Show HN: Quick way to share writing online - <AUTHOR> http://eoinmurray.io/writer

<comment><USER2> Nice, but you've broken the back-button of my Chrome.

If I press the Back Button then it seems to open a new document within the app (url changes) but adds another line of text explaining how to do the shindiggy.</comment>


How to licence for a MultiCore architecture? Pt II - <AUTHOR> http://tony.cqd.be/how-to-licence-for-a-multicore-architecture-p SpringSource TC server and VMWare Virtual Image Licencing policies. <comment><AUTHOR> Would really welcome a good discussion on this topic. I feel there is much to learn on how companies should licence software for a highly scalable elastic multicore platform.</comment>


Viking Horde: A New Type of Android Malware on Google Play - <AUTHOR> http://blog.checkpoint.com/2016/05/09/viking-horde-a-new-type-of-android-malware-on-google-play/ <comment><USER2> I dont know why the change happened but I use play store only in every couple of months when I need something really specific. Long gone are the days I was intrested in searching for new apps and trying them out.

Similar with updates, I've been hurt couple of times by keeping apps updated, so now it happens only when it stops working completely.

<comment><USER3> That's part of the over-saturation of apps I guess.

I also do the same regarding updates. More than once I've found that functionality is crippled in a newer version or it's simply is less usable so now I also avoid updating unless there's a feature I really want or as you say, it stops working altogether.

<comment><USER4> Same here, I only update when necessary. Also having auto update is painful, when you suddenly switch from 4G to WiFi your phone will try to update everything making it sluggish, regardless of what you want to do on your phone...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Too bad Google isn't more aggressive at keeping malware out of the Play Store. As it stands, I will not install anything that isn't from something very mainstream such as Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc. No small/indy apps for me.

<comment><USER6> Check out Google's excellent Android security review [1]. Google is pretty effective at keeping harmful apps out of the the Play Store; if you don't sideload apps less than 0.15% devices had malware.

[1] [http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/source.android.com...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/source.android.com/en//security/reports/Google_Android_Security_2015_Report_Final.pdf)

<comment><USER7> How does that compare with iOS? I mean, Google may be doing yeoman's work, but if that compares with near-zero (due to Apple's walled garden), it's still looks bad in comparison (esp with the huge Android installed base).

<comment><USER8> I don't have stats (and I'd be surprised if Apple released them), but it's not like IOS malware is unheard of. For example: [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2989037/malware- vulnera...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2989037/malware- vulnerabilities/iphone-malware-yispecter-apple-app-store-itbwcw.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article doesn't go into details of how the app manged to do all these things, isn't there some sandboxing that was broken, know vulnerability or some 0day that was used or anything like it? I've heard that android security is broken but it's seems a little too easy.

<comment><USER10> Sandboxing isn't a magical solution. All it does is limit resources available to an app. Usually, until a user authorizes access to such resources.

"Here's a list of thirty privileges this app needs to run. Do you approve?"

Given you just downloaded it, why wouldn't you?

After all, every other app requires a huge set of privileges to run, too.

Do you see the problem? :)

<comment><USER11> Not any more, Marshmallow permissions are on-demand.

<comment><USER12> It's not all that effective; some apps (like the Hue app) just crash if you deny them anything. Why didn't Android add the option to provide blank data to apps?

<comment><USER11> > It's not all that effective

I find it perfectly effective: If you deny an app a permission, it doesn't get any information for that permission.

> some apps (like the Hue app) just crash if you deny them anything

That sounds like the app is badly implemented, really.

> Why didn't Android add the option to provide blank data to apps?

Because it's a completely new API and it shouldn't have to, apps should check the return code to see if the permission was denied or not.

Are you talking about denying permissions to apps that don't support the new- style permissions natively, perhaps?

<comment><USER12> _That sounds like the app is badly implemented, really._

Yeah, it really is badly implemented, but the blame for that lies in part with Android for making it so easy to write apps that break. It would have been perfectly easy to write the code so that it returned "GPS signal lost" for location, "no contacts" for contacts, "SD card is empty" for storage, "no phone call in progress" for phone, etc. In fact, modders of Android have been doing that kind of thing for _years_. It's truly astonishing that Google got this so wrong when there are so many better examples.

 _Because it 's a completely new API and it shouldn't have to, apps should check the return code to see if the permission was denied or not._

Sometimes an app should believe the permission was granted when it actually wasn't, because of the aforementioned bad (or even malicious) apps. Maybe you have to use a particular app in order to control the lights in your house, or your car, or to chat with someone who refuses to use anything that doesn't have a permission list a mile long. Privacy controls are useless if the _true_ control is still in the hands of the app.

 _Are you talking about denying permissions to apps that don 't support the new-style permissions natively, perhaps?_

No, I'm not, but clearly old-style permissions could have been reimplemented as forwarding calls to a new-style API that returned blank data if the user chose blank data for that app's permission, just as privacy mods for rooted phones have already done.

<comment><USER13> They have two different privacy solutions implemented in Android 6 (marshmallow): The first one is comparable to iOS' model - the app must ask for permission on first access. If the user denies said access, the app gets this information.

Ghe second solution is aimed at apps designed for older Android versions, if the user denies access, the app gets empty data back (e.g. Empty contact lists, no GPS satellite etc).

An app designed for Android 6 should handle negative feedback (disable functions, show a warning/explanation or something else), it shouldn't break. If you don't want to handle this, design for Android <6 and let the system take care of it. But it should be a difference between permission not granted and no data available, apps should handle these issues differently. If I were to deny my navigation app access to my location, it should ask me to revoke this decision and not warn me about not finding GPS satellites (which would make me run around with my phone hold up in the air hoping to get a GPS fix).

<comment><USER12> _If I were to deny my navigation app access to my location, it should ask me to revoke this decision and not warn me about not finding GPS satellites (which would make me run around with my phone hold up in the air hoping to get a GPS fix)._

That kind of notification should be done by the permission system itself, perhaps as an icon in the status bar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.checkpoint.com/2016/05/09/viking- horde-a-new-type-of-android-malware-on-google-play/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been contemplating for a few weeks now rooting my phone. My justification for this plan is the convenience and added security of system-wide ad block. But I always wonder if I should be more concerned with the new vulnerabilities I open than with the ones I'm closing. I guess I'm wondering what people here think: is rooting something that makes sense if you're careful, or is it something you do if you're smart enough to want to play with your phone while not being smart enough to know better?

<comment><USER16> If you're a careless user, don't root your phone. If you pay attention, use common sense, and don't have a thousand Play store apps installed; you'll probably be okay. Another way to look at it is by comparing your phone to your desktop or laptop computer. How often do you unintentionally break it with malware? Often? Don't root your phone. Rarely or never? You'll be okay.

The best advice I can offer is to stay the hell away from Google Play. That trash, and the rest of their services, are the first things I strip from my phones. Instead, use properly licensed open source software, from the F-Droid repository (or similar). If it's not a proprietary app (Twitter/Facebook/Snapchat/etc.), there's likely a FOSS version that's better than anything on the Play store. Flashlight apps don't need to access your contact list, or read your call logs, or have an open port in your firewall. The damned bastards.

On F-Droid you'll find (for your rooted phone):

 _AFWall+_ , an IPTables firewall GUI. Very nice looking and intuitive. Don't think I've ever used a firewall so easy to configure.

 _Autostart_ , an app that prevents garbage from auto-starting. A bunch of junkware usually loads up when you activate things like WiFi and GPS, or reboot the phone. Autostart can be configured to block the bloat, and in turn, make your phone run much more efficiently.

 _Disable Manager_ , to disable unsavory services (Play, Facebook, etc.). If you're worried that deleting things will break the phone, this app will put your mind at ease, because you can use it to turn things off and on, like a switch, instead of outright deleting.

 _AdAway_ , generic name, but it does what it's supposed to; system-wide ad blocking. It's FOSS, under GPL. If you avoid the Play store, configure your firewall, and use an ad blocker addon on Firefox, you might not even need an app like this one.

There's a bunch of other cool, trustworthy, stuff on F-Droid that's not going to abuse your phone. When it comes down to it, if you stick with FOSS, you won't need to root the phone; a non-root firewall will suffice.

Apologies for the rant, this was supposed to be a short reply, I don't know what happened.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for the thorough reply. I'll play with it some this weekend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> so if I don't have Viking Horde or Viking Jump installed, my devices are not infected by this?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article mentions 5 different apps by I would assume there are a lot more apps in the store utilizing this scheme.

Here are the apps mentioned: \- Viking Jump \- Parrot Copter \- Wifi Plus \- Memory Booster \- Simple 2048

<comment><USER18> I would also add that they have not provided a comprehensive list of infected apps or any way to stop them from being uploaded in the future.

It's possible you are still compromised from another app. Looks like next steps are getting a tool out to check that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nasty. Great read though.

</comment><comment><USER10> I feel like every time I read about something ad-related it's usually in a negative context. This malware doesn't even care if it's not executed as root... it just needs the device to falsify ad clicks/impressions. And I guess nobody really cares, because the probably huge amount of bot action on ad exchanges just makes the pie larger for everyone.

(With all of Google's talent and machine learning and AI, it can't detect this junk? please...)

All the more reason to avoid hardware from this company.

<comment><USER20> -Typing this on a Nexus-

I'm pretty sure that this is not what Google wants although they might -as you correctly point out- profit from it in the first place. But the negative publicity in combination with possibly loosing companies buying ad space on Google because of fake clicks can not be worth it. Google is too big to profit from a scam like this in the long-term.

