Sqlpp11 – A type safe SQL template library for C++ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rbock/sqlpp11 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a really awesome library to generate typesafe sql queries right from the C++ source code. Example usage:

      auto res = db(select(foo.name, foo.hasFun)
                    .from(foo)
                    .where(foo.id > 17 and foo.name.like("%bar%")));

If you're writing SQL queries in C++ code check it out!

<comment><USER2> You should show the definition of 'foo'. That's where things get ugly.

<comment><USER3> things usually get ugly with projection (one class = one select) or class reuse (mapping)

this is code -> sql string -> exec -> code (mapping results)

best approach (ihmo) is using:

sql string -> exec -> results

with type for input/output directly generated sql string (and check for types)

like F# sql type provider ( [http://fsprojects.github.io/FSharp.Data.SqlClient/](http://fsprojects.github.io/FSharp.Data.SqlClient/) )

        [<Literal>]
        let query = "
            SELECT TOP(@TopN) FirstName, LastName, SalesYTD
            FROM Sales.vSalesPerson
            WHERE CountryRegionName = @regionName AND SalesYTD > @salesMoreThan
            ORDER BY SalesYTD
        "

        type SalesPersonQuery = SqlCommandProvider<query, connectionString>
        let cmd = new SalesPersonQuery()

        cmd.AsyncExecute(TopN = 3L, regionName = "United States", salesMoreThan = 1000000M)
        |> Async.RunSynchronously

        //output
        //seq
        //    [("Pamela", "Ansman-Wolfe", 1352577.1325M);
        //     ("David", "Campbell", 1573012.9383M);
        //     ("Tete", "Mensa-Annan", 1576562.1966M)]

everything typed, but:

\- without the need to define class for input / output

\- without learn a new functions

\- easy add database specific syntax

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a few months ago I realized that you can hack CoffeeScript's syntax to embed DSLs directly. I wrote up a quick little proof-of-concept for SQL [0], HTML [1], and CSS [2]. Obviously the HTML one is inspired by the React syntax.

I've always hated how easy it is to push SQL bugs into production, since it's so often just a string literal stuck in your code. AFAIC you don't really need the typing help, you just need to know that you didn't forget a damn comma somewhere.

[0]: [https://github.com/couchand/just-sql](https://github.com/couchand/just- sql)

[1]: [https://github.com/couchand/just-html](https://github.com/couchand/just- html)

[2]: [https://github.com/couchand/just-css](https://github.com/couchand/just- css)

</comment><comment><USER5> A similar library for Scala: [http://squeryl.org/](http://squeryl.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> What has SQL done to deserve this?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there a java equivalent?

<comment><USER8> I wrote something similar a few years ago:

[http://GitHub.com/zerorm/zerorm](http://GitHub.com/zerorm/zerorm)</comment></comment>


Unless You're Changing It, Quit Your Bitchin' - <AUTHOR> http://jangosteve.com/post/413955281/unless-youre-changing-it-quit-your-bitchin <comment><USER3> What wasn't part of the headline is something quite important: _then I am truly sorry and I will be here for you and listen to everything you have to say._

<comment><USER4> Except that that part is only about things you truly can't change, - <USER2> isn't applicable to a lot of bitching, since people rarely bitch about things they can't change.

<comment><USER5> _people rarely bitch about things they can't change_

That's not my experience, at all. As far as I can tell, people bitch about _everything_ they don't like - whether they can change it or not. It can be cathartic, and some people seem to _need_ to bitch about stuff, even when they know they can and will do something about it later.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. And like the article says, I have no problem listening to people bitch about things they can't change. Sometimes, the world can suck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I'm bitching about: self-help style articles posted by their authors

What I'm doing to change it: pressed "flag"

<comment><AUTHOR> I was also very conscientious of that, but the general consensus of the HN community is that self-posts are completely acceptable (or even preferred).

(see thread <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1016713>)

Concerning the content of the article, if people don't like it, they won't vote it up.

<comment><USER7> I think you mean s/contentious/conscious/. But you're right: self-posts are definitely acceptable. At least, given my submission history, they had better be. ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, actually I meant conscientious. Thanks though!

<comment><USER6> It's /conscientious about/, which you seem to have confused with /conscious of/.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both "of" and "about" are correct in this case. See definitions (9) and (10) of the word, "of."

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/of>

In the English language, "of" and "about" can be used _more or less_ as synonyms with only subtle differences. E.g. "I heard about the play," or, "I heard of the play." "The play was about peace and love," or "The play was of peace and love."

<comment><USER6> Compare:

You are wrong about English usage

You are wrong of English usage

<comment><AUTHOR> That is one example of improper use (hence the _more or less_ ). However, "conscientious of" is an example of proper use.

<comment><USER8> Except it isn't. Google both. You'll see the proper use and a bunch of people confusing it with 'conscious of', just like you do.

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conscientious>

Try it with the synonyms. You can't be meticulous or scrupulous of something - just like 'conscientious'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, you very well can be meticulous, scrupulous, or careful of something. Again, see definition (5a) of the word, "of."

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/of>

5a: relating to: about <stories of her travels>

That being said, I will probably say "conscientious about" from now on as a result of this conversation, just in case people really do have a problem with "conscientious of." However, "conscientious of" is an acceptable usage.

<comment><USER8> No, you can't. You can link how 'of' can be used to construct a nonsensical phrase all day long. It's still nonsensical. That being said, learn the language. 'Conscientious of' is an acceptable usage in a stubborn imaginary world in which usage is subordinate to your preference.

<comment><AUTHOR> At this point, I think this thread has gone way too far of course, but I'll give clarification one more attempt.

I think the confusion here is in neglecting the various definitions of the word, "conscientious," in combination with the aforementioned definition of the word, "of." In terms of _being guided by conscience_ , or of _being thorough and assiduous_ (two possible definitions), I agree that being "conscientious of" something makes absolutely no sense.

However, it can also mean to be _careful_ (more along the lines of my intentions), in which case using "of" certainly makes sense, as you can be careful of some idea. Perhaps next time I comment, I'll just say "careful" to avoid the confusion.

Furthermore, it's important to remember that English is an ambiguous language. Part of the beauty (and perhaps the downside) of the language is that there are no rules, only guidelines (this is a good article on the subject: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/books/01book.html>). The best we can do is to know our audience and tailor our language to most effectively communicate our message. If nothing else, this thread has at least taught me something of my audience (something I should have known: that we are all very detail- oriented and so care must be taken in our communication). Perhaps saying "conscientious of" was not the best and most effective use of the word, but to say it's "wrong" or unacceptable I think is quite naive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meh bitching helps, if I mess up an exam I was supposed to do good on because of obscure notation I forgot to study but I understood the concepts and solution better than anyone damn straight I am going to bitch.

