The printing of titles on book spines - <AUTHOR> http://cognitionandculture.net/blog/dans-blog/tilting-tilted-titling <comment><USER2> I have always hated it when an occasional book (english language) puts the title on the spine the other way. I wonder why that happens. I've never considered that in other languages it might be normal to do it the other way. I wonder if books which have the title on the spine the other way are more likely to be translations?

Most of my paper book are in my office or in boxes so I can't check right now.

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of the Monk dvd set:

[http://bilder.stubb.de/bilder/Monk.jpg](http://bilder.stubb.de/bilder/Monk.jpg)

<comment><USER4> I would hope given the title character's nature that this was done intentionally :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's easier to find books by title on the shelves of a French bookstore or library than an English/American one. The titles are justified evenly with the shelving. So you can scan along the shelf looking for your title once you are in the right section. With the English system, the title text starts at a different level, the height of the book. It is less efficient to scan.

<comment><USER6> This seems orthogonal from the top/bottom orientation though, no?

<comment><USER7> Nope, because bottom-to-top all titles start roughly at the same height (the bottom of the spine), while top-to-bottom they start higher on higher books.

<comment><USER6> Still seems orthogonal to me though. Why couldn't all top-to-bottom titles start at the top of the spine, and similarly be justified?

<comment><USER7> Because the words wouldn't _start_ at the same height. The point was that, if every title starts at the same height it's easier to skim, because you don't have to move your eyes much when looking at the first few letters.

<comment><USER6> So make them all start at the same height, at the top of the spine? What exactly about top-to-bottom orientation do you think precludes proper justification? You're still on about something orthogonal, the justification along the spine, which isn't affected by the overall orientation.

Also, someone posted photos of French bookshelves showing that their centers tend to be centered like ours are, so it's not any more readable. If you think of the spines as advertisements on bookstore shelves then this makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is at least one other distinction of French books, especially in the anthropology domain: They are almost ALWAYS WHITE!

Spines schmines. A friend of mine is a French anthropology buff and his library is white, shelf on shelf of whiteness, titles all in this wild direction. It's madness!!

</comment><comment><USER9> It's fascinating to see what small nudges, path-dependency, local tradition, and merging cultures do to conventions and practices.

On another book-related topic: I've been trying to sort out when Library of Congress details started appearing on the Title Page verso of American books. Seems to be between the 1940s and early 1960s, though the practice wasn't unversal even by the 1970s (sampling from books around the office).

ISBN (and its precursor SBN) are late 1960s.

(I've become a cataloging / classifications geek.)

<comment><USER10> The LOC CIP program, which gives publishers cataloging information in advance of publication, began in 1971. Before then, I don't think it was usual for publishers to have more than a catalog card number.

The CIP program mainly exists to make it easier for libraries to acquire and catalog books. LOC still requires that the data be printed in the book, even though most libraries now not surprisingly get the information online, either directly from LOC or from a service like OCLC.

<comment><USER9> Thanks. I'm familiar with OCLC (and Worldcat), as well as [http://id.loc.gov](http://id.loc.gov).

There's some pretty useful stuff out there these days :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _True, when a book is put flat with the front cover up, a bottom-to-top spine title is now upside down, whereas a top-to-bottom title is now upright and perfectly readable_

If you're actually writing the title onto the spine manually with a pen and holding the book right-side-up, top-to-bottom becomes the natural consequence. I wonder if that may have been a factor in creating the top-to-bottom direction.

<comment><USER12> I could imagine machine printing of dust jackets lead to the opposite convention. If you are printing a dust jacket, the back of the book is on the left, the front is on the right, and the title is in the middle. Despite reading order being from left to right, people tend to both proof and layout the most 'important' information first. This would be the title page.

Once you've laid of the title, the next thing you are going to move to is the spine. A title printed on a book spine from top-to-bottom would be completely upside down from the perspective of the front cover, whereas a title printed from bottom to top would only be 90 degrees off from the front cover. Thus the layout and proofing of the spine would be more "natural".

I wonder if there was some sort of technology invented between the widespread adoption of the printing press in Europe, and the adoption of the printing press in the colonies that made the bottom to top layout less obvious. Maybe the colonists were too uncultured to use dust jackets.

Edit: I just checked, and I was surprised to learn that every single tilted title goes the same way on my books. I have a _lot_ of old books that I bought at used bookstores just because they looked interesting. Regardless of the binding, age, or field the book was published in, if the title is tilted it goes from top-to-bottom. Fascinating.

I did discover some of my books were upside down though.

<comment><USER10> Printed dust jackets as we have them today didn't really exist in colonial times; they're basically a 20th-century innovation. As the article points out, the early convention was for titles to be stamped horizontally. The title would have been stamped on the binding, and a plain paper wrapper covered it for protection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm always surprised at publishers who print the title on the spine in a difficult-to-read font/color/size. Don't they want people to be able to find their books?

The same for CD publishers. When I'm looking through a stack of CDs, I want to know the artist and album title. These are hard to find on many CDs, some even cleverly omit one or both entirely!

I just gotta shake my head.

<comment><USER14> I don't know anything about this, specifically. But for consideration:

You know those ads that puzzle you and leave you examining them, trying to understand what they're saying? They've just grabbed a chunk of your attention.

(And a lot of ads, these days, are designed to leave a memory of the product, preferably associated with an emotion, lodged in your sub-conscious. Not to sell you outright, but to be there, lending familiarity, when you are at the point of selection and purchase.)

Anyway, I wonder whether the difficult to read spines are more noticeable and so grab desired attention in certain contexts.

Or, they just have a crappy graphic designer. ;-)

<comment><USER13> I just skip over the unreadable spines and the CDs produced by mystery bands, especially when confronted with a large selection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand why you couldn't just put a book upside down on the shelf if you want its spine print to face the same way as books that are printed the other way around. "Don't worry, the letters won't fall out."

Likewise, if it's so important that the spines can be read for a stack of books in a store, turn all of them to their face except for the top one... oh, yes, and hope that no-one buys the top one or else someone needs to keep flipping the new top of the stack.

<comment><USER16> I'd wager that many people (such as me) think it feels "wrong" when the book is upside down. This is especially true if the spine has some sort of artwork.

<comment><USER17> Definitely. When eating packets of chips I never open them from the bottom, it just feels wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Disclamer: I am French.

We are wrong. Up to today I thought that the direction was merely a choice, seeing both books flat made me change my mind.

</comment><comment><USER19> the french system looks bad when the volume is laid on a table, but has another advantage: in multi-volume sets, the numbers on the spine read in the natural sequence, left to right and top to bottom.

By the way in Italy, in our usual anarchy, both systems are in use :-)

</comment><comment><USER20> Assume that most people are right-handed.

If you lay a book with the front cover facing up, the top to bottom printing will be right side up.

If you lay the book with the printing bottom to top, the binding print will be right-side up, but, assuming a right handed person grabs the book with their left hand, and turns it as one would so they can open it and turn the pages with their right hand, then its a natural movement - pull the book with the left hand, turn to face you, open and flip through with the right hand...

</comment><comment><USER21> I hate my bookshelves. They are really ugly... a collection of mismatched colors, styles fonts.

I would pay for a service that would print out new spine stickers for all my books that cover the existing spines and create a consistent look for all of them.

Bonus points for an app that I just use to take a picture of my existing shelf and it figures out the rest.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. For me, I use the color and font and size of the book to rapidly find it rather than having to actually stare at every book and look at the title... standardizing all books would make them much more difficult for me to rapidly find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> All my Chinese and Japanese books have the spine text going vertically down. Some have English text mixed in though, which is (horizontally) downwards. I can't imagine a book with French text mixed in (horizontally) upwards with the Chinese (vertically) downwards text would look very natural.

</comment><comment><USER24> Seems like they're might be something akin to spontaneous symmetry breaking when a sufficient quantity of books choose one convention over the other, by random chance. The rest of the publishers would just suddenly fall in line.

</comment><comment><USER25> Everything in this article was obvious. You don't need to reference Cultural Attractor Theory, whatever that is. Anyone who's noticed the foreign books section in a bookstore and has common sense has deduced the explanation.

</comment><comment><USER26> Top-to-bottom isn't inherently better, but since only barbarians stack books with the front-side down, it has the advantage.</comment>


Abusing JSONP with Rosetta Flash - <AUTHOR> http://miki.it/blog/2014/7/8/abusing-jsonp-with-rosetta-flash/ <comment><USER2> The mitigation strategy falls short of current best practices.

> if possible use a dedicated sandbox domain.

It's 2014. You don't have to use JSONP and open up your domain to XSS; just use standard and safe XHR with CORS[1]. Every major browser has supported it for years, and for very old browsers that don't support CORS (IE 8), I wrote pmxdr[2] five years ago.

[1]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Access_con...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Access_control_CORS)

[2]: [https://github.com/eligrey/pmxdr](https://github.com/eligrey/pmxdr)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately: [http://blog.algolia.com/jsonp-still- mandatory/](http://blog.algolia.com/jsonp-still-mandatory/)

<comment><USER4> this is one of those times where the people using badly configured proxies just need to live with a broken internet rather than drag the rest of us down

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a really, really nasty attack. If you allow JSONP on your domain you are almost certainly vulnerable.

</comment><comment><USER5> Given the nastiness of this attack (a fully interactive client-side backdoor!), the non-trivial nature of the algorithms and coding theory required, and the slow uptake of Flash patches especially in enterprise [1], this seems like downright irresponsible disclosure to share such a detailed post (with a repository and detailed instructions for script kiddies!) so quickly after notifying companies. I can understand all too well how excited the researcher must have been to discover this and share it with the world, but jeez: wait until the Flash patch hits an inflection point on the adoption curve at least!

