows, and likely I should get one) is usually enough.

If I am really looking for 'information' on a topic, then, again, the taxonomic hierarchy is a good approach, the DOC files in relevant directories can be better, and my little system Facts can be still better.

Net, the problem in the blog post I believe I have solidly solved: I keep stuff, my own and from the Internet, and can find the stuff either as specific files or starting with just a topic.

As in a kitchen, a few, good, simple tools can be the best approach.

</comment><comment><USER10> I forgot what the point was already.</comment>


Show HN: readTHERE: a tool to move hyperlinks quickly from one device to another - <AUTHOR>

Everyone is showing off their weekend projects, I thought I'd share my mid-week project. I hope this is appropriate.
It happens quite often that I'm reading some website on my phone while I'm on the go. Usually, it's some link I found browsing, starting at HN. When I then get to a spot where I have a PC or my iPad, I'd like to continue reading on the bigger screen, but finding that same URL again may not be trivial. Or alternatively, sometimes I want to take some page that I'm reading on my desktop computer with me to read while I'm underway.
There's not really a comfortable way to get the link to my other machine. I could mail the link to myself, or use some bookmark-synchronizing service, but that all seems rather heavy-handed for what should be a disposable "copy and paste" action. There's no way to conveniently do that right now, at least not that I'm aware of. I very much hope there isn't because otherwise my work would be wasted... :).
Enfin, to scratch my own itch, I created readTHERE. You add a single bookmarklet to all of your browsers. When you want to transfer a page to another machine, you simply activate the bookmarklet to copy the page you're viewing at that moment to some invisible centralized clipboard, and again on another machine to retrieve it.
I figure there's probably other people having the same issue, so I thought I'd share: feel free to use it (keeping the Privacy Disclaimer in mind -- that is to say, you have none). Also, if you have comments or suggestions, I'm always very interested in honest feedback (technical, conceptual or otherwise).
http://readthere.rix0r.nl/ <comment><USER2> Excellent idea! I used to use Firefox Home for exactly this reason (just leave the tab open on your desktop PC), but after moving to Chrome this doesn't work anymore.

Will give yours a try!</comment>


2 malls using facial recognition technology to track shoppers' ages and genders - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-malls-1.4760964 <comment><AUTHOR> The photo:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Calgary/comments/91hv2e/facial_reco...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Calgary/comments/91hv2e/facial_recognition_tech_at_chinook/)</comment>


Tell HN: Avoid double posting to HN by searching before posting - <AUTHOR>

I sometimes make the mistake of double posting an article usually having similar content but from a different urls.
Now I use http://searchyc.com/ to search before I post and would recommend you too.
Thanks to chengmi and alaskamiller for creating this awesome tool. <comment><USER2> Actually, double posting isn't too bad. It may give articles another shot at making it to the front page.

<comment><USER3> The value, IMO, of this site is in the comments. Posting an article twice creates a dichotomy of comments.

<comment><USER2> Yes. Though if a submission hasn't gotten any discussion in the first place, than a re-submission can be fruitful.

Perhaps there should be a way to merge discussions?</comment></comment></comment>


Gawker Media Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/gawker-media-files-chapter-11-901536 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11877774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11877774)</comment>


ES7 Proposal: The Pipeline Operator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mindeavor/es-pipeline-operator <comment><USER2> I like this a lot. It's similar to the proposed function bind syntax[1], but a bit more friendly to not-`this`-related use:

        function bindMap(fn) { return this.map(fn) }
        [ 1, 2, 3 ]::bindMap(n => n + 1)
        // standalone use: bindMap.call(arr, fn)

        function pipelineMap(fn) { return arr => arr.map(fn) }
        [ 1, 2, 3 ] |> pipelineMap(n => n + 1)
        // standalone use: pipelineMap(fn)(arr)

(Also nice that it works in a very similar way to decorators, although they won't be interchangeable in most cases, with decorators working on class constructors and property descriptors, instead of just any value.)

Presumably, at most one of these proposals will make it in :)

[1]: [https://github.com/zenparsing/es-function- bind](https://github.com/zenparsing/es-function-bind)

<comment><USER3> I agree that a "functional" operator that uses `this` as the first argument is weird.

