In 1 Sentence Explain... - <AUTHOR> http://1sentence.com/ 1 Sentence is an experimental concept in simplified explanations. Would love to get your feedback. <comment><USER3> Based on a very short look around I can't see this really being interesting att all.

However, here's an idea I would like. The same website, fully moderated to the point that answers are not community-contributed, but sought out by website staff. For examplee, "In one sentence, explain what's great about SF for tech companies" you might reach out for an answer from pg, and a couple of other similar people.

And doesn't have to be all tech, or even all well-known. For example one on there was "Explain why Justin Bieber is popular". The answer "because teenage girls exist" is entirely worthless, however perhaps there is someone in the music industry who could give an actual interesting thought, in one sentence, on that topic.

<comment><USER4> I understand where Corin is coming from but his well-meaning advice completely misses the potential. The question "Explain why Justin Bieber is popular" and the answer "because teenage girls exist" are both BRILLIANT - the fact that Corin can't see the point of them doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with him, it just means that he is out of tune with the type of humor that most normal people enjoy.

A site like this is a novelty, potentially an extremely popular one. It will never be a storehouse of proper knowledge, like a sort of mini-StackExchange, full of the sort of things that Corin might consider "worthwhile" - <USER2> logically, what would be the point of "reaching out" to Paul Graham and other worthies ... for single sentence answers!

Seriously, this thing's true destiny is to be a dynamic stage for funny thoughts and funnier answers, and in that it has tremendous potential, tremendous value.

My advice would to look beyond the constraints of your own idea of what 1sentence will be, ease off on deleting answers, let your users lead the way and ignore the advice of techies who can't see the simple beauty of your idea - these are the type of people who orignally wrote off Twitter with grand, huffy statements about not wanting to know what other people were having for breakfast, completely failing to realize that something important was shifting in how people communicate.

Well done.

<comment><USER3> I know you weren't making this connection directly for me, but just for the record I have actually been a big fan of Twitter for quite a while ;)

I do see your points, but and I'm not saying my suggestions would make it a more popular site, or give it a better chance of making money, or a better chance of lasting longer. Simply that it would make it a site that I would enjoy more.

And obviously I can see that my Bieber example was humour, and my point wasn't disagreeing with that, simply that a site for of actually insightful answers would, to me and to many others (not saying the majority) would be far more interesting, than a site full of random humoour.

Would it be a waste to get pg to write just a sentence? Perhaps, but if so that means I have picked a bad example. I've seen many examples in the past of something quite complex being explained in an easy-to-understand one seentence way, which would have left me wanting a lot more had it been in my area of expertise, but in fact I much enjoyed.

Here's an example, the P = NP problem. Sure, some people will enjoy reading pages and pages about this, but others not so much. A well-worded one sentance on why people care about it could therefore be interesting.

Add that to many other topics, and essentially you're building a database that lets people learn a very little about a wide range of areas. What was the actual logic behind schrodinger's cat, how do birds fly, why is moore's law the case?

I would enjoy browsing through that, I think. And, hopefully, some of them would be "I already knew that", some would be "I don't really care", some "that's quite interesting" and some "hmm, I need to go find out more about this".

So really I wasn't trying to slightly alter this concept, I was pitching a totally differeent purpose of an almost identical website, that in my very subjective view would be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem is that you don't get a good one-sentence explanation, you get a _bunch_ of one-sentence explanations of widely different quality, frequently contradictory.

I'm not sure this would help anyone understand anything. But to test it: I currently don't understand the Diffe-Helman Key Exchange, so I'm gonna read the explanations.

[pause]

 _Error establishing database connection_. Well, so much for that experiment.

<comment><AUTHOR> In one sentence explain why the server is down: Error establishing database connection. (it worked! lol)

But seriously though, thank you for your thoughts. I did not expect it to be such a hit on HN, and the website was thrown together in a couple of days.

In response to this: "you get a bunch of one-sentence explanations of widely different quality, frequently contradictory."

You are spot on. That is the world we live in - often widely different quality and frequently contradictory [in everything]. For a social experiment, to see how many people respond in a helpful way vs silly way (commenting is open - when the site isn't being hammered by HN's community) was one of the pieces of information I wanted to find out.

The other is to show that no one sentence will ever work for all, and every sentence may be helpful to someone yet annoying to another.

But the main reason 1Sentence was born: It is currently not easy to track down one sentence explanations of a topic without travelling the net hoping someone has written it. Sometimes all you need is one sentence to explain a product to another person or even yourself. So in that regard, it worked.

I appreciate your feedback and thoughts, thank you!

Diesel Laws

<comment><AUTHOR> We have moved it to our Cloud VPS so it should now cope with the traffic. Thanks, Diesel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In one sentence explain how asinine 1sentence.com is.

[http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-how-asinine- thi...](http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-how-asinine-this-website- is/)

Added by yours truly.

<comment><USER7> Very nice. I think the website itself provided the best answer when I visited the page: <http://cl.ly/8wTr> (unedited: scout's honor, and you can tell by the pixels)

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol, yes that is a funny sentence. however, some people have found it as a good tool to get useful explanations too.

In regards to the database error, that's just because I was unprepared and did not expect 10,000+ hits in one night to a small server. We have since moved it to our VPS server, will see how that goes.

Thanks for the feedback though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is one sentance supposed to make it easier to understand? Because, for example the "explain programming"-answers made it more abstract and I guess people who does not know it would not understand it after "bla bla set of instructions bla bla".

Making explanations smaller means higer abstractions which means it is often harder to understand.

Edit: I do like small explanations. Like simple-wikipedia small.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Is one sentence supposed to make it easier to understand?" - To many = yes.

In my eyes, this would be perfect to get an explanation of new trends (e.g. a year ago it may have been this: <http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain- social-media/>)

But overall it's an experiment, and I didn't think many would use it (Until I posted it here: Thanks HN community).

So I will be seeing how it goes over the next few weeks, and see what the data suggests - but so far, I would say many love the simplicity of one sentence explanations.

Cheers for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the concept. Has the potential to be very addictive! Needs some moderation though, I see spams.

</comment><comment><USER10> The best question is "In one sentence explain why this hit 1st page on HN"

[http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-why-this- hit-1s...](http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-why-this-hit-1st-page- on-hn/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1 Sentence is an experimental concept in simplified explanations. Thanks for trying it out!

<comment><USER11> Nice site! One suggestion, remove the "In one sentence explain" from the posts. My eyes get tired of seeing that over and over...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks mcphilip. Agreed. I will look into that. Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like it - a good destination for a few minutes of diversion and good to hone your technical writing skills.

It would be useful to have different ways of scoring answers, separate buttons for "funny", "insightful" or "clear".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks zwieback!

It's very limited in functionality currently, and it was built as a side project to <http://barkles.com> \- I won't be putting much time into 1Sentence, but that is a great suggestion - and if there is a way to implement it with Disqus comments I will surely consider it.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Next move: 140characters. Sure, constrains are good and often lead to creativity but arbitrary constraints… I am not sure about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks rimantas - we are working on a 200 character limit side by side debating platform - its currently in private Alpha testing and working well so far.

<http://barkles.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did this idea come from Reddit?

<comment><USER15> I was thinking the same thing. The first thing that popped into my head was r/explainlikeimfive.</comment></comment>


How to run Debian GNU/Linux on your Android [not chrooted] - <AUTHOR> http://whiteboard.ping.se/Android/Debian

<comment><AUTHOR> The other methods of running Debian on Android devices seem to suffer from one of these drawbacks: \- You're running Debian in a chroot jail, OR

\- You can only use the method on a single model of devices, or a very restricted set of devices

This article describes a method which should work on any Android device, as long as you have a ROM image and a way to unlock the bootloader. At the base layer, it has Debian running the Android kernel. On top of that, it has an Android chroot, which interfaces with the kernel to do things like set up wifi.

This could enable some cool applications, e.g. a pocket 3G/wifi VPN router. Mobile phones can connect to VPNs, and they allow tethering. AFAIK no mobile phones support sharing the VPN connection to tethered devices. With Debian running on the device, this would be trivial.</comment>


Neural Re-Rendering of Humans from a Single Image [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://gvv.mpi-inf.mpg.de/projects/NHRR/data/1415.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a YouTube demonstration from the producers of the paper: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7fGsSNKMc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7fGsSNKMc4)</comment>


Against Cynicism: A philosopher's brilliant reasons for living  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113387/peter-sloterdijks-philosophy-gives-reasons-living <comment><USER2> This very long article is at once both thought-provoking and rather confused, like reading the beginning of a hundred interesting conversations, each interrupting the last before they get anywhere. I'm not really sure _what_ to take away from it, other than "if you want to finish the conversation, buy the books."

The title here gives a clue as to what someone else got out of it. "Against Cynicism: A philosopher's brilliant reasons for living." We might infer that this was about reasons for living, that they are brilliant, and that cynicism isn't part of those reasons. And yet, I'm not entirely sure that "reasons for living" are what Sloterdijk is even addressing. It seems more like he's addressing the concern of minimizing suffering in a culture that's largely given up God. He's an atheist who admits that religion in general and the belief in God in particular has utility, and he's exploring replacement therapies. An eminently reasonable thing to do. But this isn't a reason for living: for the vast majority of people, the "reason for living" is simply that the alternative, death, is petrifying.