I can't change the past but I can remember what to do next time and that bitching will help me remember.

Though my form of bitching may differ from others.

<comment><AUTHOR> In your case, bitching _is_ changing things then, just as the article mentioned. I agree that at times, bitching helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> the only problem is that this is just how women think.

they want to feel the problem for a while... not fix it. notice thats how the post was inspired.

<comment><USER10> dont vote down the truth just because you're a member of said gender.</comment></comment>


NPR bought a toxic asset to watch it die.  They call her "Toxie" - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124578382

<comment><USER2> I feel a little obligated-by-honor to post this, as I frequently rag on news media for not being very good, but I think this is pretty good journalism. They put a bit of elbow grease and actual resources into this, it's a great way to get a bit of concrete perspective in what is one of the most abstract (yet real) crises we've ever seen, it's pretty much everything journalism is _supposed_ to be. So my compliments, from a frequent critic.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Planet Money is a great example of what financial news should be. And it is a completely replicable phenomena. Its strength largely comes from a few personalities who are engaging, intelligent and intellectually curious and asking them to report on a subject they know little about. It gives a really strong mix of high end analysis and laymen explanations for the financial and economic mechanisms at work.

Whats interesting about this style of reporting is that it seems to actually produce more in depth and nuanced analysis than what you typically see in, say, the wall street journal. I suspect this is because the laymen explanations lea to side analysis of issue that would otherwise be washed over. Where most financial news sources would report on the current state of toxic assets and how they are effecting broader markets, planet money in this series has spent an entire year reporting on what a toxic asset actually is, how it progresses through a market, its role in the market crash and what is being done to correct it. And all of this in about 3 minutes once a week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This idea was a good one but I want to make a grumpy comment anyway. That "Planet Money" series is on the whole _terrible_. It's supposed to be in-depth but there's nothing deep about the pieces I've heard, just painfully bad dialogue issued by pseudo-hipsters all imitating Ira Glass to varying degrees of cringitude. I admire Ira Glass too, but this is analogous to folk singers imitating Bob Dylan's nasal whine instead of, you know, writing good songs. As for content, nearly all of what I've heard has been them asking obvious questions of economists who repeat the same obvious half dozen bromides such economists invariably repeat, which the Glassbots then ploddingly translate into even dumber terms, presumably so they can hear the sound of their own voices some more on national radio. That and painfully staged little sketches for idiots, like the one where they go to different supermarkets to play walkie-talkies and conclude that some of them sometimes price things differently.

It's so awful I can't listen to it any more: I find it traumatic to be exposed to people making asses of themselves. That's probably why I'm writing this, to expunge the trauma. Have I just heard the wrong 10 episodes or something?

Some of the economic reporting produced by This American Life, on the other hand, has been superb and genuinely in-depth. Since the intersection of the two sets is non-empty, perhaps the producers are to blame.

<comment><USER5> I disagree.

Take the reporting on Toxie, their toxic asset. I think what they did was a good idea, I have followed their reporting on it for a while now. First they presented how one actually acquires these assets (they started with a trader and walked through that process) then they actually dug deeper beyond just monitoring the prices. They followed the individual mortgages within the security and found how one was tied to a mortgage fraud scheme and the other was tied to a guy who borrowed beyond his means.

I saw similar research put together by a well respected bank's equity research arm that decided to start visiting the homes which corresponded to certain distressed bank loans in Ohio. So overall, I thought the Planet Money team took a really good approach to their story.

Is it true that they have to sometimes dumb things down for the masses? Yes. No ordinary person is going to sit there and read through a CDO prospectus. But if I wanted something more in depth I would just listen to my Bloomberg podcasts.

Also, your criticism about Planet Money versus TAM seems a bit off base. I have found that Planet Money is the group that most often contributes the economic reporting/segments to TAM. Although there have been times when ProPublica contributes to both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They call _her_ "Toxie" (Planet Money Podcast - <http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510289> )

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call. Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bizarre that there are so few REOs. Lots of housing reporting involves the mention of homes owned by banks that aren't on the market, because the banks know if they put them on the market it will just depress prices further. So are the busted properties immediately being bought by investors/homebuyers and avoiding going to the bank?

</comment><comment><USER8> Heh,

I have been watching (listening) Toxie since the day she was born. It's, by far, my favorite anthropomorphized menace since the Woodland Christmas Critters:

<http://www.southpark.nl/clips/sp_vid_154748/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow. Step through the months from '96 and watch the number of current mortgages decline steadily.

<comment><USER10> Well, ANY mortgage-backed security will decline in number of current mortagages -- as people pay off their mortgages or refinance. The alarming thing is not the decrease in "current" but the increase in delinquencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want to buy a toxic asset that won't die, buy some BP stock.</comment>


x86 Assembly Primer for C Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://speakerdeck.com/u/vsergeev/p/x86-assembly-primer-for-c-programmers <comment><USER2> This is just about the opening example, so not really the main point of the slides, but: Is it actually still faster on modern machines to use this repnz version? One analysis a few years ago found that the naive C implementation, when compiled with gcc optimizations, was actually faster than that inline-asm implementation; the inline-asm implementation has fewer instructions, but doesn't execute faster: <http://canonical.org/~kragen/strlen-utf8.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great question. You can also find some of glibc's even more optimized versions of strlen() here:

[http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/i386...](http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/i386/i486/strlen.S)

[http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/i386...](http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/i386/i586/strlen.S)

It's counter-intuitive that so many instructions can be dedicated to something so seemingly simple like strlen(), but it does highlight the complexity of modern processors. On that note, I do not know and am reluctant to comment on which implementation of strlen() is fastest, as it seems very difficult to decouple the non-determinism of caches, instruction scheduling, pipelines, etc. by only looking at the source, especially when other code is also involved. But there probably is a benchmark that could give some useful results -- to justify the code above too -- like in the link you posted.

Someone with a better understanding of instruction scheduling, pipelines, and other optimizations can probably give a better answer to this than me.

~vsergeev/frozeneskimo

<comment><USER3> Wow, those examples took me a while to go through and understand; it's amazing the level you can optimize a piece of code to hardware. I'm curious to benchmark the implementations and see the performance difference.

Maybe you or someone else knows the answer to this though: it seems like they are processing 4 bytes of the string at a time. If they read over (i.e. the NULL byte is in byte position 1 2 or 3), isn't that technically undefined behavior? They are only reading in the memory, but I feel like valgrind or another tool would spit out an error if that happened. It's aligned, so it won't trigger a page fault, but it seems like an unsafe optimization.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I see your point. Like you said, page alignment and size being a multiple of 4 won't cause a page fault, so it's technically "ok". I can only assume that at this level the corner is safely cut for the sake of performance.