<comment><USER10> I agree, and like you, I doubt fake clicks/impressions have an impact on Google's revenue.

Still, one has to wonder how one arm of the company can be so successful at creating artificial intelligence (smart cars, tensor flow, deep dream, just OTOH), while the other - its primary revenue driver, at that - manages to overlook things that are so simple.

Or am I really expecting it to be much more difficult than simple heuristics like "game + SMS privileges = fishy"?</comment></comment></comment>


Japanese hotel room costs $1 a night, but you have to livestream your stay - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/livestream-hotel-room-japan-intl-hnk/index.html <comment><USER2> If you consider this to be exploiting the consumer then this is a good example for the textbooks of how, in a free market, there has to be some regulation to prevent exploitation of those at the edges of society.

It's exactly the same argument for laws against the most vulnerable types of sex work, or selling body organs donated by the living. Without those laws, those who are most desperate will be able to act in desperation, to someone else's benefit, with society doing nothing to stand in the way.

It's probably time ad-tech was re calibrated on this spectrum before we _race to the exploitative-bottom_ there as well, and build a shopping mall that we don't want on the open common land that we do.

<comment><USER3> Regulating freely consented exchanges _you_ don't like out of existence will not actually make them disappear, just push them underground, out of society's eye and where the REAL exploitation takes place.

That's why adults actually working in those domains militate for legalization and that's why totalitarian societies require so much surveillance just to avoid collapse.

Because people WILL do the deals they need to do to survive or get ahead. Your laws will just provide the reason to catch and incarcerate them afterwards.

See the marijuana legalization mess.

<comment><USER4> I think your argument would make more sense if the actor in the room was paid a fair wage

<comment><USER5> Define 'fair' in a way 65% would agree with. To me, 'fair' is what I negotiate. In my view, when value and price are decoupled, things tend not to go well. Keeping the things we value expensive, is exactly as it should be. This view does not perclude a social 'safety net', it just takes the position that wage laws should not be forced into imperfect duty as one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny, I just watched "We Live in Public" ([https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/)) the other day, where Pseudo was giving people free _everything_ (room/food/drugs/shooting range/etc.), but their entire lives had to be recorded (one hundred people were living in this place together).

Absolute insanity, and I just found an interview with the director as well, Ondi Timoner ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSTLRgyt7pU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSTLRgyt7pU)).

<comment><USER7> Jennycam.

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

<comment><USER8> ah the 90s were a strange time for the internet (if memory serves this popped up in about 97-98)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People are saying it's like Facebook IRL, but it's not. Facebook used to let you post your private life online as much as possible and hide to you all the advertisement business.

This, in contrary, is very open about its business model and you are warned upfront. It also means everyone on internet can make sure the management of the hotel is done right.

You are guaranteed that the room has been cleaned and no one can steal your things.

This is an example of how recording everything can lead to reducing risks for both the host and the guests. (I'm not saying we should start recording everything everytime)

<comment><USER10> If i would ask to shut down the camera when doing private stuffs that would be ok.

<comment><USER11> The article specifically mentions that sex acts are prohibited if you take the owner up on the offer. This is presumably to satisfy Japan's strict sex censorship laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Covered by a different news source a week earlier, offering different details and photos: [https://soranews24.com/2019/11/13/japans-cheapest-hotel- char...](https://soranews24.com/2019/11/13/japans-cheapest-hotel-charges- just-130-yen-us1-20-for-a-room-with-a-huge-no-privacy-catch/)

</comment><comment><USER13> He should charge guests and extra $1 to livestream their stay (on top of the regular price). Some people like to voyeur; others like to be on camera. Charging to be seen makes it seem less creepy (than - "normal price $10... but only $1 if people can watch you"), and engenders the idea of scarcity (for $1 you can be _featured_ on a popular livestream). I see wannabe 'influencers' seeking out such an opportunity.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps if the channel got popular enough then that might make sense, but at this stage I think that would be a terrible move. Charging extra to be livestreamed changes the whole dynamic from "cheapest hotel ever, with one odd condition" to "what kind of idiot pays extra money for a hotel room to be livestreamed?"

$1 hotel is cool and something you want to share with your friends and stay in for the experience. Having to pay extra money on top of the room fare for the "privilege" of being livestreamed does not sound attractive and would probably generate outrage (though to be fair, outrage is still attention). Also as a viewer, I'd be less interested in watching people so desperate for attention that they're willing to pay extra money to be livestreamed - I'd assume they're one of those "wannabe influencers".

<comment><USER13> Maybe, maybe not, opinions vary

If staying in a cheap hotel was cool, why don't I ever hear people bragging about the low budget roadside motel they stayed in? Travelers who randomly ___wander in_ __might submit to being livestreamed, if presented that option. But people who __ _go there_ __, specifically, are doing so for the unique experience of being livestreamed ", not for the experience of paying $1. Again, just an opinion.

Also, which seems like it would generate more outrage...

(1) A hotel where people can pay to be livestreamed on youtube.

(2) A hotel for people who don't actually want to be filmed in the privacy of their hotel room, but can't afford the room otherwise.

But you are right, it shouldn't cost extra. It should be a free experience (with the option to have it promoted somehow - for a small fee ;)

<comment><USER14> People brag about getting bargains all the time. That's like one of the core themes of the "digital nomad" community.

The (2) option you specified is not the case. And if people can only afford a $1/night hotel room, then I think there are more productive places to direct that outrage.

<comment><USER13> > "if people can only afford a $1/night hotel room"

Yes, they exist. They are called poor people.

As it is, the business model seems partially based on there being (1) a group of men on the internet who want to voyeur hotel rooms, and (2) working class women who reluctantly consent to their hotel room being live-streamed for a discounted rate. If it's not textbook, it certainly has some of the symptoms of exploitation.

<comment><USER14> It's a hotel room, not a permanent residence. The responsibility for providing affordable housing doesn't rest on the owner of a small guesthouse. Also this is Japan, not a city like San Francisco with a homeless epidemic and tents on the sidewalks.

> (1) a group of men on the internet who want to voyeur hotel rooms, and (2) > working class women who reluctantly consent to their hotel room being live- > streamed for a discounted rate.

Uh...what? Have you looked at the videos on their Youtube channel? You're really stretching to find a reason to be outraged here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Depending on the terms, I would probably subject myself to it so I could drum up interest in the art project I'm working on (as I would be working on it live). This kind of seems like a win-win (assuming the hotel actually comes out ahead somehow.. which doesn't seem possible)

</comment><comment><USER16> This isn't much unlike livestreaming on Twitch. It's a novelty and if you want to do it you want. People livestream themselves doing weird stuff all the time.

<comment><USER17> > It's a novelty

No it isn't. That stuff has been done since the mid 90's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article ending makes me feel very icky for some reason:

> So, besides the opportunity to have thousands of strangers watch your REM > cycle on the internet, what's the incentive to head to Fukuoka? Plenty -- so > much that CNN Travel named Fukuoka one of its must-visit destinations for > 2019. The pretty seaside city is known for its incredible food. In addition > to local, freshly-caught seafood, Fukuoka is also the birthplace of the > popular Ichiran chain, home of yummy pork tonkotsu ramen. Also, the > acclaimed Fukuoka Art Museum reopened in early 2019 following three years of > renovations.

</comment><comment><USER17> That's pretty cheap of them. In Toronto there was a very large building where gay people would stay rent free and get paid if they live-streamed their lives. This was in '97.

</comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of Big Sister [1], a brothel where customers could use the women's services for free, subsidized by paying Internet viewers, DVD sales & such.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sister_(brothel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sister_\(brothel\))

<comment><USER20> Yep, but there the business model is (was) clear, there is no doubt that there is a (vast and lucrative) market for voyeurs and (streaming) porn, what is missing here is the lack (I presume) of a market for people wanting to see strangers sleep.

Maybe there is a subset of feticism about it, but are the numbers big enough?

<comment><USER21> tbh his ordinary, struggling budget hotel has given a handful of guests a discount, and in return he's got worldwide press coverage. I suspect that's the bit that matters more than the sustainability of the model.

<comment><USER20> Yep, but if he had an online shop, I would understand that, I simply (maybe it is just me) cannot see how/why anyone (being in Fukuoka) would choose that hotel over the competitors (paying the "full" rate I mean) so - maybe - he is increasing the number of people willing to stay there (watched) for 1 $ per night, i.e. something on which the hotel will loose money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do you have to be in the room for a certain number of hours and stay up until a certain time of night.

Im sure me livestreaming what i fo in a hotel would be super boring. Reading and then falling asleep to a documentary or podcast.

<comment><USER23> Some folks are so lonely, that watching some stranger watch tv can be a nice distraction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone remember Jennicam?

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't see the business plan there. $1 a night won't pay the rent. Not even the costs that an owner has to pay. Looks like a stunt for something else.

<comment><USER26> He hopes to make money from the livestream, not from the people staying at the hotel. It's right there in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> im actually in japan now and my budget is running low but when you can snag a guest house for like £5-6 a night its probably not worth being on the net, my budget isnt that low

<comment><USER27> Mind saying where that is found?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So... what are Japan's laws regarding child pornography?

If a family with a young kid stays, and the young kid ends up running around naked, who goes to prison?

<comment><USER29> I don't know about Japan, but FWIW, that would be perfectly legal in the US and nobody would go to prison.

