Gruber on the Macbook Pro Keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/04/25/johnston-mbp-keyboard <comment><USER2> I'm struggling a bit on what my next laptop will be. Apple owner since I don't know when, currently on a late 2013 MBP. It's still going but I suspect it doesn't have a vast amount of life left. Every few months I lose another pixel.

I certainly wouldn't upgrade to the current range so they're going to have to do something special in the next 12-18 months or I'll be taking an Ubuntu desktop crash course and getting a Lenovo or similar.

<comment><USER3> I'm in the same boat and use the same MBP.

The MBP is by default already booting into Debian and its so much better than macOS. Every time I go back, it's a nightmare.

My best bet (after looking around a lot) is the newest Lenovo x1 Carbon.

<comment><USER4> Do you miss the macOS shortcuts? I'm in the same boat as you (early 2013) and starting to looking more and more to X1 Carbon. The emacs-like system wide shortcuts is what I'm afraid of missing mostly.

<comment><USER3> _hihi_ , funny that you would mention that you're afraid of the emacs-like shortcuts, because I gave this week a talk called "Play Emacs like an instrument"[1].

Honestly, under Linux, I'm using i3wm[2] as a Window Manager and Emacs (with evil-mode) for mostly everything else. Everything is accessible with shortcuts. I don't miss macOS for those and not for a whole lot of other things. The only thing I haven't found a better (that's subjective, of course) alternative, yet, is HDR photography editing.

1\. [http://200ok.ch/posts/2018-04-27_Play_Emacs_like_an_Instrume...](http://200ok.ch/posts/2018-04-27_Play_Emacs_like_an_Instrument.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm wondering if anyone else here thinks that the time is ripe for a competitor to Mac OS X given Apple's missteps regarding the Mac as of late? I'm in the market for a new laptop to replace my dead 2013 MacBook Air, and I'm not pleased with any of Apple's laptop offerings at this time. I've been thinking about buying a ThinkPad 480 or HP EliteBook 830 G5, but this will mean transitioning to Windows 10 or Linux, which are still a step or two down from Mac OS X for me.

I wish there were an workstation-focused operating system out there that had the polish of Mac OS X but can run on a wide range of PCs. Since the demise of BeOS there hasn't been any new commercial operating systems for personal computers; it's just Windows, Mac OS X, or commercial Linux distributions. Personally it should be inspired by some of the best ideas of computing, ideas that were ahead of their time back when they first appeared but may be successful today if reimplemented and reintroduced the right way. I'm talking about some of the ideas of Smalltalk that didn't make its way into contemporary GUIs. I'm talking about Lisp machines such as the ones Symbolics made that ran the Genera environment. Take the ideas of such systems, then add something like Apple's OpenDoc to encourage the construction of small, composable GUI tools that developers could write, and then use tried-and-true UI guidelines like those from the Mac OS 8 era, and we would have an operating system that is extensible, has a consistent user interface conforming to tried-and-true guidelines, and supports programmable GUI workflows while also supporting the command line via some sort of REPL.

<comment><USER6> I feel you man.

There is a guy working on his own "open source" laptop, and his eventual goal is to have it run lisp all the way down:

[http://mntmn.com/reform/](http://mntmn.com/reform/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate to be that guy, but in my opinion, Apple has completely changed direction from the business of building general computers, to the business of building mobile devices. Also, it's a shame that they are sacrificing usability and durability to build the thinnest and lightest eye candy for coffeeshop crowd.

<comment><USER8> Apple pivoted their business to a business of luxury devices. Great tools isn't a target anymore unfortunately for professionals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know the MacBook Pro situation is bad when even the biggest cheerleaders of all-things-Apple say it's bad.

The now three year old 2015 model remains the best Mac laptop available, it's an upgrade in every way; a wonderful working keyboard, a hardware escape key, hardware function keys, no annoying Touch Bar, ports, MagSafe, no dongles needed, did I mention ports?

I genuinely hope Apple scraps the current models entirely and starts anew with the MacBook Pro, with the professional user actually in mind. They already have two consumer focused laptops, why did they screw up the pro?

<comment><USER10> I got a new laptop for work about 2 months ago and opted for the 2015 model MBP (mostly due to "legacy" external devices and not wanting to spend a bunch of money on dongles).

After all of these reviews coming out I'm really happy that I did.

<comment><USER11> Same here, bought a Apple refurbished 2015 15" last month - but now I have to worry about the display separation issue instead of the touchbar, keyboard and ports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had to use my old 2012 MBP the other day after using the 2016 MBP since it was released, and the 2012 keyboard was a stunning improvement over the 2016.

Which is strange because I never thought the 2012 keyboard was exceptional.

Do any of you prefer the new keyboard?

<comment><USER13> I like the new keyboard, they keys feel more stable and I can generally type faster due to less travel.

However, the problems are real. My 't' key gets stuck regularly. Some other keys have had problems as well. And I rarely use the keyboard (at work I connect a Microsoft Natural Keyboard). I have also heard that colleagues have stuck keys.

I think it is absolutely inexcusable for a laptop that was 1699 Euro new. I have been a Mac user for 10 years. But Apple's inability and unwillingness to address the problem leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I am now also unlikely to recommend MacBooks until they fix this issue.

<comment><USER14> I do like the new keyboard too, but I think older was waaay more accurate.

Mine got replaced after one year use (and I got AppleCare immediately after that). Unfortunately after less than a month keys started to get stuck again and I do keep quite good hygiene around my computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Folks may make fun of me, but I'm still pleased as can be with my 2016 MacBook Air. Maxed out on CPU, memory, and disk, it's plenty powerful for front-end development, and since I'm almost always connected to an external monitor, the lack of a Retina display is of little consequence.

<comment><USER16> You could've also chosen a non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro 2016/2017: Same weight as the MacBook Air, but smaller size, a Retina display, faster CPU, twice the amount of RAM possible and the option for a larger SSD. Downside is of course that it's more expensive than a MacBook Air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The same stuff happened to me. I had stupidity to try to clean it myself and all this resulted in pricey repair and having to cope with a temporary laptop for a week.

My next laptop probably will be Dell.

P.S. For now, I use MacBook Pro 2015 but it getting more and more out of date. Especially after release of hex-core processors.

<comment><USER17> I thought I was going crazy, or maybe I was just messy or something. I've got a 2017 (maybe 6 months old), and I've lost 'u', 'c', and a couple other keys - they only work if I press down hard. I usually dock it, but it's super frustrating to use it _like a laptop_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's miserable, the new keyboard. 30+ years of having the escape key in the upper left hand corner for me, and for them to switch it over to an _offset_ touch escape key has driven me a little insane.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have both a MBP and a Macbook, and the Macbook (2016) is even worse. Keys get stuck all the time, I get them lose using compressed air. Apple even has a page on it: [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT205662](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205662)

PS: I like the feeling of the MBP keyboard.

<comment><USER20> > Apple even has a page on it: [https://support.apple.com/en- > us/HT205662](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205662)

If you have to hold your 15" computer like a restaurant menu with one hand and a compressed air tank in the other - it is a very bad design.

Jobs would not tolerate this.

<comment><USER21> > Jobs would not tolerate this.

He's the guy who blamed a customer for holding the iPhone wrong instead of admitting the antenna design was poor, I could definitely see Jobs not accepting that people live with dust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Keys stopping to work is one thing, but for me the Touch Bar and the screwed arrow keys are similarly disappointing. Apple should've seen this coming. What were they thinking?

<comment><USER22> I never understood the hate for the touchbar. I found no decrease in productivity after remapping Escape to Caps Lock, and both the special options for applications and the more granular volume and brightness controls make it more enjoyable than having F-keys.

<comment><USER23> I find that having to look down at it to hit any of the "buttons" accurately is a huge decrease in productivity. I loved having play/pause right where it goes. Now I have to look at it, hit a button to go to a second level menu, then hit the button. AND it costs more money. That's not good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) and the 'E' key has stopped functioning altogether.

I've been quoted between 15-250 to replace the keyboard. I haven't been able to leave the notebook at a shop yet but my workaround is to use it stationed connected to a Bluetooth keyboard.