The main goal of all of these proposals is "left to right" composition when working with functions, and functions take parameters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In concatenative languages, this style of composition is the norm, and it does indeed work well for many tasks:

[http://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Pipeline%20style](http://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Pipeline%20style)

<comment><USER5> It is available in JS too:

        function double(str) {
          return str+', '+str;
        }
        function ucase(str) {
          return str.slice(0,1).toUpperCase()+ str.slice(1);
        }
        function exclamation(str) {
          return str+"!";
        }

        var _="hello";
        _ = double(_);
        _ = ucase(_);
        // _ = foo(_);
        _ = exclamation(_);

        console.log(_); // Hello, hello!

        function pipe() {
          var functions=[];
          for(var i=0; i<arguments.length; i++) {
            functions[i]=arguments[i];
          }
          return function pipe_call(arg) {
            for(var i=0; i<functions.length; i++) {
              arg=functions[i](arg);
            }
            return arg;
          }
        }

        var _="hello";
        _ =pipe(
          double,
          ucase,
          // foo,
          exclamation
        )(_);
        console.log(_); // Hello, hello!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can we just put more focus on sweet.js so we can do this kind of in a library with standard build tooling? [http://sweetjs.org/](http://sweetjs.org/)

There's a lot more operators than |> that you would want. Clojure commonly uses ->, ->>, as->, etc. It should be done in a library if it is done at all.

Also, going full-on functional in javascript is going to end badly, javascript simply wasn't designed for it. If you go down this path in real projects, sooner or later you inevitably end up at clojurescript or whatever other real FP language suits.

<comment><USER3> Can you elaborate on the rough seams between JavaScript and "full on functional"?

I'm not a believer in the FP vs. OO religion, and have historically been skeptical of the bind operator. That said, I think that both composition via objects and composition via functions have their place.

The pipeline operator attempts to make composition via functions more readable (left-to-right instead of right-to-left) and unless you think composition via functions is a bad idea in JS in all cases, I'm not sure what "full-on functional" has to do with it.

<comment><USER6> js objects are mutable; utliliy libraries like underscore, lodash, jquery, do not provide purity guarantees, they export impure functions that mutate objects (e.g. [https://lodash.com/docs#merge](https://lodash.com/docs#merge)). When we start leaning heavily on function composition to build our abstractions, we simply must have purity guarantees for everyday utilities or everything falls apart. So to go "full-on functional" in javascript means we need to fork and rewrite the entire ecosystem. And if you're going to do that, there isn't much value in keeping javascript.

<comment><USER5> So we need an (a) method to freeze object and it children, (b) to indicate that function will accept and/or return only read-only objects. Reserved "const" keyword is perfect for that.

<comment><USER6> That's unfortunately not what es6 const does - const is about re-assignment, not about immutability. (Though you can implement immutability in terms of non-re-assinment if it is const-all-the-way-down, which javascript objects aren't.) And you still need to re-write all the ecosystem to work with immutable objects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The single-argument case is elegant, and the multiple-argument case is awful.

        var newScore = add(7, validateScore( double(person.score) ))

becomes

        var newScore = person.score
          |> double
          |> score => add(7, score)
          |> validateScore

This is very Forth-like. Operands get pushed on the stack, and operators take from the stack and push results back. In Forth, there's no operator precedence and no parentheses; it's pure reverse Polish.

Why not go all the way to pure RPN?

         7 person score . double ValidateScore add newScore =

See how it simplifies the syntax? Of course, you have to know how many arguments each function takes.

Do we really want to go down this route? It's all syntax; it doesn't add any capability. As an extension to an existing language, it's likely to produce a mess.

Mixing functional and imperative notations is a problem. LISP is all nested parentheses, and that bothered a lot of people. Forth eliminates all the parentheses, which bothered different people. Python was pure imperative, ("lambda" went in over major objections) and is gradually getting more functional features, but they don't fit the syntax well.

<comment><USER8> It's not just syntax; it actually opens new ways for API design. See abreza's comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10686596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10686596)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like that just confuses things for no good reason. It's no fewer characters than parens but provides as I see it less clarity.

<comment><USER10> I think the clarity comes from the reading order. str |> method1 |> method2 |> method3 vs method3(method2(method1(str))).

<comment><USER11> That's readable in the simple case, (arg1 is a string, returns a string). What about the more complex cases? Different method signatures, required extra arguments, returning objects or arrays? This will either a) break in those cases, or b) not be applicable. In which case, it's extra complexity for very little gain.

Seriously, this just seems like syntax sugar that just isn't needed. I get that you might not think it's elegant, but is anyone seriously troubled or confused by method3(method2(method1(str)))? How would the pipeline syntax help here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please no.

Javascript's beauty lies in its versatile simplicity. Can we just leave these sorts of things to systems programming languages like C++? I came to javascript because of its lack of cruft, but if libraries start adopting this then I'll be forced to put it in my code as well. If that happens then I'll probably leave for nim or clojure, though that's not preferable.

<comment><USER13> Can't speak for nim, but Clojure has a near-exact feature which is used all over the place, the thread-first and thread-last macros.

Example:

        (defn do-stuff [params-map]
           (->
              (build-object params-map)
              (do-thing-with-object)
              (extract-thing)
              (format-thing)))

I'm not sure why you'd choose Clojure to _get away_ from things like |>.

<comment><USER14> Elixir has this exact feature. I'm sure it's not the first language to either.