Simple nudity is not inherently sexual or pornographic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> All it takes is one person doing something against YouTube's terms of service and his account will get banned.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm curious if he actually plans to make the money back through advertising…

<comment><USER14> Given that his hotel is now featured in a CNN article, I'd imagine it's already paid off.

<comment><USER32> You can't make up in volume what you're losing in margins.

<comment><USER33> That's correct, but not applicable to this case. You can't make up in volume what you're losing in margins for the same product. In this case there are two products:

1\. Hotel room (100Y, loss margin) x 1

2\. Live stream (whatever CPM he can get on YouTube) x many

It still seems like it would be a struggle to make this profitable though. How many viewing hours would be needed per day? Most of the time it's going to be an empty room or have the light off. The rest of the time probably not much of interest is going on.

If he's savvy, he's not really intending to make it up with ads or perhaps even keep this room deal. It's a promotion that takes the ryokan from "just another place to stay" to at least having some notability. Not sure it actually makes more people stay there, but perhaps it's worth a shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I can see absolutely no problems with this business model /sarcasm

<comment><USER35> Same but without sarcasm. If the deal is known and people are completely aware of the terms... why not? As long as you can ensure nobody is streamed without permission, I'm sure there's a number of people who are cool with it (livestream channels like that existed decade(s?) ago). And on the other side, there's going to be quite a few people interested in watching (big-brother- style reality tv pretty much validated that). And you can be sure some people staying there will try to push the "lewd act" boundary for fun, bringing in more views.

Ultimately, this will be a better advertisement for that hotel than comparable money can buy online.

<comment><USER36> You don't have to extrapolate far to get into dystopian territory. "Get 50% off your rent if you agree to be live-streamed all the time!"

This is also the business model that powers most of the web. "Let us spy on you and get our service for free!" Then brands pop up offering privacy for a price, and the result is that only rich people get to live their lives unsurveilled.

This hotel example seems harmless because it's mostly a gimmick, but we need to stop this train in its tracks. Privacy should be a human right.

<comment><USER37> I'm mixed on this because while I 100% agree with you, I also don't really think that it will take off beyond a few novelty places where the Hotel + rooms are specifically designed to accommodate an entertaining stream. Think specific amenities meant to encourage silliness, items in the room for entertainment value that a regular hotel wouldn't use, product placement, and so on.

The number of non-tech people who still bother with a strip of tape over their laptop's webcam is encouraging enough for me to believe that likely a hotel experience like this really will never grow beyond a curiosity for a select group of people who wouldn't mind such an experience, and I think that our paranoia over physical privacy likely will keep this pretty constrained.

<comment><USER35> Even more - there's bound to be someone testing the boundaries. This is one example. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley) was another one. Someone has to either express/define or demonstrate what's extreme for the rest to have an opinion on what's ok.

It will be an issue if this idea becomes a norm. But it's normal that it's an extreme novelty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why people are so interested in follow our private life?

<comment><USER39> Cause some people feel that if they can pick apart someone else's life, it makes their own look less pathetic. It's like guy weighting 300lbs calling the 350lber fat. All these people want to do is watch until they can find something to shame the other person. Society is better off without any of these people. Unfortunately 99% who probably agree with my statement watch reality TV which is no different than what this hotel is doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So it's facebook

</comment><comment><USER41> Hmmm.

</comment><comment><USER42> > you have to livestream your stay

Oh, just like airbnb, except you pay $25+/nite and you're not told you're being livestreamed.

<comment><USER43> Was there an Airbnb case like that?

<comment><USER44> Yeah:

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/05/europe/ireland-airbnb- hidden-...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/05/europe/ireland-airbnb-hidden- camera-scli-intl/index.html)

<comment> yoz-y I am puzzled, why did not they call the police?

<comment><USER45> Hidden cameras in AirBnBs are horrible.

But what crime in Irish law do you think has been broken?

<comment><USER46> I don't know about Ireland, but in most placed in Europe you can not film people without their knowledge unless it's a public place.

<comment><USER45> But is that in criminal or civil law?

EDIT: If someone wants to link some laws that's be useful.

For the downvoters: I am clearly NOT saying it's okay to hide cameras in an AirBnB. But it's probably not a criminal offence. The police have no power here. I'm NOT saying it's lawful -- the AirBnB owners are probably violating Irish data protection laws. But again those are not enforced by the police. In the UK it's not a criminal offence unless it meets the definition in the sexual offences act 2003, and putting cameras in the living room but not the bedroom probably gives the owners enough deniability to avoid prosecution. [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/67](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/67)

<comment><USER47> Criminal, obviously.

<comment><USER45> No, absolutely not "obviously". It's not a criminal offence in the UK to film people without their knowledge. It breaks data protection law (civil); there are regulations (RIPA) for public authorities but these do not apply to members of the public ; and there is criminal law that covers covert recording if done for sexual gratification, but those may not apply if the cameras have not been placed in toilets or bedrooms.

Can you link any of these laws please? Especially for Ireland. I can't find anything for Ireland that would make this a criminal offence.

Again, I'm not defending it. I think it's an awful thing to do. But "why didn't they call the police?" is answered by "maybe they did and the police told them it's not a police matter".

<comment><USER47> Okay, not obviously and I should have elaborated. In my country, Finland, watching or recording people without consent, in situations where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, is a crime punishable by a fine or up to a one-year prison sentence. This includes homes, hotel rooms, changing or fitting rooms, toilets, and similar locations, but also "upskirt" style photography in public places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> _> So far, four guests have taken him up on the offer_

So, it's not exactly a popular option.

</comment><comment><USER49> Facebook, IRL.

</comment><comment><USER50> Tbh I'm surprised an American didn't think of it first. I guess Big Brother was the first and now they're just letting every join Big Brother.

<comment><USER51> Big Brother is originally Dutch.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Dutch_TV_series...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_\(Dutch_TV_series\))

<comment><USER52> Big Brother is originally from 1984 (the book)

<comment><USER51> No, Big Brother the TV show isn't.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I want to do a video tutorial for cheap on OSX. What tools should I use? - <AUTHOR>

Wanting to a video tutorial with a voice over.  What software is there (ideally free) that does a good job at this? <comment><USER2> Ideally you'll want to do some full on video production. If you want to do it for cheap, you can use:

\- Free Screen cast tools to record your desktop or just the app window. \- Use some audio capturing tool to record your voice over. Best if you have a mic and can control the eq. I think quicktime Pro does has support for this too. ($30 for pro). \- Use imovie to edit/animate transitions between your script.

Hows that for a starts?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty good. I'll give Free Screen a whirl. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well if you can spend $100 try: <http://www.telestream.net/screen- flow/overview.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, they have a trial version that's full featured except a water mark. Can play with it and if I feel the end result is worth $100, i'd be more than happy to pay for it.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> No problem glad it may be what you needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For sound I'd recommend the much-underrecognized built-in Garageband... better than Audacity. ('Name' artists have done whole CD's with it) ... It has many, many fine plug-ins & effects, if you'll be using music.

</comment><comment><USER5> Quicktime X to record the screen and Audacity. $0.

VLC can also capture the screen I believe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Already using Audacity for sound ++. Will try VLC and QuickTime. Tx.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> start with screenr -- www.screenr.com. I saw them a while ago and bookmarked them. Basically, they do screen capture + video recording from your video camera. Not amazing quality but the (free) price is right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there! That is so easy and free that it might be just what I was looking for. The quality isn't that important since it'll be uploaded to youtube or vimeo. SWEET!</comment></comment>


L. Gordon Crovitz: From Internet to Obamanet - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/l-gordon-crovitz-from-internet-to-obamanet-1424644324

<comment><USER2> Some choice quotes from the article:

       The permissionless Internet, which allows anyone
       to introduce a website, app or device without
       government review, ends this week.

He seems to elaborate on this further down:

       The Supreme Court has ruled that if the FCC applies
       Title II to the Internet, all uses of telecommunications
       will have to pass the "just and reasonable" test.
       Bureaucrats can review the fairness of Google's search
       results, Facebook's news feeds and news sites' links to
       one another and to advertisers.

No cite is given to that Supreme Court ruling, so I don't know what Supreme Court ruling he's completely misunderstanding (or more likely purposefully misrepresenting).

Most of the claims in the article can be completely blown out of the water by simply looking at wireless voice, which is regulated the same way the proposal will regulate ISPs. If the things the article is claiming _must_ followed from Title II were true, then we would have seen them in wireless voice. We do not.

       Utility regulation was designed to maintain the status
       quo, and it succeeds. This is why the railroads, Ma Bell
       and the local water monopoly were never known for
       innovation.