I wonder if this issue is common with my model as well (not the butterfly mechanics i beleive)

<comment><USER25> I have the same MBP and the keyboard is still working great despite my taking exceptionally poor care of it (multiple drink spills). I've not heard any buzz about HW failure rates with that model so I think you might just be unlucky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I still keep holding out for the MBP that probably won't appear (with lots of ports and a magsafe charging connection, and while I've never tried the newest keyboard, I love my current one). My current MBP is a mid-2010 (2009? maybe? can't remember), and it still runs great, especially after replacing the HDD with an SSD several years ago.

However, El Capitan is the last OSX that will install on it, and this year even the Turbotax software gave me a warning that their software for next year will not run on my system and I'll have to either get a newer one or use their web product.

</comment><comment><USER27> I got a new, maxed MBP about 4 months ago. I hate the keyboard, and typically hook it up to my DAS Keyboard 4 Professional at work, but when I work from elsewhere I am constantly resting my fingertips on escape and "hey Siri" touch bar buttons, or the point that I've developed muscle memory to close Siri whenever I open it by mistake. Worst keyboard layout I've ever experienced. Not to mention there's hardly any feedback in the switches (especially compared to my cherry Browns).

</comment><comment><USER28> It happened to me. They had to replace the whole top case under warranty because a crumb got into the keyboard. And since I got it back I have been pretty careful but still it seems like one of the keys is starting to go. Thank goodness for AppleCare. Hope Apple fixes this in the next release.

<comment><USER29> As long as it's covered, I'd hope everyone is bringing them in for servicing and repair as often as necessary, since that seems like the only way they'll take any action, if it costs them enough in support and refurb costs.

Public outcry is nice, but unless it's actually stopping people buying them, I'm not sure it helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I absolutely loved my 2011 Air which always was a great combination for me with a linux server for all the heavy lifting.

This week I will somewhat begrudgingly swap out the Air for a 2015 15 inch MBP, hoping it will last me long.

</comment><comment><USER31> One of my shift keys doesn't work reliably. I'm just waiting for the day when the other key and the caps lock also go dark and I won't be able to log in to my computer.

</comment><comment><USER32> Curious to hear from anyone who has used these directly, not clamshelled for several months or more and have been keyboard issue free.

<comment><USER33> Daily use since July 2017 without issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> My keys were getting stuck, but spraying a can of compressed air underneath the keys opened them up again

<comment><USER35> So in addition to a pack of dongles for basic connections, do you carry a can of compressed air in your pack as well?

Give me a break, Apple

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wow it must be bad.

</comment><comment><USER37> Please link to the original article. [https://theoutline.com/post/4277/dont- buy-the-new-macbook-pr...](https://theoutline.com/post/4277/dont-buy-the-new- macbook-pros-even-on-sale-in-my-opinion) Linking to Gruber instead caused a bunch of confusion last time. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15499536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15499536)

<comment><USER38> I think it's nortable and worth linking to the Gruber article, because he's usually a reliable apologist for any Apple screwups. When even he's saying it's bad, it's real fuckin' bad.</comment></comment>


Show HN: At a glance summary of upcoming weather - <AUTHOR> https://temperature.report/ <comment><AUTHOR> About a year ago WeatherSpark got rid of their very useful dashboard - <USER2> particularly liked being able to see a combination of temperature and rain per hour for the next week.

There didn't seem to be an alternative (and there was a Reddit discussion full of people with the same problem) so I started making one.

It took me a year, but it's finally up and has its own domain and everything.

It uses the weather report API from Dark Sky, Google's chart API, free icons from Freepik and the free tier of Google App Engine. About the only thing I'm paying for is the domain name.

Because I'm using the Google chart API I'm limited in how much I can customize how it looks, but it's not too different from what I wanted.

If it sucks please let me know why :)</comment>


What's your favorite math proof? - <AUTHOR> We have a lot of people here with a more-than-passing knowledge of math and who understand that math is about structure and form.  For others it's just about arithmetic, formulas, calculations and equations.  So I ask those with more math - what's your favorite math proof?  How can you show someone that math is about elegant arguments?
Here are a few:
The infinitude of the primes.
If you take a single closed curve that is allowed to cross itself, it can always be colored checker-board style.
For a map, vertices+regions=2+borders (but not on a Moebius strip or donut)
Less accessible, but a real favorite of mine:

  1+sqrt(2) = 2 + 1/(2 + 1/(2 + 1/(2 + 1/(2 + ...))))
 From that we can deduce that sqrt(2) is irrational.
Six people at a party - you can find three who have all shaken hands, or three who have not.
Cut a Moebius strip in half lengthwise and it remains in one piece.
I have some others, but I'd like to hear yours.  Alternatively, ask more. <comment><AUTHOR> I'm about to go off-line, but I'd like to run an experiment.

This submission could easily sink without a trace simply because not enough people see it. I'd like it to get voted up, but I don't care about the karma. So I've put in another few replies. If you want, up vote the submission, but balance my karma by downvoting one of the scapegoats.

Just an idea ...

<comment><USER2> One upvote for using the word scapegoat correctly, six downvotes for cluttering the thread.

Also, if you're going to ask a chatty question, it's distasteful to say "I'll go first", especially when you are doing so in the body of the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, at least downvoting the scapegoats put them at the bottom so they don't reall clutter the thread. Now that down-votes are capped at -4 I didn't know how many would be needed to make sure people had something appropriate to down-vote should they choose to play.

It appears no one did. I'm disappointed that the idea didn't work. I didn't really expect it to, but it's a shame when low expectations are lived down to.

With regards the "I'll go first," the idea was to try to set the tone by giving a few examples, and possibly inspire people who read it to go "ooh, that reminds me ..."

In short, I don't think it is distasteful, but I'll take your comment as a data point for the future. Thanks for taking the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another favorite: in any group of 6 or more people, there exist either three mutual acquaintances or three mutual strangers.

Proof: Assume to the contrary that there's some group of six people not satisfying the theorem. Let the six people be named $p_1$ through $p_6$. Since acquaintance and non-acquaintance are symmetric relations, we can model this by drawing between each pair of acquaintances and edge of a certain color (say red) and between each pair of strangers an edge of a different color (say blue). The result is then equivalent to saying there is no way to color the edges of the complete graph $K_6$ with two colors that doesn't produce a monochromatic triangle.

Consider the six edges incident with $p_1$. Since there are five of them, we know at least three will have the same color. WLOG, assume the three edges of the same color are red, and, further WLOG assume the other ends of these edges are $p_2, p_3,$ and $p_4$.

Now, if we want to avoid monochromatic triangles, we have to color the edges $p_2 p_3$ and $p_3 p_4$ blue. But, to avoid the $p_2 p_2 p_4$ triangle being mono-blue, this then forces the edge $p_2 p_4$ to be red to avoid forming the blue triangle $p_2 p_3 p_4$. This then yields the monochromatic triangle $p_1 p_2 p_4$.

Since all of the edge colorings after the initial three coming from $p_1$ were forced, this implies no $2$-coloring of the edges of $K_6$ exists without a monochromatic triangle.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, which is why I put it in the original submission. Nice that you included the proof - thanks.

I also like the infinite version: In every infinite graph there is either an infinite induced complete subgraph, or an infinite induced empty subgraph.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951250>

<comment><USER3> Hah, I didn't notice you put it in the submission, or I probably wouldn't have written out the proof. :P I like to show this to low-level math classes (I'm a grad student, so I end up teaching freshmen a lot) with two different colors of chalk on the board. Inevitably, at least one person thinks it's pretty cool, which makes it worth it.

BTW, the infinite Ramsey theorem and the finite Ramsey theorem are equivalent. Obviously, the infinite version implies the finite version. To show the finite version implies the infinite version, you can use the countable version of Zorn's lemma (which you prove from the countable theorem of choice -- note it's a theorem, not an axiom).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yay! I really love Euclid proof of The infinitude of primes. It is so short, simple & elegant that any starting learner could understand it easily.