[1]([http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/05/the-mad-mad-dash-to- updat...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/05/the-mad-mad-dash-to-update- flash/#more-25957))

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice to see the exploit finally out.

I gave a talk about the potential for this to happen about a year ago: [http://quaxio.com/jsonp_handcrafted_flash_files/](http://quaxio.com/jsonp_handcrafted_flash_files/)

<comment><USER7> People have known about the potential for much longer than a year:

[http://www.slideshare.net/guest2821a2/web-browsers-and- other...](http://www.slideshare.net/guest2821a2/web-browsers-and-other- mistakes/14)

[http://www.slideshare.net/guest2821a2/web-browsers-and- other...](http://www.slideshare.net/guest2821a2/web-browsers-and-other- mistakes/15)

Actually going out and doing it is something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The article suggests a 32 character length limit on callback parameters. Unfortunately this looks to be too short - from examining log files it appears jQuery often uses callbacks of 40 or even 44 characters.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why is JSONP any less than an XSS exploit waiting to happen?

<comment><USER3> I don't think you can use JSONP for XSS. The JavaScript does to execute on the domain that hosts the JS, it executes in the context of the page that loaded the code using a script tag. Allowing attacker-controlled script tags is definitely an XSS hole.

<comment><USER9> The linked article demonstrates even just allowing attacker-controlled function name can allow an XSS hole!

<comment><USER3> That's due to an extremely complex (albeit easy to exploit) SWF reflection attack.

JSONP itself, though yucky, should still be safe from XSS given a /-star- star-/ prefix and a validated callback parameter.

<comment><USER8> > given a /-star-star-/ prefix and a validated callback parameter.

I think that is the "waiting to happen" part of my initial comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New math proves that a special kind of space-time is unstable - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/black-holes-prove-that-anti-de-sitter-space-time-is-unstable-20200511/ <comment><USER2> Here is what I believe is the most relevant paper by Moschidis: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04268](https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04268)

I find it mildly amusing that this work is being done by mathematicians rather than theoretical physicists.

<comment><USER3> I don't think theoretical physicists would find these findings to be that interesting. There are a lot of mathematical results that can be somehow applied to physics, but very rarely something interesting comes out of it from physicists perspective. Obviously when it happens, then it can lead to a breakthrough as it happened when Einstein figured out how Riemmann geometry can be applied to GR.

The author himself is kind of uncertain if there are any real consequences comming out of his math:

>>The instability of AdS space-time has major implications for how we understand our own universe. First, since AdS space-time is unstable, it's "something you will not see in nature," Moschidis said.<<

>>But "even though AdS is not real," he said, "it can still lead us to the discovery and study of real phenomena." <<

I am not sure how our understanding of time-space can be increased by a theory that just does not describe reality.

Maybe the math is somehow useful? Maybe this might explain what happened after Big Bang (maybe instabilities were more common then)? Maybe this is the path to unify QM and GR (in the article it is mentioned that, but with some usual addition of not yet observed additional dimension that can explain everything - the feature of many "string" theories", that didn't give us much.

<comment><USER4> Theoretical physics has always studied theories that don't describe reality. It deepens our understanding of the theories that do describe reality. Eg., if you change one axiom of a reality-describing-theory and certain naturally occurring phenomena disappears, then you can say that that axioms causes that that phenomena to occur.

Also, this is not my field, but thousands of physics papers have been written on the AdS geometry (particularly the AdS-CFT duality). This line of thinking has brought a lot of clarity to string theory and to black hole physics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "If you perturb AdS space-time and wait a sufficient time," Moschidis said, "you'll end up with a different geometry — one that contains black holes — and it's no longer AdS. That's what we mean by unstable."

But our universe is known to contain black holes and yet isn't it being AdS considered an open question ? Or is it only an open question about the universe during its infancy ?

<comment><USER6> Our universe is definitely not described by anti-de Sitter space. It might be de Sitter space though.

<comment><USER5> Then why do we care so much about AdS/CFT correspondance ?

<comment><USER7> The bulk-boundary equivalency. It seems it's possible to describe some models' insides just by studying its surface. (Hence the holographic principle.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > If the boundary is, in fact, reflective, nothing can leak out of AdS space- > time. So any matter or energy put into the system could potentially get > concentrated — perhaps to such an extent that a black hole would form.

So in space-time that does not have a reflective boundary, is the implication that matter or energy _can_ leak out? Where does it go?

<comment><USER6> If my understanding is right, de Sitter space effectively has _no_ boundary, in the same way that a sphere has no edge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The Stanford mathematician Jonathan Luk describes Moschidis' work as > "amazing. … What he's discovered is a rather general instability mechanism" > — one that could apply to other settings, unrelated to AdS, in which matter > or energy is cooped up within a physical system that has no escape hatches.

So the I'm not particularly interested in the specific result, but the "rather general instability mechanism" is potentially game changing.

Does any know how general this mechanism is? Could it apply to Navier-Stokes?

</comment><comment><USER10> Can someone expand on what this means for AdS/CFT?

</comment><comment><USER11> When they mentioned "other settings, unrelated to AdS, in which matter or energy is cooped up within a physical system that has no escape hatches." I thought immediately of the fusion reactor I've been working on.

In my device, an arangement of static fields creates a region in which deuterium energised in a specific reflects back to the center forever and has no outlet even after non-fusion collisions.

The "instability" in my system comes because the extreme stability in the oscillation should cause even a rare event (DD fusion) to happen eventually with 100% probability.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does this mean we're now sure that spacetime has positive curvature ( >= 0 ) ?

<comment><USER13> AdS has _constant_ negative curvature. I don't think he proved that any spacetime with a negative curvature is unstable. But experimental data so far show that the universe has zero curvature.

<comment><USER14> Hey, are we emulsion floating on the surface tension of a still, multi- dimensional pond in which we all eventually sink? asking for a friend

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So my understanding is that the Maledecena conjecture that provide a correspondence between AntiDeSitter Space and CFT was a crucial breakthrough for proving string theory. Does this discovery make an impact on string theory?

<comment><USER6> > proving string theory

Would definitely not consider string theory "proven".

On the contrary, its odds of being correct (much less demonstrably so) seem to be decreasing by the year.

<comment><USER16> I was under the impression that string theory was inherently un-provable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can anyone relate this to a human scale? What would it mean to be caught in an unstable space-time? How could it be exploited?

</comment><comment><USER18> What is special about wave 2? Wouldn't 3...n behave the same way and result in stability?</comment>


Show HN: QuickPublisher a Simple Blogging Platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.quickpublisher.online <comment><AUTHOR> QuickPublisher brings the fun back in blogging with its easy to use interface. Be able to design your post your way using a WYSIWYG editor, monetize your blog without using ads, moderate comments easily and more.</comment>


Ask HN: Carpal Tunnel Recommendations? - <AUTHOR> I'm having a bit of carpal tunnel.  I had it several years ago and I found these exercises which seemed to help a lot: http://www.eatonhand.com/hw/ctexercise.htm
I'm going to do them again, but I'm wondering if HN has any mouse/keyboard/pads/other suggestions.  I already have an elevated monitor so I'm good on that front.  I'm currently using the standard Apple external keyboard of a couple years ago and a pretty generic Dell mouse.
Edit: Should add that the pain is only in my right wrist/hand (mouse hand) and I think a large degree of it maybe related to the mouse - I spend a lot of time scrolling with my middle finger for example.  I'm considering the Apple Magic Trackpad <comment><USER2> A few things I can recommend:

(1) Switch to the Colemak keyboard layout -- it significantly reduces the work your fingers have to do.

(2) Vary your mousing devices/behaviors. I love Kensington trackballs, and they're much easier on my wrist than a mouse, but after awhile I get pain in my thumb (because with a trackball you typically use your thumb to left-click rather than your index finger), so I switch back to a mouse for a few weeks. Vertical mice are also nice and I occasionally use one for a change. You can also move your mouse/trackball to the other side of the keyboard and use your non-dominant hand -- it takes a few days to rewire your brain, but it's another good way to change up your mousing behavior.

(3) Consider buying a USB numeric keypad, placing it on the non-dominant side of your keyboard, and using macro software to program the keys for common actions (e.g., scrolling).

<comment><USER3> [http://www.typingstudy.com/en-us_colemak-3/](http://www.typingstudy.com/en- us_colemak-3/) This is a free typing tutor for those who want to learn to type with colemak ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I normally do is swap between normal mouse and trackball, but I think sustained use of my phone has been bothering me more than recently. I've never been diagnosed with carpal tunnel, but I definitely have some kind of repetitive strain injury.

If it's an RSI and not getting better from breaks, I'd recommend Active Release Technique ([http://www.activerelease.com/](http://www.activerelease.com/)). I've been going to an ART provider for a knee injury, but since I'm there they also work on my wrist and it's been helping. The 2 places I've been are classified as chiropractors for insurance purposes, since they're chiropractors who also practice ART. This has its pros and cons - you don't need to get a referral to go, but you could be limited on sessions.