<comment><USER3> "for the vast majority of people, the "reason for living" is simply that the alternative, death, is petrifying."

Perhaps I'm unusually happy, but my reason is to have the most fun, which pretty strongly implies helping those around me have fun, while being focused on long term. Some sociocultural rules from the other side of the planet three thousand years ago are interesting and all that, but don't float my boat or fit my needs.

<comment><USER2> Let's say rather that the least common denominator reason for living is that, well, death sucks. Yes, of course are positive reasons to live, and while those are nice to have, they aren't as universal a motivator, I think, as simple fear of death.

<comment><USER4> I have to agree.

Shakespeare: "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come...?" Or as brilliantly stated by XKCD, you end up going back into the "Lego box" [http://xkcd.com/659/](http://xkcd.com/659/)

To define what sucks about death is the concept of complete non-existence and the the total erasure of everything you ever were and consequently destined to never exist again.

Your atoms may change into different forms but you will never experience it. That to me makes even the worst of life experiences better than death sentence known as "...we owe god one death."

<comment><USER5> Shakespeare has a wonderfully ability to make me feel okay with my own mortality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing this. I'm glad to see a secular author who has a real appreciation of religion--he doesn't treat it as something that makes dimwitted people happy, but as a training regimen designed for self- improvement, a struggle to develop good mental hygiene and psychologically safe communities, etc. If I read the article right, he is saying we need to develop these practices in a nonreligious context.

I agree, but how can secular people and communities practice spirituality in a way that will cause these changes without sharing a common set of beliefs, practices and language?

<comment><USER7> It doesn't need to be called 'spirituality' \- you hit it on the head before with 'self-improvement'

It's possible for secular people to practice self-improvement, but why would we not share a common set of beliefs/practices/language? I think many self- improvement groups do just that - obvious ones like churches, but also non- obvious ones (book clubs, running clubs, etc).

<comment><USER8> You can practice self improvement, but there is not really anything to tie people together in ordinary living in the absence of religion. Self improvement groups do not create the kind of bonds in a community that will cause people to make real sacrifices for their neighbors. As an atheist married to a practicing Christian I am acutely aware of the fact that my wife's church offers a level of community, tied together by common beliefs and practices, that I've never found outside a religious context. Book clubs don't give you a shared way of life, and political organizations are linked by a common fight not a common way of living ordinary life. I can't think of anything in my secular urban world that is quite like the barn raisings my wife tells me about from the small, Christian, town in Iowa where she grew up. The closest thing I guess would be some sort of Habitat for Humanity project, but that's very different: focused outward rather than inward; charity rather than reciprocity.

<comment><USER9> > _there is not really anything to tie people together_ in ordinary living > _[emphasis added] in the absence of religion. Self improvement groups do not > create the kind of bonds in a community that will cause people to make real > sacrifices for their neighbors._

1\. A sense that we share an on-going narrative can give rise to a shared sense of purpose or mission. That in turn can be a significant motivator of communal behavior, even in ordinary life.

(EXAMPLES: + The founding of the modern state of Israel [many founders were secular or even atheistic]. + American exceptionalism and "manifest destiny." \+ Tradition in, e.g., military units and sports teams. + Scientific teams in pursuit of a discovery.)

2\. QUESTION: Do we share any non-religious on-going narrative that can _scalably_ and _sustainably_ generate a sense of shared purpose or mission? Certainly different individuals are motivated by different things. Here's what sort of does it for me: It's plausible that we're all participating in a cosmic construction project that's been in progress for at least the past 13.8 billion years. In the words of an old story, we aren't just cutting stone to pay the bills, we're building a cathedral [0]. We can't know what the final outcome of the construction project will be, but if past trends are any indication, it'll be amazing. To me, that's pretty exciting.

[0] Self-cite: [http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/06/metanarratives_....](http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/06/metanarratives_.html) and [http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/09/creation_a_tita....](http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/09/creation_a_tita.html) and [http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/03/progress_hope_a....](http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/03/progress_hope_a.html)

<comment><USER8> Re: (1), it seems to me that, at least in my circle of friends (yuppies, basically), there is precious little narrative that gives rise to a shared sense of purpose. There are bonds of friendship, but between people of comparable social class and experience. There is nothing that binds me to the people in my neighborhoods, etc, at least nothing that compares to the depth of the ties my wife experiences in her religious community.

Re: (2), it is an interesting open question to me. I don't yearn for the spiritual aspect of religion. I don't fear death, I don't lack any sense of purpose, etc. I do lament not being able to participate in the communal aspect of religion. I haven't encountered any secular alternative. I'll give an example: my wife had our daughter dedicated in her church. I have encountered nothing like that in the secular realm. Maybe you can offer a baby shower as an example, but our baby shower would involve other upper middle class people, not a broad cross-section of the people who live near us.

<comment><USER10> It's worthwhile to note that it's unclear if religion is so decidedly behind a shared sense of purpose among the people. E.g. Pakistan, an Islamic nation with 97% of its populace being Muslim, is littered with social problems, there is very much a lack of shared sense of purpose. I think culture and history are better candidates for what unites people together.

My apologies for getting off-topic, but if I may inquire: how is it, being atheistic and being married to a religious person? Isn't it difficult to work things out, when the other believes that you're destined to hell? To believe that there's nothing after death, and that there's a whole afterlife of heaven (or hell) is quite a gap. How do you reconcile with this, do you often try to convert her, or make her see things differently?

> I do lament not being able to participate in the communal aspect of > religion. I haven't encountered any secular alternative.

There are atheist churches our there: [http://firstchurchofatheism.com/](http://firstchurchofatheism.com/)

The one near me has quite a vibrant community. They do clean-ups, social work, etc. I have made many good friends there.

<comment><USER9> > _how is it, being atheistic and being married to a religious person?_

You didn't direct the question to me, but I was an agnostic married (then and now) to a fairly-serious Christian. These days I'm sort of in the believer camp, for reasons that I think are intellectually defensible [0]. I still don't subscribe to many of the official tenets of Christianity [1].

The key to that aspect of our marriage seems to be mutual love and -admiration --- which dictate respectful behavior --- while agreeing to disagree about certain matters theological. We each recognize that for all we know, _both_ of us could be wrong.

We see the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin's approach: Concerning the divinity of Jesus, Franklin wrote, a few weeks before his death at age 84, that, _" it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, ... and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble."_ [2].

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-----

> _Isn 't it difficult to work things out, when the other believes that you're > destined to hell?_

Your premise won't always be true. I can't speak to what Muslims, Jews, etc., would believe, but most traditional Christians claim that even a deathbed conversion will be rewarded with eternal salvation. Such a Christian, married to an atheist, can thus hope that the loved one will still make it to heaven.

While some Calvinist-style Christians believe in pre-destination [3], they're in the minority. As I understand it, Calvinists don't claim to know _who_ will go to heaven or to hell.

In liberal Christianity, there's a strain of universalist thought that says God would not punish finite sin with eternal damnation; therefore, everyone will make it to heaven eventually.

Finally, not all religious people believe in heaven or hell; some (like me) simply don't know what happens after death.

\</comment><comment>-----

[0] Self-cite: [http://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse....](http://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse.html)

[1] [http://www.questioningchristian.com/2004/11/redacting_the_n....](http://www.questioningchristian.com/2004/11/redacting_the_n.html)

[2] [http://www.questioningchristian.com/2004/11/benjamin_frankl....](http://www.questioningchristian.com/2004/11/benjamin_frankl.html)

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

</comment><comment><USER11> Though I heard the name so often I never read the man, I think have to rectify that.

 _We need to recover, and give to one another, the trust that we once gave our placentas._

Wow! It's so refreshing to hear something like that put so strongly. When discussing politics, people often say competition and struggle is normal and lets us have all the nice things, but I like this radically different outlook much more, man should not be predator to man. After all, we can also invent things because it makes ourselves and others happy, just as an expression of our creativity or intelligence... I would even say we can't avoid it. Competition is nice, sportsmanship and/or cooperation are nicer.

<comment><USER12> It's a lot less poetic if you consider that it wasn't "trust" that brought our placentas into being but a mutated retrovirus.

More power to this guy if he helps people feel better about themselves and the world but he should refrain from entering public debates about "genetic engineering and economics" while presenting himself as somebody enlightened, knowledgeable or even adequately informed.

It is unfair to judge him solely from this article without having read his books but what can be gathered from it and a cursory search suggests that his interest in modern science consists exclusively of surfing the current zeitgeist without actually being interested in science, or even the philosophy of science.

If he indeed is "at the forefront of European intellectual life" it would be a pretty sad testament to the dismal state of contemporary philosophy.

<comment><USER11> Fair enough ^^

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1) obscurantist jargon. check.

2) banal observations once you finally figure out WTF they are talking about. check.

3) lauded for being the smartest, greatest, most brilliant intellectual of their age. check.

4) books with inscrutable titles like _Bubbles: Spheres Volume I: Microspherology_ and _Rage and Time_. check. (LOL! How big do your balls have to be to give a book a title like that?)

5) constant name-dropping of fashionable intellectuals. check.

Must be European philosophy!

UPDATE: quote from Amazon description of _Bubbles_. Behold the enormity of Peter Sloterdijk's balls:

        "reinterprets the history of Western metaphysics as an
        inherently spatial and immunological project, from the
        discovery of self (bubble) to the exploration of world
        (globe) to the poetics of plurality (foam)."