Ma Bell was never known for innovation? Seriously? Has the WSJ never heard of the transistor? The solar cell? The laser? Unix? Information theory? Modern cryptography? Radio astronomy?</comment>


A compiler for Lambda Calculus to LLVM, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.finiteimprobability.com/2009/11/17/a-compiler-for-lambda-calculus-to-llvm-part-1/

<comment><USER2> "I'll try to keep things to the point that nothing more than a general understanding of Haskell, Parsec, and the basic concepts of LLVM are required."

ok, I'll be back in 4 days.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> With the right link this time. (I submitted this earlier with a corrupt URI and didn't notice until it was too late to edit/delete.)</comment>


The teacher of tomorrow will be neither human nor machine - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fjmubeen/the-teacher-of-tomorrow-will-be-neither-human-nor-machine-f9433139ee16#.e8w9kfldd <comment><USER2> Great post. Are there any case studies of schools that implemented a 'blended' approach successfully? What would that look like?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Moonshots in Education" is a book full of case studies from all around the world. Implementations are as diverse as the conditions of learning environments. Intelligent tutors may be fully integrated, squeezed on the sidelines, or somewhere in between.</comment></comment>


Crimea Part of Russia on Apple Maps, but Only Within Russia - <AUTHOR> https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/11/28/Crimea-part-of-Russia-on-Apple-Maps-but-only-within-Russia/4641574958907/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21648633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21648633)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's easy to be a champion of justice and rights, until it affects income.</comment>


Apple removes the 'time remaining' battery estimate in new macOS update - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/13/13939278/apple-macos-sierra-new-macbook-pros-battery-life <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169060)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13172903](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13172903)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169348)</comment>


Show HN: Site which searches throught Internet to find full movies from youtube - <AUTHOR> http://keepermovies.com/ Hi,
This is my first django website, how do you like it? Please give me your feedback :)
Best, Wiktor <comment><USER2> Is the code open-source ?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now, no</comment></comment>


A Global Arms Race to Create a Superintelligent AI Is Looming - ux-app http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-global-arms-race-to-create-a-superintelligent-ai-is-looming

<comment><AUTHOR> Uh, can we... not? Not sure how people think this will end up being anything but awful for the human race (Paperclip maximizer[0] and all that).

On the bright side, I think 10-20 years is hilariously over-optimistic, given that it's a problem -- that is, general, human-like AI -- that's been tackled by some extremely smart people for something like 60 years now, and no meaningful progress has been made. Sure, the hardware might be there, but that's not the hard part (I hope!).

[0] [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)</comment>


Top 20% of iPhone devs make 97% of the category revenue - <AUTHOR> http://www.industrygamers.com/news/iphone-devs-in-top-20-make-97-of-total-category-revenue/

<comment><USER2> Numbers are interesting, however it's a small, non-representative survey.

This is also just for games, not for other apps.

Also, I'd probably consider this not very useful at all due to a survey defect that caused strange numbers:

>"One of the things I really wanted data on was a snapshot of what the last 12 months have looked like for game developers on the App Store. However, the questions I created to gather this data clearly confused respondents. The intent was that devs enter only revenue from games released within the last 12 months, but many developers provided revenue from the last 12 months for all their games. This made the data I collected for these questions largely useless for the purposes I wanted. Further, most people didn't understand the instructions and didn't match the sales revenue to the non-sales revenue in the two questions, making drawing conclusions there impossible, also. You'll see later on that I did manage to get some basic data from it, but couldn't do the detailed analysis I had hoped for."

<comment><USER3> yes but they are useful, or does anyone else know better stats how much mobile developers earn? apparently majority of mobile app developers don't earn enough money to cover their opportunity costs or development costs.

<comment><USER2> What is a mobile developer? Someone who spends 2 weeknights worth working on an app? Or a guy who does nothing but that for months, hiring full quality artists, etc.

I think the issue is many mobile apps aren't fully baked ideas implemented with the full range of work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additionally:

      The top 1 percent of iOS game developers earn over a third
      of all that cold, digital revenue.  In contrast, the bottom
      80 percent of iOS devs are splitting a mere 3 percent of
      all App Store game revenue between one another.

The parallel with the current state of wealth in America[1] is interesting. I feel like there is something, sociologically, to be said there but I have no idea what it is.

Put another way: "This behavior of the top 1% capturing a huge portion of the environment to themselves is mirrored in our wealth as well... why does this pattern re-occur?"

[1] <http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html>

<comment><USER4> Maybe we should tax the top 1% of game devs to support all other game devs.

<comment><USER5> That sort of amortization is how the publishing industry for books works, IIRC; most books lose money, but the few successful ones make up for it.

<comment><USER6> An even better example would be game publishers.

(But as others have noted, it applies to many industries. Venture capitalists who invest in startups is another example.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm actually surprised that this isn't even more pronounced.

Zero marginal production cost, while the long tail is very long. If I'm buying 10 apps, I'm just gonna buy the best 10 and ignore the rest.

</comment><comment><USER8> 20% seems way too high to me. I bet if you took a truly random sample, it would be less than 5%.

But per app or per developer statistics don't really tell you anything except that the app store is saturated with junk. It's just noise, and there is a world of mechanisms to filter it out.

The real interesting stat would be revenue per talent-hours or something, but obviously that is hard to measure objectively.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if a (rough enough) algorithm might be to filter all apps in the app store and only analyze apps that have more than 1k downloads then see what the profit split looks like so you (hopefully) filter out brand new apps that you don't care about, or junk apps that have been buried algorithmically by Apple already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The more interesting question here isn't "what % take in the most money" but what kind of money can you expect to see? As in, if you write an iphone/ipad app, what are the maximum returns you could see? It'd also be interesting to find out how much money has angry birds, or fruit ninja made off just the app store?(not counting merch sales) Additionally, how does it break down? (in app purchase/initial purchase, ad revenue, etc)

Overall reports are interesting, but not that useful, since there is a ton of crap that no one in their right mind would buy...and if you're doing it as a business you wouldn't produce a product that low quality (we hope)

</comment><comment><USER10> How does this differ from other software markets?

<comment><USER11> My guess is not much. Everyone will want to spend his money on best of the list, specially when all those are same priced. Thus the top 5% will garner all revenue while the rest will starve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not surprising. The 80-20 (or 90-10) rule (top 10 to 20% of paying customers account for 80 to 90% of your revenues) applies to all sorts of businesses.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is job hunting / available? - <AUTHOR>

To complement the Ask HN: Who is Hiring post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542892) please paste the role you're seeking, brief skills / experience, factors important to you, your availability to start and any visa requirements. <comment><USER2> There is a almost simultaneous thread: Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2014) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542898) (85 points, by whoishiring, 1 day ago, 107 comments)</comment>


Imaging through Fog - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2018/depth-sensing-imaging-system-can-peer-through-fog-0321 <comment><USER2> Not clear to me if conventional cameras can make use of this. Or special hardware is needed.</comment>


What is a natively compiled non-GC lang. for Android? - <AUTHOR> I've been searching for a language to implement a game I had in mind. The problem with java on android: When GC runs, I get a weird world-stopping delay. The game requires continuous interaction with the touch screen, so users could be dismayed by these random stutters that happen every 20-30s. (I've checked with a memory profiler, I don't have any object allocations within tight loops, so I blame java for that randomness.)
The problem with C++: I love it. Especially after what they did with C++11. And with C++14 we even have polymorphic lambdas. Coding in C++ can be elegant provided that I've coded enough abstractions over the data structures and algorithms I need. That's why I won't touch C++. This project will never finish.
The problem with Free Pascal: Having worked with Delphi some of my professional life, I gave free pascal+LazSDL2 a go. Turns out it works great on android. (no world stopping delays). But it isn't the most elegant language. I know, because I'm a ruby person.
Go, Crystal, Nim, I fear their garbage collection schemes will end up doing the same thing as android's Java implementation.
I'm just one person, don't have the time to evaluate the whole world. Does HN have a suggestion? <comment><USER2> Have you considered doing manual memory management in GC language?

Create your own memory pool and use your own new() and free() functions just like with C/C++. When you free() memory it goes back to the object pool and is recycled.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't considered creating my own thread safe custom memory management routines. I would probably get lost in the details instead of making a game.</comment></comment>


Zuckerberg and Sandberg can't be trusted to handle data leak fallout - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/22/cramer-facebooks-zuckerberg-sandberg-cant-watch-over-data-leak.html <comment><USER2> Can we stop calling this a data leak? This was business as usual. What Cambridge Analytica did is SOP for almost every organization that's large enough to do their own ad targeting. I know personally of several information brokers that are actively buying and selling these kind of data sets on exponentially larger scales, not to mention hundreds of middlemen in the advertising industry that each have their own databases. I'd be willing to bet at least half the users of HN work at companies with splunk databases that could be used to infer a lot of the same data CA used. I made a Facebook app in college that was used by under a thousand people and I remember being able to scrape email addresses from friends of friends. Am I crazy or does everyone just have their heads in the sand?

Framing this as a "Facebook data leak" makes it seem like the problem was people we don't like got a hold of our precious data, not that our entire industry is funded by the mass harvesting and reselling of personal information.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I thought about this, but not calling it a data leak normalizes the activity. ~200k people installed an app that gave up ~50 million users' data. Those users may have consented to handing over their data in the ToS they agreed to, but it still feels icky. I'm perfectly fine calling it a data leak if it means more press coverage about bad data practices at modern Internet companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not picking sides here in the FB debate, but how can you trust anything that Jim Cramer says? The guy failed spectacularly during the financial crisis. He flips a coin, chooses a view, and goes with it...

<comment><USER5> Even a broken clock is right twice a day. And I would even go much further by saying that not one Facebook employee should be trusted to handle the fallout.

<comment><USER6> Well, given that trust is relative, this scandal seems to involve a whole lot of people implicitly saying you should trust them more than Facebook.

And that's the thing. I don't trust Facebook but I would trust less any plan to externally regulate Facebook.

The government already _forces_ Facebook and Google to divulge information to them. No one should trust any public Internet forum with their personal information but there's a lot of "impersonal information" that's still safe to share. The best way to deal the recent revelations is to stop giving up any information online, not to Facebook or to anyone. Posting text to Facebook or whoever is secondary. (browse and post anonymously but keep a "vanilla" social media profile for border and other other fun).