</comment><comment><USER5> I got Carpal tunnel last year when I was putting in too many hours(60+) for several months. Switching to a Kinesis Advantage Pro keyboard and a RollerMouse Red worked for me. I tried other ergonomic mice (including Evoluent and Anker) and they just shifted the pain. The RollerMouse was the only one that I could use with no pain. I think it is because there is no gripping involved and it allows you to distribute the click force over all your fingers instead of focusing it on just one finger. Moving the mouse from the right hand to the left hand didn't help it just resulted in Carpal tunnel in my left hand.

I also found hanging on my fingers from a pull-up bar and rock climbing helped my hand and fingers heal.

</comment><comment><USER6> You want to minimize continuous, repetitive use of the same muscles.

* Whenever your hand feels pain, stop typing, and take a break.

* If you have a PC at home and work, you may want to have one type of mouse at work (standard) and another at home (ball and button). Use the mouse with your right hand for half an hour, then switch to your left, then your right. If your right hand uses a mouse and hurts, use your left hand for the mouse half the time! It takes a little adjusting, but it is better than hurting your hand.

* People tell me this gets progressively worse and worse if not dealt with. You're looking to deal with it which is good, so keep on top of it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use a [http://www.goldtouch.com/ergonomic- keyboards/](http://www.goldtouch.com/ergonomic-keyboards/) which forces me to never have my wrists on the table (or on a gel pad). I requires a good posture (elbows almost 90 degrees). With mice I make sure they're big so I can rest my whole hand on them. Apple mice are too low and small in my opinion. Goldtouch also has mice in kind of a 30 degree angle but I never got used to them. I have no recommendation on trackpads. I'm glad you're at least not crouching in front of a small laptop in a cafe.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like vertical Mice. I've had two and prefer the Evoluent over the Anker. Seemed to help quite a bit when I started "noticing" my mousing wrist.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP Here - What I've decided to try after reading through the comments here and recommendations in other places:

\- Take a couple days break from hardcore typing/computer use

\- Ordered the Anker vertical mouse and Microsoft Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard from Amazon

\- Resume Exercises that worked years ago

\- Take anti-inflammatory turmeric laced foods and resume taking some Omega 3 capsules I was taking before

Thanks for all the advice - I hope my typing is back to pain-free soon! Thanks again.

</comment><comment><USER9> About 20 years ago I started having pain from carpal tunnel. I enjoy my work, so that was a bummer.

I cured myself within a year mostly by using ice, and I also took aspirin. I am not a doctor: this is just what happened to work for me.

You might also try searching for "anti-inflammatory diets" to help carpal tunnel syndrome, sore knees, etc. My wife and I adjust our diets to help prevent inflamation.

</comment><comment><USER10> What worked for me is:

\- moving the mouse to the left (you get used to it in a week); this reduced the pain in my right wrist by half. Most of the pain on the right wrist now comes from using the arrow keys.

\- getting a Typematrix 2030; adds spacing between wrists, has softer keys, leads to less movement for Enter key

\- switching away from qwerty; this was twice as valuable, because I also finally learned to type properly.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've had similar problems with pain and discomfort when using a mouse. Was using an Evoluent Vertical Mouse for about a year, which helped, until the left clicker started playing up. Replaced this with an Anker vertical mouse which costs a fraction of the price and is just as comfortable. Can't recommend it highly enough!

</comment><comment><USER12> I had the same issue, and was told by an old school hacker friend to do the following:

\- Stop typing for a few days altogether

\- Get a Kinesis Advantage keyboard

\- Switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout

After a few months, I got rid of the Kinesis keyboard, and everything was back to normal. I never had any issues moving forward, and I attribute a lot of this to the use of Dvorak.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the rec. I am considering stopping typing for a few days. How many days did you stop for? Do you feel the Kinesis made a big difference? I feel like a big part of my problem may be the mouse actually - I spend a lot of time scrolling with the middle button and I'm actually only having pain in my right wrist/hand. I'm thinking of getting the Apple magic touchpad.

<comment><USER13> Have you also tried: \- swap to off-hand mouse. \- use pageup/pagedown/spacebar for scrolling at times \- More/larger monitors, so that you don't have to scroll things or swap between things / re-cat things as often \- Plan things with whiteboarding / talking rather than banging out code

These won't eliminate RSI, but they might help alleviate the causes of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks yeah, pretty much do all of those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Check into your posture. It's good you have an elevated monitor, and it's worth looking into the ergonomics of your whole setup (and general life).

Old thread about RSI [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269951)

</comment><comment><USER15> Have you read "It's Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome"?

Even if it is Carpal Tunnel in your case, "It's Not..." is a superb book on RSIs and RSI-like conditions: well worth picking up.</comment>


I want to learn about growth hacking - <AUTHOR>

I want to learn about "growth hacking". I like the idea of studying analytics and making a plan of attack focused on converting one-time users to active community members and growth hacking seems to fit that bill.
Where can I learn more about this field? What blogs, books, etc do you recommend? Where can I find sample data for things like Google Analytics and Mixpanel?
Also, is there a less buzz-wordy term for what I am interested in? <comment><USER2> _I like the idea of studying analytics and making a plan of attack focused on converting one-time users to active community members and growth hacking seems to fit that bill._

That is not growth hacking. GH is socially engineering a positive response from a given marketplace. It focuses on getting conversion rates from the average 10% to the tipping point of 15-18%. GH is not for the faint of heart because it requires you to develop systems that are not very socially acceptable. Not immoral, or illegal though.

How do you learn GH?

It requires a lot of time, money, and _guts_. Plus testing. And lots of it. Is there way straightforward way of learning it? Not really. It does require that you study a lot of different subjects and master each of them. Negotiations, sales, copywriting, closes, pitches, writing, body language, inflection, general psychology, behavioural psychology, deception, the art of war, and a lot more.

You can, however, learn how to create marketing campaigns that proof to be profitable and might look like a "hack". That is the easy part. The hard part is making sure that the growth stays. Few can manage that, and nobody is telling.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would highly suggest following this quora board:

<https://www.quora.com/Growth-Hacking>

and then read this blog post by Andrew Chen on becoming a growth hacker:

[http://andrewchen.co/2012/05/11/how-do-i-learn-to-be-a- growt...](http://andrewchen.co/2012/05/11/how-do-i-learn-to-be-a-growth- hacker-work-for-one-of-the-guys/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to head off to work soon, but I have bookmarked those pages and I will be sure to read them later. Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where are you located? There's a Growth Hacking meetup in SF that's good.

<http://www.meetup.com/SF-Growth-Hackers/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I am in Jacksonville, FL right now, but I will be moving to SF towards the end of June.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would join the Growth Hacker Hub on LinkedIn...</comment>


Huddle's 'highly secure' work tool exposed KPMG and BBC files - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41969061 <comment><USER2> It seems from the article that security tokens were not unique and being generated with a 20 millisecond granularity, furthermore the security tokens were the only thing required to access files (no username etc).

If this is correct then this is astonishingly poor design and this problem was completely predictable and obvious.</comment>


Can't Upgrade My Mac Book Pro from Mavericks to Yosemite - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone been able to upgrade to Yosemite? My App Store says Item is not available, however, I can see "upgrade button" on http://www.apple.com/osx/ <comment><USER2> I have been running Yosemite since its first release. I don't think the link on apple's site will work for you if you are not :

\- Registered developer for OS X Beta \- OR initial fist million beta testers

I get the same error, though I get regular updates about Yosemite from App store since I registered as the first million beta tester.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have more questions.

</comment><comment><USER2> Use this link and download - > [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id915041082?mt=12](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id915041082?mt=12)

</comment><comment><USER3> Try waiting more than 0 hours after they announce it. :P

<comment><AUTHOR> :P i am just too excited...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Same is happening to me!</comment>


Fingertip Microscope Can Peek Inside a Moving Animal  - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/38546/?p1=A1

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Can something like this be made to photograph bacteria in water, outsourcing bacteria image recognition to an outside server?</comment>


Nexus 5 proves easy to repair, says iFixit - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57610873-94/nexus-5-proves-easy-to-repair-says-ifixit/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title <comment><USER2> I just submitted the actual teardown instead, probably of more interest: [http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus+5+Teardown/19016](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus+5+Teardown/19016)</comment>


Amazon drivers are hanging smartphones in trees to get more work - <AUTHOR> https://nationalpost.com/news/world/amazon-drivers-are-hanging-smartphones-in-trees-to-get-more-work/wcm/55e32efb-c43f-49b6-acdc-77ca1fbc62bc/ <comment><USER2> Amazon knows about it but does nothing</comment>


ICloud - <AUTHOR> http://nshipster.com/icloud/ <comment><USER2> I've started disagreeing with people who complain about Apple doing web services.

Game Center is actually getting pretty solid. So far only played with the turn based, but the API is sexy as hell. And it seems to work fine now that it has been Lettepressed™.

Push Notifications where great from the get go, and it is probably more complex than it looks like.

My experience with iMessage has been _GREAT_. I use it from iPad, Mac and iPhone. It has worked perfectly fine for me.

They are slowly getting there. I suppose iCloud as a complexity is a pretty hard nut to solve. Dropbox has had more focus in this area than Apple, give'em some time.

I just wish... I just wish Apple called iCloud beta, and they wouldn't have to suffer so much unnecessary backlash.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel there's an example a lot of the people miss when they complain about Apple's web services; and that's iMessage. It is another product that is consistently awful and follows a similar process to iCloud — the product is released, shown to be underwhelmingly developed and supported, then ignored.

As it stands, iMessage is frustrating at best, and completely unusable more often than not. Messages always arrive out of order or not at all, scroll-back is shuffled, the memory use is obscene, and you can't search at all on iOS or Mac. It's the pinacle of shoddy engineering and design.