<http://primes.utm.edu/notes/proofs/infinite/euclids.html>

I put it here: Call the primes in our finite list p1, p2, ..., pr. Let P be any common multiple of these primes plus one (for example, P = p1p2...pr+1). Now P is either prime or it is not. If it is prime, then P is a prime that was not in our list. If P is not prime, then it is divisible by some prime, call it p. Notice p can not be any of p1, p2, ..., pr, otherwise p would divide 1, which is impossible. So this prime p is some prime that was not in our original list. Either way, the original list was incomplete.

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite proof is Fuerstenberg's proof of the infinitude of primes, seen here: <http://primes.utm.edu/notes/proofs/infinite/topproof.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's brilliant! I up-voted you - no idea why it didn't stick.

<comment><USER3> The real reason it works is actually deep magic. Dirichlet's theorem states: given any two positive coprime integers $a$ and $d$, there are infinitely many primes of the form $a + nd$ where $n$ is a positive integer.

This result is one of the deeper facts of analytic number theory. I have no clue in hell how to prove it other than "look it up in Hardy and Littlewood."

<comment><USER5> Haha. Actually, Hardy and Littlewood in 'An Introduction...' don't prove this result, stating that it is too difficult!

They do prove some subcases, though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always loved the proof of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, which ties together differential geometry and topology, and basically states that however you distort a compact, boundaryless two-dimensional Riemannian manifold, its total curvature remains the same. The proof (well, the proof I learned -- there are several) was long with many steps, each of which was simple and intuitive. It comes together in a sort of crescendo. Here: <http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~leibon/gbt/sld001.htm>

</comment><comment><USER7> I am amused by the proof that all natural numbers are interesting. Sort the numbers into two lists, one of interesting numbers and the other of uninteresting numbers. If there is a smallest uninteresting number, that number would be interesting and it would not be on the list. Therefore the list of unintersting numbers is empty.

<comment><USER3> It's similar to the proof that all horses are the same color.

Suppose we have $n$ horses. It suffices to show they are all the same color. We do so by induction on $n$.

If $n=0$ or $n=1$, then, certainly all $n$ horses are the same color, so the base case holds.

For the inductive hypothesis, assume we've shown that all the horses in any group of $n-1$ or fewer horses are the same color, and suppose we are faced with a group of $n$ horses. Choose some horse arbitrarily and remove it, leaving a group of $n-1$ horses for our consideration. By the induction hypothesis, these horses are all the same color. Replace the horse we removed and then remove a different horse from the group. Likewise, these horses are all the same color. This then implies that all $n$ horses are the same color. Since $n$ is arbitrary, this shows that all horses are the same color.

<comment><USER8> Cute.

I know it's a joke, but the inductive step fails for n = 2. Each of the two groups of 1 horses being the same colour does not imply that all the horses are the same colour.

:)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but it's still hella fun to throw at a class of undergrads on a Friday afternoon. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another one I forgot is the proof that the topology of lines through a point is the same as the topology of a moebius strip glued to a disk, which is a projective plane. That's the same as identifying antipodal points on a sphere.

That's a talk I give to 14 year-olds who seem to love it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thales's proof that any angle inscribed in a semicircle is a right angle.

[http://www.cut-the- knot.org/pythagoras/Munching/inscribed.sh...](http://www.cut-the- knot.org/pythagoras/Munching/inscribed.shtml)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, cool, I forgot that one. Thanks! Especially nice is the symmetry argument instead of the tedious angle-chasing, although the angle-chasing technique generalises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another favorite is Steinitz's theorem: the graphs of the $3$-dimensional convex polyhedra are precisely the $3$-connected planar graphs.

The proof isn't hard, but a bit too long for this space. :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Those aren't proofs, those are statements (which happen to be true).

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a big fan of e^ix = cos x + i sin x

Cook's theorem is pretty sweet too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yah, I like both of them a lot, but I find them hard to explain to those who aren't already in some sense "into math." I was going to include Euler's equation, but left it out for that reason. I do sometimes explain 3-coloring of graphs, and can sometimes get to NP-Completeness, although it's a bit of an effort.

However, I don't want to preclude stuff that maybe can be explained, even if at first glance it doesn't seem so.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scapegoat 6

No idea how many of these might be needed, so I'll stop there. Interesting to see if this idea works. If you do, thanks for playing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scapegoat 5

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scapegoat 4

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scapegoat 3

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scapegoat 2

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scapegoat 1</comment>


Ask HN: how to get a tan as a developer? - <AUTHOR>

The question is pretty straightforward: I'm pretty much out of the sun all day long. Is there any way to work outside with a computer? Maybe a nice setup? <comment><USER2> This is a solved problem.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> What about the weekends? It only take an hour to two to get some darker skin. It's not rocket science.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.notebookcheck.net/](http://www.notebookcheck.net/) usually covers outdoor use in their laptop reviews.

I have a 4-year-old macbook pro with a matte display that I occasionally sit with on my back portch. It works well enough in shade but not in direct sunlight.

My main source of sunlight, though, is it taking a 30 to 40 minute break to take a walk once or twice a week.

<comment><USER5> I also have a 4-year-old MBP with a matte display (I'm so glad that back then, I decided to pay extra for that! Matte displays aren't even an option anymore for new MacBooks, are they?) and I find I can also work sitting in the sun. It really depends on the time of day/angle the light is hitting from/intensity of the sunlight. Wearing a cap with a peak/a visor/similar (it's all about shading the eyes) & turning the brightness of the screen up also helps.

To the OP: if you want to combine work and being outside and have everything that's necessary - basically a laptop which won't immediately overheat and whose battery is still doing alright (+ a WIFI stick if you need internet[1]) - go for it! If you don't have a matte display, look into privacy filters/screens (the one I have is shiny on one side and matte on the other), though those obviously work best on screens with a good backlight, even more so in sunglight.

If you do end up working outside, don't forget to use sunscreen and to stay hydrated!

[1]Alternatively, search for cafés with free WIFI that have outdoor seating or turn your phone into a WIFI hotspot (beware of mobile data costs though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are many places in this world that have both high speed internet and sunshine (and beaches and tall drinks with umbrellas.). Many of these places are in different time zones from the rest of your team, leaving one able to sit on said beach (or bob around a short way out from it on a surfboard) for a few hours each day while your co-workers are either asleep or home for the night.

It's a solved problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> Stop working for an hour and go for a walk.

Repeat 2-3 times a week and you'll get some color + light exercise.

<comment><USER8> Alternatively take a 5-10 minute break every hour and step into the sun. Your body will feel better, and your mind will consider new perspectives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I work outside fairly often - but that's mainly because I hate being in an office. You need a shady spot so your laptop doesnt glare - and even a portable wifi to work at the park.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tools down and eat lunch outside in the sunshine.</comment>


Watermarks: Diving into the fathoms to find life's fluency - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/water/watermarks <comment><USER2> Water - its importance.

This writing reminded me of Robert Sheckley's "Prospector's Special", a short sci-fi story [1]

[1] [https://freeclassicshortstories.blogspot.com/2016/04/prospec...](https://freeclassicshortstories.blogspot.com/2016/04/prospectors- special-by-robert-sheckley.html)</comment>


Flipping abundance and scarity - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/flipping-abundance-and-scarity.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Frank Wilson (of A VC / Union Square Ventures) adds more: [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/09/seth-on-freemium- abundance-a...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/09/seth-on-freemium-abundance- and-scarcity.html)</comment>


Launching a crowdsourcing startup - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm planning to launch my crowd sourcing startup in a few weeks. I hope you guys will review it when I do, on HN :)
This will be a place for job seekers to find work by showcasing the skills they possess. (more concern on personal branding :)
So I'm planning to do this launch in two stages--i.e first get job seekers registered and when the no. of users hits a particular milestone then let people post jobs, since I don't want job posters to lose their expectations.
What do you guys think about my approach?
Thanks in advance!
Cheers! <comment><USER2> We thought of doing something like this for college students with crowdmarkup.com a while ago - didn't follow through after the first lean startup machine - best of luck.

My Suggestion - Build a 1 sided tool to get jobseeker contact info - solve 1 side of the chicken/egg problem first. Maybe some type of resume critique application - checks for spelling errors, makes some simple suggestions like using action words and using more qualitative numbers. Maybe matches keywords in a job description to the resume and gives a match score.