Another more trivial example of something like this is in the repnz-based strlen() (slides 7-8), where %ecx is loaded with 0xffff ffff, which technically limits the routine to scan strings up to 4 gigabytes in length. It's a valid assumption that the string is under 4GB (especially on a strictly 32-bit system), but the point is that it's a semantically different routine than the C based one.

~vsergeev/frozeneskimo

<comment><USER4> (signatures are frowned upon around here)

<comment><AUTHOR> (I see, my bad. Habit of mine. Thanks)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be nice if it was 64bit. Seems a bit late.

<comment><USER6> 64 bit x86 is very similar to 32 bit. The differences are covered in on slides 191-193 in this deck.

The biggest difference for me is the difference in the calling convention. In 32 bit, all arguments generally are placed on the stack for "standard" calls. In 64 bit, different OSes have different conventions:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_calling_conventions#x86-64_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_calling_conventions#x86-64_calling_conventions) (note that OS X and linux use the "System V" calling conventions)

<comment><USER7> I was about to call BS on that last sentence but it looks like I was the one full of it. I thought that the amd64 calling convention was standardized, bummer.

On Windows, amd64 is much better than x86 in this regard because of the bevy of x86 calling conventions that are still around. Only _one_ amd64 calling convention.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, the System V document is AMD's convention and it was Microsoft that decided to design an incompatible (and worse) ABI.

<comment><USER7> Sucks. I wonder if AMD wrote that later, after Microsoft had made up their own and were dependent on it. Dave Cutler was involved in amd64 _really_ early in the process of Clawhammer (mainly because he hates Intel with a passion!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The slides look like they have good information, but I'd really love to see that speech that (I suppose) went with it.

</comment><comment><USER10> All I get is the speakerdeck main page, with "You are not authorized to access this."

Does anyone have a working link to the content?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, it's back up. Apparently updating the PDF broke speakerdeck, permanently marking the presentation as "unpublished", even though it is public. I had to delete and re-upload. Probably shouldn't have updated the PDF in the first place, though.

Content is available here as well: <https://github.com/vsergeev/apfcp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish I could upvote this indefinitely. What a great resource, thanks for your efforts!

</comment><comment><USER12> Great resource, thanks for it!</comment>


Joint Tax Cmte: Top 1% Receives 19% of All Income, Pays 49% of All Income Taxes - <AUTHOR> http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/03/joint-tax-committee-the-top-1-receives-19-of-all-income-.html

<comment></comment>


Coloring 3D prints with DIY computational hydrographics (and Blender) - <AUTHOR> https://formlabs.com/blog/full-color-pattern-3d-prints-computational-hydrographics/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've made the source files are available for people to experiment with: it's not a perfect process yet, and I think with some crowdsourced effort it could get a lot more refined. The application would be coloring any 3D print that has a diffuse color/UV map: figurines, product prototypes, that kinda thing.</comment>


Howell Torpedo 1896 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTRBbFX7AxA <comment><USER2> It's a really clever design, especially that gyroscopic 'impulse' mechanism, but it was never used in battle. The competing Whitehead torpedo, which had an onboard engine, was the one that navies adopted.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo#Invention_of_the_moder...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo#Invention_of_the_modern_torpedo)

</comment><comment><USER3> I get the distinct feeling that engineers could do more with a lot less back then. So much creativity in this design -- and essentially an analog implementation of P in a PID controller with the pulsed course corrections. It's awesome.

<comment><USER4> I've worked extensively with mechanical engineers on large scale projects. This level of creativity is very much alive today. We just don't get exposed to it as much here on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> As someone that loves the "How it's made" videos: Do you have some videos or explained graphics of your work that can post here? (As another submissions.)

One of the problems is that making these videos require a lot of time. This video is 6 minutes long, but I guess it was at least a week of work, perhaps more

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure how the flywheel speed is sensed, though. I don't think it was explained in the video, unless I missed something?

Also, I am clueless about imperial units (or rather, I make a conscious effort to not convert them...).

<comment><USER6> > I am clueless about imperial units

As am I. I had a laugh today when I stumbled across an interface in Siemens medical software that requires patient height and weight. I could enter 'metric' or 'U.S.' values.

<comment><USER7> > requires patient height and weight. I could enter 'metric' or 'U.S.' values

My scales has three settings, which I respectively think of as metric, US and British: kilos, pounds and stones+pounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Analog computing" is a great subject to get lost in on Wikipedia.

Some prime examples: Babbage's Analytical Engine, the Norden bombsight, the Mark 1 Fire Control Computer, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> That stair-step "gear" and pawl for pulsing the control vanes blew my mind.

That there are over a half dozen systems all functioning simultaneously further blew it. :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> For those getting lost in steam era torpedos, you might also enjoy the earlier Brennan Torpedo. It was propelled and steered by hauling fine wires out of its stern with a land based steam engine.

[https://youtu.be/XeyJbgrE8oc](https://youtu.be/XeyJbgrE8oc)

<comment><USER11> My favorite part of that torpedo is the little flag. Because it didn't use steam, it didn't have any wake. So to be guided it had a little flag on a pole _above the water_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The truly amazing thing about this is the flywheels double usage as stabilizer.

If the torpedo changed direction due to wind or waves the forces of the wheel cause the torpedo to bank.

This is then detected by a pendulum which sets the course straight again.

</comment><comment><USER13> What an amazing work of engineering! I can't believe they figured all these out way back in 1896. How much of testing and iterations would have happened to make this work. I am super amazed!

</comment><comment><USER14> Very clever way of control the rudders. Pure mechanical self navigation.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the world's first disposable [analogue] computers

</comment><comment><USER16> How does this steer to the target or how did torpedos hold onto the target in the era of full mechanical torpedos?

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing it doesn't. It seems unguided. As I understood the video, all that machinery is there to ensure the torpedo swims in a straight line at a given depth, automatically countering any influence that tries to push it off course.

<comment><USER18> Thats why i was getting confused, I thought the same, but what would mean any influence, any current or perhaps waves? What else could stop a torpedo if not some target boat? Would a smaller boat or a swimmer be able to influence its trajectory if they were at the right time/place? Somehow doubt that. Im not very familiar with war/naval technology in general, just a basic idea of the principles and their physics

<comment><USER17> I'd say currents, detritus, and imperfections in torpedo shape. It's hard to make an inert thing move in a straight line in water, much like it's hard to make a paper airplane that flies straight. A control system like this, however, can maintain a flat trajectory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If I am not mistaken the gyroscope technique is also used in smaller satellites

<comment><USER9> I believe that is true as well.