</comment><comment><USER4> At least Java is no longer the king of verbosity: NSPersistentStoreDidImportUbiquitousContentChangesNotification

<comment><USER2> OBJ-C verbosity tend to be one word and not multiple.bullshut.properties.on.other.properties().

Also their verbosity tend to be explanatory compared to Javas factoryOfFactoryWithFactory

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra I've read this article but think that author failed to make a point. A few gags is not enough and I obviously lack context.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the acceptable timeline to look up a solution? - <AUTHOR> As I attempt to work through the teachyourselfcs.com curriculumn, I am trying to find how long is too long to spend on a problem. Now remember, I am a beginner so the knowledge base is being built. I have spent a long time on the problems in SICP and feel it is slowing down my overall growth.<p>What is an efficient timeline of when to give-in and look up a solution? <comment><USER2> That depends on your level as a programmer. A real beginner shouldn't spend a long time on it as s/he will just be wasting time and becoming frustrated. Someone with more experience might spend more time on it because they have more things to think over and more ideas to try.

What is more important is what happens AFTER looking up a solution. You have to be analytical and look at the solution. How does it work? How is it different from your attempt(s)? Why is it better than any attempt you made? And so on. This is difficult for a beginner, but you will get better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the response! This is true.

Must not look at the answer with false confidence and think.."Oh yes I get that. Now let's move on to the next problem."

I like the three questions you state from an analytical perspective. I am going to make this a checklist with these three when reviewing a solution.

Cheers!</comment></comment>


Creating Things That Matter [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SId3J8J7cPo&t=8s <comment><USER2> I couldnt get a lot out of this talk and havent read the book. But I do feel the theme of what he's saying becoming a popular narrative lately.

People are hungry to provide themselves and others with purpose and meaning. It seems as though so many of us want to know what we're doing will make a difference, in the short and the long term. Not just working for the sake of it, or competing blindly in what may be a zero sum game.

<comment><USER3> The speaker's narrative style in this video has many depth-first branches, before he unwinds the stack and continues. This makes it a high-effort endeavor (for me) to stay focused on his message.

After ~15 minutes, I gleaned these two points:

1\. Creation is an essential part of being human

2\. The way we create has fundamentally changed over the past half-century, and the consumer of a work now plays a non-trivial role in shaping the work.

I wonder if the book has a similarly discursive style.

<comment><USER4> For me the highlight was the ~15:14 mark, building up on the the diving buddy example. First he mentions that creative process needs a buddy (in "pioneering conditions"):

\- buddy must be passionately curious

\- buddy needs to be kind

Then he explains that all creators create in a cycle, and that long-term creation must be fun, since there is no quick payday. The cycle:

\- ideating

\- experimenting

\- exhibiting

He explains that the exhibiting can (should?) be done to audiences that "get it" and are able to consume the content even in experimental form.

This resonated for me. The most creative and long-term work I did was in this very cycle. I was able to produce things that were immediately consumed and the feedback loop was very quick. This allowed me to stay motivated and sustain "the creativity" for > 2 years.

The obvious question is how to create this cycle artificially, and how to sustain it from an employer point of view.

On the subject of motivation/meaning, it's worth noting "The nihilist's guide to meaning" [https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to- meaning/](https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/)

<comment><USER4> There is some relationship between motivation and enthusiasm. I think enthusiasm is the single most important thing.

Naively, you could state that showing enthusiasm is an expression of internal motivation. But enthusiasm can be faked, while I'm not sure you can fake motivation.

The remaining question is: is it possible to have motivation to do creative work without having an enthusiasm?

(and of course, how to build both things consciously. Is convincing yourself to "doing meaningful work" exactly that?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In creating things that matter, one has to decide what matters, are you creating what matters to you or to the public? If for the later, then you must ask yourself if you are willing to deal with all that it entails such as criticism, moving in a direction that you don't care about where you might not even enjoy the work, and doing a lot of work that other's might value but refuse to pay for.

I frankly believe that the act of creating is "creating things that matter", if it never mattered you wouldn't put in the effort in the first place, the question is does the impact matter? if you created something for only you or you and your friends, what's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing! It use to be that creators created things that mattered to them, but now it seems we are driven to create for others and for profit.

If anything, I would argue against "creating things that matter" and simply preach, "CREATE!"

</comment><comment><USER6> (I'm a bit critical in my comment below; Caveat being that I do appreciate David Edwards' exploration of the subject. Also, his talk is only 28 minutes. The additional material in the his book may well address what I've brought up below).

at about 9:29 :

> "The wall between the creator and the public is going away, and that it's > becoming increasingly difficult to receive commercial value or to learn and > not to co-create..."

I think this doesn't give enough credence the 1000 true friends / believers concept that Kevin Kelly and Seth Godin have discussed. The 1000 true friends theory is especially potent when the the absolute audience size is most of the people in the world, and only a tiny subset across that audience is patronizing the creator/artist.

Later in the video he talks more about the maker movement ..but comes back to "the lab" as a place that that can be captured and understood. I don't quite understand that..

At about 11:00:

> "kids are the ultimate pioneers"

I don't understand this - kids are certainly sponges for learning - but I don't think they're creative pioneers at all - calling kids creative pioneers is much too broad (IMHO). It seems kids are much more reactionary to the creativity that has been put in front of them; often in new mediums ...which means the creative pioneers already exist. Sure there are exceptions to the rule that are indeed kids.

Edit: re kids : in the video he shows a young child - and that is what I'm reacting to. But if you define "kids" to be people in their 20s ..well, that's different. That said, it would be interesting to have some statistics for creative pioneers who are kids (per some definition) vs others.

</comment><comment> a-nikolaev The talk is interesting and the importance of audience is a good point.

However, there is selection bias in the statement that most creations are made for audience. It is true that most famous creations were made for audience, indeed, otherwise they would not become famous or even known to others. There is more to art though.

Some people don't publicize their art, or don't get a lot of attention from others. Yet these people are not necessarily lesser artists. The whole audience can be one friend, or small internet community, or there may be no intended audience at all, when art is made for the sake of the creation process, not necessarily for exposition at all.

The same for the necessity of beauty, which he states is required for all art. I think, not all art or artistic creations are beautiful. However, beautiful art gets remembered and becomes part of the bigger culture easier.

</comment><comment><USER7> im midway thru this book atm. its got an encouraging and enlightening feel, but suffers a bit from being situated in elite academia.

for example, this requirement of being "nice" was ubiquitous in gradschoolland and synonomous with "unchallenging, flattering, " and especially, "beyond critique."

hopefully this talk lets the book's concepts trickle down to Earth a bit.

</comment><comment><USER8> I highly recommend everyone to read "Perennial Seller" by Ryan Holiday. Really insightful and fun to read book on the same subject that does a much better job of explaining it than this dude.

</comment><comment><USER9> TLDR - The creativity nowadays goes in much faster cycles than before, and less life. "Our creations used to live the life of trees, then turtles, and lately flies..." (unknown rand() thought)

</comment><comment><USER10> A lot of words were said but very little was taken away. Can anyone sum up what they thought was interesting or valuable about this talk?

<comment><USER11> Basically: lots of people create things now, and the creations are more short lived than in the past, when there were less creators and less creations. It was one of the least rewarding videos I've watched recently.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Part-Time Work for Founders? - <AUTHOR> Hi fellow hackers! Dilemma, I have!<p>What part-time jobs should be suitable for founders to have in other to fund their expenses and work on their startup for the rest of their time? I wanna hear personal stories too! <comment><USER2> I was saved by a consultancy that dropped in my lap, a foreign company looking for a local representative to manage a key account. Basically 10-20 hours a month doing some product/marketing and account management stuff within my area of expertise but not related to my startup. It mainly just ate into my weekends, with a few meets mid-week.

Since then I have noticed others doing the same type of work to support themselves while their businesses are in the early stages (be it startup or trad. business).

Im relatively old and have a family withs kids in school, for me the hardest part of founding a startup was the financial strain. We extended way past our initial runway by not taking salaries, eroded our savings. It was difficult, but I had confidence in the business, we had responsibility to our customers* and this gig saw me through the really dark times.

We are a success case (our startup is seeing a lot of traction and funding now isnt an issue), but this is an area that I think needs more attention. I can imagine there were potentially great businesses that failed because of this. Startups (esp B2B ones) take time to find their feet. Older founders can eat ramen but you cant feed it to your kids.

PS On general advice id tend towards activities that arent too strenuous and are different to your main tasks within the startup. Eg developing part time while coding full time for your startup id imagine would be a huge drain.

* Our startup has an impact aspect. You couldn't with a heart abandon it, even if you were to roll back your services in a professional manor.

</comment><comment><USER3> I worked for about 6 months at MemSQL while we were selling our startup Theneeds (and now I have a full time job while launching SoloKeys, so I can see also the "growing your startup" option).

My experience with MemSQL has been awesome on every possible level, before, during, and after.

I found the job via regular application process + interview, they were searching explicitly for part-time, so I'd recommend looking for that. I strongly recommend no conflict of interests of any sort, I was doing QA at MemSQL, they knew about my startup where I was doing content recommendation/machine learning/backend+web.

Aside from money, it's been great to work with another startup that: 1) was a US company (vs we were all Italian founders), 2) was in a more advanced stage (so, potential to learn about processes), 3) was and is full of great talented employees (so, great connections that we're still keeping alive).

</comment><comment><USER4> When I finally decided to make [https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) be my priority, I found work through a temp agency for a while which came with some interesting experiences.