<comment><USER15> F#/OCaml too, probably all the ML variants actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's so painful about just doing `exclaim(capitalize(doubleSay("hello")));`? Why introduce needless syntactic sugar that'll only confuse people about how UNIX pipes work?

<comment><USER17> (because (there (is (such (a (thing (as (too (many parens)))))))))

<comment><USER16> I bet Lispers would beg to differ. :D

Nested function do one thing on a chunk of data, then another, then another.

*nix pipelines apply all the filters at once and control the scheduling and lifetime of the filters.

Those are quite different concepts, and I think it's confusing to conflate the two. Plus every decent editor can handle paired parentheses.

<comment><USER18>
        > I bet Lispers would beg to differ. :D

Would they?

I wrote and read threading macros all the time when I used Clojure. Turns out it cleans up code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I liked this feature in LiveScript rather much.

Especially that it worked in both directions.

        my-list = filter <| sort <| get-data

</comment><comment><USER20> If is to be more functional like e prefer add functions: compose and curry:

1 - // With pipe: var result = "hello" |> doubleSay |> capitalize |> exclaim;

      With compose:
      var greet = compose(exclaim, capitalize, doubleSay);
      greet("hello");
      // or compose(exclaim, capitalize, doubleSay)("hello");

2 - var person = { score: 25 };

      // With pipe:
      var newScore = person.score
        |> double
        |> score => add(7, score)
        |> validateScore

      // With compose and curry:
      var newScore = compose(validateScore, curry(add(7), double);
      newScore(person.score);

3 - Mixin paradigms

      // With compose and curry :
      var newScore = Function.compose(validateScore, add.curry(7), double);
      newScore(person.score);

</comment><comment><USER21> As an F# user, I like this a lot, very similar although it can confuse people. It's very much a trait of functional programming and it's easy to read once you get the hang of it :)

</comment><comment><USER22> That's beautiful, the linear pipeline better matches your intuition about the computation than the nested functions.

Can we have this in C# 7? :)

<comment><USER23> This essentially exists - extension methods.

<comment><USER22> Extension methods only apply to instances and they must be declared explicitly.

This syntax can be used anywhere as long as the types signatures of the functions are conducive to the chaining.

<comment><USER23> Not sure what you mean with applying only to instances, in which case couldn't you use an extension method? If you own the code making a function an extension method seems not a big deal. If you want to invoke a static function you don't own the code for then you could have a generic wrapper extension method which admittedly would probably look rather clumsy and nullify the desired gain in readability.

<comment><USER24> But you have to write them before using. It's not needed in case of the discussed feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If we're going to do this operator, I would prefer a regular arrow:

        import { sortBy, filter, map } from 'array-like';

        let names = document.querySelectorAll('.entry')
          -> sortBy('title')
          -> filter(entry => entry.getAttribute('data-url') in whitelist)
          -> map(entry => entry.getAttribute('name');

I personally find this more readable than either the bind proposal (which looks too much like a property access, and not enough like a function call, to me) and the proposed pipeline operator, which doesn't have an immediate meaning to my eyes.

<comment><USER25> _> I would prefer a regular arrow_

And I want it painted green ;-)

 _> ... which doesn't have an immediate meaning to my eyes._

It's a matter of background. F#, Julia and Livescript have identical operators, likely among others.

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd233229.aspx#Ancho...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd233229.aspx#Anchor_11)

[http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.4/stdlib/base/?highli...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.4/stdlib/base/?highlight=|%3E#Base.|%3E)

[http://livescript.net/#piping](http://livescript.net/#piping)

<comment><USER3> Fair enough.

I personally consider compound operators (asymmetrical) to be pretty risky (the do, indeed, depend on background), and I like '->' because it has a clear meaning outside of programming.

But you're right, this is a bikeshed.

I'd prefer either version of the pipeline operator to bind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> After having used this operator in Elixir and Elm, I would love to see it in JS. I know it seems like a superficial issue, but I think the left-to-right chaining flow is one of the main things people miss as they move from an OO style to a more functional one.

<comment><USER27> It is not superficial or trivial at all. This proposal helps to ease the cognitive load required when reading or debugging code at least for the straightforward cases and makes writing code even more interesting and intuitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> @dang, was this manually penalized? Or is it a false positive to the flamewar detector?

It looked like a fine submission.

52 points, an hour ago, and it lies on the third page...

</comment><comment><USER28> Doesn't LiveScript already have it ?

<comment><USER29> As noted in the OP, yes, as do F#, Elixir, Elm and Julia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't entirely understand where this gets me that promises don't.

<comment><USER18> Promises are an abstraction for managing asynchronous operations.