[http://www.amazon.com/Bubbles-Spheres-Microspherology- Semiot...](http://www.amazon.com/Bubbles-Spheres-Microspherology-Semiotext- Foreign/dp/1584351047/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374460081&sr=1-2)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think it's possible to believe that a cause is lost, and yet still believe in the categorical imperative of fighting for it.

Cicero is immortal as both the greatest and last defender of the Roman Republic.

<comment><USER15> There is a saying I really like: "I may not have hope, but I do have determination". I'm not sure who said it, but it's true (for some things).

People have faced many hopeless tasks and triumphed. They only seem inevitable _after_ the fact. I'm sure it was difficult to expect the end of racism in South Africa, but it happened. It's not hard to think of many other examples.

It's worth it to start working on a cause you believe in, and other people will join.

<comment><USER16> Correct. There is no racism is South Africa.

<comment><USER15> I should have written "institutionalized racism" or maybe "overt state sponsored racism". I wasn't trying to imply that racism no longer exists in South Africa.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I realize my comment was overly sensitive. Sorry 'bout that. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Provocative title, but in the end no message.

Reminds me of watching the series "Lost", where the expectation was set from the beginning that there was a logical, rational explanation for the whole thing. In the end they producers basically lied, and it ended up being a big shaggy dog story.

If anyone can extract the "brilliant reasons for living" from that article, please post them here. I don't expect much of a list.

<comment><USER18> Haha, the plot of "Lost" is a great metaphor for studying philosophy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "[...] it is just one of the many provocative ideas that he develops and then drops in the course of the book, which reads less like a structured argument than a long prose poem. Sloterdijk's strength and appeal come from the intuitive and metaphorical quality of his thought, his unconventional approaches to familiar problems, his willingness to scandalize."

This sums up Sloterdijk pretty well. I highly recommend reading him.

</comment><comment><USER20> While I wasn't previously familiar with Sloterdijk, I find it interesting that he takes exactly the opposite value from Christianity as Slavoj Zizek, the other great popular atheist apologist for Christianity (cf. Zizek's _The Fragile Absolute: Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting for_ ).

"Sloterdijk's ideal is not Pauline conversion but Trinitarian 'perichoresis,'"

Unfortunately, I don't think Sloterdijk has understood the theological context of _perichoresis_ which he goes on to define:

"'Perichoresis means that the milieu of the persons is entirely the relationship itself,' he writes, envisioning love as a total mutual absorption."

 _Perichoresis_ is literally "mutual interpenetration" and refers to the greek _choros_ and their dances around ( _peri_ ) each other in interlocking rings in the theatre. In the theological appropriation of this imagery, this has more to do with the depth and interdependence of the relationship than with the "milieu" \- though it's not clear what he means by that.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really enjoyed this phrase: ""brilliant at diagnosis and helpless at cure""

</comment><comment><USER22> Call me cynical, but this exudes the intellectual aroma of Fuller's "Synergetics". In the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and remembering everything to which it referred): "Mostly harmless."

</comment><comment><USER23> I couldn't understand the article. Can someone summarize the new ideas?

<comment><USER24> I don't understand it either. I didn't understand anything and I gave up after a few paragraphs. If we're dumb, we are at least not alone ;)

<comment><USER25> I understood it reasonably well. The article wasn't very good, randomly quoting from several books and the writer of the article added onto the already complex language with his own even more complex descriptions.

Anyway Sloterdijk is apparently a borderline new-age post-existentialist, who hopes that (new, updated) religions can provide solace for the masses, in these books at least hasn't bothered to keep up with the technological changes of the last 20 years or so (although there is some mention of genetics, but that's old news by now).</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft given control of no-ip domains in temporary restraining order - <AUTHOR> http://noticeoflawsuit.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the order is particularly unfair to no-ip - it was made ex parte on Microsoft's application (i.e. without no-ip being informed or having a chance to respond).

The complaint claims that no-ip could have implemented Response Policy Zone in response to a report by Cisco; assuming the 'report' they are talking about is this Cisco blog post: [http://blogs.cisco.com/security/dynamic-detection-of- malicio...](http://blogs.cisco.com/security/dynamic-detection-of-malicious- ddns/), Microsoft has misunderstood the blog post, as the post is suggesting that resolvers could use RPZ to not resolve malicious (or any) DDNS addresses, not that no-ip could use it to magically stop all malicious users.

It is scary that this was granted - many other businesses could be severely disrupted if courts let things like this through.</comment>


Down the Rabbit Hole: on viral texts and linking to sources - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottbot.net/HIAL/?p=41397

<comment><USER2> And thus, stuff like: perma.cc

Though it strikes me that with such an extended chain, it'd be better to essentially have ping-backs for each item that referenced or used the data.

At least with stuff like this there aren't privacy concerns, and it's not a low-level web commodity like a picture. EXIF & IPTC data can show authorship, but can also store location data, and whatever crap you (or your software) decides to stuff into metadata. It pisses me off that tumblr strips metadata, but all-told, it's the best course of action anytime people use your platform to post erm.. selfies.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone with a large amount of content that is both casually shared or blatantly ripped off, there doesn't really seem like a great way to fight this sort of behavior. Calling out sites which steal content publicly would likely end up in them gaining additional visitors and views.

Has anyone here found good ways of battling sites that "repost" content without attribution?

<comment><USER4> Denial of service :)

More serious you are fighting a losing battle here. If even the big media companies with full time employees can't stop this it is basically impossible.

Google might be able to do something about this if they banned sites that continually re-posted content without attribution, but even here you would have issues - you would not want to get into the situation where because of the time google crawled your site you were accused of stealing from the reposter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> the tweets at the end hint that the way Facebook attributes reposts (or even better, tumblr, which keeps the full path) should solve it.

I'd say it mighty even be useful for silly articles like the one he started with, but for anything more serious, with several sources, those solutions to crediting a single source are but a joke. a lame joke no less.</comment>


Linthub: Static code analysis for GitHub pull requests - <AUTHOR> https://linthub.io/ <comment><USER2> Instead of using a service like this one (or Hound) that comments directly on pull requests, we chose to integrate the same tools in our build process with Phare ([https://github.com/mirego/phare](https://github.com/mirego/phare)), a command-line tool we built which runs Rubocop, JSHint, JSCS, etc. and exits with a global status.

If the code has coding style violations, the build breaks. Exactly like it would if we pushed a failing test.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the noise generated by comments about coding style on pull requests.

<comment><USER3> I guess the advantage of Linthub over Phare is that it can run on pull requests made by external contributors.

<comment><USER2> Actually, it does in a certain way. Travis runs builds (tests + Phare) for all pull requests (eg. [https://travis- ci.org/mirego/encore/pull_requests](https://travis- ci.org/mirego/encore/pull_requests)) so we know if pull requests made by external contributors "break the build".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, true, but only if it breaks. This enforces common code quality issues, so it will run side-to-side with travis.

<comment><USER4> In all my projects (and the projects I contribute to), style issues are a build-breaking defect.

In Python this usually means running flake8 as a Travis job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks pretty awesome and will just get better as more languages get supported. But, it comments on commits, not on the diff in the PR. I think commeting on the diff looks nicer (you see code snippet with the comment) and in my opinion it's also easyer to find all the comments that way. Instead of clicking the commit hash on the commen each time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will check and handle this.

<comment><USER6> The release with commenting on pull requests is active now. Linthubot will comment on the pull request itself instead of the commit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a free open source alternative written in Python: [https://github.com/justinabrahms/imhotep](https://github.com/justinabrahms/imhotep)

It runs on the commit diff with a specified linting tool (used it with pep8 and jshint), it is also fairly easy to add new linters.

Here's a fork that works nicely with Travis: [https://github.com/glowdigitalmedia/imhotep](https://github.com/glowdigitalmedia/imhotep)

</comment><comment><USER8> So this is like Hound[1]? - I am (kinda) building something for PHP, Anorak[2] which uses something else I built.

What's your plan on this? I'd like to use it for our private repositories.

Edit: My web hooks are returning errors. I'll submit some feedback.

[1] [https://houndci.com](https://houndci.com)

[2] [https://github.com/jbrooksuk/anorak](https://github.com/jbrooksuk/anorak)

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems comparable, though we are supporting different languages. Plans are to support a lot more languages, and support private repos also. (Actually they are already supported, but linthubot needs to have read only access to the repository). All feedback is welcome.

<comment><USER8> Thanks! Are you planning on charging for this? I have an error, can I email you guys?

Edit: Nevermind, I found the support form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently no plans for charging. If we'll change these plans, existing repositories will stay free. Send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com for the error, and we'll check it immediatly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Similar services:

[https://houndci.com/](https://houndci.com/) [http://scrutinizer- ci.com/](http://scrutinizer-ci.com/) [http://landscape.io/](http://landscape.io/) [http://codeclimate.com/](http://codeclimate.com/)

<comment><USER10> Does anyone know how these services stack up against each other? I use CodeClimate and it rocks, but I'm curious about how the others work.

<comment><USER11> I may be biased as I made Landscape.io, but it rocks too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are there any opensource tools that do the same thing( like reek for ruby) ?

I would like to use something like this at work but we don't host code on github.