One memorable placement was in the shipping department of company which sold tooth whitening kits to dentists. Another was as an office manager at a cremation company sales office.

I actually enjoyed temping for the most part since I was able to build various skills I didn't have before and try out different roles in companies.

<comment><USER5> Unrelated to OP's topic but I really enjoy OfficeSnapshots and it's incredible to see how far it's come since the early days. Congratulations!

Was there sort of a pivotal moment where you felt OfficeSnapshots was going to be viable? Did it happen organically or did you have to push hard for it?

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I guess I'd say it was pretty organic.

When I started it there was no intention of it being a business and it took a while to even think about it that way.

<comment><USER5> It certainly felt that way. Did design firms eventually ask whether they could showcase their work on your site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of startups that grow slowly use a consultancy model, offering consulting services in the area their startup is targeting, or on the Open Source tools their startup is leveraging. As you grow a product and get market fit you can slowly switch from service-oriented to product-oriented, or not, as you see fit. As I understand it, product-oriented tends to be more profitable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Arent Non-Disclousure and Non-Compete agreements that you have to sign as a consultant forbid you from making a product ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> \- teach during weekends \- fill up online surveys \- start a blog \- build a strategy for another startup and take stakes in return than money \- review life experiences with Brands

</comment><comment><USER8> The best kind would be using your first customer as a funding source.

The other, typical option is to consult for a not very demanding customer.

</comment><comment><USER9> Toptal.com</comment>


BBC Genome Project (BBC TV and Radio Listings from 1923 On) - <AUTHOR> http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ <comment><AUTHOR> On literally my first page, I find this gem: [http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/696801456e6e4dfc95e059a2ab68699a](http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/696801456e6e4dfc95e059a2ab68699a)

Electronic Office

BBC One London, 24 February 1985 9.35

3: Wiring up the Organisation A microcomputer on its own can perform many useful tasks in the office but as soon as an organisation starts linking computers together into a network, its whole style of working may change dramatically, with a consequent challenge to management. In the third of six programmes Ian McNaught-Davis continues his examination of the office technology of today and tomorrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Archive.org has the series available: [https://archive.org/details/electronic- office](https://archive.org/details/electronic-office)</comment></comment>


Show HN: nFiles: Instant File Hosting with an Email. Private. No signup. - <AUTHOR> https://nfil.es/

<comment><AUTHOR> Free. No Ads. Minimalist solution for file hosting. Best for anonymously uploading and sharing small files.

<comment><USER2> "Free. No Ads." What's the business model - who is paying for it and why? Will my files be around a month from now when you move on to something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> We haven't had a business model yet. We just want to build something our family and friends want to use.

Those files are there until you delete them yourself. You decide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> this is neat, nice to see people experimenting in this space.</comment>


Font Size May Not Aid Learning, but Its Style Can, Researchers Find - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/health/19mind.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> It's unclear if the result come from looking at a font that's hard to read, or simply one that's unfamiliar / not Arial. Would have been nice if they tried setting it in a reasonable text font as well like Garamond or Bookman as a third option to see how that impacts performance.

Instead, we get a study that says "use comic sans instead of Arial." Thanks.</comment>


Why Hulu's Owners Couldn't Find A Buyer - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/13/why-hulus-owners-couldnt-find-a-buyer/ <comment><USER2> The most puzzling part of this to me is that the content studios honestly thought it would work.

"We're going to sell you a company with assets which vanish in two years, after which time, you have a company with no assets and the right to negotiate for the right to use of the aforementioned assets at a price to be determined by us."

Yahoo may exhibit tremendous inability to derive value from acquisitions, but not even they were willing to take this time bomb.

<comment><USER3> I think the idea was that none of the Hulu partners felt a real need to keep Hulu around. The Netflix threat has been thwarted. Enough providers have turned against Netflix it can't stand on its own anymore. Everyone with content is instead building its own segregated streaming service around proprietary content.

So what do you do with a very popular but strategically dead product? Sell high is what you do. At least that's what Comcast and Disney wanted to do with Hulu. New Corp's streaming offering isn't quite as mature, so it was fine keeping Hulu for a little bit longer.

The same thing happened with Netflix. What do you do with a popular but strategically dead product like the DVD rentals? Sell high, sell high.

Netfix's DVD business is worth something. Hulu is worth something. They were just hoping it was worth more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I were Google, I would have done it. Offered $2B and taken the 2-year deal with Hulu. Match it up with YouTube, grow it as big as possible, and completely dominate online video to the point of creating a monopoly. At that point, you'd have leverage to negotiate with the studios -- yes they have the content, but you'd have the distribution (think iTunes and record labels). If they don't deal with you and try to launch something separate, they'd have no traffic. And there'd be no real competition on bidding from third parties as they'd likely already have been wiped out by the YouTube/Hulu combo.

</comment><comment><USER5> I keep being reminded of the cliched statement: content is king.

The next revolution in the media industry will be brought about by the ability to produce high quality, low budget content.

Things like the RED camera, HD video capable SLRs, point and click video editing software, easy access to compute farms are pointing to a future where video content will be as easy to produce as back in the 2000's where anyone could just put up a webpage with the tags <html></html>.

You can already see it happening and that is what has the old content producers scared.

<comment><USER6> What exactly are they scared of? Amateurs taking over professionals?

Can't see that happening as the public directs most of their attention to the professionals. On the other end of the spectrum, all of the talent and creativity go where the money is.

<comment><USER7> Not amateurs taking over - a new set of professionals, doing shows cheaper and quicker.

The production values might not be as good, and there will be a heap of terrible content produced, but there _will_ be some hits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not surprising news to me.

The issue is that the three owners (Comcast, Disney, News Corp) provide the most popular content on the service. In order to become a truly independent platform, Hulu needs to beef up its offerings so that the loss of any individual content partner would not be a big deal.

They are not there yet, though they are moving in the right direction with Hulu Japan, the Univision deal, etc. As of now, however, the major content partners still hold a large amount of power and the potential buyers saw this from miles away.

<comment><USER9> > In order to become a truly independent platform, Hulu needs to beef up its > offerings so that the loss of any individual content partner would not be a > big deal

Absolutely correct. The main thing is that the only viable independent platform, Netflix, has had serious difficulty maintaining agreements with content providers. That adds a lot of risk and uncertainty for prospective investors of an independent Hulu.

<comment><USER7> The content providers are playing a dangerous game though, and it isn't clear they recognize it.

If they push the price too high then Netflix has the money to go directly to the production houses and buy shows themselves. I know they are experimenting with this now, but it is a model that will become more and more attractive.

<comment><USER8> I think they do recognize it by this point. I think the pullback of Starz! was a key sign of this... the content providers were not comfortable handing Netflix so much power.

You bring up a good point about Netflix/Hulu going direct to buy their content. I think we are seeing early signs of this, but it has been taking time to gain traction. Some of the early Hulu exclusives such as "If I Can Dream" were epic failures. But there have been successes as well, such as "The LXD".

<comment><USER7> I think they have recognized the power Netflix has, but the withdrawl of Starz was overplaying their hand. That's going to push Netflix down the road of commissioning more shows themselves earlier than they need to. It's also going to encourage other, new content providers to enter the market.

The fact that some of Netflix shows failed isn't really relevant - the fact they commssioned them at all is the thing that should have content providers worried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The reason is here somewhere..

<http://www.sjtrek.com/trek/rules/></comment>


What we learned from building a real-time, location-based geofencing game - <AUTHOR> https://geoloqi.com/blog/2011/09/building-a-real-time-location-based-urban-geofencing-game-with-socket-io-redis-node-js-and-sinatra-synchrony/ We recently built an app on the Geoloqi platform and wanted to share what we learned from it. <comment><USER2> Excellent post. Even though I know y'all IRL, it is still nice reading a nicely organized dump of priceless information!</comment>


Cryptocurrencies are pulling the U.S. back to the 1830s, Fed official says - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cryptocurrencies-are-pulling-the-us-back-to-the-1830s-fed-official-says-2018-05-14 <comment><USER2> The situation seems entirely hamfisted into the metaphor.

It's like saying "Wow, with everyone being to able to read and write there is way to much chaos, how annoying. Times were better when only a few chosen would guard the knowledge of humanity"

EDIT: Also, what an egocentric worldview is this? As if crypto were some kind of America-only phenomenon...</comment>


Errors detected in the Visual C++ 2012 libraries - <AUTHOR> http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0163/

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty effective advertisement.

I'd bet that the goal of the example entitled "One more strange loop" is to avoid a lot of annoying indentation. I've seen the same technique used by fanatical adherents of the "no early return" philosophy.</comment>


Democracy Doesn't Exist Anymore Because of Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_facebook_s_role_in_brexit_and_the_threat_to_democracy <comment><USER2> Is it just me or are other people sick of all the finger pointing at Facebook for the worlds ills. Sure FB isn't perfect but it's hard for me to believe they are solely responsible for Trump, Brexit, the end of democracy, and hell freezing over.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish that was opinion so that we could actually argue against it. It's not a matter of belief at this point, as unbelievable as it may sound.</comment></comment>


Complicated is OK - <AUTHOR> http://kyledaigle.position.cc/complicated-is-ok

<comment><USER2> Hear hear. HN was much better than average throughout this whole affair. There were heated arguments, but it was (mostly) civil and people at least took the time to elaborate on their positions.