This proposal is about function application.</comment></comment>


A Kid From My School Made a Facemash Like Mark Zuckerberg's Old Website - <AUTHOR> http://facemash.hacking4noobs.info/

<comment><USER2> I don't know...a site with underage highschool girls in questionable poses just seems like a bad idea to me.

<comment><USER3> It felt wrong just loading the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope it really is a kid that made that site.</comment>


Show HN: Simple JavaScript Tetris - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jstimpfle/tetris-on-a-plane/ <comment><AUTHOR> EDIT: Better URL [https://github.com/jstimpfle/tetris-on-a- plane/](https://github.com/jstimpfle/tetris-on-a-plane/)

I had fun building this and experiencing the joyful side of JS (or at least the browser ecosystem). Boarding a plane I'd had the idea of finishing a simple tetris before arrival. The game was in a working state after ~2 hours, even though I had made a few bad decisions. (it was subsequently polished, investing another few hours).

It was made with a "get things done" mindset, and the experience from dabbling with purely functional programming in Haskell was very helpful (mostly the "pure", as in "non-destructive", part).

It's nice that in Javascript we have an environment where we can code a fun game in <400 lines, without any library dependencies (not even internet connection needed) or build systems. On the downside, if it had stronger dynamic types and errors (like Python) that would have saved maybe 25% of my debugging time, probably without coding overhead.

<comment><USER3> Had you made Tetris before? Or used an external resource to see any pseudocode? Reason I'm asking is, I was doing a similar thing with Snake and it took me a bit longer (probably 4 hours) because I messed up the basic mechanics in the beginning (I didn't think of how to structure the growing body as a linked list). I want to gauge how much I suck (at least at games programming) lol.

<comment><AUTHOR> I once spoke about it with a friend who had to do it in C. However C is a dangerous trap here, I think it gets you in the wrong mindset.

Data representation is pretty universally one of the most important things (basically the "design" part to me). Four hours is pretty quick I guess. Snake might be more difficult (but an array or llist + snake direction + board map should be straightforward). I'd done chess that week and the representation is also doable _unless_ thinking about AI or history or... which is when I quickly go bikeshedding. Multiple different representations for different tasks (and transforming in between) might be a way to go.

<comment><USER4> I made Snake in 103 lines of ClojureScript for a talk once: [https://github.com/pate/cljs-snake](https://github.com/pate/cljs-snake) (LOC excludes whitespace and links to repo). Comes in under 100 LOC if you strip out the aesthetics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And here is a _concise_ JavaScript tetris (playable: [http://copy.sh/tetris/](http://copy.sh/tetris/)):

        f=[];p=[1];g=h=2;s=0;t=500;for(i=0;23>i;i++)f[i]=j=-16380;f[23]=-1;onkeydown=e;e(e);function e(b,a){(k=b.which)?k-38?k&-3^37||(g+=a=k^37?-1:1):(z=p,v=p[2],c=p[1],p=[2*v&2|4*c&4,p[3]/2&1|v&2|2*c&4|4*p[0]&8,p[3]/4&1|v/2&2|c&4|2*p[0]&8,v/4&2|c/2&4]):s-j&&setTimeout(e,100+t,h++);m=p[0]<<g;l=p[1]<<g;_=p[2]<<g;o=p[3]<<g;f[h+=32==k]&m|f[1+h]&l|f[2+h]&_|f[3+h]&o?a?g-=a:k^38?(f[h]|=l,f[--h]|=m,f[2+h]|=_,f[3+h]|=o,h?(g=6,x=new Date%7*4,p=[h=0,2908739>>x&15,266758006>>x&15],t*=.97):s+=" Game Over!"):p=z:k^32||e(b);for(y=_=o="";24>++y;o+="\n")for(f[y]+4||(f.splice(y,1),f.unshift(j),s+=++_,o="",y=2),x=14;x;q.textContent=o+s)o+=" X"[(f[y]|p[y-h]<<g)>>x--&1]}

<comment><USER6> Just because you minify and obfuscate this code doesn't somehow make it better or let you win the "contest".

I can walk through the submitter's code and understand what's happening clearly. It's fairly well structured and easy enough to read. This is 20x more valuable than any code that is produced using uncommented edge features for a perceived 5% gain. (Note that I'm making up these numbers to illustrate a point.)

<comment><USER7> Wait, where did the OP say it was better or won some contest?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's going on here? [https://github.com/jstimpfle/tetris-on-a- plane/blob/master/t...](https://github.com/jstimpfle/tetris-on-a- plane/blob/master/tetris.js#L93)

<comment> proto-n [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642028/what-is-the- name-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642028/what-is-the-name-of-the- operator-in-c)

<comment><USER9> In other words, it's a crappy way to write `i-- > 0`

Note that it's not logically equivalent to `for (var i = 5; i > 0; i--)` because in this case the `i--` operation is applied after the body of the loop.