<comment><USER13> Try RuboCop for ruby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does github not have granular enough permissions to allo commenting on pull requests without granting write access to a repo?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, true. We've tightened the scope, read/write is not necessary any longer. Only for private repo's, the linthubot user needs to be added to the repo with read access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This look awesome! But there are a lot of similar services such as codeclimate.</comment>


Grooveshark is hunting an anonymous commenter - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120118/grooveshark-fights-a-copyright-lawsuit-by-chasing-after-anonymous-commenters/

<comment><USER2> At first I thought: "How dare they, I'll never use Grooveshark again." Then I realized Groovshark probably has an inkling that the anonymous comment from a "former employee" is in fact some sort of astroturfing via the company suing them, so as to strengthen their case. Just my thoughts on the issue. We shouldn't be too quick to judge here, big media co's are devious bastards, no?

<comment><USER3> I had a similar feeling, basically the comment can be considered slanderous. I do have to agree with the site that they might not be able technically to give the info.

I don't think whistle blower laws apply to someone making a post on the internet but I could be wrong. I thought it was more if you heard of illegal things and went to law enforcement about it.

Anyone can clarify if it applies or not?

<comment><USER4> >I do have to agree with the site that they might not be able technically to give the info.

I have mixed feelings about sites that rely upon the "we regularly purge identifying information" excuse. In this case I believe it makes the site directly responsible for libel as they are actively looking to protect the sources of information that benefits them.

<comment><USER5> I don't see how that can be if they're doing it with all comments.

<comment><USER4> They do it for all comments to have a protection when someone comes gunning for some comments.

This isn't about someone defending a champion of free speech or a hero of mankind. It's about, in most cases, _liars_ who invent claims in comments to support their side. Such lies gain truth through repeated assertion (remember how RIM couldn't believe that the iPhone was possible? Retold endlessly, it was all based upon a quickly deleted claim on some random message board by some anonymous person claiming to be a RIM employee. The claim was absurd -- the iPhone used the same stock ingredients that RIM was used to -- but there you had an "insider" to support it).

<comment><USER5> People are bad about rumors, but there's still no reason to try to block anonymous commenting. If someone wants to make themselves anonymous for a single post, they will, barring blatant mistakes. We should not expect server logs to let us snoop around a comment made with exactly zero reputation or trustworthiness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't imagine that the comments from the anonymous commenter can be accepted as evidence or testimony in any sort of lawsuit or deposition. Wouldn't that violate all existing precedent regarding the right to cross-examine your accuser?

Edit: Nevermind... it appears that the Confrontation Clause only applies to criminal and not civil matters.

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

<comment><USER7> I'd imagine it'd go the other way: the burden of proof would be on UMG to prove the claims made by the anonymous commenter. That would be easier to do if they could get the anonymous commenter to testify.</comment></comment>


OCSP Stapling: How CloudFlare Just Made SSL 30% Faster - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudflare.com/ocsp-stapling-how-cloudflare-just-made-ssl-30

<comment><USER2> It's nice that they've enabled this on their servers, but it comes with some caveats at the moment.

First, not all browsers support it. For example, no version of Firefox supports it at this time (see: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=360420>).

Second, OCSP stapling was originally conceived for only the end entity cert. This means that if the browser wants to check intermediates for revocation that payload can't be stapled, but will still require an additional check. There are several in progress proposals (spearheaded by Opera) to resolve this, but it's not finalized yet. This negates some of the speed gain on browsers that do choose to do revocation checking with this level of rigor.

But guess what, you can join the stapling party even if you aren't a CloudFlare customer! If you're using Apache (2.3+) you can configure OCSP stapling for your own website with the SSLUseStapling directive. nginx also plans to support stapling with the 1.3 release (initial preview released early this month). You can also do stapling with IIS 7.5+ on Windows.

Edit: Others have asked what browsers currently support stapling. I believe only Opera and IE9+ (probably schannel in Win7, but possibly in Vista?) at this time. Chrome is publicly moving away from OCSP/CRL entirely in favor of aggregating that data themselves and pushing it down to clients via their own infrastructure, Firefox has that open bug, and Apple's roadmap for ocspd/securityd is obviously not known.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a fan of cloudflare, but I'm disappointed they didn't thank or mention nginx in this blog post. Cloudflare uses nginx, which recently released OCSP support thanks to sponsorship from Comodo, DigiCert, and GlobalSign [1].

[1] <http://nginx.org/en/CHANGES>

<comment><USER4> But but but, cloudflare is making SSL 30% faster!@# :)

And they're launching 30 data centers (oh wait, they're deploying some machines in a DC...) and blah blah blah.

Sigh. Cloudflare is somewhat interesting, but very much still in the kiddie pool of CDNs.

<comment><USER5> It's goal isn't to be a fully featured CDN, CloudFlare is a whole suite of tools, use what you want, if you have something better use them with CloudFlare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish there was a way to subscribe to just the technical posts on the CloudFlare blog, those are always informative. As it is, I can't even find a way to get an RSS feed for posts by particular authors.

</comment><comment><USER7> Which browsers support this? I was under the impression that even the latest version of Chrome (22) doesn't have this.

</comment><comment><USER8> As an aside $200 per month for a CDN is pretty cheap, how are they not charging by bandwidth used?

<comment><USER9> They are setup to make use of cheap/peering bandwidth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool stuff. CloudFlare just keeps getting more and more awesome.</comment>


Show HN: Quillbot's Summarizer brings AI research to users - <AUTHOR> https://quillbot.com/summarize <comment><USER2> The summarizer is actually really intelligent. It will rewrite some sections of the text (although subtly) in natural ways. Definitely an abstractive summarizer</comment>


How to improve the click-through rate in your email newsletter - <AUTHOR> http://www.launchbit.com/blog/how-to-improve-the-click-through-rate-in-your-email-newsletter/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow up post to this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734797>

</comment><comment><USER2> Ok, so now: how do I improve my open rate?

<comment><USER3> Easy. Write really interesting words so people want to read more.

...what, you thought it was going to be magic? Like positioning a Clear Call To Action! on the top right side? Running a banner ad through the middle? Running contests with prizes worth half your marketing budget?

Note that the first subhead:

Click-through-rate on content positively correlates with open rate

is about as amazing as the discovery that caffeine is an aphrodisiac. You see, people are more likely to have sex while awake.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I didn't think it was obvious at all... Like in my example, say List A has 1000 people and a 50% open. List B has 2000 ppl and a 25% open rate. In both cases, the same number of absolute ppl are opening the email. Why should List A necessarily get more clicks than List B? And yet consistently, it does. That's not obvious to me...</comment></comment></comment>


The people behind JavaScript: Allen Wirfs-Brock - <AUTHOR> https://javascript.christmas/2019/6 <comment><USER2> Kudos to him. For all the flack JS gets, ES2015 was a huge boon to the ecosystem and pretty nice.

> _I 've spent most of the last two years working on an in depth technical > history of the evolution of JavaScript/ECMAScript from 1995 through 2015._

It would be interesting to read. How things came to be the way they are. It's actually quite impressive that the various browsers/companies/etc manage to cooperate at all.</comment>


First look at Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 'Lucid Lynx' - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxcritic.com/ubuntu-1004-beta-1-lucid-lynx/ <comment><USER2> While I thought the new look was pretty nice for about 10 minutes I soon found that it just clashed with everything you ever use. For example, you end up with a bright white webpage in your browser against all the dark grey in the menu's. Different sections of menus aren't delimited and it all just looks a mess once you get past the initial excitement that the default isn't brown.

Like everyone else I don't get the change in the button positioning but its a pretty simple fix to put them on the other side (I know thats also no excuse!).

The boot time was much improved on my fairly ancient laptop and Firefox 3.6 feels quite snappy. Seems like everything loads a little bit faster.

Thats my impressions after using it for 3 days!

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry but Where's the rest of the post? It leaves off abruptly at with little actual info. I will be changing the positioning of those buttons as soon as 10.4 is installed too, but I'm sure Canonical did more work than that in 6 months.</comment>


How a meme starts "in real life" - Guy starts dance party, single-handedly - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA8z7f7a2Pk

<comment><USER2> Nice!

Even if "Sorry to burst your bubble, but this wasn't spontaneous. It was staged by a group of people similar to what 'Improv Everywhere' does." - @FreedomUSA1 is correct, It's still a nice example of something gaining traction and taking off. (I wonder what pct of the ultimate crowd was "in on it" and how many joined once it'd been started.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Feels like watching an exponential growth curve in real time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cute. But I can't help thinking that there's something creepy about that "me too" component of the human psyche.