Also, you reminded me, using the release of wound cables to de-spin a satellite. Very analog.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-yo_de- spin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-yo_de-spin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is one on display at the free Naval museum near Paulsbo WA.</comment>


Industry Data Models - <AUTHOR> http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/ <comment><USER2> It's returning a 503. :/

<comment><AUTHOR> It is working here. Maybe this site is just not prepared for Hacker News front page.</comment></comment>


Spare the Rod and Spoil the Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://rentzsch.tumblr.com/post/348372361/spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-programmer

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I agree with his point. And even if I do agree, wouldn't you say this points out a problem in the language being used? Of course, pretty much all languages have the same problem.

It seems to me that not enough thought has gone into how programming languages should handle dependency management. I think it could be done much better, although I must admit that I have no idea how.

</comment><comment><USER3> As he mentions, if you only ever look at the code through an IDE that does code folding, the long list of imports is a non-issue.</comment>


Show HN: Just hit $15k/m running unlimited design service by myself - <AUTHOR> https://www.designjoy.co/ <comment><USER2> At the risk of being "that guy", this post really isn't fit for a Show HN:

> Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN > users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread.

> ...

> Blog posts, sign-up pages, curated lists, and other reading material can't > be tried out, so can't be Show HNs.[1]

This is just you sharing your landing page and bragging about how well your business is doing. Congrats on your success, though, and I expect some interesting discussion about the business model in the comments at least.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats! What's your profit margin look like? It's hard to evaluate what $15k/mo means because it's an outsourcing business.

How does payment work internally? Is everyone just a 1099 that you feed work to? How do you deal with international payroll?

How do you source designers and assign work?

<comment><USER4> Amazingly, he does all the work himself: [https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-run-an-unlimited- design-...](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-run-an-unlimited-design- service-by-myself-927558f038)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Margins are nearly 100% due to the fact I do all the work myself.

I mention "us" on the website for two reasons:

It's weird to say "I" in this case because to a client it isn't natural to wrap your head around the fact there is one person behind the business.

Secondly, when I built the service, it was my full intention of also building a team behind it (designers, customer care, etc.).

I could change the website copy to reflect it's a one man show, but I look at it like at the end of the day as long as you're getting the service you signed up for, that's all the client really cares about or needs to know.

</comment><comment><USER5> First of all, congrats!

If you run it all by yourself, why do you write "us" everywhere?

<comment><USER6> Presumably Brett is not doing all of the design work if any.

<comment><USER7> Nopez, he's doing it all by himself. Really admirable.

<comment><USER8> then it seems disingenuous to write "Work with some of the best designers in the world."

<comment><USER9> He's very confident

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How can you offer unlimited designs at $467/month?

That seems very cheap. It doesn't take much for that to be negative margin right? What am I missing?

<comment><USER11> You're missing the conflict at the core of this business model. It motivates the provider to take as long as possible without souring the business relationship, because the faster they work, the less they're getting paid. So the unlimited part is basically marketing BS.

<comment><USER12> Did you look at the site at all? He clearly advertises a 48 hour average turnaround time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Surprised to learn "unlimited design service" is _a thing_ , offered by several people/companies: [https://www.failory.com/blog/unlimited-design- services](https://www.failory.com/blog/unlimited-design-services)

</comment><comment><USER14> From the pricing model, it looks like hiring more than out sourcing because it charges based on duration, not the work to be delivered.

</comment><comment><USER15> What are your margins?

</comment><comment><USER16> So this is basically Brett As A Service ?</comment>


Facebook uncovers new fake accounts ahead of midterm elections - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-uncovers-new-fake-accounts-ahead-of-midterm-elections/ <comment><AUTHOR> The article sounds kind of worrying. It seems to me that they're conflating "fake" with "dissenting". Of course, Facebook is a private entity, they're entitled to do as much censorship as they want on their platform.</comment>


Apple asks FCC to keep iPhone 4 details under wraps - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/18/apple_asks_fcc_to_keep_iphone_4_details_under_wraps.html <comment><USER2> _It is standard practice for Apple to request confidentiality from the FCC. But the request has been viewed as curious by some, considering that prototypes of the near-final iPhone 4 design were publicly disassembled, revealing many of the new device's secrets._

The letter was probably prepared months ago, or quite possibly is the same as previous letters. Other than the items on the second page, at the top (above the graphic), I'm sure it's indistinguishable from the ones issued for previous models.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps they're hiding support for CDMA?</comment>


The story of ispc: all the links (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/30/ispc-all.html <comment><USER2> This is a great series of posts, highly recommended.

From my perspective, as someone who was once on one of the Larrabee graphics teams (but not the same one as Matt), I'd agree that the programming model was a big issue. For us, even C++ with intrinsics wasn't fast enough for the most important code, since we didn't control the compiler (note that I'm only speaking anecdotally here, these decisions pre-date my involvement). So we had our own programming language that was more like Python with intrinsics, that hooked into the back end of the shader compiler (which handled register allocation and scheduling).

This probably wasn't the best call for a Larrabee programming model "for the masses" (even lots of people on the team were skeptical of it)... But _damn_ , that was a fun project. We needed the ability to try any crazy idea we could think of, because that's the only thing that could work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Three small thread from the time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16966009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16966009)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891980)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18253742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18253742)

</comment><comment><USER4> Does ispc still offer compelling advantages versus icc or other compilers?

<comment><USER5> Probably. To vectorize effectively for wide SIMD architectures, you need to start with the right data-layout properties (struct of arrays, instead of array of structs), as well as vectorizing at the right level. The standard way people write code in C/C++ is simply not that great for doing this stuff automatically.

The difference is going to be a lot more minor if you use C/C++ code written with #pragma vectorize manually, and do these data transforms yourself in code. I know Intel has been pushing harder on "outer-loop vectorization," judging from the papers they've been putting out at PLDI and the like. But I still imagine that a dedicated SPMD programming language is going to have an edge over twisting C/C++ to that end, especially in terms of ergonomics, if nothing else.</comment></comment>


The 1619 Project - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html <comment><USER2> > The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the > 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe > the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing > the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the > very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that if you're having trouble navigating the scrolly-animated presentation, you can go to the NYT Magazine's landing page to see a more straightforward listing of articles and links:

[https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine](https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine)

<comment><USER4> NYT tries a lot of things. I like that.

But they're bound to fail, this one is a bit much on the scrolling.