Try it in your browser: for (var i = 5; i-- > 0;) { console.log(i); } //4,3,2,1 for (var i = 5; i > 0; i--) { console.log(i); } //5,4,3,2,1

<comment><AUTHOR> This is why I actually like this syntax (and get fun out of provoking "shudder" comments).

        - Can use the same limits as in ascending iteration
        - Can do decrementing in for loop (no extra line)
        - The arrow unambiguously signals that the iteration is correct :-)

<comment><USER10> !!"It's the JS way"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Playable version of this code located here [http://jstimpfle.de/projects/tetris-on-a- plane/tetris.html](http://jstimpfle.de/projects/tetris-on-a-plane/tetris.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> nice, as a web developer i wanted to try my hands on making a game. which turned out to be much harder than i thought, and also see if i could do any thing with c lang, never wrote a program more than ~15 lines of code in c, so i build a tetris game, using SDL lib.

funny thing is i also represented shapes like you did as 0 or 1 on plane, but then changed to x,y list of blocks.

here it is. [https://gist.github.com/spaceexperiment/4d6b116ef577a2971259...](https://gist.github.com/spaceexperiment/4d6b116ef577a29712593c41747bd092)

</comment><comment><USER13> Broken on Safari 10, and I can't figure out why. None of the keyboard keys seem to fire any events.

<comment><USER14> It seems the code uses `event.key` (which returns a human-readable string, e.g. "ArrowLeft"). `event.key` is not supported in WebKit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to you both. I converted to using ev.keyCode. Hope it works everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome! I made a fiddle [https://jsfiddle.net/wt309enw/1/](https://jsfiddle.net/wt309enw/1/)

<comment><USER16> This is pretty fun to see on a fiddle. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very nice. Agree with danso that keys should be case insensitive. Also - <USER2> UP arrow should rotate in some (any) direction.

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice, I like writing things under constraint; especially without internet and manuals. Seems to take away a lot of stress and open up creativity, at least it does for me [0]. I am flying to AUS soon which will have me without internet for around 21 hours again and I will try another constraint game at that time.

[0] [http://brainfisheatfishbrain.com/2015/03/writing-a-game- with...](http://brainfisheatfishbrain.com/2015/03/writing-a-game-without- sleep-or-internet-at-jfk.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> I like that that this implementation lets you shift right/left for a split second after you let the piece fall.

Not all Tetris versions I've seen do that. I'm not sure what official behavior, though.

<comment><USER20> There's quite a few details about the official authentic tetris guidelines here, looks like it's probably reverse-engineered. [https://tetris.wiki/Tetris_Guideline](https://tetris.wiki/Tetris_Guideline)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think you could optimize quite a bit of this. If you made your shape objects more robust, even just {x,y,on}, instead of doing all of those nested for loops, you could start leveraging array methods like filter to only select the ones where on === 1, then do some sort of matrix transform to swap out that x,y coord in the 4x4 with the shape you're replacing.

Either way, cool game! Pretty neat you could do that in sub 400 lines of code.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason why I'm (sort of) proud of this is exactly that I managed to _not_ get hung up with such considerations and just do the obvious things. It's not a problem to scan through 200 blocks (of which often 50% will be habitated) once every 100ms or so).

If there is any need for optimization, then it would probably be to avoid DOM inefficiencies and opting for canvas or another environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very neat. I was about to report a bizarre bug -- `a/d` for rotating pieces worked on my laptop keyboard but not my USB-connected keyboard -- but then I realized caps-lock was turned-on my connected keyboard. Still probably wouldn't hurt to make the conditional case-insensitive

</comment><comment><USER23> My iteration of the same thing

This one generates a wide array of pieces upon start. And has buttons for use on mobile

[http://kevinusbaragon.us/jtris/jtris.html](http://kevinusbaragon.us/jtris/jtris.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's one i made in Haskell and NCurses [https://github.com/hauxir/haskell- tetris](https://github.com/hauxir/haskell-tetris)

</comment><comment><USER25> Similar, in Python, using rudimentary CLI controls (it was a take-home test). [https://github.com/andreis/bchw](https://github.com/andreis/bchw)

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the rotations feel wrong. If I get a Z piece, rotating twice should get me back where I started. Instead it's shifted sideways one space. I have to shift 4 times to get back.

<comment><AUTHOR> The scheme used here is a 4x4 block (the minimum required to accomodate all pieces) and rotations by 90 degrees. You can rotate both cw and ccw, this works for undoing rotation of _all_ pieces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> @OP License?

Can I use it as a teaching tool? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure!

<comment><USER16> Thanks. Please add a license file to repo of you haven't done so already. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> no babel/webpack?