</comment><comment><USER5> Super awesome illustration of what going viral means in real life:)

</comment><comment><USER6> Press coverage: [http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Technology/Online+Dancing+clip+...](http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Technology/Online+Dancing+clip+turns+Calgary+waiter+into+worldwide+sensation/1656024/story.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Tipping point at 1:30

</comment><comment><USER8> that's a good example

</comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome! Gotta post it to TNW - thank you!</comment>


The only flash intro I've ever enjoyed - <AUTHOR> http://bttf.com/

<comment><USER2> That just makes me want to see all of the movies again. Now I have to go change up my Netflix queue.</comment>


Reports coming in BitPay has been hacked. Over $80M worth of bitcoin gone? - <AUTHOR> http://thebitcoinnews.co.uk/2014/01/04/reports-coming-in-bitpay-has-been-hacked-over-80000000-worth-of-bitcoin-gone/

<comment><USER2> Just spreading the FUD. This is complete nonsense (and has no content anyway)</comment>


Judge dismisses US women's national soccer team's equal pay claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/us/uswnt-equal-pay-claims-dismissed/index.html <comment><USER2> Sad, there are various reasons, linked to audience numbers (drawing power) that lead to an inherently lower cash flow from their matches = less $$ for owners = less to pay players. I am not sure how well the equality in pay can be spread across different playing venues? In a worst case, it could lead to some teams being unable to pay them from the lower revenues, laeding to a zero job = zero pay situation. We have seen this played out in the auto business where almost 90% of UAW jobs as well as 75% of car makers have been lost to Asian and European car makers since 1950. True, those left are paid and benefitted like kings(queens too), but many jobs lost forever. Due to seniority rules, the core of strikers were never left without jobs as the fall-off and retirement attrition were carefully balanced.</comment>


The Solution to Obamacare and the Inefficient US Healthcare System - <AUTHOR> http://www.medpats.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The United States healthcare system is broken and in need of repair. Medical Tourism is a global trend that is on the rise and increasing at more than a 15% rate (according to PatientsBeyondBorders). This globalization of healthcare will help solve the current detrimental situation in the United States.</comment>


Why Mozilla will support H.264 on OS that comes with it - <AUTHOR> http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web/

<comment><USER2> H.264 is arguably more open than WebM. It has been developed by standards committees over the course of many years, is published and backed by ITU, ISO, IEC and MPEG. A massive number of devices support it, there are loads of independent implementations, it is well documented and understood. It has been blessed as the standard codec in many media formats (BluRay, HD DVD) and for broadcast (ATB, DVB, etc) and is one of the most common video formats on the web today.

WebM was originally a proprietary codec called VP8, developed by a single vendor (On2 Technologies) with a single implementation and no real specification. It was purchased by Google, and an ersatz specification was extracted from the implementation.

I admire Google for what they are trying to achieve. But given both Windows and Mac ship with H.264 decoding support, and it is fast becoming the de facto format for mobile, the decision seems to be a no brainer.

<comment><USER3> I don't buy this argument at all.

If I have to pay royalty fees to ship an h.264 decoder, that's not open. If I have to pay royalty fees for my startup to distribute videos in h.264, that's not open.

Standardized doesn't mean "open".

[Edit: I think several people in this thread disagree what Open means. Since this is the context of a Mozilla story, I think it is fair to use "Open" in the sense of "Open Source".]

<comment><USER4> Open != free. H.264 is an open standard, in that the specification is open, and you can implement your own encoder/decoder as you wish. H.264 is not a free standard is due to the fact that you cannot implement anything useful without using some patented technologies.

WebM is free. Good luck implementing your own encoder/decoder.

<comment><USER5> People tend to define open however it benefits them. It's not really worth feeding the trolls.

<comment><USER6> Trolls - patent trolls - are sort of the central concern here, aren't they?

<comment><USER5> No, the companies that designed H.264 aren't really trolls. They actually do R&D and sell real products; patent royalties are relatively minor sources of revenue.

<comment><USER7> The CEO of MPEG LA is also the CEO of a patent troll company called MobileMedia.

<comment><USER8> MPEG LA had no hand in designing h.264, it's solely a patent pool manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Money quote:

> Losing a battle is a bitter experience. I won't sugar-coat this pill. But we > must swallow it if we are to succeed in our mobile initiatives.

Mozilla fought the good fight, and lost. Instead of standing on a street corner with a bullhorn, Mozilla is going to move on to fight the next battle. Those would be WebRTC and Google/Netflix's Web DRM initiative.

<comment><USER10> What the hell is wrong with real time capabilities (I won't comment on open source DRM, except to say it would make an okay April first joke)? The web needs them, if it is to become the future we always wanted.

<comment><USER5> WebRTC is good; the question is whether it should use VP8 or H.264. Apple will argue for H.264 while Mozilla will argue for VP8. Since WebRTC has not been deployed yet there is no status quo to create path dependence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To put it more simply, what is the greater threat to the open web: platform- dependent mobile apps or patent-encumbered video codecs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Without doubt platform-dependent mobile apps: by nature patents expire.

<comment><USER12> I agree in general, but note that those pushing patented codecs aren't idiots and have an upgrade treadmill ready for users where at each decision point it'll make sense to upgrade to a newer codec with new patents.

Having said that, the silliness of patented codecs seems to have been recognized for lower bitrate use cases (image, speech, audio) so I guess it's only a matter of time for video.

I think a Googly approach where the encoder and decoders are assumed to be software like anything else in Chrome and updated every 6 weeks would be interesting to see.

<comment><USER13> Even though there are better alternatives to MP3 from both a technical and legal perspective, and even though Apple has been pushing for AAC within iTunes, nothing is close to replacing MP3 as the defacto standard for distributing audio files.

There are multiple reasons for this, like the huge cost of re-encoding everything that was once encoded in MP3, the broad hardware and software support or the fact that MP3 is good enough for most purposes.

Broadband plays a role here as I'd bet that if it weren't so prevalent today, then people would actually want formats that sound better at lower bitrates. As it is, Amazon doesn't have a problem in selling songs encoded at 256 kbps, although you won't hear a difference when comparing that to an 128 kbps encoded AAC file from iTunes.

An upgrade scheme only works if files encoded with the newer codecs don't have a problem being played on older software/hardware, because here's the thing ... H.264 is already good enough as far as video codecs go, just as MP3. And this is doable, but the newer patents will most likely touch the encoders, not decoders and the newer patents themselves will get more fragile over time, as you can't really innovate on top of the same technique forever.

All in all I agree with the general sentiment ... proprietary platforms are more dangerous than patents and native apps are more dangerous to the future of the Internet than proprietary codecs.

<comment><USER12> Just as a counterpoint that illustrates the patent upgrade treadmill, you say that nothing has come close to displacing MP3 for distributing audio files, yet if you're distributing that audio as the soundtrack for a video then MP3 has been quite firmly displaced by AAC due to bundling by the MPEG group (even though pirates held out with MPEG-4/DivX & mp3 for years).

You could even argue that the fact that it always comes with such (relatively) large size video files makes the improvements of AAC over MP3 even less relevant, but still the "standard" has moved on and everyone needs to keep up. I also believe that 3G phones needed to support AAC but I could be just making that up.

I've seen one "mp3 player" that dropped AAC support, but I can't see that happening for any device that also wants video. The direct result will be paying separate royalties on two mostly overlapping audio formats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any guesses on the minimum number of (known!) patents that must be violated to implement an H.264 decoder? I assume the answer must be greater than zero, otherwise someone would have written an clever/convoluted H.264 decoder that sidesteps known patent issues.

<comment><USER7> The AVC/H.264 patent pool contains over a thousand "essential" patents. So, at a guess, at least hundreds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mozilla's browser usage statistics show mobile devices at almost 2x desktop browser usage next year yet stats available here show mobile as about 10% of the market: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#His...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Historical_usage_share)

Which of these is right?

<comment><USER12> The Mozilla numbers show mobile _devices_ will outnumber desktop _devices_. The Wikipedia numbers show web usage. People surf more on desktop machines, and don't (need to) upgrade them as much so both figures are correct.

The real issue for Mozilla is that you can get great benefits (shared history, passwords etc.) if you use the same browser on both platforms and sync them. Luckily Apple and Microsoft's lock-in approach seems to be holding them back here, but I'd imagine Android Chrome will be a big driver for Desktop Chrome (and possibly vice versa).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Didn't H.264 become free forever on the Web due to fear of competition from WebM? Doesn't sound like a total loss.

<comment><USER5> Encoders and decoders have to pay royalties. But MPEG-LA says they're not going to charge _more_ (legally questionable due to exhaustion) fees beyond that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hope they also support ffmpeg libraries on linux to do the same thing. (libavcodec and libavformat)

It would be really nice to have VDPAU video playback in the browser!

</comment><comment><USER18> So, will there be a European/free-world build for Linux/XP Firefox?

</comment><comment><USER19> At the end of 2010 I think the war of H.264 was reignited and I am surprise that this time by Google.But still H.264 has some big advantages such as such as it supports efficient hardware acceleration and its also an efficient decoder of the browser.</comment>


Show HN: List of UI Libraries - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jefflombard/ui-libraries <comment><USER2> Looks to be a list of _Web_ UI libraries. Some mobile platform stuff sprinkled in. If Web-only isn't the intent, then the list is sorely missing Qt ([https://www.qt.io/](https://www.qt.io/)).</comment>


Credit Suicide - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jeremyriney.com/post/174473442845/credit-suicide <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone: this is Jeremy, the author of the "credit suicide" blog post. I'd be glad to discuss this on this thread here, rather than on my blog, as I like the discussions that happen here. Thanks!</comment>


Internal Design of Onyx - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MichaelDrogalis/onyx/blob/master/doc/user-guide/internal-design.md

<comment><USER2> I'm interested in this general approach being implemented in so many newer engines (those which Onyx apparently competes with) - the distributed pipeline processing/directed acyclic graph (DAG) approach. So many of these engines have related components - message queues, central coordinator, etc.

It seems this is the current popular technique (and rising in popularity) to solving some really long-standing, hard, data processing problems and related performance concerns - really an extension beyond the progress we made with distributed MapReduce algorithms and the like in Hadoop.