This all comes down to Facebook selling a kind of "privacy" that's been inherently rendered meaningless by the Internet age - privacy where "people know" get your data but somehow this information won't leak beyond this porous group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why serious breaches of trust such as this don't immediately receive outside, completely foreign, third party (all of it!) investigation is beyond me. None of this should be news - it should be implied. For the same reasons PDs shouldn't "investigate" their own abuses.

</comment><comment><USER8> So, is it the consensus of HN that this incident is more or less important than Equifax incident, and why?

<comment><USER9> Much less, for sure.

1\. Equifax had a security breach. Facebook just had an instance of a 3rd party misusing data they were known to provide to external developers. Aka, Equifax lost data that should never left their servers, vs Facebook found out some data, amongst the ton that leaves their servers on a usual basis, was misused. Don't get me wrong, that's bad, but not "we got hacked and lost a ton of info that should very much be ket secret" bad.

2\. Facebook involved 50 million users. Equifax involved 143 million [1].

3\. Equifax leaked credit card numbers for 209k people, and dispute documents with personal identifying information of 182k people [1]. It's unclear exactly what info about users was harvested from facebook, but there's no API access to credit card numbers for example.

4\. Repercussions; CA claims huge influence elections because that's what they sell, of course they'll market it like that. There's some debate about their effectiveness [2], and it's worth adding they're not the only or the first ones doing it (Obama used micro-targeting with Facebook data too). The way CA got their data is just more sketchy, and of course, involvement with Bannon makes it all the worse.

One can't pinpoint what exactly happened with the Equifax data, but it's clear it could be sold and used for identity theft and other fraud, since it includes SSNs, addresses, and in some cases credit card and license numbers [3].

It's bad that Facebook wasn't quicker to address the issue, inform users or take actions to find other leaky 3rd party apps, but Equifax was IMO definitely much much worse.

[1]: [https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/what-consumers- need-...](https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/what-consumers-need-to-know- about-the-equifax-data-breach/)

[2]: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17138854/cambridge- analyt...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17138854/cambridge-analytica- facebook-data-trump-campaign-psychographic-microtargeting)

[3]: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/winniesun/2017/10/02/what- you-s...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/winniesun/2017/10/02/what-you-should- do-now-after-the-equifax-security-leak/#1f3ea0c12123)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Says the guy who told people the economy was great just before the biggest crash in history. I don't listen to this guy and never trade on his advice.

<comment><USER11> 'Experts' are right until they are wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please mark this as having auto-play video - I just disrupted a quiet room at work and I never watch the videos anyway.

<comment><USER13> In my humble opinion, this should be the task of the browser, not the task of every site that links somewhere.

Moreover, I always mute the speakers of my computer, for exactly that reason. When I do want sound, I usually connect my headset or an external speaker. The computer's speakers remain muted. In the rare cases where I do want to use the computer's speakers, I unmute them, and mute them when I'm finished. This is so seldom that it's not a big deal.

Back to browsers, I wonder why those implemented auto-play for videos in the first place. More specifically: I wonder why they auto-play audio, as I don't see that issue with animated GIFs. Moving ads are annoying, but not remotely as bad as an unexpected sound.

The upcoming Firefox versions are very promising in that regard:

"Block video auto-play: Firefox will provide users with a way to block video auto-play that doesn't break websites." [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap)

"Implement new autoplay policy" [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1382574](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1382574)

<comment> FLUX-YOU chrome://flags also has an autoplay setting that requires user interaction before playing media

<comment><USER14> I was reading about this recently here: [https://www.chromium.org/audio- video/autoplay](https://www.chromium.org/audio-video/autoplay)

Even the strongest setting "Document user activation is required" isn't good enough. It means one click in the page will cause the video to start playing, which is annoying and highly game-able. I don't want a click somewhere on the page to cause a video elsewhere on the page to start playing. Every content site is going to do something to require you to click, like not showing the whole article and having "Click to expand".

I've been using AutoplayStopper and it works wonderfully: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoplaystopper/ej...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoplaystopper/ejddcgojdblidajhngkogefpkknnebdh?hl=en)

Once you start using it it's shocking how many (attempted) autoplay videos there are that you never noticed.

<comment><USER13> It is really a pity that there are so many browser extensions who get this right, but the browsers themselves don't.

That's why it is so refreshing to see at least one of them (Firefox) actually trying to get it right.

The technical term for a browser is "User Agent". That naming may be historic and old-fashioned, but it was named that way for a reason. It's time to restore the original meaning, to make the browser an agent who actually acts on behalf of and in the interests of the user, not the website creator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Cramer previously said it may be time for the social network to hire an 'internal special prosecutor' to get to the bottom of its data scandal."

I think it may be time to hire a new CEO.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hope this is the start of the end of all facebook legacy. We deserve on 20XX more than a full laggy PHP system as social network.

<comment><USER17> The language they code in is PHP, but it is rebuilt as highly optimized C. Not justifying this, just adding for clarification.

<comment><USER9> Technically it's not PHP either, but Hack, which is like PHP with types. Nitpick; it's not PHP like TypeScript is not Javascript, but kinda is.</comment></comment></comment>


Summary of the Panel Discussion at DeepLearning Workshop ICML 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/deepernn/home/blog/briefsummaryofthepaneldiscussionatdlworkshopicml2015 <comment><USER2> > To my surprise, according to Hassabis, Google DeepMind (DeepMind from here > on) and FAIR have agreed to share research software framework based on > Torch.

Would this be among them or publicly in github?</comment>


Ask HN: What are Best Practices for Freelance Contracts? - <AUTHOR>

I do some freelance work on the side and recently a client asked me to provide a contract that covered deliverables, length of service, e.t.c. I want to make sure I don't over commit and support his website for 10 years, but I am not sure what is reasonable. Most of my clients are not technically savy, and the sites I am building are not high traffic so I am just curious what is fair. Are there resources for figuring this out? Or standards you use?<p>Thanks HN! <comment><USER2> It depends on how you bill your clients - is it generally per project or hourly? If it's per project, I would include limited bugfixing for 1-2 months. Beyond that, the client either needs to pay you hourly for work, or you can offer a maintenance contract at a lower rate. You should also make sure you have a very detailed scope, and that every list item can be confidently checked off before you deliver it. On the same note, you also need to be strict about deadlines and payment terms, and make sure the client is getting billed for any requirements not explicitly scoped out in the initial quote.

With freelancing, the most important thing is to make sure your projects stay on schedule, and that you get paid. Being too forgiving will just end up biting you in the ass later on.</comment>


Ask HN: Where/How can I learn more about general webapp maintenance? - <AUTHOR> Particularly things like fault tolerance, speed, unit testing, code abstraction, etc.
I've been hacking away/making webapps for a while and although they're functional they aren't optimized for heavy use. Now that I'm working on a startup/production application, I've realized that general maintainance is a skill-set I really haven't perfected. Any good sources for these - especially related to Ruby/Rails? I'm working through code-complete/pragmatic programmer for general good code practice, but would love some other books/blogposts/anything on the matter.
Thanks so much! <comment><USER2>
      1. Database, database, database
      2. Database
      3. It's probably your database unless you're doing something CPU or disk intensive, for example resizing and prettifying pictures, rendering a 3d image, etc. Realize that these days looping a few thousand times is trivial.
      4. It's your database

Starting with _fault tolerance, speed, unit testing, code abstraction, etc._ is starting at the wrong point. 90% of performance problems are at the database level.

What's most likely wrong with performance in a webapp:

      1. No/bad indexes/missing foreign keys on your db
      2. Stupid joins
      3. You're doing stupidly complicated things in an ORM
      4. You're doing complicated things in the DB instead of loading a large chunk into memory and doing calculations or aggregations in code. Simple DB queries are a lot faster than you think they are. Complicated ones are a lot longer than you think they'll be. There are weird gotchas in DBs like using a function in a where or select clause will cause a massive performance hit.
      5. You're not caching into memory or something like memcached things that changes infrequently but are queried regularly. Memcached is actually overkill most of the time. Actually think about how much memory storing X would take compared to how much memory your machine has. Be surprised at how insignificant it is these days.
      6. 1-5 are especially true if you're using Mysql - It's great and all, but all the other big DBs piss all over it for out of the box performance. You have to give it some love. I expect some dissent here. They're wrong. MS SQL is a shit ton better at handling a poorly designed db/db queries out of the box than mysql. I can't stress this enough.

tl;dr Start looking at your database performance before anything else.

<comment><USER3> Have to agree here. It is much easier to screw up a database schema than application code.

I am talking in terms of performance here. Also, I always feel that if you understand the schema (whether relational or not) of an application you understand the domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems like the common point in each of these comments. Optimizing my ActiveRecord queries will be my first todo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not an expert, but this is what I've cobbled together as a fellow Ruby/Rails startup person.

 _Fault_ _Tolerance_ : Just use Heroku. We've seen maybe an hour of downtime in a few months?

 _Speed_ (and fault tolerance): Cache everything you can, assets on S3/CF.

 _Testing_ : Rails Test Prescriptions by Noel Rappin [<http://pragprog.com/book/nrtest/rails-test-prescriptions>]. Then you can choose what you like, but I like Test::Unit, Mocha, FactoryGirl.