Also, make sure you know the # of job seekers you want in advance so you know the milestone you're looking for and it's not an arbitrary number.

Finally, make sure when users submit their resumes for the critique, they consent that it might also go into the next version of the application.

</comment><comment><USER3> chicken and egg problem: why would job-seekers join if there are no jobs?

<comment><AUTHOR> hehe ya. I have to start from somewhere, so decided to have job seeker profiles first :)

<comment><USER4> I really suspect that's not going to work. You need to find some means to populate the site with something of value to someone to start attracting one side or the other. I don't know what that would be. I've done a bit of reading up on this topic in recent weeks/months. I gathered a few links here at one time: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126209>

Here is a link to another discussion about the topic that has links to other good discussions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239281>

<comment><AUTHOR> wow. didn't know others are also having this problem :) thanks for the reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gread ides.It likes the ODesk. Do you have enough resources, I want to join your team, Can I ?

<comment><AUTHOR> will let you know if i want in the future. but now im expecting your views...</comment></comment>


Sony Now Says Waterproof Xperia Smartphones Should Not Be Used Underwater: Why? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techtimes.com/articles/84146/20150912/sony-says-waterproof-xperia-smartphones-should-not-be-used-underwater.htm <comment><USER2> Because underwater there is also pressure, I'd say. But they should make this very clear. It would probably be better not to call it waterproof in this case.</comment>


A Glimpse at the Internet Ecosystem Through the Lens of the Netflix CDN - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.05519v1 <comment><AUTHOR> Also covered by IEEE Spectrum [1]

[1] "Researchers Map Locations of 4,669 Servers in Netflix's Content Delivery Network" [ [http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/telecom/internet/research...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/telecom/internet/researchers-map-locations-of-4669-servers-in-netflixs- content-delivery-network) ]</comment>


Redis - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/redis/ <comment><USER3> There is also memcachedb. (<http://memcachedb.org/>) Same interface as memcache, with replication features and persistent storage.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've knocked up a quick prototype ruby client library for redis. So far it supports GET, SET, EXISTS, DELETE and KEYS. Should be able to have a fully compliant library in a few days.

<http://github.com/ezmobius/redis-rb/tree/master>

<comment><USER4> Umm redis is _really_ cool. Nice job on this antirez. I've just finished implementing the entire spec here:

[http://github.com/ezmobius/redis- rb/blob/0951204e6a84ca335ac...](http://github.com/ezmobius/redis- rb/blob/0951204e6a84ca335ac154f0449eeba149a81086/lib/redis.rb)

And I am really enjoying being able to store lists as values and pushing/popping/indexing. Looking forward to where you are going with this.

Although the current release doesn't seem to support all the documented features yet. incrby and decrby don't work yet.

Can you get in touch? I'd love to pick your brain a little about redis.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! your implementation is cool and if you agree will just be the Ruby implementation distributed with Redis. INCRBY/DECRBY are still missing but in a week I plan to have this, all the Set operations inside and release another beta. Then will be the time of replication and compression. And finally I plan to write a fail-over daemon that will handle masters and slaves, check who is running and who appears to be down and act accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just tried to wikify the documentation a bit:

<http://code.google.com/p/redis/wiki/README>

Not very well formatted but if you want to know a bit more about Redis without to uncompress the tar.gz it should help.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tokyo Cabinet: [http://www.igvita.com/2009/02/13/tokyo-cabinet-beyond-key- va...](http://www.igvita.com/2009/02/13/tokyo-cabinet-beyond-key-value-store/) <http://sourceforge.net/projects/tokyocabinet/>

<comment><USER5> Nice project, I already read about it. Still note that one of the major points of Redis is to support more complex types as values. Tokyo Cabinet is basically an on-disk hash table library, with an optional networking server using this lib to export the functionality.

For example if you want to use Redis in order to store logs from a lot of different computers, and you want to only take the last 1000 entries for every computer, all you need to do is for every computer something like this:

        RPUSH computer_5 "... your log line ..."
        LTRIM computer_5 0 999

Redis offers atomic LPOP/RPOP too, this makes pretty easy to create queues where different computers can pop/push values with the guarantee the operation is atomic.

Another trivial example: think about implementing something like YC with a key-value DB. Support for lists and sets will make your life much easier :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you like this, check out Datastore (<http://github.com/ociule/gae- datastore/tree/master>). It will allow you to put up a simple hash-value database on AppEngine.

Live demo at <http://gae-datastore.appspot.com/>

Have not got around to doing performance tests, but based on general AppEngine performance, I guess it will not come close to a dedicated Memcache machine. Should be good for everything else.

<comment><USER5> Just to give you some rough range, Redis is in the range of 10k query/second on an entry level laptop. As you can guess the main bottleneck is the networking I/O with things like Memcached or Redis.

About the speed of dumping the DB. 1 million keys DB with 16 bytes string inside every key takes something like 1 second to be saved on the same HW. For the next release I hope to have replication and LZO compression of (compressible) big values working.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since it's in C, it probably has an edge, but as I've mentioned to antirez a couple of times, I'd love to see someone take a crack at this in Erlang - <USER2> is exactly the kind of thing it was built for.

<comment><USER5> There are a lot of projects similar to Redis in Erlang actually: [http://www.metabrew.com/article/anti-rdbms-a-list-of- distrib...](http://www.metabrew.com/article/anti-rdbms-a-list-of-distributed- key-value-stores/)

Apart from speed what I like of C for this kind of projects is the self- contain-ness and the fact that most developers that may help in the development are probably able to read/write C but not Erlang.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AdDuplex launches the first cross promotion network for Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.adduplex.com/2012/07/adduplex-for-windows-8-is-here.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting - and nice to see such an early release.

Personally I'm just waiting for the C++/DirectX model to be supported. It makes more sense, because AdDuplex is IMHO best for indie game devs as a hardcoded fall-back position for Microsoft's own advertising platform (which can frequently fail to serve ads, for whatever reason).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's coming. We just wanted to start with technology that is closest to what we are comfortable with and then move into other areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why is this spam story even on the front page?

C'mon, HN, you can do better than this!

<comment><USER4> A large part of HN is developers trying to make money/earn reputation. An ad network for a new release of an OS is important in that regard. Not a big surprise it's popular.</comment></comment>


Avoid those pesky same-origin policy errors with Corsproxy - <AUTHOR> http://www.corsproxy.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but it is kind of opposed to the intention of CORS. This takes the decision about which pages are allowed to request a given resource away from the server writer and gives it back to everyone else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally not ideal... but if you are looking to hack together a simple client side webapp that uses api's that do not support cors or jsonp you are not left with much of a choice without having a server side solution</comment></comment>


The Octopus: Stable Genius - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/science/octopus-brain-intelligence.html <comment><USER2> For a much more in-depth article, I'd recommend Amia Srinivasan's review of two recent books about octopuses at [https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n17/amia- srinivasan/the-sucker-the...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n17/amia- srinivasan/the-sucker-the-sucker). Of course, the books that Srinivasan reviews go into far more depth than any article summarizing them could, but if you're not going to read the entire books, I think you'll still find this article very interesting.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. If you enjoyed that, you might also enjoy David Foster Wallace's famous essay _Consider the Lobster_ , which also examines the issues inherent in comprehending the inner experience of animals, and the ethics involved in our eating of them.

I can only find this genius link, unfortunately: [https://genius.com/David- foster-wallace-consider-the-lobster...](https://genius.com/David-foster- wallace-consider-the-lobster-annotated)

<comment><USER4> That was a thoughtful, interesting article. From the link: "Like most arthropods, they date from the Jurassic period, biologically so much older than mammalia that they might as well be from another planet." (then later...) "The nervous system of a lobster is very simple, and is in fact most similar to the nervous system of the grasshopper. It is decentralized with no brain. There is no cerebral cortex, which in humans is the area of the brain that gives the experience of pain."