<comment><USER28> XD</comment></comment>


Congress's New Encryption Bill Just Leaked, and It's as Bad as Experts Imagined - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/draft-encryption-bill-is-everything-we-feared-security-experts-say?utm_source=mbfb <comment><USER2> Probably leaked on purpose to gauge the reaction to it before publishing it and then officially looking like idiots. I can't imagine what they were expecting. Is there a non-government agency, a private or public company that is supporting this kind of legislation?

</comment><comment><USER3>
      I can say without exaggeration that this draft bill is the most
      ludicrous, dangerous, technically illiterate tech policy proposal
      of the 21st century so far.

And that's saying a lot.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, let's be honest here... Did _anyone_ expect _anything_ different from these two?

</comment><comment><USER5> When will they actually consult with various IT-literate parties before making decisions that affect the way IT-related professionals will have to operate?

I don't think they are stupid enough to not have thought of that. So I wonder what motivates them to write that kind of bill.

</comment><comment><USER6> Main discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11456907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11456907)

</comment><comment><USER7> Why do you Americans put up with these things? Is it not time for a new government?

<comment><USER8> Excuse me, but where are you from? I don't support this bill, but it is not yet law. Your implication that we should overthrow the government because a couple of dim representatives drafted an unpopular bill, that hasn't been made law, is juvenile.</comment></comment>


Deepest hand dug well in the world (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id__6948_path__0p115p1224p597p.aspx <comment><USER2> An amazing bit of industry. There was a home owner in Sunnyvale that hand dug a fairly large basement under his house over the years. When he passed and his heirs went to sell it they discovered it. It clearly wasn't up to code and the city had them seal it up in some way and add it to the disclosures when they sold the house. Apparently it started as a 'root cellar' to keep his vegetables cool during the summer.

<comment><USER3> There was also The Hackney Mole Man. £100k of concrete poured into his tunnels.

[https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2...](https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2006/aug/08/communities.uknews)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can we please add a [2005] to the title?

Though they themselves are confused about the history of the actual article:

> Added to the site on 16-11-04

> This page was added on 22/03/2006.

I lived in England for a few years. Coming from Australia, where we have precious little surviving historical structures, either pre or post white settlement, there's a weird combination of envy, surprise, and shock at the Brit's track record.

The 'Lost gardens of Heligan'[1] are a good example, with a happy ending. Nearby, at Lyme Regis, a watermill[2] dating from the 1300's (perhaps a couple of centuries earlier) had, as recently as 1991, been been at risk from the local council of being pulled down and replaced with townhouses and retail outlets.

Hearing that, while standing in a beautiful/historic/functional building that's 3-5x older than anything we had back home, was surreal.

I appreciate the line needs to be drawn somewhere. There's an abundance of structures that I see around me each day that I'd be happy to see gone, and even if - perhaps _especially_ if - they were still standing in a millennia, I'd encourage the demolition of.

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

[2] [http://www.townmill.org.uk/](http://www.townmill.org.uk/)

<comment><USER5> To be fair, most historical buildings of that age would be listed[0]. However there are plenty of buildings from 100 - 200 years ago that are not listed. For example, the last remaining building of a historic factory in the village where I grew up was refused listed status, it has since been distroyed by fire in a convenient 'accident'.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listed_building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listed_building)

<comment><USER6> A lot of railway structures are not listed. Bridges are particularly threatened at the moment as they are not high enough to allow electrification. This is shame considering how historically significant these railways are. Network Rail are very relaxed about demolishing Brunel structures.

<comment><USER7> This is one thing I just do not understand about many of my countrymen. So often I seem to read about wanton destruction of precious places such as buildings, forest and so on. Some of the destroyers are demonstrably ignorant/moronic, but the worst are the intelligent but sociopathic cynics that wilfully destroy, almost always in the hunt for profit. Ugh. For example a property owner near me destroyed some greatly loved ancient woodland in defiance of legal protections on the woodland. His response to legal action is to sell the woodland - if there were any justice he would be forced to reforest it, and fined half his fortune or something equally fierce. We don't deserve to have nice things around when we let these people thrive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The location: [https://goo.gl/maps/mKxeTmhKktJ2](https://goo.gl/maps/mKxeTmhKktJ2)

<comment><USER9> Wow, they are less than 2 mi from the ocean and they had to dig 1300 feet to get water, including about 850 feet below sea level! That must be some pretty impermeable ground they've got.

<comment><USER10> Makes me wonder if the water is potable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of the deep well at Nuremberg Castle which is a measly 50 m (164 feet) deep. That on its own is deep enough that things take a noticeable amount of time to reach the water's surface. I imagine that it would take 5-10 minutes before you'd hear some water that was dropped down this one hit the surface.

<comment><USER12> In old Europe we dug a lot of such old wells from hill tops down to the ground water level during the middle ages. Actually prisoners of war dug most of them. Hundred of meters usually. It secured water from being poisoned with dead animals, the usual tactics then.