 _Code_ _Abstraction_ : Rails is already pretty sensibly organized, and if MVC + tests + static assets is not a good fit for your webapp, you really should not be using it in the first place. One minor point: Noel and others will tell you to use skinny controllers.

Curious what other people consider best practice for Ruby/Rails startups.

<comment><USER5> "Cache everything you can"

This is terrible advice. Telling developers to cache everything is like walking into a rehab clinic with Lindsay Lohan's purse.

Cache what you can measure as having a performance problem, which can't be optimized in another way. It should always be used as a last resort.

<comment><USER4> Sure, of course, premature optimization is the root of all evil and all that. I presume you're reacting to a bad experience in the past you had with some young developer not understanding database indexes or memoizing everything unnecessarily or something. I certainly don't want to create another one of those experiences!

That said, he asked about how to get web application speed. One major answer (as discussed elsewhere in this thread) tends to be "add a cache somewhere." Of course, you have to architect things right so the cache works (possibly with a layer of indirection like app servers, or figuring out where a cache would be helpful, etc.) and the code that the cache is obviating needs to be slow in the first place.

That said, the general rule (add a cache for speed and scalability) has been the case from Slashdot to MovableType/Wordpress to Facebook to App Engine.

<comment><USER5> Caching is probably one of those things that if you have to be told to do it, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've heard good things about New Relic for performance testing.

MiniTest, which is built into ruby 1.9 has a full suite including performance tests. It's really cool because you can measure e.g. whether an algorithm scales linearly or not.

<comment><USER7> New Relic's RPM has became an important asset in all of my applications, plus we heavily use it for a Rails app that receives ~5 million hits per day. The best way to track performance issues, and that's in production.

Tip for OP: As you might already have been read on the internets, worry about scaling later, because there's a very high chance that your app will need special care and will differ from other people cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks for the input on scaling. Good call - will worry when it comes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A quick tip would be to run everything process intensive in the backend, don't waste frontend resources with API calls, data processing etc, got something that takes more than 200ms to run, place it in a job que and do the processing later.

Some tools for the job: <https://github.com/defunkt/resque> <https://github.com/tobi/delayed_job>

Also don't forget to cache. You shouldn't worry too much if you do these two properly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Using delayed job already for certain API calls, but will think about how to use them more.

I think I definitely have to look into cacheing.

<comment><USER7> Basically if one of your controller has more than 10 lines of processing and you don't need to present the data to the user immediately, you can put that into a job, for example when a user register, you can add the new record to the database and redirect him, but you can send the welcome email 1-2 minutes late. And for presenting data, yeah, go cache everything, also take a look inside rails partial cache features, for example in a page, even that the results are dynamically generated, you can cache things like categories for example, or the blog post, and retrieve just the comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From a performance point of view: test and measure! Find the worst bottleneck, and reduce it. Rinse and repeat.

NewRelic is a great tool to help you do this.

Common performance problems to look out for in Rails are:

* Missing database indexes

* Long running code (eg PDF generation, file uploads to a third party) that should be put in a job queue

* Innocent looking ActiveRecord calls that use N+1 queries or fetch way too much from the DB and the result set is further reduced in Ruby

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra You can read on various massively scalable webapps architecture. <http://highscalability.com/> seems to aggregate those, and you can find articles and slides published by the developers of more services if you do some googling.

The key to speed and load tolerance is massive multilevel caching; every service does caching differently but they all do.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pick up Release IT (<http://amzn.com/0978739213>) from the Pragmatic guys. While many of the examples and stories are based on Java webapps there is something in there regardless of which platform you are building atop.

Oh, and don't ever establish a blocking connection without a timeout or some other mechanism to abort it.</comment>


The Story of the GnuTLS Bug - <AUTHOR> http://blog.existentialize.com/the-story-of-the-gnutls-bug.html

<comment><USER2> Is that first snippet accurate? It makes it look as if it would never return a positive value. It returns only 0 or a negative value.

<comment><USER3> It's accurate, but the calling convention of the top-level function is such that _any_ non-zero value is accepted as boolean true (i.e. a valid CA) and only a zero return value is understood as false.

Because of this problem of returning the errno-style result code as a boolean- style result code, the cert being looked at would always verify as correct.

That's why the fix simply added another label to clear the result variable (to be logically false) before running through the cleanup code and returning the result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ugh I really don't like the brace style in that code. Seen it a few times in GNU code and it's a PITA as everyone else does it differently resulting in merge/patch issues. It's ugly too.

<comment><USER5> GNU C style is by far my least favorite style out there, but at least it's a style, and can be automatically checked.

IMHO, any style can be adjusted to once one gets over the initial aesthetic revulsion. I haven't yet found a formatting style that is truly better or worse than others, once one has learned it and its quirks.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Puts Free Portable WiFi In Forbes Magazine Print Issues - <AUTHOR> http://designtaxi.com/news/357287/Microsoft-Puts-Free-Portable-WiFi-In-Forbes-Magazine-Print-Issues/ <comment><USER2> I hate this. All the electronic waste, batteries and whatnot for a 15 day trial. I hope such a thing wouldn't be allowed in EU with the stricter waste laws

<comment><USER3> We better stop making many forms of new electronics then, to limit waste. Just imagine how many millions of USB sticks have been thrown in the trash in just the last year alone, as they become outdated by newer USB sticks that store twice as much at half the cost while wasting just as many physical resources!

Do you really need a new iPhone? No you do not. The iPhone 4 will do perfectly fine for now (according to some random bureaucrat), so the iPhone 5 should be illegal to sell until further notice.

<comment><USER4> This is a device that's designed to work for fifteen days and then instantly become garbage despite being perfectly functional.

Do you really have trouble understanding that part?

I'm a proponent of the idea that companies that sell you products should have to take them back at the end of their useful life. That is, Apple would take back your unwanted phone and be responsible for recycling or disposing of it, it would no longer be your problem. This would encourage companies to engineer products with longer useful lifespans, or to facilitate refurbishing instead of destruction.

<comment><USER5> _This would encourage companies to engineer products with longer useful lifespans, or to facilitate refurbishing instead of destruction._

Or just bake the cost of disposal into the sales price of the item.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We all knew that as the cost and size of hardware decreases, in the future we would have computing and connectivity everywhere. What I never expected is that computing and connectivity would come hand-in-hand with _advertising everywhere_.

Today it's a magazine ad with 15 days of sponsored WiFi. At the rate we're going, it's only a matter of time before we have Free Happy Meals with hallucinatory ad-sponsored connectivity delivered over the network straight to the visual cortex.

\--

Edit: corrected "15 minutes" to "15 days," which is what I actually meant to type. Thanks JimmaDaRustla!

<comment><USER7> Have you seen the Happy Meal toys & some of the boxes lately? With all of the various movie tie-ins and whatnot, it's only a matter of time before Happy Meals are completely subsidized by the toys included.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure they already are. They've been tied in that way for years and years.

<comment><USER9> When my kids were younger, it became a Disney tie-in vehicle. My all time favorite was one happy-meal toy line with each Disney character from an animated movie standing on a rollable (wheeled) video-cassette case for the movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A few months ago there was a full Android phone in a magazine:

[http://www.geek.com/mobile/fully-functional-android-phone- em...](http://www.geek.com/mobile/fully-functional-android-phone-embedded-in- entertainment-weekly-1520099/)

</comment><comment><USER11> If you wanted to run a MITM attack against executives with high-value accounts, this would be a heck of a way to do it.

<comment><USER12> How would that work? Anything of value would be encrypted and out of your purview.

<comment><USER13> sslstrip attacks could be made to work, all sorts of things are possible if you own the network. If you have your target picked out, and know the stack he's using and what his home network policies are, you can flash an official looking help page with instructions for disabling specific security features "If you're having problems with your connection."

<comment><USER12> Well sure, but that's a lot different than just controlling the network (which someone else is always doing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is just a copy of the lame "cellphone in a magazine" stunt that happened not too long ago. Read the article closely and you'll notice that it says _"a number"_ of magazines have this, not all of them. The number is not disclosed, but I'm betting it's very small. This says nothing about cheap ubiquitous hardware, the future of magazine publishing, etc. It's just an expensive publicity stunt.

<comment><USER15> I have a print subscription (needed to use up expiring airline miles), and my copy does not contain the hotspot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't wait till the day that a magazine comes with a free portable 3D printer to print and redistribute copies of the magazine. That'd be a nice publicity stunt for the printer maker.

Edit: seriously though, I'd hate to be the unsuspecting subscriber who tries to bring his Forbes issue onto an airplane

Edit: if I were Microsoft and I wanted the most bang for the publicity buck, I'd sell these issues exclusively at airport newsstands

<comment><USER17> wouldn't a 2d printer be more appropriate for redistribution of a magazine?

<comment><USER18> obviously you'd use the 3D printer to print the 2D printer that prints the magazine

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a glut of these devices on the market right now, someone must have accidentally added a zero to the order (there was a similar rationale for the Android phones included in EW a while back). Amazon used to have the Overdrive Pro for $100-250, and it was new a couple years ago.

Recently[1], there have been promotions for 500MB/mo free data, if you buy the hotspot for $50. One catch is they tack on $1/mo if you don't use it at all. Apparently the hardware is horrible, with crazy overheating problems; best usage practice is just to remove the battery and run from USB. You can get them attached to all sorts of carriers, but this one is Sprint; I figured it was worth a try.