There are certainly a lot of implementations coming out - why would one choose Onyx over say, something like Spark? Is it just the compatibility with the Clojure programming language and the associated, implied benefits of functional programming paradigms (among others?).

<comment><USER3> Hello! Michael Drogalis, the developer, here.

I talked a little bit about why I wrote Onyx on the Clojure mailing list: [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/clojure/OmHzAEfYe9U/33e0a0l3...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/clojure/OmHzAEfYe9U/33e0a0l3qkQJ)

It's mostly driven by the need to use data structures in places where I didn't have them - I only had things like macros and functional composition.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the info, and awesome work on Onyx!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting! I'm working on a similar project at the moment, but I haven't come across Onyx at all before -- I'll start digging through.

In particular, I'm interested to know if this supports exactly-once messaging semantics, and if so, what the implementation looks like. Anyone here have experience with this?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if exactly-once messaging is possible in a distributed system. Onyx gets close in that it uses transactions to move data across queues atomically. But code can fail _just before_ a transaction is committed. The transaction will only be committed once, but the code leading up to the transaction will be run twice. Is that really exactly-once? IMO, it's not.

<comment><USER4> Right: I guess I distinguish between exactly-once _messaging_ and exactly-once _processing_. it doesn't seem possible to guarantee that the code will be run exactly once, but you can promise that the outputs are made visible exactly once... as long as your system can capture the relevant outputs, of course.

It seems like transactions ought to be enough for the latter -- I'll have a look. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've sent a link to this out to my team as an example of the sort of documentation and technical writing I enjoy. Go one level up in the directory and you'll see quite good explanations of deployment practices, implementation, and high-level architecture stuff.

<comment><USER3> Thank you. :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Resources to teach high schoolers to code? - <AUTHOR> I have a friend in NYC who has volunteered to teach high schoolers programming this summer. She's a public school teacher with limited resources, but she's been given free rein to teach whatever she wants, and asked me for guidance.
Her goal is to get the kids building basic web apps by the end of the summer. It's an ambitious goal but I think it's doable. Some resources I suggested so far:
* code.org for free curricula and guidance
* glitch.com as an easy and fun platform to start building web apps
Are there any other good tools she should check out? Any organizations in the NYC area that could help her? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Taught programming to high school students for twenty years....

I liked using a bunch of projects with increasing difficulty that students could move through at their own pace. The difference in coding aptitude is really quite astonishing.

I wrote a blog post explaining how I used to teach beginners in tremendous detail: [https://grahammitchell.com/writings/how-i-teach- beginners.ht...](https://grahammitchell.com/writings/how-i-teach- beginners.html)

I'm not a big fan of CodeCademy; it's seductive but the kids end up not knowing how to do very much at the end.

Khan Academy has a decent HTML/CSS/JavaScript curriculum. I never personally used it with students because I wasn't teaching Web Development anymore once they rolled it out. However, I think it looks pretty good. Might be a little fast for some kids.

Anyway, hope that helps.

<comment><USER3> That's an interesting way to teach, acting much like someone running a college level CS lab, except you also have the benefit of creating the material. I think this is one of the better ways I have read to teach this sort of stuff. No one will be left behind and those who are fast are not held back. The only problem I can see is class sizes but with a low enough size, this seems like an awesome teaching method.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just in case you haven't run into yet, we also have a specific page on Glitch to highlight "learn to code" projects:

[https://glitch.com/learn-to-code](https://glitch.com/learn-to-code)

</comment><comment> 52-6F-62 When I was in high school we used BASIC and then Turing to learn basic instructions. With Turing we were able to learn to draw some basic graphics to the screen, etc. I'm not sure how applicable it would be to web app cases, but it was at least a little engaging at the time.

[http://tristan.hume.ca/openturing/](http://tristan.hume.ca/openturing/)

To build a full web app for the first time without previous exposure could get messy quickly given the current landscape. Maybe start with a simpler website that includes laying out some HTML, styling it, and adding some basic front- end interactivity.

If there's a pre existing server that they could interact with, maybe that would help with encouraging them by giving them more immediate results without skimming too much of the detail into what they're actually building, rather than just learning _too_ much by rote.

A bit of a search pointed me to Udemy which has a free course covering HTML/CSS laid out already. It wouldn't be too hard to build on something like that to show how Javascript interacts with elements on a web page.

[https://www.udemy.com/build-your-first-website- in-1-week/](https://www.udemy.com/build-your-first-website-in-1-week/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not exactly a teaching resource, but one tool I think high schoolers will be interested in is the browser's dev tools.

Showing how they can modify websites they visit - even if just to replace a phrase on the homepage of their school's website with something else, like legal graffiti - can interest them in one kind of code - web code. It's not the only or even most important kind of programming, but it's highly accessible/relatable to high schoolers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've heard Repl is becoming popular with teenagers, and it's free. [http://repl.it](http://repl.it)

</comment><comment><USER7> As a high school student, I've heard great things about Hack Club[1]. It's a full HS coding curriculum with a community of high school students behind it. I believe HN user zachlatta could be able to help you (he runs the program).

[1]: [https://hackclub.com/](https://hackclub.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> * Lightbot : Code Hour app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lightbot.l...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lightbot.lightbothoc)

* games list: [https://medium.mybridge.co/12-free-resources-learn-to-code-w...](https://medium.mybridge.co/12-free-resources-learn-to-code-while-playing-games-f7333043de11)

* side bar of this subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingforkids/](https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingforkids/)

* also this Q&A site: [https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes](https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)

</comment><comment><USER9> Mostly geared to middle school and absolute beginners but worth mentioning:

Scratch is a visual environment that will teach the basic of algorithms, loops, decisions, variables etc. using just drag and drop. It has sprites, sounds and everything you need to create rich flash games that can be exported to the web, so coding it's very rewarding, here is what a 12 y/o can create: [https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/203422373/](https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/203422373/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This blog has some good ideas about teaching Python to high school students: [http://blog.jrheard.com/](http://blog.jrheard.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Freecodecamp.com - I'm surprised nobody here is touting it. It's the best. Has a forum, has a curriculum, hits on computer knowledge students might have gaps in, uses github, is open source, etc. glitch is a cool way to do a full stack demo but you need to go through some learning on your own first I think and FCC is the best free tool there is

</comment><comment><USER12> Code Club is great. Has a one year curriculum of Scratch -> HTML & CSS -> Python.

Aimed at 10-12, but easily caters to other ages too.

Have a look at the tutorials below...

[https://codeclubprojects.org/en-GB/](https://codeclubprojects.org/en-GB/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Check out the projects listed at the Center for Game Science. Two of them (DragonArchitect and BlockStudio) are all about introducing programming concepts to novices. Disclosure: I'm a grad student at CGS.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm no educator, but this material caught my eye a while ago: [http://csfieldguide.org.nz/](http://csfieldguide.org.nz/)

</comment><comment><USER15> ScriptEd (scripted.org) has a curriculum on GitHub which might be helpful to your friend.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's some additional resources

Web Apps: \- freecodecamp \- codeacademy

That's all I really got for now :)</comment>


6 Entrepreneurs Tell Us Their Biggest Mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.process.st/2014/02/6-entrepreneurs-tell-us-their-biggest-mistakes/

<comment><USER2> All of these are very good points. I have a friend that programs that I've still not told about our dev studio as I really don't want to hire someone that I feel would inclined to "let slide" on things.</comment>


New ATM hack uses "trigger" card - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227135.700-cash-machines-hacked-to-spew-out-card-details.html <comment><USER2> I've always thought it was rather silly (and extremely overkill) to use Windows as the operating system for an ATM. After all, an ATM has relatively simple requirements, which haven't really changed all that much in the last ten years. Of course, this is Diebold we're talking about. Back in the days of voting machine bashing a common refrain was "they make ATMs, so surely they know how to make a voting machine secure". Well, perhaps we made the wrong assumption about how secure their ATMs really were... :)

</comment><comment><USER3> The only solution to this is going to be something like what Heartland is going to have to do - encrypt everything from the card swipe all the way to the banks on the other end.

In case you have forgotten, Heartland processes about 100,000,000 credit card transactions per month and for a period of time last year, some trojans were operating that were harvesting the magnetic tracks of swiped cards. The trojans hid on the hard drive, and until auditors started looking at the temp files on the drives (and matching what created the temp filess) the stuff hidden in unallocated drive areas weren't found.

[http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/heartlands-n...](http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/heartlands- new-encryption-strategy-let-em-in-but-limit-how-much-they-can-get/)

[http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/heartland- sn...](http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/heartland-sniffer-hid- in-unallocated-portion-of-disk/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Re: Windows: ATMs with a BSOD are still a common sight in the DC area.</comment>


Open Source, Low Latency, High Quality Voice Chat - <AUTHOR> https://www.mumble.info/ <comment><USER2> Still out goto application for chatting, an exceptional piece of technology. Works on unbelievably awful computers in the worst Internet conditions.

Discord has them beat in terms of improving the quality of bad microphones, but also requires an order of magnitude more bandwidth.

<comment><USER3> Discord beat all of them because it doesn't need hosting. TeamSpeak, Mumble, Ventrilo all needs hosting and a lot of people don't want to hassle with that. Skype was the only available alternative for a long time but Discord came along and pretty much won.

<comment><USER4> I think if Mumble ever had a web client it would be a game changer. I have not used anything other than Discord for voice chat since it came out. Unless at a company setting where other tools are appropriate due to culture.