Hills in town centers were fortified to withstand longer sieges and rescue the town folks. Famous is eg. the well at the Königstein castle near Dresden, which was never conquered, with a depth of 152 metres. Such wells needed decades to be built. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_well)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love reading through the comments on these articles.

A "Jonathan Brown" wrote a play about it: [http://www.somethingunderground.co.uk/the- well/](http://www.somethingunderground.co.uk/the-well/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I think it would be interesting to send someone down there with a camera to see what's accumulated in the last hundred and fifty years. Based on the comments there's at least one piece of wood and possibly a dead nun...

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice to see my hometown on the front page.

Saw the cover of this structure outside the Nuffield Health hospital a while ago and had no idea what it was.

Well I'll be damned!

</comment><comment><USER7> I live nearby and recently discovered this piece of local history. I wish there were a way to open it to the public!

For some reason I'm fascinated by anything subterranean. The Great County Adit is quite an incredible feat, the world's largest drainage adit, started in the 1700s: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_County_Adit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_County_Adit)

Crazily enough people are still interested in exploring these places: [https://www.aditnow.co.uk/community/viewtopic.aspx?t=8031](https://www.aditnow.co.uk/community/viewtopic.aspx?t=8031)</comment>


Why They Lost The Wheel (1973) - <AUTHOR> https://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/197303/why.they.lost.the.wheel.htm <comment><USER2> The author also wrote the book "The Camel and the Wheel", also in the 1970s. There's a 2010 interview of him at [http://bwog.com/2010/10/09/professor- interviews-just-camels-...](http://bwog.com/2010/10/09/professor-interviews- just-camels-with-richard-bulliet/) .

My first thought on reading the link concerned the iron chariots mentioned in the Bible ("And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."; Judges 1:19.) I figured I was missing something when I saw he was a history professor. The interview clarifies it further in that he knew the same reference, which got him to wonder why the word "wheel" wasn't in medieval Arabic.

<comment><USER3> Actually regarding Judah's defeat from the inhabitants with the iron chariots, it was because they were afraid of them and not trusting God (see Judges 2:1-3). They did defeat them latter on (Judges 4:3,15)

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure your point with "Actually"? They were still chariots, with wheels.

I could have quoted Exodus 14:7 - "And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them." That's the other one which which comes quickly to mind. (Well, the other topic; there are several verses which mention those Egyptian chariots.) But the qualifier "chariots _of iron_ " gives an idea that they've been around long enough to need a qualifier. (Chariots are from the Bronze Age.)

FWIW, there are 60 references to chariots in the Bible, of which three use "iron".

<comment><USER4> The curious thing about chariot warfare is that nobody seems to have a very clear idea of the tactics. The book _The Coming of the Greeks_ offers a picture of the spread of Indo-European languages through a military elite that has mastered chariot tactics, but can't say what they were or how they declined. Homer is pretty shaky on chariot warfare. And when Darius tried to bring back chariots with scythed wheels to defeat Alexander, it just didn't work.

<comment><USER2> I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing. [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/mis...](http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/miscellanea/chariots/scythedchariots.html) has more details. "Although intermittently appearing on the battle field for six hundred years, the scythed chariot was curiously ineffectual. Their use by the Seleucid king Antiochus III at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC, can serve as an example. ... Antiochus had expected that they would throw the enemy into confusion, but for Livy it all was a "silly show." Placed in front, the horses were terrified by the shouts and missiles directed at them and bolted wildly, without bit or bridle."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone that found this interesting, the website is a magazine focused on the Arab world. They have over 50 years of articles similar to this on their site. Interestingly, it is completely payed for by Aramco, the oil company.

<comment><USER6> Old and from a different culture => very enjoyable. I'm happy @antman posted that article today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The mention of asphalt roads in pioneer-era America was rather anachronistic. Tarmac (or tarmacadam), what much of the world calls asphalt, wasn't created until 1901 (though earlier variants date to 1834). It's a combination of _macadam_ , or crushed gravel, and _tar_ \-- bitumen, or the heaviest components of oil (also what's principally present in the Canadian tar sands). Though yes, asphalt _was_ used locally as early as the 6th century BC.

Tarmac is also a _topping material_ for roads. It stabilizes crushed gravel, but doesn't of and by itself provide much in the way of load-bearing capability. For that, substantial earthworks are required. Roman roads required earth removal, a layer of land, gravel and concrete, crushed stone and concrete, and finally a topped layer of dressed cobblestones, as well as drains to either side.

[http://spqrlive.com/communities/8/004/007/457/098/images/452...](http://spqrlive.com/communities/8/004/007/457/098/images/4529891515_525x272.jpg) [http://spqrlive.com/roads/4536983176](http://spqrlive.com/roads/4536983176)

While that makes for an excellent load-bearing surface, it's a bit rough for high-speed travel. That's where tarmac comes in.