[1] <http://www.freedompop.com> \-- beware affiliate links

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the heads up on freedompop's $.99/mo 'Active Status fee'

<https://www.freedompop.com/service_plan_terms.htm>

      > If you choose the free Broadband Service and use less than 5mb in any
      > given month, we'll charge you a $.99 Active Status fee to keep your
      > account active.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> We got an email from our security manager late last week: the current issue of Forbes is not allowed in any secure facilities!

</comment><comment><USER22> They seem to have neglected to mention how many copies got this treatment. That would be interesting to know.

Next month: A free car with your print magazine*

*selected subscribers only

<comment><USER23> As a Forbes subscriber, my issue did not come with free Wifi. Needless to say, I'm bummed.

<comment><USER24> More bummed than getting Forbes magazine in the mail every month? Wow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is perhaps one of the most awesome publicity stunts I've ever seen. I wonder if this type of tactic is going to catch on. Can you imagine if each copy of Wired shipped with 30 days of free wi-fi? Their subscriber count would shoot through the roof!

<comment><USER26> entertainment weekly shipped an issue with a full phone inside, a trend i've been hoping for since the first time a blinking LED was included in a cover as a promo.

<http://mashable.com/2012/10/02/ew-has-smartphone-inside/>

<comment><USER27> Sounds like a terrible waste of our finite resources, actually.

<comment><USER28> I agree, but at least they made that issue slightly useful by including a phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Doesn't the magazine make a pretty poor enclosure for the electronics inside? I feel like people generally consider magazines to be disposable and mistreat them but it doesn't seem like a good idea to do that to what looks like a Li- poly battery.

</comment><comment><USER30> Very clever, but I hope there is a way to make use of the electronics after the time when Microsoft wants to pay for the data have passed. Our ecosystem cannot sustain this short product life-cycles.

<comment><USER31> I imagine that one would merely need to purchase a T-Mobile "Data Pass" to maintain the WiFi connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This begs for a teardown for possible reuse after the 15-day trial.

</comment><comment> mark-r Is this the modern day equivalent of the AOL floppy?

</comment><comment><USER31> I take issue with the definition of "15 days free internet." I happen to own one of T-Mobile's "4G" mobile hotspots, and I pay $50 for a whopping 5 GB of data. The "Data Pass" I purchase from Team Mo' Bull is good for 2 months... As if anyone on today's internet could make 5 GB of data last 60 days!??? If I'm not careful I can go through 5 GB data in 72 hours. Thus, if a consumer with one of these magazine WiFi hotpots were to use, say 20 GB data in 15 days, will overage charges apply?

</comment><comment><USER33> I wish I had a copy, I feel like the parts could be used for some fun hacking projects.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think a better marketing gimmick would be to distribute these things to villages in impoverished nations and then to show the villagers logging into office 360. "If rice farmer mi ling from this is rural chinese village can use 360 out of the office, so can you!".

It would be great for the recipients as well, especially if lasted longer than 15 days.

<comment><USER35> Correct me if I'm wrong, but the current Microsoft stunt is using a T-Mobile portable WiFi connection, so is only possible in the US. For any other countries, unless they'd tied up with a local provider, this wouldn't really be possible.

<comment><USER36> T Mobile operates in the UK. They have a number of mobile devices, including 4G mobile wifi hotspots.

(<http://mobile-broadband.t-mobile.com/mobile-hotspot>)

<comment><USER37> I have T-Mobile in the US, but in practice I get a different T-Mobile prepaid GSM SIM when I visit the UK.

I haven't actually looked at what the international costs are, just heard enough horror stories that I take the US SIM completely out of my phone before takeoff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> can we get a number of these airdropped into North Korea?

<comment><USER39> T-Mobile's coverage there isn't very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I could see these going into a vending machine.

</comment><comment><USER41> Print is saved!</comment>


How to Write your own Minesweeper AI - <AUTHOR> http://luckytoilet.wordpress.com/2012/12/23/2125/

<comment><USER2> Nicely done!

Side note: for those of you inclined to try this, or make use of Java's Robot class in any way, a word of warning: Robot takes over your mouse and/or keyboard entirely, so if things go wrong (e.g. an infinite loop) you'll have to restart your computer. It can do far worse if you're not careful, too, so feel free to read up on the mistakes of others before running in guns blazing.

[http://alvinalexander.com/java/java-robot-class-example- mous...](http://alvinalexander.com/java/java-robot-class-example-mouse- keystroke)

<comment><USER3> It's probably safer to keep it in a VM until you have a finished product.

<comment><USER4> This kind of product often runs in a VM anyway

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I made a similar minesweeper solver that employs many of the same techniques. It really is an interesting algorithm to play with and involves some deep delving into combinatorics and probability. Glad to see someone else had the same thought process (or obsession)!

You can play with an HTML5 demo here: <http://mrgris.com/projects/minesweepr/demo/player/>

One fun side-effect is that once you have the core algorithm, you realize there's no reason minesweeper must be constrained to a grid. It works just as well on hexagonal tiles or on the surface of a cube.

<comment><USER6> It's interesting how the grid+1 is really hard to safely get going, but once underway it progresses quickly and it's clear where the mines are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice algorithm. That's pretty close to optimal. There is one improvement you missed, though it's not obvious how to implement it and I'm not sure how helpful it would be. When you aren't sure what to do, you assign probabilities in order to guess which square to click, but you could also estimate how useful each square would be.

There might be one square that's unlikely to contain a mine, but also unlikely to help much in solving the rest of the board. You might even be able to infer exactly what it will be before you click on it. Then, if there is another square that's a bit more likely to have a mine but also more likely to help, you can click on that one instead.

<comment><USER8> You _could_ just simulate a run of your algorithm against all the possible configurations left. Even with the segmenting trick from the article, this will sometimes be far too slow; but e.g. trying it for 10 seconds before terminating the computation may help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Minesweeper has been shown to be NP-complete [1]. So if there's a way to avoid "brute force" and _guarantee_ a polynomial-time solution to an arbitrary board, that would be a proof of P=NP and win you a million dollars, worldwide fame (at least among theoretical computer scientists), and a citation of that work in theory of computation textbooks for a long time to come.

[1] <http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/R.W.Kaye/minesw/ordmsw.htm>

</comment><comment><USER10> Has anyone done an analysis that computes probabilities without brute force enumeration? Probabilistic decisions in Minesweeper are interesting, but this algorithm left me kind of disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Tangentially related - there was a conspiracy theory making rounds in early 90s that not only Windows Minesweeper was allocating mines as you played, it also rigged the game in its favor. That is, if you were opening a tile that may or may not have a mine, it'd be more likely to see a mine there than not see it. Allegedly, this was backed by a statistics research that some people did. I've never seen that research, but the game _did_ feel unfair when it came to random poking around the mine field.

<comment><USER12> I remember seeing that debunked, but cannot find that now.

What I can find is <http://www.minesweeper.info/wiki/Main_Page>. Those guys aren't aware of this, and claim to see games repeated (<http://www.minesweeper.info/wiki/Dreamboard>). That debunks the theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting project.

In the past I've had a side project involving automating casino games for fun. I followed this tutorial for automating simple web games with Python:

[http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/workflow/how-to- build-a...](http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/workflow/how-to-build-a- python-bot-that-can-play-web-games/)

This tutorial uses Python Image Library (PIL) for 'reading' the UI and PyWin to manipulate the mouse in order to play the game. I would suggest using AutoPy instead of PyWin to give platform-agnostic GUI manipulation:

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

Cool project overall though, nice AI example.

As an aside, I find the whole area of bots automating repetitive human tasks fascinating, here's an excellent book about this topic (did you know a guy wrote a Lisp program that can compose orchestras in the style of Bach and fool human critics?):

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1591844924>

</comment><comment><USER14> Very nice article, luckytoilet!

I recently published my own minesweeper AI, and it does only a subset of what your program does. The explanations in your article would be applicable to my work too.

My program plays the pre-Vista/7 version of Windows Minesweeper, so the graphics detection is much simpler. I only implemented a strategy that considers a single cell and its neighbors, a strategy that considers pairs of cells and their neighbors, and random guessing.

[http://nayuki.eigenstate.org/page/automatic-minesweeper- solv...](http://nayuki.eigenstate.org/page/automatic-minesweeper-solver)

</comment><comment><USER15> It'd be fun to adapt this for Windows 8's new "adventure mode" minesweeper. There are some significant challenges though; for one, all the numbers are the same color! The nice thing is that you could avoid guessing in many situations by simply using a pickaxe/dynamite/map powerup.</comment>


One Way to Fight the California Drought: Study Trees [video] - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-way-to-fight-the-california-drought-study-trees/

<comment><AUTHOR> Dan Griffin, the scientist whose back of head is featured in this video, is the author of the study from this HN thread a while back: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8708161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8708161)</comment>


Since Twitter Won't Sell, Who Should Facebook Buy? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/11/24/twitter-facebook-deal/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps a niave question, but why should facebook buy anyone? Why shouldn't they just focus on their own revenue stream?

</comment><comment><USER3> any company that's actually generating revenue. until facebook itself has a method of making money, spending FUNDING to acquire more uncommercial services under its belt is wildly irresponsible.

sure it might turn out to be a good idea, but it could more easily turn out to be a bad, horribly bad idea.</comment>


Ask HN: What browsers do you support? - <AUTHOR>

What browsers do you support? How do you use to test against the browsers you support? <comment><USER2> IE6+, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera.