<comment><USER3> The NYT arguably popularized the technique when its 2012 "Snow Fall" won a Pulitzer [0]. My impression has been that, thankfully, people have realized that scrolly-heavy stories are more trouble than its worth. But it wouldn't surprise me if it's still seen as a way to signal "This Project is a Big Deal" even at the cost of accessibility. At least nowadays, most of the project's individual articles can find plenty of traction through non-landing-page clicks (e.g. social media), so the risk of poorly-used landing page is less of a concern than it was 5+ years ago.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/new-y...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/new- york-times-snow-fall-feature/320253/)

<comment><USER5> _> it wouldn't surprise me if it's still seen as a way to signal "This Project is a Big Deal" even at the cost of accessibility._

It also looks really slick when shown on a big wall-mount monitor in the conference room where the Important People gather. I dunno about the _Times_ , but I've seen plenty of places where that carried a lot more weight than usability or accessibility did.

(Sigh.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The only article in this project I've read so far is the history about how the sugar industry became economically viable through slavery, leading one Louisiana politician to boast the state's sugar industry was "without parallel in the United States, or indeed in the world in any branch of industry."

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/suga...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/sugar- slave-trade-slavery.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Personally I would like to see a broader and less American perspective on slavery. While chattel slavery in the American antebellum South went away, slavery in general certainly didn't, and it also didn't begin in 1619. To illustrate that latter point, in 1619 slavery was a general practice in Africa, and many of the first slaves imported by Europeans were already enslaved in Africa as a byproduct of endemic warfare. Even today many industries' profitability depends on slavery in the undeveloped world -- it's just no longer visible to Americans.

Certainly this isn't meant to diminish this piece. American slavery became particularly incendiary because it developed a racial component that long outlasted its abolition and continues to have ripple effects today not just in America but elsewhere due to the wide export of American culture. But I also don't want to be so quick as to equate slavery in general with one particular (and, indeed, relatively small-scale) instance that _did_ end when we have other larger instances still active today -- instances that we even depend on and make use of.

<comment><USER7> You stated that you don't want to "diminish this piece", but then go on to describe American slavery (this project's sole focus) as "one particular (and, indeed, relatively small-scale) instance". Your comment also contains multiple points (e.g. "slavery wasn't invented in America", "American slaves were enslaved in Africa", "slavery still exists in non-American places today") that are regularly used by people trying to diminish or erase the impact of slavery and racism on American culture today.

Because the project is investigating the _legacy_ of _American_ slavery, I think discussing current global slavery is at best off-topic.

<comment><USER6> I acknowledge whole-heartedly that this is a difficult topic, but I really _don 't_ think it's that off-topic. The articles available so far focus a lot on the economic incentives involved in slavery and how the American economy was boosted because of it. The observation that those same incentives are still sustaining slavery and that the economy is still boosted by it seems relevant to me.

<comment><USER8> You are dancing perilously close to what-aboutism, though. The context of American slavery within global and historical slavery _is_ an important topic, but within _this_ context, it sounds like an attempt to minimize the effect and power of American slavery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This appears to be a great project, not in small part because, for my taste, great web design. I haven't read the articles yet, but I plan to.

That being said, allow me to share a regret that I have about the Civil War. I find it a tragedy that the institution of slavery was terminated in the United States via such a violent solution. This lead to resentments and scars and continuation of race discrimination and racial issues until this day. It's such a tragedy. Compare the slavery in 19'th century America with the situation depicted in the "War and Peace" early 19'th century Russia, where peasants were slaves in all but formal legal status (for example they were called "souls" and they were pretty much the unit of account when describing a prince's wealth). Two hundred years later, that slavery in Russia left no scars, and the same story was repeated in many European countries. In the country I come from slavery was abolished at various points in time (in various provinces and for various social strata) ranging roughly from 1775 to 1850. The last people to be freed from slavery were the gypsies, and one can say that even today there is some racism in my country against gypsies, but nothing like the issues that America sill faces .

I don't really have any point to make, it's just an observation.

</comment><comment><USER10> This reads not as a respectful remembrance of the history of the brutal practice of slavery, but an attempt to suggest slavery is a consequence of capitalism and is thus also evil. That since they are both fundamentally exploitative, today's capitalism, in many ways, causes just as much human suffering as its child, slavery did. The conclusion, whether its stated or not, is that capitalism needs to go, replaced with socialism.

But what every analysis like this fails to recognize is that capitalism doesn't take away the autonomy of the people who have power, they can choose to wield it responsibly or irresponsibly. Changing the system from capitalism to socialism doesn't change the fact that there will be vast disparities in the power, it just changes the system by which people obtain power.

I'm not sure that living "free" under Stalin is necessarily preferable to living a slave in the antebellum south. Of course, both are full of stories of suffering and human misery, and I'm sure both can cite instances where things weren't as bad as we imagine them. But I'm extremely frustrated with rhetoric which cites the latter as evidence that we should move closer to a society like the former.

<comment><USER11> Where did you see that insinuation? Can you point me to the place where you saw the conclusion about socialism? I feel like you are reading way too much into it. Why attribute something the authors didn't intend?

<comment><USER12> "If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation."

"Why doesn't the United States have universal health care? The answer begins with policies enacted after the Civil War."

<comment><USER13> That seems like quite a stretch: neither of those is a global statement, simply an accurate summary of how the culture in one particular country developed. Most countries with universal healthcare are capitalist to a large degree so it seems pretty clear that an explanation for the difference between, say, the U.S. and Canada is going to have a different answer than "capitalism!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd like to see a similar feature on our extermination of the Native Americans.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a worthy effort but for a better educational experience it should indicate at the beginning that slavery is still completely legal in the US per the 13th amendment to the Constitution:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

</comment><comment><USER16> A similar and very powerful narrative can be found in _The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism_, by Edward E. Baptist. The book is slightly problematic in some of its methods, but overall I would highly recommend it to anyone who was taught the public school version of US history.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14894629-the-half-has- ne...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14894629-the-half-has-never-been- told)

<comment><USER17> Sounds great, what are the problems with its methods?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wouldn't have cared as much if I were not a parent - shitty to say but its true - the thought of children tugging on their parents while the parent is being shipped off or sold i mean. My gosh.

</comment><comment><USER19> > "If you wanted to understand the brutality of American capitalism..."

Stopped reading there. Not sure American capitalism is some evil brutal thing to oppose in the first place. And we could have capitalism without having slavery.

<comment><USER20> In addition to slavery, American businesses have been behind exploitation and despotism in Latin America and Africa. American capitalism has certainly been brutal.