I wish the same could be said for my Facebook feed (and why I wish I could keyword-filter my Facebook feed), which were full of snarky one-liners, catchphrases, and image memes from both sides of the aisle (well, mostly the pro gun control side, given my demographics) - none of which is productive.

These simplistic sound bites (image bites?) add no understanding to the discourse, oversimplify a _massively_ complicated issue, and are nothing more than self-congratulatory feel-good rhetoric that serve to further polarize and separate the two sides.

It's not unique to this shooting though - the dumbing-down and meme-ification of my Facebook feed has been increasing for some time, across all age groups I'm friends with. People don't express themselves anymore and opt to share an oversimplistic, insipid image macro instead - even distinctively non-Redditor middle aged people on my friends list do this.

</comment><comment><USER3> See also: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/gz/policy_debates_should_not_appear_...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/gz/policy_debates_should_not_appear_onesided/)

In short: Tighter gun control might help on net, or it might be harmful on net. But whichever is right, we shouldn't pretend that the option that's better on net has _no downsides_ , that it is a _strict_ improvement, which is what people tend to do.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coming from a country where you essentially can't own guns (sport is an exception, and very tightly controlled), it strikes me as odd that anyone would want to own one, for personal defence, or reasons of freedom. And on first thought it seems obvious that tighter gun control will prevent gun crime.

However I think the issue is far more complicated than this. As I understand it, a large number of countries allow guns to a larger extent than my own, Canada being a good example, but they don't suffer from the increased gun crime. Deaths relating to guns here and in Canada are roughly the same, as they are in most countries. But the US is consistently several orders of magnitude worse in gun related deaths than anywhere else.

Perhaps this is not a question of gun control, after all, if people really want a gun there is probably little that will stop them. Perhaps this is an issue of cultural attitudes to guns?

</comment><comment><USER5> It is vitally important to recognise the complexity and uncertainty in deciding on these kinds of big issues. There will rarely be clear winners, and evidence is almost always partial and flawed.

BUT as a non-American citizen I can't understand why you would allow citizens to own semi-automatic weapons. The only purpose of these weapons is to kill other people (or hold the threat of such). Why not allow weapons for hunting (rifles, etc.) but criminalise anything allows you to simply hold down the trigger and count.

</comment><comment><USER6> Suicidal lone-nuts need shouldn't be able to obtain guns. There are probably ways to do this without an outright ban, or excessive bureaucracy. I propose the following possible solutions:

1) Outlaw buying a gun by yourself, and require 10 co-signers, who assume personal liability for any misuse of the gun. Everyone must be free of a criminal record, and take an oath to follow the law.

2) Require liability insurance to own a gun like car insurance. The insurance company would ensure you aren't a threat, or they probably wouldn't provide you with liability insurance.

</comment><comment><USER7> Prohibition is never a solution to anything. What we need is a cultural shift of some sort that involves identifying people in situations that lead to increased risk of later in life criminal activity and providing them the tools they need to escape that fate. This is more complicated than just thinking critically about gun control.

The goal isn't to create a perfect, utopian, society. It's to target certain statistics for reduction. It's hard to get elected on a platform that has a 10 year wait for results.

<comment><USER8> Prohibition is very definitely a solution to some problems. Take drugs as an example: You can make an argument that marijuana, or even harder drugs like cocaine or meth should be personal choices. But those arguments have limits.

For instance, nobody would run a "Legalize Vancomycin" campaign. Being one of our last resort antibiotics that remains effective against many cases of MRSA, preventing its overuse is critical. If not for our prescription drug system, it'd take less than a week for someone to start selling ANTIBACTERIAL SOAP! KILLS 99% OF MRSA! and the drug would become useless in short order.

While I won't say that's analogous to gun laws, it's a good example of there being cases where prohibition is an effective solution, and there are _absolutely_ situations where things should only be available to people with a strong need to use them.

Saying that prohibition is never a solution reeks of the same aversion to complex opinions that the linked article was written about.

<comment><USER7> I don't agree. I think prohibition can coincide with a cultural perception that creates the illusion that the prohibition is effective, but in my opinion it's the culture itself not the prohibition.

Nothing can truly be prohibited. Especially things culture demands. What you're talking about is regulation anyway. There is a deference between prohibition and regulation. Take prescription drugs for example.

People absolutely would campaign to legalize Vancomycin if there was a cultural perception in favor of it's benefits.

<comment><USER8> >Prohibition: Noun The action of forbidding something, esp. by law. A law or regulation forbidding something.

I don't see how it isn't prohibition. What differentiates it from any other prescription drug, especially those with recreational uses? Would you apply the word to marijuana, but not to OxyContin?

Regarding your last point: If there were a massive outbreak of something best treated by Vancomycin, I'm sure we would see arguments that it should be available over the counter to anyone who wants some. And that would be a terrible idea because of people who would buy a bunch and take it constantly, figuring it would keep them safe. And maybe it would, but at the cost of Vancomycin becoming a less effective treatment, and overall a lot more people dying.

That's one aspect of the argument that _does_ fit pretty well with the debate on firearms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The situation we are in is quite simple actually. It is nothing more than a Nash equilibrium. Suboptimal, but stable...and nobody gains anything by changing their strategy. Everybody wants to disarm everybody but themselves.

The solution? Now that is complicated. Has anybody ever seen a Nash Equilibrium broken by anything other than a third party? What happens when neither side trusts the third party?

</comment><comment><USER10> From the article:

> Complete and utter freedom doesn't work in America

Uhh, you wouldn't know. You've never had it.

<comment><USER8> We used to have something closer to it. Side effects included child labor, people burning to death in factories because the doors were locked, and Standard Oil, among other things.

Even the most hard-line Libertarians will admit that "complete freedom" is overrated.

<comment><USER11> > Even the most hard-line Libertarians will admit that "complete freedom" is > overrated.

Be careful with statements like these: Every time you use them, you're betting that you _have_ , in fact, _actually_ seen the hard line.

In this case, I am pretty sure there are others here who have experience with Libertarians (self-proclaimed, perhaps, but loud enough) who do, in fact, believe that complete freedom would lead to market solutions to _everything_. Utopian Libertarianism, like Utopian Socialism, is quite dogmatic on some issues.

<comment><USER8> Admittedly, the libertarians I've spoken to personally have some concept along the lines of "Your freedom ends where mine begins," and don't think a society where someone might feel entitled to murdering you over a parking space would be a good idea. But I could probably have worded it better.

In any case, I don't see "complete freedom" for everyone as a concept that can even exist in the abstract. If you have complete freedom, I can't (as a silly example) lock you in my basement and make you sew Snuggies for 20 hours a day. But one definition of freedom (#3 on dictionary.com) that I think applies here is:

> _the power to determine action without restraint._

If slave ownership isn't permitted, then I don't have that power. Either you get "complete freedom" or I do.

Replacing "overrated" with "not possible/feasible" should make it a bit more accurate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test - <AUTHOR> http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/artificial-earthquake-detected-in-north-korea-may-be-nuclear-test/story-e6frg6so-1226576256804 <comment><USER2> So when they did this in 2006, the UN issued weapons sanctions against North Korea[1]. Then when they did it again in 2009, the UN issued more sanctions[2] that apparently NK considered an 'act of war'. From them, the world has intercepted a whopping 6 North Korean boats and 1 North Korean airplane.

Aside from "issuing even more sanctions" what options are available to the UN? Good luck trying to send in a team of people to destroy the nuclear program, that will all but invite a warhead/attack.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1718)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1874)

<comment><USER3> What is North Korea's motivation? Given the UN's predicable past responses, North Korea must gain some political benefit from these UN responses.

<comment><USER4> Never ever underestimate the power of being self sufficient military wise. You can pretty much do anything you want and get away if you are a nuclear power. And its not like North Korea is going to remain poor forever.

Look at UAE and Singapore, it takes little time to change the economic situation. A little years here and there, with China's and India's emergence on the world scene things can change pretty rapidly. To cut US's influence in Asia, North Korea is a indispensable asset.

Allies are not permanent and US's help to Japan and South Korea is not infinite. Geopolitical situations will always change and have always changed throughout history.

Given this situation, North Korea can be a big player in the future, now imagine having the military might in this situation. It can force unification of the Korean peninsula on its terms in the future.

<comment><USER5> > And its not like North Korea is going to remain poor forever.

They are doing a pretty good job of being poor already. I don't think you can compare North Korea to those other countries, even China. North Korea is a world peculiarity; it is the way it is because of it's bizarre regime, in a way different from China. It is so totally isolated and the average person is so uninformed about what is happening less than 100 miles from it's borders. The kind of trade that would reduce North Korea's poverty, I think would topple the regime, a regime based on magical stories about unicorns and people that don't need to use the bathroom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My father-in-law was a VP in Northrop Grumman's space and satellite division. The kinds of projects he worked on were space defense satellites.

When he looked at all the uncertainty in the world (much caused at least indirectly by the US), his biggest fear was and continues to be North Korea.

Given the types of people I know he met with, this test does not fill me with warm fuzzies.

<comment><USER7> " his biggest fear was and continues to be North Korea."

Can you go into why? The sentiment runs at odds with Bush's obsession with Iraq/Iran.

<comment><USER6> It really comes down to the country's leadership. All of the other points in other comments here are certainly valid, but he feels that NK's leaders are more likely to be willing to push the button and the US is in range.

What I can't say is if this belief in NK's leaders is based on actual intelligence or some sort or just his opinion. Given their willingness to take pot-shots at SK, I know I'm concerned about this.

<comment><USER7> Has that sentiment changed since Kim Jong-un ascended to power?