<comment><USER5> Mumble web clients exist. They are limited to what the browser allows with respect to TCP and UDP access. So they need some sort of websocket proxy to work.

Another example of why web apps are inherently limited I suppose...

<comment><USER4> I was implying the voice implementation on the backend should natively support audio streaming to the web. Its nothing new and Discord does it. Hacking it to work is not going to be perfect.

<comment><USER6> It seems Mumble uses speex as the codec. Not sure how well that's supported by the browsers.

<comment><USER5> Normally Opus these days. Which is what the web client uses.

* [https://github.com/Johni0702/mumble-web](https://github.com/Johni0702/mumble-web)

<comment><USER6> Technically browsers have WebRTC and can do Opus without the emscripten compiled libopus, but I guess the Mumble server won't support WebRTC's RTP stream.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amnesty International: Encryption Is a Human Rights Issue - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/03/amnesty-international-encryption-human-rights-issue <comment><USER2> The average person isn't even _aware_ that VLC is an illegal circumvention tool in the United States under the DMCA. I fail to see how restrictions on encryption software would have a different outcome. Encryption is built into so many products, it's part of daily life and most people don't even know they're using it.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't aware of this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player#Legality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player#Legality) Harks back to people not being aware that making copies of CDs for private (fair) use is illegal [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Legality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Legality)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Encryption is therefore also an enabler of the rights to freedom of expression, information and opinion, and also has an impact on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, association and other human rights_

I haven't been following the whole encryption debate in detail recently, but it seems there's one point which hasn't been discussed much: What about encryption which works _against_ users' freedom, things like DRM, "trusted" boot and the whole idea of mandatory forced trust, etc.?

On the one hand, I'm against government surveillance. On the other hand, I'm also against DRM and user-hostile locked-down systems. Government surveillance, breaking DRM, jailbreaking, rooting, etc. all rely on cracks, the "imperfect" nature of security in some form or another. That's why I think this is a particularly perplexing issue, and bluntly saying "encryption is good and we should have more of it" is not seeing the whole perspective.

Relevant story: [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

<comment><USER5> >What about encryption which works against users' freedom, things like DRM, "trusted" boot and the whole idea of mandatory forced trust, etc.?

Isn't this a "freedom from/freedom to" distinction?[0]

People should be free to use encryption. People should be free to use software to break DRM. People should be free to create, use and sell hardware which limits the behavior of software. Using hardware to hide keys from software for instance is a common DRM usecase, but it has applications in security and privacy as well (SGX or Apple's enclave for example). People should be free not to use DRM as well.

The problem, it seems to me, is should technology be used to enhance or degrade a users agency and security? The technology, including hardware which limits software behavior, can be used in both directions.

[0]: [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive- negative/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is left to say about this? Does anyone have any new insights?

I want encryption so I can perform online transactions safely. Or at least safe enough that the financial services I use online can ensure the movement of my money.

If I want encryption to communicate online then it all comes down to who you trust. Who do you trust? Certainly not any provider of encrypted messaging services, since we can't audit their code, can't guarantee there isn't a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) plant working there, can't guarantee it's not a TLA front, can't guarantee the service provider isn't subject to a NSL etc etc.

I'm not sure I'm convinced this is a human rights issue. How would we enforce the right? Rights that aren't enforceable aren't much use. Negative Rights[2] and all that.

The UN's 'The Universal Declaration of Human Rights'[1] is a nice document, but it's existence hasn't made those things real. Adding another article, or interpreting the right to encryption in to an existing article, does not, and can not, ensure that right.

What am I trying to say? Probably something like: if there are people who are inclined to, and have the power to, infringe your _right_ to privacy, you're probably pretty screwed.

1\. [http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human- rights/](http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights) (... rights are ranked by degree of importance, and violations of lesser ones are accepted in the course of preventing violations of greater ones ...)

<comment><USER7> > What is left to say about this? Does anyone have any new insights?

There is one thing that I'm really, really wondering about. Are large cities like London and New York basically screwed?

Let me explain: One large city with 10-20 million people is obviously far more vulnerable to terrorism than 10 smaller cities of 1-2 million each. Obviously Amnesty is correct that encryption is good for freedom of speech, human rights etc. Also, encryption is necessary for business/banking in a modern world. But let's not kid ourselves, terrorists can also hide behind encryption.

Terrorism is nothing new, and there will probably be more of it in the future. I'm not a law expert, but my impression is that the countries in Europe with the worst laws for privacy is the UK and France. Probably because that is where you find the largest cities: London and Paris. These people are scared/worried. I can see no other reason why they would enact laws like these.

So in the future, when there are more terrorism attacks, knee-jerk politicians (and their voters!) will probably want even more laws restricting encryption. This will make these places even worse for both human rights and business.

The industrial revolution basically created mega-cities. Is modern computer technology making them impractical?

<comment><USER8> The thing is that even these cities aren't that vulnerable.

Imagine you're a terrorist.

Where are you going to attack for maximum impact? Piccadilly Circus? Heathrow? Gatwick?

Or a random suburb out at the end of a line somewhere?

<comment><USER7> I see your point. Much of this vulnerability is psychological, though. If you look at how many people have died from terrorism in the past, it's not many, at least compared to things like cancer, heart disease or traffic accidents. Still, I remember how most Americans were more than happy to give up their freedoms and human rights after September 11, in order to fight terrorism. Never mind that those freedoms and human rights were probably much of the reason why the US became great (compare it to say Argentina or Russia). Ironically, I think in order to preserve freedom during periods of terrorism, we would have to do away with democracy, since most voters are such morons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool. I do think we should stay on offense about this.

The DOJ has said they won't let up seeking legislative and court room power to demand warranted access to encrypted data.

The problem with this is that as a society, we are not all focused on the right ways to keep each other safe. Of course, we as technologists know that no such law is enforceable given the existence of free and open source software. But the rest of society doesn't get that, and some portion of them are simply taking our word for it. Given another terrorist attack in which encrypted communications is somehow shown to be a factor, some of the public could swing the other way.

I believe it is our civil duty as technologists to educate each other about this issue in a respectful manner. We must not assume there is some nefarious government position. That hurts our ability to convince those people who do trust the government. And, those are precisely the folks we want to convince. We're on the winning side of this ride now and we should ride the wave as long as it is carrying us towards greater public understanding of encryption and technology. We'll be safer on balance and have a better IT industry if we do so.

</comment><comment><USER10> What about voter rights? Why is nobody fighting the Fiasco in AZ?

</comment><comment><USER11> When everything becomes a human right, you cheapen the entire concept. So many times I read in the news "this latest issue is a human right, and that thing, etc, etc".

Let's keep human rights to the basics.

If your goal is privacy as a human right, then make that the human right, and stop there.

Not the tool you use to accomplish it! Next a computer will become a human right, and then electricity, and a keyboard. Where does it end?

Encryption is a tool, not a goal in and of itself.

<comment><USER12> Yes and that's how Amnesty references it, as an _enabler_ of __other __human rights:

 _Encryption is therefore also an enabler of the rights to freedom of expression, information and opinion, and also has an impact on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, association and other human rights._</comment></comment>


Suspended from University for writing email about mathematics software - <AUTHOR> https://crucialflow.com/suspended <comment><USER2> Tell me, OP, what did you learn, if anything, from this whole ordeal?

<comment><AUTHOR> As stated in the post, I learned that the university system is not able to facilitate or nurture mathematical exploration and discovery for me.

<comment><USER2> How is mathematical exploration and discovery related to asking a fellow student, whom you don't know, through e-mail, on a date?

If I were in your shoes I wouldn't have sent any more e-mails after not receiving a response from them. It confuses me how you thought what happens afterwards was appropriate. In fact, I wouldn't even have made the first e-mail about a date at all.

Your blog post and your reaction to the whole situation shows how immature you are/were.

So, IOWs, here's something you ought had learnt:

a) A lack of reply in this context should be interpreted as a "no" or "I'm not interested.";

b) If you cross paths AFK and there's eye contact but no engagement: you do _NOT_ e-mail the person especially after the previous point - that may be considered harrassment to some people and that's probably why you were labeled as problematic;

c) If you are angry about the whole thing instead of furthering the damage refocus it on something productive and move on with your life;

d) Comply with the faculty's sanctions next time - don't be a smart ass;

e) Don't make these "let's discuss research" about dates, like, at all!

Your _naiveté_ came at a great cost for your career. Think with your upper head next time.

<comment><AUTHOR> All these strict (implicit) social rules are ridiculous, and I am not interested in that kind of toxic environment, where a simple question results in inter personal conflict.

I also don't care what you think about my maturity or social ability.

A mature adult would have been able to respond with a message saying that dating is not appropriate, and a mature adult would have still been able to talk about math after saying that dating is inappropriate.

To me, it seems more like the other person is immature and not capable of engaging in a constructive situation.

Anyway, over analyzing a simple email with a question is a bit unnecessary, and it was the opposite of productive. The productive thing to do would have been to simply acknowledge the situation and divert towards mathematics. What annoyed me is that none of the university faculty was able to do so.

I actually provided an extremely productive path of discussion via my mathematics called Grassmann.jl which could have taken the center stage of discussion, instead I was suspended and sanctioned and nobody acknowledged my mathematical contribution to the discussion.