<comment><USER21> I think the issue is the erroneous claim that slavery was a product of capitalism. This is patently untrue, slavery predates capitalism by millennia.

Not only that, a strong argument can be made that capitalism ended slavery. The American South was an agrarian society, with an economy based on crops. The North was a capitalist society with industry forming a much larger portion of the economy. It was the industrialist, capitalist North that voted an abolitionist President into office and defeated the South's subsequent rebellion.

This pattern holds true across global history. Agrarian societies have almost always had some mechanism to lock large segments of the population into agricultural or manual labor: caste systems, serfdom, slavery all filled this role with some variation in their implementation. Abolition movements predominantly occurred in the time range from 1750 to 1900, and in the same time period many countries began to industrialize.

<comment><USER8> I think you're confusing the difference between capitalism and industrialism.

<comment><USER21> The two largely go hand in hand. You need capital to start new industries. Industrialism, in turn, generates lots of capital that people are going to want to invest thus leading to more capitalist activity. Industrialism without capitalism has been attempted in the USSR and PRC, both of which ended up adopting capitalism. No industrial society managed to remain non-capitalist for more than 50-60 years which is incredibly short in the context of global history.

<comment><USER22> You also need capital to start new plantations. Which, in turn, also generates lots of capital that people are going to want to invest thus leading to bigger and more plantations.

Industrialism did make slavery obsolete and, where still needed, easy to offshore. Which I think is what described ended slavery in the US

<comment><USER21> No, you don't need capital to start plantations. You just need land and labor. People were running farms and plantations thousands of years before coinage was invented.

Plantation owners are capitalists in the same vein that Romans were capitalists when they conquered neighbors and cultivated this newly annexed land. This is perhaps correct in a very abstract sense of capitalism, but it is an alternative definition that is not shared by most people and most people will say you are wrong if you try to claim that this is capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Slavery is America's original sin, to this day it permeates every aspect of this nation. Americans must continue to campaign to right the wrongs that began in 1619, I'm really grateful for this project and it's motive of reframing the origin of this country.

<comment><USER24> _Slavery is America 's original sin_

Although providing a great line for The West Wing, I would say America's treatment of the indigenous people is America's original sin.

<comment><USER8> If we're going to be technical, America's original sin is being human. Humans are pretty loathsome, especially when they're being hypocritical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's become more and more difficult as a centrist to keep reading the NY Times. And the NY Times probably considers itself centrist because it publishes both very left wing views and very right wing views.

-10 + 10 / 2 = 0

</comment><comment><USER26> They confuse feudalism with capitalism. Slavery is no capitalism, it's feudalism.

See this image to understand what I mean [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VbM3qZttnmI/XSIP33QGpUI/AAAAAAAAU...](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VbM3qZttnmI/XSIP33QGpUI/AAAAAAAAU-g/EZCC291tUOcp6KAN7CLdmtx9I5PbI_AxQCLcBGAs/s1600/political- ideologies.png)</comment>


Launch HN: Writer's Bloc – Collaborative, Slack-Based, Writing Community - <AUTHOR> https://www.writersblochq.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Friend of mine recently launched this. It's a community for writers.</comment>


ZX Spectrum Code Hidden in Bandersnatch - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/gasmanic/status/1079164419488268288 <comment><USER2> Cool idea I guess. I didn't even expect to find any sort of easter eggs in this show. But feels to me like a contrived effort to be like Mr. Robot.

Personally, I didn't enjoy the choose your own adventure format. I thought choosing dead ends that forced repeating storyline to be tedious. I also felt the "send him a Netflix sign" thing was too overtly obvious.

I also didn't get the objective of choosing. Was it to try and get the highest game rating? Was it to try and help him with his psychological issues?

Seems like an interesting idea but not what I'm looking for as a Netflix user.

<comment><USER3> > _I also didn't get the objective of choosing. Was it to try and get the > highest game rating? Was it to try and help him with his psychological > issues?_

The objective of a Choose Your Own Adventure book isn't to reach a particular ending, but rather to experience all of the divergent paths.

> _I thought choosing dead ends that forced repeating storyline to be > tedious._

They 100% accurately captured the experience of reading a CYOA novel. Nobody who reaches a "dead" end stops reading. You go back to the last untaken path and try again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _( "Aha, you youngsters don't recognise that this is clearly a dialup modem > tone!" they say with misplaced confidence to their slightly-younger > cousins.)_

The tweet thread would have been better without this. As mentioned in the replies, the closed captions literally say that it's a modem connecting.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I build a Chromium browser on iOS? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to figure out whether Apple has relaxed its restrictions around running other browsers or whether Chrome, Firefox, etc. are still just wrappers around WebKit? I'd like to build my own Chromium based browser. <comment><USER2> To my knowledge, regrettably they haven't relaxed their restrictions.</comment>


China's Tech Ministry Warns of Being Too Dependent on Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.techinasia.com/china-miit-warns-dependent-on-android-google/ <comment><USER2> The problem is that the Chinese regime wants its local industry and state- owned enterprises to create Android forks that allow for:

(a) pirated software on their app stores [1] (b) changes to the OS that allow government censorship and spying (c) breaking the GPL/Apache license to create closed-source clones that are "compatible" with Android only in name [2]

and Google is not allowing them to.

References: [1] [http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/15/aliyun-app-store- con...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/15/aliyun-app-store-confirmed-to- be-distributing-pirated-android-apps-many-from-another-pirate-site/) [2] [http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/technology/google-alibaba- ac...](http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/technology/google-alibaba-acer-android- aliyun-china-292615.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> "We'd rather have the market dominated by companies who accept all of our censorship and allows us to install all the spyware we want into the devices".

<comment><USER4> To be fair, (parts of) the US gubbermint wanted the same thing.</comment></comment>


Introducing Small Basic - Microsoft releases yet another programming language - <AUTHOR> http://manekari.blogspot.com/2008/11/introducing-small-basic-microsoft.html <comment><USER2> An alternative: <http://hacketyhack.net/>

Small Basic appears to have a rather clunky syntax, despite having a very small number of keywords and built-in methods. These odd little bits of syntax can throw newbies off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow! So Microsoft is now feeling threatened by _why? I didn't realize he was quite that important!

</comment><comment><USER4> I've found that it's rarely, if ever, the number of keywords that directly contributes to the complexity of a language, but the size and accessibility of the standard library.

Look how easy it is to set the desktop background image! You just need to know that the SetWallPaper method of the Desktop object needs to be invoked! Admittedly, it is the small, quick successes that lead to further interest in programming.