Suggestion to avoid falling into the trap of wasting a huge swath of time on fixing stuff for IE: test often. Really often. Test your approach as soon as you can, so that if you find that your approach isn't working, you'll catch it early and can avoid using the same approach in the future and have to fix it everywhere once noticed.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use Flex. So, browser compatibility/testing is not an issue for us.</comment>


Ask HN: Translating copy targeted to software developers to other languages - <AUTHOR>

We have hundreds of pages with marketing and technical copy that are targeted to software developers.
We are looking to translate these pages to various languages (starting with Japanese, Russian and other languages).
Would you have any recommendation for sites who allow to hire translators with expertise such as copy geared toward the software development industry? We are NOT looking for a platform that break down the text into smaller string and send them to different translators, we've tried this in the past and the translations were horrible. We're looking to find an individual or 2 who will be able to work on this as an ongoing project.
I know of One Hour Translation, Proz.com but would love to hear if anyone on Hacker News had any experience with these sites or have recommendations to other I have omitted.
Additionally if anyone here is a professional translator and is fluent in English and one of these languages [Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish, Arabic) - feel free to reach out to me (my email is in my profile).
Thanks Adam <comment><USER2> When translating text into Spanish (as it might happen in other languages) is very important the localisation of the text. It is not the same translating into "Latino" Spanish (the one used in America) than translating into "Castellano" Spanish (the one used in Spain).

It is easy to identify if you check the prices, normally Latino is cheaper than Castellano. Also, if you doubt, Castellano sounds fine for Latinos but Latino doesn't usually sound as fine for "Castellano" speakers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have used proz.com and was able to find a good translator. I would classify my experience as good. My biggest issue was not having something like what Canonical's Launchpad provides for managing the strings and their translations. Instead we emailed Word docs back and forth.</comment>


(Legal) Espionage: 20 Creative Ways to Research your Industry Competitors - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidecrm.com/archive2/2007/04/legal_espionage.html <comment><USER2> Depending on the industry many companies can give a lot of info away if you just call them and discuss private labeling or buying technology from them.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great way to get info but that is also where you start walking the line of legality.</comment></comment>


David Blaine Ascension - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=QwzvNAAqH3g <comment><AUTHOR> David Blaine redefines magic once again for an unprecedented live event at a time when the world could use a positive distraction. Bringing wonder, hope and untethered possibility, David tackles his most ambitious and revolutionary feat yet.</comment>


Ask HN: How does your company do L&D (Learning and Development) - <AUTHOR> Any horror or fairy tale setups/stories? <comment><USER2> We use Plural Sight and CBT Nuggets, well the IT people do, not sure of others. At various times people have had to stay at home, kid issues, wife having baby etc. During which time people can work from home for up to a week a year, learning online.

Company rules are each person is supposed to make a list of what they want to learn (develop) in the year, but it is rarely followed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have a budget of some sort that your company provides? Or is it just on an ad hoc basis

<comment><USER2> We have the pluralsight / cbtnuggets licenses about 1 per 3 people and rotate around as desired.

As for company wide, its a matter of justifying the need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We have a free udemy account but we are too busy to use it. Workload takes an extra couple of hours per day and usually some im weekends too.</comment>


Ask HN: How scalable is Microsoft SharePoint as a Web application framework? - <AUTHOR>

Also, what would be the pros and cons of building and launching a minimum viable product on SharePoint? Specifically, would a skilled hacker likely see any speedup in going from concept to launch over, say, Ruby on Rails?
Has anyone ever used SharePoint Online as a production PaaS solution? (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/sharepoint-online.aspx)
Please don't hurt me. I swear I'm just curious... <comment><USER2> I was a SharePoint consultant/developer for quite some time and still do occasional projects.

The current version of SharePoint (2010) is a strong product if you stay with out-of-the-box features. It has all the major features you find in the collaboration-saas-app de jour just geared towards big business and therefore less "sexy". The core is still built around document management (versioning, corporate meta data/tagging and workflows being the major features) and integrates well into a Microsoft infrastructure environment. There are different levels of search, but if used correctly it can become the corporate search center and index pretty much anything you throw at it (Microsfot bought an external SharePoint search product a couple of years ago).

I agree with struppi the wiki (both the old and new versions) don't get close to functionality & usability of modern wikis. But I disagree on page and site creation. The default templates cover most use cases. The page editing functionality is browser-based WYSIWYG that any Office user can figure out without involving the IT department (the big selling point). Sure you're not going to win design awards doing that, but you get the job done.

A lot of Microsoft Access functionality is replicated via lists, linked lists and views but without the concurrency nightmare.

Customizing the SharePoint design always fails from my point of view (apart from basic colors and a logo change). There are great examples but they require a lot of investment and who needs it for intranet sites. SharePoint _can_ be licensed for Internet use, but I have yet to meet someone who has done that - it's really an intranet product.

Development on SharePoint is a PITA. Workflow development is usually the starting point and has improved over the years but getting to version 1 is an uphill battle. Sadly it doesn't end there, the real problem is updating to the next version. Without going too deep into SharePoint terminology let's just say there is not "ALTER TABLE" you can run on SharePoint lists which makes changing data schemas difficult.

Regarding search: it does work out-of-the-box (even in the free foundation version) with one exception. To be able to search PDFs additional steps are required which is indeed a PITA to setup everytime. I'm assuming this has patent reasons. Search in SharePoint was one of my favorite features if you use it to the fullest extent.

Having said all that (and mostly because SharePoint always seems to be the big mystery product) I am NOT building my MVPs on SharePoint. I have built a couple of products on it but due to aforementioned update difficulties on the one hand and fairly easy integration of vanilla ASP.NET web applications into SharePoint environments I mostly choose that route for my products.

To sum up: SharePoint has improved greatly since 2003 and is a good collaboration platform for big (albeit conservative) businesses but cannot be recommended as development platform (for any kind of non trivial project). Since it is based on ASP.NET using that and integrating with SharePoint data via the API libraries is my suggested way to go.

PS: I agree with eletrichead that the market for SharePoint products is large and SharePoint knowledge is a value resource at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would not do it. The last time I saw/used Sharepoint (I had a 2-day sharepoint user training ~9 months ago) I was really unimpressed.

Don't get me wrong, managing documents with Sharepoint works. Somewhat. But all the web stuff seemed really half assed to me. The Wiki doesn't work, building pages and sites is PITA and search does not work out of the box (and as far as I can remember you need an expensive add on to make it really work).

I think they also told us that developing for/with sharepoint can be quite tricky and upgrades to newer sharepoint versions can cause problems - But I am not sure If I remeber that correctly.

Even if everything above worked find, I don't think it is a good idea to create a MVP with a tool like Sharepoint, which has it's own (quite inflexible) way of doing things and forces you into certain processes. You should really be able to iterate fast and create exactly what you want, and not be constrained by the structure, process and templates of a (huge, hairy) tool when building a MVP.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sharepoint has its uses. I think that unless you're committed to deploying on SP, you are probably better off not using it for a prototype. It takes a lot of configuration just to start out on it, as by default it is hard wired to look like SP. Swapping out the master page to a more useful one and creating a new style sheet with resets takes a lot of work. If you can find someone that has already done it then it might be viable, but IMO unless you are specifically targeting current users of SP (a surprisingly large number of Fortune 500), it is not worth it. The flip side to this is that there are very few products for SP and you would have a large base for each product unit sold. I am a SP developer, so I can help out if you need it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Unless you need to leverage SharePoint functionality then I would suggest anything else would be faster and less painful.

In the .Net environment an MVC3 application is the closest you will get to RoR, and if you are looking for a lot of pre-built functionality the Orchard Project will give you a good foundation.

www.orchardproject.net

</comment><comment><USER6> All Sharepoint Online users have to be authenticated, and using one logon for more than one user isn't allowed. You might have more luck with the free Sharepoint Foundation server.

</comment><comment><USER7> Run away, fast.</comment>


A BuzzFeed investigation: 14 deaths on UK soil linked to the Russian government - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil <comment><USER2> I can almost guarantee the government hasn't 'ignored' these cases as suggested here.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for great startups in need of design work  - <AUTHOR>

Hey all,<p>I'm looking to see if any interesting startups out there are looking for a design refresh. I've got some time freed up to take on some more projects. I'll blog about the redesign as well (per your permission), so email me if you're interested. My email is in my profile. <comment><USER2> Are you a UX/UI? If so, let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am, yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Email sent!</comment>


One of the earliest victims of internet bullying - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/alex-lunney-prodigy-boy-scout-lawsuit-section-230.html <comment><USER2> I witnessed "cyber bullying" on BBS forums already in the mid-to-late 1980s. It's both understandable and curious that very few contemporary journalists have any idea at all about that pre-Internet multiverse.

<comment><USER3> Not too surprising given the demographics of BBS users of the era. Wonder how it would compare to the amount of bullying those same users dished out and received in physical space during the same period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me or does this not seems like a bullying case but an identity theft one?

<comment><USER5> Maybe it's one of the early cases of online based harassment, but the target isnt even the subject of the article.

Lunney(the real one), was target of identity theft, but not victim of the harassment directly (besides being accused it was him)

The author of the article seems just made a clickbait title with the recent bullying in the news.

Article has nothing to do with bullying

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why didn't they just file a Doe lawsuit against the person who actually wrote the emails and get a court order taking everything down? That would likely have worked instead of the approach they did take. I haven't read the case so there might be more details I'm missing.</comment>