I provided the opportunity for productivity via my mathematical inquiry, but it was ignored in favor of inter-personal conflict (over a simple question) on the side of the university.

<comment><USER2> >All these strict (implicit) social rules are ridiculous, and I am not interested in that kind of toxic environment, where a simple question results in inter personal conflict.

You can't really expect navigating a world where everything is laid out just for you. That's not how it works. The faster you learn this the less you'll suffer. There's a hint of entitlement here that you should probably fix as well.

>I also don't care what you think about my maturity or social ability.

Of course you do, you made a blog post about it, posted on Hacker News and you replied to posters on your thread. All your prose suggests bitterness. Stop being bitter about it and move on with your life. Seek therapy if you feel it's overwhelming you. It has been 2 years now. [0]

>A mature adult would have been able to respond with a message saying that dating is not appropriate, and a mature adult would have still been able to talk about math after saying that dating is inappropriate.

She didn't acknowledge you because you made the e-mail about a date. Had you not made it about a date _MAYBE_ things would have turned out different. But you were too focused on something that's not mathematics to think straight.

>To me, it seems more like the other person is immature and not capable of engaging in a constructive situation.

Take responsibility for your own actions. Admit you were wrong, _LEARN_ from it and move on. Do I have to remind you that _YOU_ e-mailed her first about discussing research and make a date out of it? _YOU_ e-mailed her after you saw her at that public lecture knowing that she didn't previously acknowledge you? It's not up to the other party to tell you how to behave. She's not your parent.

>Anyway, over analyzing a simple email with a question is a bit unnecessary, and it was the opposite of productive. The productive thing to do would have been to simply acknowledge the situation and divert towards mathematics. What annoyed me is that none of the university faculty was able to do so.

There's no over analyzation here. You made your intentions pretty clear with your first e-mail to her. You should have worded it differently and actually make the "research discussion" about actual research and not a date.

I'm sorry things turned out wrong for you, but I don't feel sympathy for you after you lashed out at faculty like that. Next time, refocus your anger to something productive and not destructive. Just look at how that turned out for you.

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumination_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumination_\(psychology\))

<comment><AUTHOR> > Next time, refocus your anger to something productive and not destructive.

I did do something productive, I have created a mathematics software which has impacted hundreds of scientists. This work is enabling and will continue to enable many people to perform collaborative research not previously possible.

> But you were too focused on something that's not mathematics to think > straight.

That is incorrect, I actually was so extremely focused on mathematics to the point that it intimidated most people. It's more of the opposite, I was so focused on mathematics that I did not think straight about non-mathematical things.

> move on with your life

the act of sending the email which caused the suspension was me moving on with my life... so I'm way ahead of you, it was an act of moving on from the get go

the reason why I posted this is to share a story and provide insight into my life</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GB (AI), cognitive models papers and Lisp code on the way  - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys (enthusiast AI guys, and Lispers too), I would like to share my professor Guilherme Bittencourt
AI publications (and later his code),
it goes specifically on cognitive models (well known, but not a popular and easy field).
Unfortunately, he passed away last year (cancer), and
most of his work is stagnated (since the disease, 2008). I have most of his cognitive model coded in Common Lisp,
and will be pulling publically when I get time to
turn it "usable", and fix some things up. If anyone has interest in this field, just contact me, and we'll come along.<p>[1]: http://www.das.ufsc.br/~gb/publications97-05/ [2}: http://www.das.ufsc.br/~gb/publications05-07/ <comment><USER2> Clickable:

<http://www.das.ufsc.br/~gb/publications97-05/>

<http://www.das.ufsc.br/~gb/publications05-07/></comment>


All I need is an iPod touch and Monitor - <AUTHOR> http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2009/01/31/all-we-need-is-connectivity-why-the-ipod-touch-netbooks-matter/ <comment><USER2> I am really excited to see what the TechCrunch Tablet brings. For $300 it's in the price range of the iPod Touch, has a bigger screen, can be used with an external KB/Mouse if needed.

Once the tablet drops I will be one of the first to spend $300 on it. Much more value for my money than a netbook, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER3> This idea has been discussed. I personally remember 3 years ago when everyone though people would be working off of thin clients within the year.

However a lot of people do more with a computer than currently offered by online spreadsheets and email.

Not to mention companies and government that have strict IT security policies that wouldn't allow data on these external networks.

<comment><USER4> 3 years? In 1995 Larry Ellison and quite a few other people were completely convinced that thin clients (or network computers) would win over desktop PCs with all applications being hosted on an external server and running off of central databases.

<comment><USER5> Oracle and Sun both. In 1999 the startup I worked for actually beta tested some of Sun's thin client systems. Ahh... bad times, bad times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dropbox is web-based? Because I have to install a program for it. In that case, Outlook is web-based.

<comment><USER7> It's web based because the main data store is not on your computer but 'out on the web', and you can access any of your data stored in it by logging onto their website.

You can install a program for your convenience, but you can use the core remote-storage of dropbox without it.

<comment><USER6> It's entirely the same of Outlook/Exchange, yet I don't think anyone would consider that web-based.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like you're drawing the distinction at "primarily browser based" and I was using "primarily internet based".

As such, I think Outlook/Exchange is not web-based, but Outlook/Hosted- Exchange is web based (because the Exchange server is "out on the web" somewhere out of sight, out of mind).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Two major frontiers before web based computers become a reality:

1.) Games.

2.) Powerful office/business programs.

<comment><USER9> To 1.) Steam? Still requires the power of a gaming computer, but web based and portable game.

<comment><USER10> Isn't steam more of a distribution channel?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _and decent input_

There's no way you could work productively with an iPod touch and monitor if the iPod touch keyboard was all you had to type on. I simply don't believe it's practical.

And on that note, sod the big monitor - how about a HMD (I guess a pico- projector would do), iPod Touch and wearable keyboard (I guess foldable portable would do)?

Well you could do that now - pico projectors exist, apps exist for hacked iphones to display more than just video to the TV out port, there's a hack to get an external keyboard working somewhere, and of course MobileTerminal, Python and Safari are already available.

iPod Touch, foldable keyboard, portable projector - smaller yet more useful than a netbook? Now? One day soon?

<comment><USER11> Input is huge. I have a coworker who has done a lot of research on two thumb qwerty keyboards like the one on the Blackberry. He's actually found that users can type fairly accurately and upto 60wpm with about 400 minutes of practice [1].

Also another friend has looked at the Twiddler, a one-handed chording keyboard. It requires more practice but you can type accurately and touch type [2].

[1] <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~jamer/pubs/mq%20-%20TOCHI06.pdf>

[2] <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~kent/pubs/twiddler-iswc.pdf>

<comment><USER5> I have a twiddler. When I lived in boston, there was a crew of guys at MIT in the late 90s/early 2000s who were into them, so I bought one. I can't stand it. It doesn't seem to work well with my hands. I have large, rugged, yet sensitive hands. Even so, I could type way faster with my thumbs on a SideKick keyboard than I could on the twiddler. It seems to work better for typing text. It was bad for programming. Maybe I didn't spend enough time customizing my environment.

Also, they aren't made anymore.

<comment><USER7> I went looking and see they've basically shut down - parts for v2 are no longer available, they're in debt and they can't afford to develop v3 and that was a couple of years ago.

There are none on eBay.com or .co.uk active or recently completed, or any on Froogle either.

Shame; I never thought they looked brilliant, but quite liked that they exist.

<comment><USER11> [http://wiki.cc.gatech.edu/ccg/classes/7470/7470-f06/bluetoot...](http://wiki.cc.gatech.edu/ccg/classes/7470/7470-f06/bluetooth_twiddler)

These guys worked on a Bluetooth version that was HCI Profile compliant. They worked for my advisor.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Intel memory ordering, fence instructions, and atomic operations (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://peeterjoot.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/intel-memory-ordering-fence-instructions-and-atomic-operations/

<comment><USER2> The state of the X86 memory model before 2009 was quite poor [1]. All Intel had to offer was a whitepaper on memory ordering and it contained terms which weren't defined like "causality" and "transitive visibility".

As a person who lives in these trenches, I cannot stop myself from pushing others to read the fantastic X86-TSO paper by Sewell et al [2]. It gives a clear, easily understood view of the memory model. Their earlier, more in- depth paper, is here [3].

[1] [http://www.mpdiag.com/intel_arch.html](http://www.mpdiag.com/intel_arch.html) [2] [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/weakmemory/cacm.pdf](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/weakmemory/cacm.pdf) [3] [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/weakmemory/x86tso- paper.pdf](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/weakmemory/x86tso-paper.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Funny thing,

Just yesterday I did not know almost anything about memory models, cache coherence, etc. Then I've read this book/lecture [1], got interested and later found the same great articles by Peter Sewell[2], you've mentioned

And today I see it on hacker news :)

[1] [http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00346ED1V01Y2...](http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00346ED1V01Y201104CAC016)

[2] [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/weakmemory/index.html](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/weakmemory/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also the Linux Kernel documentation on memory barriers in general: [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/memory- barriers.txt](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does any of this apply on modern x86?

<comment><USER6> You mean compared with the 'ancient' x86 from 2009?

<comment><USER5> Yes. Intel has done a surprisingly large amount of optimization in their CPUs over the past few years.

<comment><USER6> Sure but there is no way that memory ordering would have been impacted by any of those.</comment></comment></comment></comment>