Setting the desktop background image is the Hello World of GUI apps.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is a bit of history on the language.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/smallbasic/archive/2008/10/23/hello- wo...](http://blogs.msdn.com/smallbasic/archive/2008/10/23/hello-world.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER6> Earlier discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341997>

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of Popeye cigarettes...</comment>


When the Compiler Bites - <AUTHOR> http://nullprogram.com/blog/2018/05/01/ <comment><USER2> _The unit test issues in my real program, which was a bit more sophisticated than what was presented here, gave me artificial intelligence vibes. It's that situation where a computer algorithm did something really clever and I felt it outsmarted me._

As someone who has been reading compiler output for many years, it seems like these "flashes of inspiration" are relatively sparse compared to the bulk plain-stupid code they normally produce; once in a while you'll see something and think "that's clever... _really_ clever", followed immediately by something so stupid it makes you wonder how it managed to generate such code. You can easily distinguish between that and human-written Asm that way. The latter may not have as much "peak cleverness" but certainly keeps up its average level of efficiency.

<comment><USER3> Has there ever been a program (not including any so-called "optimised assembler") that accepts handwritten asm on stdin and sends "optimised" asm to stdout?

       optasm <1.asm >2.asm
       diff -U0 1.asm 2.asm|less

The person writing the handwritten asm can then look at the suggested "optimisations" and can learn from/evaluate them.

Looking at x86 asm source code, I have always been amazed at the relatively small number of commonly used instructions versus the large number of available instructions that are listed in the manuals. As someone learning asm, how would I ever be introduced to apropos usage of these uncommon instructions absent real-world examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was interesting, but I don't get this part of the example code:

        if (w == 0 || h <= SIZE_MAX / w)

To me, that condition is just super-strange: if w is zero, the product w x h is zero too, so the entire allocation becomes pointless. Surely it should be:

        if (w != 0 && h <= SIZE_MAX / w)

or something? Having these kinds of discussions based on code that is confusing in itself just becomes too much, for me.

<comment><USER5> pointless, but not wrong: calloc on a zero width image should still yield a memory pointer, even if it points to a zero length stretch of memory. It would be strictly wrong to return a null pointer just because (one of) the dimensions happens to be zero.

It might read a little funny, but it's actually quite correct with respects to what the code path should be expected to do. Valid dimensions should yield a valid pointer. Even if they're validly zero =)

<comment><USER6> >It would be strictly wrong to return a null pointer just because (one of) the dimensions happens to be zero.

Strictly wrong according to whom? At least not any C standard I know of.

Besides, even if the function did return a non-null pointer value (which it is allowed to do; the behaviour is implementation-defined) you aren't allowed to dereference it any more than a null pointer, making it hardly any more "valid", either.

<comment><USER5> According to code design mostly. It's not a syntax issue (both are fine syntax) but a logic issue. You should be able to trust that as long as your dimensions are valid, any for loop over the resulting list works. And in graphics contexts, zero is typically a perfectly valid value to set one (or both) dimensions to (negative values, however, are not). Of course, you _can_ say "I think 0 is an invalid dimension" but given that plenty of frameworks and applications consider 0 just fine, that's kind of an unnecessary restriction for the sake of writing a conditional that is arguably irrelevantly "easier" to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> GCC float comparison: since C doesn't have a portable way to denote single precision float constants, it's a good idea to cast them in order to avoid implementation specific differences. See: [https://godbolt.org/g/t7UYoi](https://godbolt.org/g/t7UYoi)

      int
      float_compare(void)
      {
          float x = 1.3f;
          return x == (float) 1.3f;
      }

This correctly returns 1 on all compilers I cared to check.

Couldn't reproduce clang calloc removal bug with that code. Tried clang 6.0, -O1, -O3.

Clang did remove calloc when there were no new_image calls where parameter "shade" could be zero. But that's to be expected, as it is a static function, only accessible from same compilation unit. Entirely correct behavior.

[https://godbolt.org/g/FfV7G2](https://godbolt.org/g/FfV7G2)

When it comes to the filed clang bug, I fail to see any bug at all: [https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37304](https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37304)

When calloc return value is not stored (or used), how could it be accessed or even freed at all? I think compiler is right to remove whole call.

<comment><USER4> Can you clarify this part:

 _[...] since C doesn 't have a portable way to denote single precision float constants [...]_

That sounds like the suffix 'f' which you're also using, how is that not a way to "denote single precision float constants"?

My draft copy of the C11 spec says:

 _An unsuffixed floating constant has type double. If suffixed by the letter f or F, it has type float. If suffixed by the letter l or L, it has type long double._

But this is not new syntax, I just looked in the most recent document I have.

Do you mean that C doesn't have a way to require IEEE 754 floating-point?

<comment><USER7> _See edit below. C99 allows greater precision than required by the type!_

Hmm, you're right.

I think something similar bit me long ago and left me under impression f-suffix for a float is not portable.

Perhaps it's time to read the standard through once again...

Then again, explicit casts generate code that works on all compilers, standards compliant or not.

Edit: C99, 220.127.116.11.2: "The values of floating operands and of the results of floating expressions may be represented in greater precision and range than that required by the type; the types are not changed thereby."

So I guess explicit floating point casts are needed when explicit operations are wanted!

<comment><USER8> You might have encountered in the past is C/C++ silently promoting your floats to double.

An example, `printf("%f", float_value)` will actually promote float_value to a double. Or calling a function from `math.h` with a float constant

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        t->counter = calloc(n, sizeof(t->counter));

I think you are checking the sizeof of `unsigned *` here, not `unsigned`, which is itself a bug.

</comment><comment><USER10> It strikes me that the System V amd64 ABI is not defined on such an (apparently) obvious point as padding of values smaller than a word. Is there a reason why it does not get fixed?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm amazed that we still have people being bitten by exact floating point comparisons in 2018 really. Nobody working with floating point numbers should be surprised by the behaviour in the post. This article [0] is over 6 years old and is a follow up from I don't know when, talking about this exact subject.

[0] [https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/comparing- float...](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/comparing-floating- point-numbers-2012-edition/)

<comment><USER12> The first example is about optimizing away multiplication by zero. The second is about GCC treating float literals with greater than float precision, and the third is about dead code elimination.

Not convinced your comment is relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, afaik, the bug is not a bug. It should be, but the language specification says it's not.

To quote richard smith on a related issue (malloc(-1) succeeds):

" * malloc is part of the implementation, so LLVM is allowed to optimize it to allocate memory from "somewhere else".

* In this case, LLVM allocates SIZE_MAX bytes of memory in some hypothetical space that exists only in its imagination.

* This allocation succeeds, so the pointer is non-null, and errno is not set.