Which makes it all the more remarkable that we share some basic elements. As Jordan Peterson recently explained in his book (12 rules) and the now-famous BBC Channel 4 interview, lobsters have been around for an exceedingly long time -- before there were trees! And we share a number of hormonal pathways with this lowly, delicious creature.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=lobster+dopamine](https://www.google.com/search?q=lobster+dopamine)

The same hormonal triggers that lead an Alpha-lobster to walk with pride and swagger and respect among his carapace-suited peers are involved in our own human sense of accomplishment leading to machismo. How incredible that durable, robust mechanisms replicate in nature and result in enormously complex systems (such as social networks),built on this foundation!

<comment><USER5> Your selective quotation misses the main point of Wallace's piece. He is wrestling with the ethics of causing gratuitous suffering.

The 'grasshopper' quote is Wallace actually quoting the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, possibly not an unbiased source for science. Wallace goes on to say:

 _Though it sounds more sophisticated, a lot of the neurology in this latter claim_ [grasshopper quotation] _is still either false or fuzzy. The human cerebral cortex is the brain-part that deals with higher faculties like reason, metaphysical self-awareness, language, etc. Pain reception is known to be part of a much older and more primitive system of nociceptors and prostaglandins that are managed by the brain stem and thalamus._

Wallace goes on to write:

 _The basic scenario is that we come in from the store and make our little preparations like getting the kettle filled and boiling, and then we lift the lobsters out of the bag or whatever retail container they came home in …whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen. However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you're tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container's sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle's rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster's fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature's claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming). A blunter way to say this is that the lobster acts as if it's in terrible pain, causing some cooks to leave the kitchen altogether and to take one of those little lightweight plastic oven timers with them into another room and wait until the whole process is over._

<comment><USER6> This expanded quote got me to go look up videos of live lobsters being boiled. None of them showed the lobster reacting to being immersed in the water the way Wallace describes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm](http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm)

This is an interesting essay on the minds of our ocean-dwelling aliens.

</comment><comment><USER8> My daughter and I have been learning about octopui and squids and I never cease to be amazed by these creatures so far removed from us on the evolutionary tree. Recently I learned how scientists studied the squids giant axons to understand our own brains.

<comment><USER9> I believe you mean octopodes my good sir. [https://youtu.be/wFyY2mK8pxk](https://youtu.be/wFyY2mK8pxk)

Pip pip, cup of tea, cheerio.

<comment><USER10> i thought the same immediately: octopus is a screwy latiny-misspelled greeky word, with octopodes the plural. happy to see another knew that.

<comment> Digit-Al This view is "contentious" :-)

[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/270/what-is- the-...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/270/what-is-the-correct- plural-of-octopus/271)

<comment><USER11> That it might be but it's pretty clear the Latin associated plural is misapplied.

So English has octopuses.

Greek has octopodes.

Some English speakers prefer to use the Greek word rather then the loan derived plural which uses English construction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was trying to explain how CitusDB works the other day to another developer and tried using an octopus as an analogy. Turns out I needed an analogy to explain my analogy.

</comment><comment><USER13> They must have been thinking about Trump's comment when they made the headline, right?</comment>


Thoughts on Ecommerce: The Status Quo - <AUTHOR> https://julian.digital/2020/05/17/thoughts-on-ecommerce-the-status-quo-shopify-shop-amazon/ <comment><USER2> Now the Facebook of e-commerce is Facebook.

[https://about.fb.com/news/2020/05/introducing-facebook- shops...](https://about.fb.com/news/2020/05/introducing-facebook-shops/)

<comment><USER3> How poignant!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Owning your own unique niche is the only way nowadays

<comment><USER5> The ads I can see on Instagram are always following the same pattern : find 1-10 interesting products on AliExpress that are visually appealing. Multiply the price by a factor of two to three. Make a website dedicated to this product only, constantly pretending there's a big exceptional sale right now. They only do droppshipping so the margins are huge. They provide almost no value. And they win the ads auctions. Customers usually get disappointed by the quality as they just bought a cheap Chinese item at a price that makes you think it's high quality.</comment></comment>


What a lack of net neutrality looks like – in Mexico, today - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/yYobj7x <comment><AUTHOR> Discussion on reddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6x6izw/guys_m%C...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6x6izw/guys_m%C3%A9xico_has_no_net_neutrality_laws_this_is)</comment>


Studying failure: What I learned from a Kickstarter project that failed… badly - <AUTHOR> http://kickstarterguide.com/2012/08/16/studying-failure-what-i-learned-from-a-kickstarter-project-that-failed-badly/

<comment><USER2> A common theme on HN is that ideas don't matter and execution is everything, but I think the author is mistaken in this case and the problem with this project was not his video or his methods of sharing, but that his idea just wasn't something anyone was interested in.

Does anyone reading this blog post think "whoa, that really is a great idea I would have backed if only I had heard about it!"?

<comment><USER3> > ideas don't matter

Not quite. The point is that there are a lot of potentially good ideas, not that all ideas are good, and that execution makes the difference between success and failure.

IMO, this does sound like a potentially interesting project, though the writing is pretty bad. Would I personally fund it? No. But check out the photography projects that are successful. Kickstarter's a big place with a lot of different people.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/photography/s...](http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/photography/successful?ref=more#p1)</comment></comment>


System python is not signed on OS X 10.11 El Capitan - <AUTHOR> http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/103692/why-does-the-tool-codesign-in-os-x-10-11-el-capitan-report-every-python-proc <comment><AUTHOR> I'm getting the same behaviour when I use python that is bundled with OS X! Very frustrating...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, as I thought - looks like Apple didn't codesign their executable.

[http://bugs.python.org/issue23117](http://bugs.python.org/issue23117)</comment></comment>


Cancer Is More Bad Luck Than Bad Behavior, Study Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-02/cancer-largely-due-to-biological-bad-luck-rather-than-behavior.html <comment><USER2> This article misstates the finding of the research, as does much of the other coverage. A good explanation can be found here: [http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2015/jan/02...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2015/jan/02/bad- luck-bad-journalism-and-cancer-rates)

<comment><USER3> Thank you very much for that helpful link. If you submit it as a new submission to Hacker News, I'm sure I will not be alone in being glad to upvote it to main page visibility.

<comment><USER2> Thank you. Submitted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a curve that represents the rate of cancer diagnosis by age in the UK. [http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer- info/cancerstats/inci...](http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer- info/cancerstats/incidence/age/#Cancer)

If cancer were only about a mutation happening randomly, you'd expect the curve to actually slope downwards, like an exponential distribution.

But maybe cancer requires several mutations to happen in a row, which would suggest an Erlang distribution of which we only see the beginning of the hump. 20 mutations give a very good curve fit (1).

An alternative hypothesis is senescence. Maybe the mutation rate itself increases with age, or maybe the immune system isn't as able to nip cancerous growths in the bud.

This is important! Whenever the impact of a disease doesn't follow a chi squared or exponential distribution, it suggests two ways to fight the disease. Directly target the disease itself, or target the process which over time makes us more susceptible to it.

(1) warning, back of the envelope, there are plenty of other effects to account

<comment><USER5> That looks like a perfectly fine exponential distribution.

<comment><USER4> No it doesn't. The exponential distribution p.d.f. is decreasing. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_distribution#mediav...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_distribution#mediaviewer/File:Exponential_pdf.svg)

<comment><USER5> But that's not what we are interested in, no? Nobody asks "whats the probability that you'll get cancer at precisely age x", they ask "what's the probabiblity that you'll have cancer _by_ age x". I mean, we often can't even determine at what precise age the cancer developed. That's a problem for the PDF, not so much the CDF.

<comment><USER4> The graph I linked to plots the PDF. It's not exponential. It indicates something is getting worse over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I see the sole previous top-level comment here [edit: which has now been deleted] started out with a misstatement of fact. In fact, age-adjusted cancer death rates have been steadily dropping in the United States[1] and in general death rates from cancer and from other major causes of death have been decreasing throughout the developed world throughout my lifetime.[2] What that means in practical terms is that life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world, so if you have reached the age of 50, you can be ever more confident of reaching the age of 65, and if you reach the age of 65, you can be ever more confident of reaching the age of 80, and so on.