<comment><USER6> His view hasn't. My reading of it is that is because Kim Jong-un was raised in the same megalomaniac environment and the supporting power structure hasn't changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most informative piece on North Korean culture I've read recently was written by someone who worked in Pyongyang for a year as a "reviser" (giving a final read over their English translated press releases):

<http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang.html>

"A Year in Pyongyang" is just fascinating. Really digs into the mechanics and psychology of a state run under a cult of personality.

It's also completely free.

The biggest takeaway: there are probably a shockingly high number of "true believers" there that would fight to the last man in any conflict.

</comment><comment><USER9> USGS link: [http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000f5t0#...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000f5t0#summary)

</comment><comment><USER10> Statement by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation: [http://www.ctbto.org/press-centre/press- releases/2013/statem...](http://www.ctbto.org/press-centre/press- releases/2013/statement-by-ctbto-executive-secretary-tibor-toth-on-the- seismic-event-detected-in-north-korea-as-a-response-to-media-questions/)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is sad. Nuclear proliferation can be a good thing (energy), but it can also be a bad thing (weapons). NK only does this to get attention from other nations and feel like they are on the same level as them. The end result is food aid to stop the nuclear development. What's really sad is the world produces enough food to feed the entire population of the world, but most of it gets thrown away. I'm willing to pay twice as much for my food if it means the rest of the world gets to eat too, but I fear most people just don't care.

The good news, if you could call it that, is that China doesn't want American troops stationed on it's south border, so they will do what they can to keep NK in line.

</comment><comment><USER12> Think of all those poor suffering people starving to death, eating bark off trees, just so the government can afford to do this.

It's just sickening.

</comment><comment><USER13> These kinds of "you guys can't have nukes because they're bad, but we'll keep some on hand because we're responsible" disputes that the USA seems to love force me think "where are all the adults?"

<comment><USER14> This kind of thinking is disappointing. North Korea is a dictatorship that is irrational enough to starve it's citizens- if it has that little care for it's people, why wouldn't it launch some nukes?

Is the US perfect? No. Is it a democratic, accountable country? Largely, yes. There is no perfect system of government, and people should stop pretending that everyone is on the same moral level.

<comment><USER15> That's misrepresenting US to suit US propaganda.

The US leveled two countries in order to assassinate someone in a third country. It wasn't held accountable at all.

You are right, morally they are not on the same level, but not the way you think they aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think it should be pointed out here that the NK regime is not actually crazy, they simply are very skilled at acting in such a way to extract concessions and aid to keep the regime intact.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why is it wrong that NK do Nuclear testing?

I agree NK has some human rights issues, that should be addressed, but testing nuclear weapons is no different to Pakistan or India, and there are no sanctions against them.

<comment><USER2> It's the manner with which they're conducting the tests. Do you think nuclear testing should be done in private by an authoritarian regime, or do you think it should be done with the acceptance and supervision of the world's scientists?

<comment><USER17> In their last round of tests neither Pakistan nor India performed them "with the acceptance and supervision of the world's scientists".

US intelligence was completely wrongfooted at the time of India's five Pokhran-II tests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> God how I wish the North Korean regime would be wiped off the face of the planet.

</comment><comment><USER19> I hope they blew themselves up.

<comment><USER15> Your comment is an example of why this kind of propaganda works. People start hating another country they've (likely) never been to, and likely have no understanding of their motives.

<comment><USER20> I assume that you know that the OPer has no personal linkage to, or understanding of, the Korean situation? Or did you make a convenient assumption?

<comment><USER15> You'll note my use of the word "likely".

Happy to be refuted.

<comment><USER20> "Likely" and unsubstantiated guess aren't the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is sensationalist news at its finest. There is only one way to confirm that a nuclear bomb test has occurred and it is not by measuring 'resulting' earthquakes. Until either the US Gov't or the very top at the IAEA states there was a successful test, this is nothing but linkbait. Frankly, given the tensions right now between the North and South, and that it seems the North, with the Passing of Kim Jung Il, might be more willing to open up, I find this type of reporting and grandstanding for views really infuriating.

/rant

<comment><USER22> An earthquake 1000m below the surface on Nuclear Test Road (not a joke: type the coordinates into Google Maps) which occurs after a week of nuclear test threats and has a slightly larger magnitude than the last North Korean test is unlikely to be a coincidence.

<comment><USER21> I'm positive that North Korea wants the world to believe that they're testing nuclear weapons, because that is their only bargaining card, but that doesn't mean they made a successful test.

<comment><USER23> NK stated they would perform a nuke test on this date and location.

Which do you think is more likely, a) the tremors are from a nuke test b) Kim Jong performed a mystical ancient Korean wardance that happened to summon an earthquake at the designated time and place?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Savings Bond Wizard Replacment - <AUTHOR> https://www.savingsbondsolutions.com/calculators/savings-bond-wizard <comment><AUTHOR> Your alternative option to the (now retired) Treasury Direct Savings Bond Wizard. Build a spreadsheet (csv or xlsx) of your bonds and import to quickly determine the redemption value of your bonds and more!</comment>


Barcamp San Juan, Puerto Rico - <AUTHOR> http://barcampsj.org

<comment><USER2> I'm sad I am not in San Juan that weekend and will miss it :(

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in, attending and presenting.

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome. Looking forward to this.</comment>


Ask YC: How do I send incoming email to a PHP script? - <AUTHOR>

I've never dealt with email servers so don't quite know where to begin. All I'm looking to do is send incoming emails to a PHP script that can then parse the message and take action based on the contents. I've got a box running FC and it looks like the default mail server is postfix. Is there a simple way to get this going? I'm worried about fiddling too much on my own as the server hosts a few dozen moderate traffic sites. Thanks! <comment><USER3> In the postfix configuration, enable allow_mail_to_commands ( <http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html> ). In a Unix account home directory, create a .forward file which begins with a pipe symbol and names your script: |./my_mail_stub.php

For each message sent to the account, postfix will run your script. Your script can obtain the raw message from stdin.

You'll be pleased to know that the principle for sendmail and qmail configuration is broadly similar and shouldn't require any changes to your script.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a bunch. Just about got it working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're running a pop3d or imapd - then it's much better (and safer) to have your script fetch email from there.

Check: <http://us3.php.net/imap>

If you're not running a pop3d or an imapd - then xirium's way is good - <USER2> get postfix to forward to a mail account that runs the script from .forward.

Note: Someone could mailbomb the account with the .forward file and cause your script to be invoked every single time a mail comes in (hence, a little less secure!)

<comment><USER5> A mailbomb in an IMAP box would still be a cause for concern. It could mean that incoming mail doesn't get processed for hours or days--if the system relies on timely information (like in a support ticket tracker) this could potentially be a big problem.

procmail would allow one to pre-process mail and add some rules to prevent dupes and not even forward messages that don't make sense. For example, if you're expecting to receive a ticket ID in the subject and there isn't one, you toss the message rather than forward it. If you get multiple messages with identical contents, you can also toss it. procmail has built-in tests for this sort of thing. A milter or filter could be written to do the same job, but that would apply to all incoming messages unless you jumped through a few hoops and made it pretty smart.

But, a mailbomb would still be a concern just from a raw mail processing speed standpoint. But, Postfix can throttle SMTP servers that are sending faster than a certain rate...so it can be locked down, but you have to address the problems at multiple layers.

That said, any of the solutions given will probably work fine--most of the time the usual spam and AV filtering tools will keep your mail clean enough to just do the simplest thing and fix it if it breaks (possibly by going to more complex solutions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You could also use a cron job (php script even) which can fetch emails and do what ever with them accordingly at what ever interval you need.

<comment><USER3> That's a cunning plan. Your script could connect to a POP or IMAP server. That would allow it to process an unlimited number of messages in one run. This would be more scalable because you could do stuff like database bulk inserts of data from many messages.

It would be more awkward to write and more awkward to test but it would definitely be worthwhile for a high volume of messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a chapter about this in Cal Henderson's _Building Scalable Websites_...

<comment><USER8> yes, awesome book

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> procmail will do the job. From the homepage:

"Procmail can be used to [...] preprocess your mail, start any programs upon mail arrival [...]."

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

<comment><USER5> We also use procmail for this sort of thing (along with a lot of other things, like spam and AV filtering, advanced delivery logging, etc.). It's a bit of a learning curve, but once scaled, is a very powerful tool. It also has the benefit that it can be a dispatch table, of sorts, and call different scripts based on different contents or subjects or whatever, and provides logging and other stuff reasonably cheaply. And, it provides security via its DROPPRIVS directive. Yep, procmail is a good choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use sendmail to pipe incoming messages to a python script using smrsh. "sendmail restricted shell" one liner change to sendmail.conf. Google around, lots of examples.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's probably something prebuilt already (dunno) but writing your own POP client isn't very difficult. Figure out how to set up a socket connection and issue some commands (look these up, but from memory all there is to POP is LOGIN, PASSWORD, LIST, RETRIEVE and DELETE). Now POP server processes were fairly CPU hungry (but short lived as well, so it wasn't too much of a problem) back in the day of 400MHz servers but nowadays you should be fine.

<comment><USER12> Ah yes, the PHP way. Instead of getting a library that does POP, just hack together a half-working implementation that may or may not randomly lose data. Good plan.

<comment><USER11> Oh come on. This is POP we're talking about, not a full fledged SOAP client. Writing your own POP client is easier and takes less time than scavenging the internet for someone else's, looking through it to see if it doesn't have bugs and testing it.