For wagon trains, occasional travel over largely unimproved dirt roads was possible, but _any_ amount of water would result in mud, with wheels and wagons sinking into it. Wheel ruts from pioneer crossings from 1840-1869 are still visible today, 150 years later:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail_Ruts_(Guernsey,_W...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail_Ruts_\(Guernsey,_Wyoming\))

This bit on the first macadam road in the U.S. might be interesting:

[http://web.en.rmutt.ac.th/highway/eng- macadam.html](http://web.en.rmutt.ac.th/highway/eng-macadam.html)

 _The first macadam surface in the United States was laid on the "Boonsborough Turnpike Road" between Hagerstown and Boonsboro, Maryland. By 1822, this section was the last unimproved gap in the great road leading from Baltimore on the Chesapeake Bay to Wheeling on the Ohio River. Stagecoaches using the road in winter needed 5 to 7 hours of travel to cover 10 miles._

It also details some of the intermediate phases between macadam and full asphalt concrete roadbeds.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarmac](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarmac)

</comment><comment><USER8> > roads are built for wheels and not vice versa. Their decline paralleled that > of the wheel; it did not cause it.

Is this true? I remember being told that the Roman roads were built for the legions to march on (even people on foot are faster on a road than a dirt track), and that it was only this established road network that made wheeled transport viable.

</comment><comment><USER9> "There is one Roman relief showing a camel chariot race, but it is hard to believe that it was not intended as comic relief."

Hey Gaius, did you hear the one about the camel pulling a chariot?

And nice word play by the author of the article.

</comment><comment><USER10> Africa province (countries around todays Libya) had very different climate in Roman times. There was no need for camels back than.

</comment><comment><USER11> unfortunately (for Australia at least) the camel is in no danger of disappearing, it is a very serious pest of the inland desert areas. The number of camels which range through inland arid areas is now around the 1 million mark. They are very destructive too, being able to reach much higher and eat tougher plants than any other native animals.

<comment><USER12> I would seem to me it should be pretty easy to shoot them and eat them.

<comment><USER13> [http://www.camelsaust.com.au/](http://www.camelsaust.com.au/)

There is indeed an industry for this, but it's no where near as large as it would need to be to eliminate a significant amount of the population.

You also have the problem that the population is spread over such a large area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Camel carts/wagons actually do exist ([http://www.nomadderwhere.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/07/dsc_...](http://www.nomadderwhere.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/07/dsc_0411.jpg)) and are quite popular in India and Pakistan. In fact, I would say that such is the primary way of using a camel as a load-bearing animal in this region. I think the big difference is, in the Middle East, the caravans had to travel very long distances (for instance, Mecca to Constantinople was a profitable route) over very _diverse_ desert terrain, some of which is probably very unsuitable for carts (mountain passes, loose sand).

</comment><comment><USER15> You should really read the article but...

tl;dr It was 20% cheaper to just have a camel, than to also attach a wheeled cart to it, due to the absence of trees. So the camel beat the wheel for economic reasons alone.

</comment><comment><USER16> Jerry Pournelle frequently comments that the invention of the horse collar ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_collar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_collar)) was one of the most consequential ones in history. Here we have a similar move from oxen to something more efficient.

<comment><USER17> That reminds me that Egyptians and Romans rode in chariots rather than on horseback because they didn't have stirrups: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup)

<comment><USER18> The Roman legions used saddled cavalry. Chariots were only really used for racing. But yes, Romans rode without stirrups.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Drops $250M for the Rights to LOTR - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-show-1.14974338 <comment><USER2> Viewers might want to see Beren and Luthien, and that's about it? You could easily get three whole Game of Thrones sized series out of the Numenoreans alone.

<comment><USER3> The Numenorean story could easily fit in a few Game of Thrones sized seasons, but the problem is that Tolkien left more of the broad outlines of the story than something with the level of characterization and dialog that would make good drama. So you'd have TV writers filling in the blanks. And I don't think I'm alone in fearing just how terribly that could go wrong. Think of the last two seasons of GoT only far worse.</comment></comment>


Gist Takes the Social Graph Beyond the "Of Course" Moment - <AUTHOR> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/11/17/gist-takes-the-social-graph-beyond-the-of-course-moment/

<comment><USER2> Gist has been great for me in keeping track of the business and volunteer contacts. I feel smarter and better informed during business conversations from using it, it finds a lot of things i previously had to research before meetings automatically. I haven't even given it all the information that it presumably would like[1] and have a distinctly suboptimal (for it, not for me) usage pattern[2], and it still does a wonderful job.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

[1] it correctly divines that i'm not giving it all the information about my email accounts -- i limit it to my business emails. [2] i don't log in except when i need its information, basically. presumably the firefox integration would fix this, but i use chrome regularly.</comment>