It is possible for expanded cancer screening programs to produce the illusion that rates of age-adjusted cancer diagnosis have increased because of a real increase in cases of cancer,[3] but what is really going on with increased screening is increased detection of early cases of cancerous growths that eventually die off and never cause clinical disease. The human body has some defenses against cancer, and many cancers reach a growth dead-end not long after starting. Screening programs sometimes detect harmless cancers that don't need any treatment except watchful waiting.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/31/us-cancer- casualti...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/31/us-cancer-casualties- idUSKBN0K918220141231)

[http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2014-04-17/how- americans-d...](http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2014-04-17/how-americans- die.html)

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/life_expectancy_history_public_health_and_medical_advances_that_lead_to.html)

[2] [http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...](http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box/scientificamerican0912-54_BX1.html)

[3] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/recent-developments- and-...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/recent-developments-and- recurring-dilemmas-in-cancer-screening-colon-lung-thyroid/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Different cancers are different. Skin cancer, both basal cell and melanoma, is usually caused by the sun. Other cancers have a very strong genetic correlation. This study did not consider the most common cancer in men, prostate cancer, or breast cancer. It's interesting that random cell division is such a strong factor in cancer, but it is completely incorrect to say that luck has a bigger effect than behavior for all types of cancer.

<comment><USER7> This is an excellent comment, but I want to point out that getting a cancer that has a strong genetic correlation is still "luck" rather than "behavior" from the perspective of a cancer patient.

<comment><USER8> The tricky thing with correlation is that behavior can still act as a "middle- man" for genetic correlation. For instance, a genetic susceptibility to addictive behavior could lead to higher rates of smoking, and therefore lung cancer. (While some of the more obvious factors might be corrected for, there's no way that all of them would be.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are a variety of basic errors in the interpretation of this study:

[http://ameyer.me/science/2015/01/02/vogel.html](http://ameyer.me/science/2015/01/02/vogel.html)

<comment><USER9> The tl;dr; version: this 65% number comes from a correlation coefficient on a log-log plot, which means the correlation coefficient has nothing to do with the actual fraction of cancer cases one can attribute to stem cell division numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is interesting, but dangerous. Smokers make up 90% of lung cancer deaths [1]. At some point you have to acknowledge that smoking definitely does something to influence lung cancer.

[1] [http://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/about-smoking/health- effect...](http://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/about-smoking/health- effects/smoking.html)

<comment><USER11> Also, exercise reduces colon cancer risk by 40-50% and breast cancer risk by 30-40%. Then there are other risk factors such as poor diet, insufficient vitamin D, etc. Overall it seems highly unlikely that cancer is mostly "bad luck".

[http://www.cancer.net/navigating-cancer-care/prevention- and-...](http://www.cancer.net/navigating-cancer-care/prevention-and-healthy- living/physical-activity/physical-activity-and-cancer-risk)

<comment><USER12> 50% of what though? If you have 1 in a million chance, increasing that to 1.5 in a million isn't a big change. If "bad luck" afflicted 1 in 100,000 then then bad luck would still have a much bigger effect, despite lifestyle changes clearly being significant.

(These numbers totally made up)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Bloomberg article mis-interprets the scientific article.

In effect, the scientific article shows how we could predict which tissues are most likely to become cancerous if we had no population statistics on cancer. That is, we could look at the rate of cell divisions in a tissue and say "Oh yeah, divisions occur frequently here, so there are going to be more cancers in this particular type of tissue."

The scientific article does NOT say that the cancer which has arisen in random person X is mostly due to "bad luck" in person X. If person X smokes 4 packs of cigarettes per day, the person's risk of lung cancer is certainly affected. Of course, there is still some element of luck (not every heavy smoker gets lung cancer), but you can think of it like using loaded dice at the time of each DNA replication... loaded dice don't turn up snake eyes every time, but they certainly change the odds, and if you were playing craps there is no way you would want to use loaded dice.

My reaction to the scientific article is... yawn. The result could have been predicted. Cancer is a disease of DNA replication. It makes sense that clinical problems arising from DNA replication would occur most often in places having the most DNA replication events. But it's nice to have experimental verification.

</comment><comment><USER14> We pin-pointed DNA double-strand breaks using sequencing, and found very high correlation with genes damaged by cancer. For e.g. the "ERG" gene which fuses with TMPRSS2 in prostate cancer was one of the genes in our list. [http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v10/n4/carousel/nmeth.24...](http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v10/n4/carousel/nmeth.2408-F4.jpg)

More research should reveal that it's more than just pure luck :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Immune system kills spontaneous blood cancer cells every day - [http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/272092.php](http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/272092.php)

</comment><comment><USER16> Mutations do happen during replication. But is it random? How about underlying mechanisms involving telomeres or histones? Or something else.

</comment><comment><USER17> That's just what _they_ want you to believe. They being Corporate America who profit enormously when you eat their processed foods, smoke their cigarettes, and take their drugs. Cancer is mainly caused by environmental toxins, so if you don't want to get cancer you have to detox: eat only raw paleo or vegan, cleanse with lemon juice or unsweetened tea four times a week, and for God's sakes man, DON'T BREATHE THE AIR!!!</comment>


Bitcoin fans eye potential in Greek crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/29/bitcoin-fans-eye-potential-in-greek-crisis <comment><USER2> I like Bitcoin a lot, but this is just wishful thinking. If you can't trust the _bank_ , the place that has handled your money for decades, why would you trust a magical internet currency app that you can't even easily exchange for cash?

I went to read /r/bitcoin this morning but closed the tab pretty quickly, after reading all the cultish comments. That place is too much for me sometimes. I only go there for the "X now accepts Bitcoin" news, but there hasn't been any of that in ages, and the sites that used to accept it are now even phasing it out.

<comment><USER3> I remember reading an article that pointed out that despite the large investment in Bitcoin startups and so on in 2014 that the number of non- speculation transactions stayed pretty flat. It sounds like a decent metric and I wonder if that is still the case.

<comment><USER2> That's sad, I tried to buy a plane ticket the other day and keep reminded how horrible the process is every time. I need to remember the Visa Secure thing password, and charging the CC fails three out of four times for no reason, and I have to restart the whole process again, etc.

Half of it is shitty website UI, but the other half is card-related. I wish I could just scan a QR code and pay. It's amazingly easy with Bitcoin, and integration is very easy, too, especially with Stripe, but it hasn't caught on. Too bad...

<comment><USER4> All my hotel purchases in last year have been with bitcoin via Expedia, using a credit card form (and trusting it doesnt get "mistreated") feels like something from another era to me.

<comment><USER2> Expedia is one of the few sites I know that accepts BTC, but I don't think it's very popular in Europe. I'll have to give it a go, though, thanks.

<comment><USER4> I am in Europe too, here there is not as much need for Bitcoin now that SEPA exists and not many people care for credit cards but its still has its uses.

You can use sites like [https://giftoff.com/](https://giftoff.com/) (EU) or [https://www.gyft.com/](https://www.gyft.com/) (US) to get giftcards and spend your bitcoins that way in shops such as Amazon which do not yet take Bitcoin

<comment><USER2> Huh, thanks for giftoff, I'll give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How are those inside Greece supposed to get their hands on Bitcoin in order to start this process? Seems to require that someone is willing to pay Bitcoin in exchange for olives or cheese, or tuition, or surgery, or whatever you have to offer.

</comment><comment><USER6> As an investment - brilliant. As a value store - rather too risky. It's not like they can use it like a regular currency with no infrastructure for it.

<comment><USER4> It is not an investment, it is a tool that addresses some of the problems with legacy payment systems (tho doesnt solve them all bring its own quirks) especially when it comes to borders.

as for infrastructure, it is growing, I have been using bitcoin since 2011 in that time the possibilities for using bitcoin have grown exponentially for me and my company for everything from getting paid from far east cheaply and quickly to booking hotels, to buying petrol to ordering electronics and everything amazon/overstock has to offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No offense to the bitcoin fanboys, but greeks overwhelmingly want the euro, not bitcoin.

<comment><USER4> What Greeks want is the government to not steal/hold/control their money as they are now doing, bitcoin solves that problem and doesnt require stashing money into a mattress.