In fact, I'd argue that if you've never written any sort of network client code, writing a POP client is perfect to get you started. It's just that simple.</comment></comment></comment>


Should job seeking programmers understand object oriented programming? - <AUTHOR> http://www.supercoders.com.au/blog/shouldcodersknowoo.shtml

<comment><USER2> I work in the enterprise where for the most part people I interview can't explain things like polymorphism, which is sad. I once interviewed a fellow with his PhD in Comp Sci who couldn't explain simple theory based things such as graphs or know when to apply graphs. I agree that these kind of questions are important on phone interviews people it weeds out the people who aren't very good without having to waste my time to ask these kinds of questions. When I interview people, I want to be more concerned with the persons problem solving skills than their ability to trivially memorize words and definitions.

I must state though that these concepts are important to solving the problem correctly. If I give you a problem to solve, its important to solve it, but it is important to solve it elegantly (I know that sometimes this is not possible). If I have refactor your code every time you check it in, not only are you wasting your time, you are wasting my time which means things aren't getting done. To their point, these concepts are very important, however hey aren't the most important thing to look for in people. I'd rather have someone that could solve problems kinda well, who was friendly than someone who can't solve problems but has a large computer science vocabulary.

<comment><AUTHOR> If someone can memorize the words and definitions of OO concepts then they are at least part of the way to actually understanding the concepts.

Nothing wrong with memorization if it is a step towards comprehension.

<comment><USER2> To me, it's less about the actual memorization and more about the effort shown to actual memorize them. My job isn't hard to do (trust me), its not designing anything complicated, so if you show effort and willingness to learn things (or at least long enough to get the job done), for the most part that is satisfactory.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. The disappointing thing is that so few people make the effort at all to learn.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Poll Aggregators of the Future Are Reproducible and Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/11/the_polls_of_the_future_will_be_reproducible_and_open_source.html <comment><USER2> I had some trouble finding the code[1] and the paper[2]. The Stan code itself is [3]

I think this is quite a strong model - if I was looking to work on it I'd like to see it incorporate some economic data (and probably previous election poll trends) as a way of attempting to improve the early-election-cycle forecasts.

[1] [https://github.com/pkremp/polls](https://github.com/pkremp/polls)

[2] [http://votamatic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Linzer- JASA1...](http://votamatic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Linzer-JASA13.pdf)

[3] [https://github.com/pkremp/polls/blob/master/state%20and%20na...](https://github.com/pkremp/polls/blob/master/state%20and%20national%20polls.stan)

</comment><comment><USER3> Totally misleading title. "Polls" is one thing, poll aggregators are a whole other thing.

I was really excited to read about actual polls that are somehow open source (not sure how that would work though).

<comment><USER4> The hardest part of an open source poll would be anonymization. Demographic information in some areas could be enough to come pretty close to uniquely identifying an individual.

The rest of it: Likely Voter Models, Demographic Weighting, etc would be pretty easy to have open source and reproducible once you've solved the issues.

<comment><USER3> Yes anonymization is the problem I was thinking of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >There's lots of concern about media bias from all directions, and open source is the best way to address skepticism about particular assessments.

This is a really good and important point, I think. Let's argue about method, not outcome.

</comment><comment><USER6> If that's true, then the polling companies of the future have new customers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ptrs: Ben Adida worked on a cryptography-based open-audit voting system called HELIOS in 2008 -- could be used as part of anonymous yet auditable open-source polling / voting system:

[http://ben.adida.net/research/](http://ben.adida.net/research/)</comment>


Ask HN: How have you spent time outside work for the past couple of weeks? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Preparing slides and supporting material for a talk I'll be delivering at All Things Open[1] in about a week.

The talk is titled "AI Sherlock Holmes Style : Introduction to Automated Abductive Inference"

So I've been working on slides that cover the different styles of reasoning/inference (deductive, inductive, analogical, statistical, and ... wait for it... abductive), some history, examples, etc., with lots of quotes from the Sherlock Holmes canon woven in to illustrate specific points. It turns out that much of what Holmes did, what he described as "deduction", was really abduction. So that material works in nicely to help make certain points more concrete.

As for the implementation, I'm working with Parsimonious Covering Theory, as developed by James Reggia and Yun Peng. I've written a partially complete implementation of their approach, and will be including some live demos of how abduction works with a knowledge-base to generate explanations.

[1]: [https://allthingsopen.org](https://allthingsopen.org)</comment>


OpenBSD gets a hypervisor - <AUTHOR> http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20151122214050 <comment><USER2> Yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612226)

</comment><comment><USER3> Where I can view the source? Is there a source browser where I can see the commit?

<comment><USER4> [http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/cvsweb/src/usr.sbin/vmd/](http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/cvsweb/src/usr.sbin/vmd/)

<comment><USER5> CVS? Seriously?

<comment><USER6> It's still a very widely used version control system, despite the popularity of git. If it works (and well), why change it?

<comment><USER5> The "well" part is questionable. It's been many years since I used CVS, but I recall things like branching and merging being much more tedious affairs. People move on to things like Git not just because they're fashionable, but because they're more productive. When I see a large project still using CVS, it makes me wonder if there's some point trying to be made.

<comment><USER6> Presumably, part of it is related to licensing - OpenCVS being a BSD-licensed tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> cant wait to get some openbsd vm's spun up! great work and thx!</comment>


A Bit of Functional Programming in Rust - <AUTHOR> http://andreiformiga.com/blog/?p=382

<comment><AUTHOR> I would like to see more elaboration on _why_ things like fold are not idiomatic Rust. The article mostly just states it without elaboration. If anyone can elaborate, please do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's my initial guess as someone just beginning to learn the language. Imagine you have a data structure that you need to work with, and many funcs which operate on it. Striving for functional style, you'd prefer these funcs not to mutate the data struct passed in to them. Rather, the funcs would return a _new_ data struct that has the appropriate changes.

But that would generate a lot of "allocations" and "garbage." Possibly that approach only makes sense in a language with a garbage collector. Presumably, the main reason you would have chosen Rust in the first place is you desired tight control over memory. Yet, this "pure function" approach which creates a lot of garbage requires you to not care so much about tight control over memory.

As I said, this is a guess -- where am I right and where am I wrong?</comment></comment>


Robert Scoble: I've completely moved to social media - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/?p=8494 <comment><USER3> Well, the usual example is why give away all your Google juice to FB - <USER2> those links pointing to your domain.

However I have just posted my latest so called thought to Ask HN : my blog has run out since I changed phones and I am fed up wasting time writing to email and never catching up.

So, yeah I understand his position. Plus Scoble is the name he cares about not Scoble.com</comment>


Ask HN: Why productivity matters to you? - <AUTHOR> I've being asking this to myself recently and I found it to be a very important question, answering it helped me to focus more during the day, so I wanted to share the question here, and I'm curious about your thoughts. <comment><USER2> In professional life, productivity is important because it's how I position myself in negotiation.

I'll quote my day rate for a consulting gig, which will give the other party an immediate pulmonary embolism. But before it becomes terminal, I'll continue onto my spiel about how cost equals rate multiplied by time, and that neither term is meaningful on its own.

So you can hire a $50/hr guy to build this, but it'll take him six times as long because he's never built one o' these before. Or you can hire the $15/hr guy who will labor away tirelessly for six months before it becomes apparent that he is simply incapable of delivering a finished product. Or you can hire me and end up with your thing built quickly and correctly. (at which point, it's handy to point to a working example of something frighteningly similar that you've built recently to underscore the point).

For my own stuff, productivity is just as important. If I can get a new feature out the door in four hours on a Monday morning instead of 40 hours over the course of a week, then I've bought myself a lot of time to spend working on the next feature or (more likely) screwing off climbing rocks and playing with the kids.

It's the reason a little question mark appears over my head every time I see somebody mention how they don't mind writing code in a text editor and keeping a browser window open to look things up. Maybe if I was sitting in a cubicle, collecting a paycheck, that would fly. But if it's my time on the line, I'm going to leverage every last scran of tooling to speed things up.

<comment><AUTHOR> My take away from your comment 'I've bought myself a lot of time'.

That's a great way to put it, I've being asking this, because usually people put the focus on productivity method X or Y and this or that software to manage tasks. One can miss the point of why is productivity important for oneself in the first place. I found that for me focusing on answering this question, rather than on particular tools or methods, motivates me much more than just going mindlessly trough your workday fighting against productivity tools/methods.

So I'm not saying that tools of methods are not useful, just saying that the motivation can't come from using these tools or methods, but from the WHY. I guess sometimes people are so enthusiastic about particular methods or tools and there so much advice out there that it feels overwhelming.

So I though that coming back to the basic question could be helpful/healthy reminder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Without productivity, nothing would get done. In our society, where we have tons of distractions, as well as the innate ability for procrastination, it should be priority to set goals in order to accomplish things, even if it is just one or two things a day. If you want something in life, you have to go for it. Very few people get lucky and are given handouts.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not so much the productivity that means things to me.

I want to feel like I'm achieving things, and if I sit about all day doing nothing then that isn't going to happen. The only way to achieve things is to be productive.

Plus it feels great at the end of the day, to look back and see everything you've managed to do.

</comment><comment> brown-dragon I have so many things that I need a system to keep me productive. Plus, it's fun to get things done and be confident in not having missed anything important.

Productivity is about getting the right results for the least effort!

</comment><comment><USER5> In theory, if I'm more productive, I get more time and/or money.</comment>