This little Trezor device sitting on my desk (photo comparison versus plastic credit card shaped card) stores equivalent of dozens of thousands of euro safely and securely ;)

[http://i.imgur.com/A8iDEBm.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/A8iDEBm.jpg)

<comment><USER8> > bitcoin solves that problem and doesnt require stashing money into a > mattress

Some people feel more comfortable with their understanding of physical security than digital security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think anyone disagrees with the historical results around the Cyprus disaster.

What makes the debate interesting is Greece vs Cyprus discussions or now vs recently discussions. I'm not sure if there is much if any difference between Cyprus and Greece WRT BTC so that leaves any recent changes in the overall BTC scene, also not much. So the BTC focused greek situation should be very much like the historical cyprus event.

Very theoretical discussions about what people want or wish for are not relevant to recent/current events although they could be interesting in a very abstract, perhaps long term, sense.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bitcoin hahaha, more likely Chinese will ride on their white horses and bail out Greece by investing crapload of money.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very amusing to see Bitcoin fans trot out their usual nonsense.</comment>


Show HN: Haus – Simplified payment and splitting of home expenses - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hausiq.com/whats-with-haus/

<comment><AUTHOR> Haus is a side project that I worked on: an app that can help renters deal with the frustrations of apartment bills, service providers, roommate payments etc.

I would love if anyone signed up for the beta: [https://hausiq.com](https://hausiq.com)</comment>


Superhero Laundry Pickup Startup Experiment  - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/11/superhero-laundry-founders-launch-startup-to-prove-a-point-then-shut-it-down-once-they-succeed/

<comment><AUTHOR> Instead of shutting down these guys should contact this company...

[https://laundrylocker.com/](https://laundrylocker.com/)

and see if they can sell/partner with them.</comment>


America's Electronic Voting System Is Corrupted to the Core - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/americas-electronic-voting-system-is-corrupted-to-the-core-1f55f34f346e <comment><USER2> It's sad to see things like this. I work for an election services company, and it's interesting how different a lot of perception is from reality. Then again, we don't make eVoting machines either (mostly deal with print/scan systems).

<comment><USER3> Is this a use case for blockchain, or only in theory?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds interesting. It's too bad it's on Medium.

</comment><comment><USER5> Important story; hidden behind a paywall. Again.

<comment><USER6> I have JS disabled and I see the article just fine.

FUD? Even vanilla Chrome only shows a small nag box.

TLDR: electronic voting machines are corrupt and US democracy has been subverted multiple times.</comment></comment>


Google Chrome Tests Replacing URLs with Search Queries in Address Bar - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chrome-tests-replacing-urls-with-search-queries-in-address-bar/ <comment><USER2> Google, like all modern web companies, have a similar approach to lowering the floor when it comes to usability.

1 .Assert that a computer interface is unacceptably complicated and asking for any level of computer literacy is nerd bullshit for poindexters.

2\. Change to something superficially more approachable, but requires users learning another custom one-off interaction model.

3\. Crash the usability ceiling into the floor so none of those shifty nerds get any ideas.

4\. Hide everything else in a hamburger menu, and then use surveillance data to tell yourself that because features aren't used therefore nobody would benefit from using them.

Ever seen a highschooler use computers/phones? They're so fucking bad at it that they'll write school reports on their cellphones. Not only does it not cross their minds that touch tying on a real keyboard would be an improvement, they're resistive to the idea because they're soaking in media that guides them to the platform that makes the media the most money. FFS I saw a student unironically argue that doing CAD on a phone was better than a laptop.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is something Apple has already done for Safari on iOS (and maybe macOS, but I wouldn't know as I don't use it there).</comment>


Webcam spying goes mainstream as Miss Teen USA describes hack - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/webcam-spying-goes-mainstream-as-miss-teen-usa-describes-hack/

<comment><USER2> I've always assumed that the green light on the Apple laptops is hardwired to light up when the camera is in use.

Is it so? Can it be bypassed without opening the screen?

<comment><USER3> IIRC, that is how it is with Macs. I've no idea about other brands/hardware though.</comment></comment>


Lazy NCAA Bracket Generator - <AUTHOR> http://lazyncaa.heroku.com/

<comment><USER2> I used this to impress my friends. The ones who are into "basketsball" were dumbfounded when I presented a complete sporty flowchart like I was one of the gang.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRGDY>

</comment><comment><USER3> Just completed all my brackets in record time. Awesome!</comment>


Show HN: QuoDB – Movie quote search engine based on subtitles - <AUTHOR> http://www.quodb.com <comment><USER2> Ah, some search relevance needs to be worked on :) No movie should rank higher than the Terminators for "I'll be back":

[http://www.quodb.com/#search/i'll%20be%20back](http://www.quodb.com/#search/i'll%20be%20back)

<comment><USER3> "asta la vista baby" query does not result with Terminator at all!

<comment><USER4> For that you need auto correction; "hasta la vista baby" gives the correct result

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think lots of us have had this idea, great to see it implemented.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've often wondered how a database such as this can be used in other fields of programming like say, a text-to-speech engine[1] where using subtitles the algorithm can guess the context of the conversation to produce better results.

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2009/03/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2009/03/read_me_a_story_mr_roboto.html)

<comment><USER7> I actually worked on this exact problem as an intern job at our university. We used a _huge_ corpus of communication (for example, we had access to all the emails every sent internally at Enron).

We used this as the basis to train a speech-to-text engine by automatically correcting likely-wrong interpretations. "I go loo school" would be corrected to "I go to school", for example. It worked remarkably well.

The basis of all these subtitles can be used, but there are far bigger (and better?) collections of data to be used to train these machine learning engines.

<comment><USER8> Could you recommend any of these data collections if they are open to the public?

<comment><USER9> This is very likely the Enron corpus that was used: [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./enron/](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./enron/)

<comment><USER7> I can confirm that this is the corpus. I can also confirm that, even though the emails are all from mid-to-senior management, the writing style is very sloppy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The first thing I searched for was "you look like shit" which is a very common remark in movies and shows.

[http://www.quodb.com/#search/you%20look%20like%20shit](http://www.quodb.com/#search/you%20look%20like%20shit)

531 titles. Wow.

<comment><USER11> I'm partial to "We've got company!"

[http://www.quodb.com/#search/we've%20got%20company](http://www.quodb.com/#search/we've%20got%20company)

Incoming is the moral equivalent (and is much more popular), but is less impressive since it's only one word.

[http://www.quodb.com/#search/incoming](http://www.quodb.com/#search/incoming)!

<comment><USER12> [http://www.quodb.com/#search/is%20my%20middle%20name](http://www.quodb.com/#search/is%20my%20middle%20name)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where are the movie cover thumbnail images from? I'd like a source for an idea I have.

</comment><comment><USER14> Suddenly Fight Club is in the same league as Ugly Betty...

[http://www.quodb.com/#search/i%20want%20you%20to%20hit%20me%...](http://www.quodb.com/#search/i%20want%20you%20to%20hit%20me%20as%20hard%20as%20you%20can)

</comment><comment><USER15> Very neat. I queried for a line I remembered as "a story Englishmen tell when they're down in the mouth", and it corrected this "Englishmen tell it [etc.]", identifying the movie as Beat the Devil.

</comment><comment><USER16> I typed in "finality" as the search term. There's a scene in which this word is used where Nick Nolte gives a speech to the Hulk. It only came up with results that had "finaLLy" in the results(?)

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice design; fast and functional too. Kudos!

So while the fuzzy matching is neat, sometimes it's handy to be able to perform an exact search as well.

Typically this is done using "quotation marks" around the search term(s).

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting case: i searched "screw you" and it als turned up results like "are you screwing with me?" , "we would have been screwed..." etc

</comment><comment><USER19> Very cool!

What is it using localStorage for? Without dom.storage.enabled, it's just a blank white page with a footer.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this legal?

</comment><comment><USER21> As someone who often hunts old movies for samples of random phrases, this is just so perfect. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER22> Excellent. One useful feature would be the ability to sort search results by age, for example.

</comment><comment><USER23> congrats ! do you plan to include subtitles from another languages ?

</comment><comment><USER24> Waterboy: "this is some high quality h2o" yields nothing.

</comment><comment><USER25> Ok, really works! [http://cl.ly/image/2b1l1s321123](http://cl.ly/image/2b1l1s321123)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is halfway trough what I wanted to do. Just add the movie's clip together with the quote and, boom, gold.

<comment><USER18> One developer did something like that. She'd use subtitiles to create .gif's of movie quotes. made a utility for it! will post if i can find the link

<comment><USER27> [http://quotacle.com/](http://quotacle.com/)

Also posted to HN not too long ago</comment></comment></comment>


Mt. Gox Update – Announcement Affecting Bitcoin transfers - <AUTHOR> https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20140217-Announcement.pdf

<comment><USER2> _" With this new system in place, MtGox should be able to resume withdrawals soon. At the beginning we will do so at a moderated pace and with new daily/ monthly limits in place to prevent any problems with the new system and to take into account current market conditions._

The copywriter in me notes that this is a _curious_ way to phrase "Don't worry; we actually have your money."

</comment><comment><USER3> This is good news. I hope that everyone using Gox should now be able to withdraw and move to any of the other exchanges with more reliable track record.</comment>


United Airlines plans to resume service on more than 25 international routes - <AUTHOR> https://kokpitherald.com/united-airlines-plans-to-resume-service-on-more-than-25-international-routes-in-september/ <comment><USER2> Big problems in Ireland at the moment with American tourists. I realise it's hearsay and Reddit isn't a great source, but lots of people are complaining that they've seen Americans out and about, who when asked "aren't you quarantining?" have replied that they don't want to quarantine because it would ruin their holiday.

Here's an NYT article saying the same: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/europe/Ireland- amer...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/europe/Ireland-americans- break-quarantine.html)

<comment><USER3> I mean Europe has to decide between the tourist dollars and the virus. Americans have demonstrated themselves unfit for the challenge of dealing with this virus so anyone who really cares about keeping their country healthy will ban Americans until the US basically lets everyone catch it.

<comment><USER4> As an American who did quarantine in both Spain and the UK, I'm going to disagree with your statement.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, your fellow mask and quarantine non-compliant & self-entitled citizens, putting their own ego above the health of others, disagree with you.

In an infectious disease situation, your following the rules is meaningless when many other US citizens seem to think the rules simply don't apply to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With the US at 145 new cases of COVID19 per million¹ compared to Germany's 3 new cases per million, perhaps this is somewhat premature.

\--

¹ Source: Jonas Nart COVID19 Tableau [https://public.tableau.com/profile/jonas.nart#!/vizhome/COVI...](https://public.tableau.com/profile/jonas.nart#!/vizhome/COVID19_15844962693420/COVID19-TrendTracker)

<comment><USER7> Germany doesn't have to let US travelers in. So if Germany lets them in, that's on Germany in my opinion.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Surely _some_ of the onus would be on the people and companies ignoring all expert opinion and seeking to travel to other countries while their own struggles with containing the virus continue...

Edit: I had to look this up because it sounded strange Germany would go against the EU travel recommendations and openly allow American travellers. They do not: [https://www.auswaertiges- amt.de/en/einreiseundaufenthalt/cor...](https://www.auswaertiges- amt.de/en/einreiseundaufenthalt/coronavirus)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A pre-departure COVID test should be required for all flights. With the rate of spread in the US, the risk of having infected -and probably asymptomatic- people on board is not negligible.

Having to stay in closed quarters, breathing the same air, going to the same toilets, wearing the same mask, with a good portion or people not caring much for all the extra measures and who will probably find ways to defy the order to wear masks properly, well, that doesn't seem a particularly way to fly.

A test within 3 days before departure would at least give a chance to temporarily prevent someone from infecting others.

Some countries already require the test before entering their borders but as a airline, I would expect that to be enforced before departure, for all flights.

<comment><USER9> The next problem is the testing infrastructure. Few labs (if any) do PCR tests with results guaranteed in the next 72h in major US cities.

What if test results are late? Should you delay and take the first flight after getting the results? Now the test was taken 4 days or more before the new flight. Should You take another test?

Airlines or countries that do not want to welcome travelers without a recent, <72h PCR test should set up the necessary infrastructure in the city of the departure airport.

<comment><USER10> what you described is the problem and responsibility of the individual. i don't see why it should be at the departure airport, that is an unnecessary scaling issue for countries/airlines.

make it at the arrival airport, if the traveler doesn't have a valid recent test, he can take it again at the arrival airport + mandatory quarantine (and by that i mean in a nearby facility escorted by police). If you want to travel, it should be your responsibility to not infect everyone else...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please don't add any more flights to Australia.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hope the EU and other big destinations take action against this to prevent spreading the virus even further now that a large part of Europe is about to get hit with a second wave. The USA can hardly control the spread of the virus inside their own borders, let alone convince people to quarantine. I wouldn't feel very comfortable letting in any tourists from the USA, Brazil or any other country with bad anti-corona measures without an enforced mandatory 14-day quarantine after arrival.

</comment><comment><USER13> As much as I want my friends and family to come visit me here -- i'm very very wary of Americans being allowed to land in Asia at this time. It completely drives me crazy that Americans are so divided about masks.

(American here currently in South-East Asia since 2018). As you all know, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan and others have some of the lowest rates of Covid in the world.

No one complains about the masks. No one makes a political issue out of it. It's simple -- you can't go into the majority of stores, shopping centers, offices or buildings in any of the cities in these countries.

No Karens. No viral videos about people not wanting to wear (or wanting to wear) masks. And the resurgence of Covid-19 is enough to cause the governments to be super-cautious again.

People wear them. Cute kids wear them. Old and young people. And we are safe. Very few if any infections or deaths over the last 3 months.

Because of the control of the spread, people are more relaxed outdoors and mask use outdoors is around 65% at this point just from looking around.

No Covid-19. Enough. About. The. Masks. Already. Wear one. Protect your fellow humans.

<comment><USER14> As a counterexample: New Zealand, minimal infections and deaths, and minimal mask wearing. [https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and- conditions/...](https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and- conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-health-advice-general- public/covid-19-use-face-masks-community)

"Healthy people in the community are not currently required to wear a face mask for protection from COVID-19 in New Zealand. In our current environment, the potential benefits of requiring masks to be worn by all healthy people in the community are not felt to outweigh the potential risks."

<comment><USER15> Yes, because New Zealand has such a low transmission rate they can carefully track and isolate new cases. Because there's such a low rate, they don't need masks.

When it's everywhere, like in the US, we don't have that option. Masks are one of few mitigations available to us.</comment></comment></comment>


Private Rocket Successfully Puts Satellite In Orbit for the First Time  - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5314443/private-rocket-successfully-puts-satellite-in-orbit-for-the-first-time <comment><USER2> Beautiful video, a bit jerky in places but I suppose live-transmission from a rocket is rarely done by private companies. If I had it, I'd pay a billion dollars to be able to see the world drop away like that.

Seeing things like this makes me hopeful for the future, but perhaps that's just because I grew up watching Star Wars and became a SF/F writer.</comment>


Investigating the relationship between gold and Bitcoin prices with R. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.quandl.com/blog/investigating-the-relationship-between-gold-and-bitcoin-prices-with-r/

<comment><USER2> This article is asking "does correlation imply causation?"</comment>


OSX Lion with feature to put your signature in PDFs - <AUTHOR> http://www.9to5mac.com/54071/lions-signature-capture-in-preview-photographs-your-written-signature-to-put-in-pdfs

<comment><USER2> This is great. Previously I used to receive a document that was printed, then signed, then scanned and emailed to me. I would print it again, sign it, scan it, and send it back. This can greatly simplify the process and seems to work rather well.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to start to build out QA automation - <AUTHOR> Over the years I've run into one form of QA automation or another (Selenium, Ghostscript etc.) but I am having trouble finding best practices, latest tools etc as it doesn't seem to be covered as extensively or often as other topics. What is a good place to look? <comment><USER2> Hi -

There are probably a few key-words you need to be aware of: Mike Cohn's testing pyramid, agile testing, BDD (Behaviour Driven Development), ATDD (Acceptance Test Driven Development).

Dave Haeffner has a good ten-step program on being effective with Selenium. Take a look at this recent videos: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf_qsXK6YdM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf_qsXK6YdM)</comment>