* However, as a result, malloc need not actually be called at runtime. "

Does this lead to silly results? Yes.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was once told that optimizations in the sense of dead code elimination the way clang does it could be bypassed by making a variable volatile... Wouldn't that help here as well?

        volatile unsigned char *p = malloc(w * h);
        ...

<comment><USER15> Not quite, what you want is

      unsigned char * volatile p = malloc(w * h);

This indicates that p itself is a volatile variable, rather than a pointer to memory that is volatile.

<comment><USER14> Ah, that was the thing I was after. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love when people fail to understand the specification of the language and blame the compiler.</comment>


Ask HN: Are interviews for iOS roles less focused on algorithms? - <AUTHOR> I love building software, but I'm terrible at the leetcode stuff. If I interview for iOS roles, will there be less of a focus on my ability to invert a binary search tree on a whiteboard? <comment><USER2> You will have to explicitly ask the potential employers about their interview process upfront, which one should ask anyways before investing time into the process.

Usually companies which hire generalists would interview with Algos, DS, System Design and then have tech specific interviews later on. Some may not even do tech specific and others may do it in matching stage after making the offer.

Really there is a lot of variance, but if you are looking at FANG, better bite the bullet, give yourself decent time (3 - 6) months to prep and start applying/interviewing.

For other non FANG, I assume the process may not be so leetcode focused, no guarantees there as there are many companies which prefer to ape FANG style interviewing at their own peril!

Good luck.</comment>


Interactive Rendering Course (Udacity cs291) - <AUTHOR> http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs291/CourseRev/1 <comment><USER2> Looks interesting - I've enrolled. Thanks for the post.</comment>


One Teenager Killed Himself. Six More Followed - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-teenager-killed-himself-six-more-followed-11555061402 <comment><USER2> We need to be really careful with reporting supposed suicide clusters.

The most famous recent case in the UK - Bridgend - turned out to have been _caused by_ reporting of it. That is, a few deaths happened, then sensationalist news reporting happened, and a lot more deaths happened.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3756004/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3756004/)

> There was a possible suicide cluster in young people in Bridgend between > December 2007 and February 2008. This cluster was smaller, shorter in > duration, and predominantly later than the phenomenon that was reported in > national and international print media. Further investigation of factors > leading to the onset and termination of this series of deaths, in particular > the role of the media, is required

[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/769469/Identifying_and_responding_to_suicide_clusters_and_contagion.pdf)

[https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/abs/10.1027/0227-5910/a0004...](https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/abs/10.1027/0227-5910/a000410)

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/02/reporting_bri...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/02/reporting_bridgend.html)

I'm always surprised, alarmed, at the very poor quality of reporting on suicide coming from the US. It feels like US journalists just don't care that the words they chose can cause significant harm.

<comment><USER3> And its hidden behind a wall, so some form of monetization is connected to this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> On another "cluster": [https://thevillagefreepress.org/2019/04/14/maywood-hit- with-...](https://thevillagefreepress.org/2019/04/14/maywood-hit-with-a- suicide-cluster-needs-more-experts-to-confront-this-crisis/)</comment>


DIY Server Cabinet Using IKEA Parts - <AUTHOR> https://www.ikeahackers.net/2018/06/server-cabinet-diy-ikeahack.html <comment><USER2> Aesthetics are great, but did you make any provisions for airflow? I'd be worried about equipment suffocation.</comment>


A curated list of things related to Vue.js - <AUTHOR> https://vuejsexamples.com/ <comment><USER2> cool.</comment>


DIY Single-Chip 2D Retro Game Console - <AUTHOR> http://www.voja.rs/PROJECTS/GAME_HTM/1_intro.htm <comment><USER2> Very cool.

It's interesting to me that while some of these microcontroller chips (fast enough to do vga) have been around 15 years or so, it's only in the last 5 years or so that people have figured out how to bitbang pretty decent vga output from them.

And now that we have 100Mhz+ microcontrollers people are making really simple devices that take advantage of it. I was pretty impressed with this $11 ESP32 gadget that replicates what an old VT100 would do, but with vga output and a ps/2 keyboard. It also does retro games: [https://www.tindie.com/products/ttgo/lilygor-ttgo- vga32_v14-...](https://www.tindie.com/products/ttgo/lilygor-ttgo- vga32_v14-controller/)

</comment><comment><USER3> May I also mention my similar project [https://github.com/makapuf/bitbox](https://github.com/makapuf/bitbox) ? Its been a while I started and worked on it for a while. I'm considering re starting doing games on it. Maybe in rust? Could be fun!

<comment><USER3> I'm also thinking about a simpler / cheaper version. Still vga, 12bpp, maybe no sd card (complex code, complex to solder, few reasons to use it), cheaper/smaller, maybe single usb or classic nes (super simple to interface with)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very neat! Reminds me a bit of the Basic Engine[0], which is similar in the sense that it is also a DIY ultra low-cost computer. This looks a bit more involved than that project though, since there is a lot of custom hardware involved.

Beyond that I guess the main limitation these days would be to find a VGA monitor

[https://basicengine.org/](https://basicengine.org/)

<comment><USER5> Huh? This (the TFA, the "Single-chip 2D Retro Game Console") is single-chip, all the work is done in software on a PIC microcontroller with 48 KB RAM. This includes generating 16-color VGA-compatible video, with sprites, and 5 channels of sound.

The Basic Engine is based on the 8266 (4 MB of flash) and has a separate hardware video controller chip, plus an I/O expander so at least three chips. It has way more "custom hardware" than the TFA's board.

<comment><USER4> My bad, my initial assessment was in terms of _" how much of this is off-the- shelf and how much of this requires hardware customization"_. I had the mistaken impression that the basic engine didn't need a custom PCB, and other than that they both seemed to use off-the-shelf components. So in that sense I thought this required "more" customization (even though, as you mentioned, the basic engine requires more hardware). But I was wrong about that too, so either way you're right[0].

[0] [https://basicengine.org/hardware.html](https://basicengine.org/hardware.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is similar to the Uzebox, which also uses a single microcontroller and full software video signal generation.

[http://uzebox.org/wiki/Main_Page](http://uzebox.org/wiki/Main_Page)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't know about you but I find limited 2D video games .. more games. Nostalgia, and emotional biases asides, there's a thing about the naked abstract nature of these that appeals to the remains of my soul.

<comment><USER8> Because it draws on your imagination and creativity more vs being told this world exists like so with games nowadays.

<comment><USER9> Also because the pattern of the game is more visible and easier to grasp and also easier to asses whether you find the logic of the game compelling or not. And that combined with some creativity can take your mind/imagination somewhere else. Games which are immediate depictions of reality or very detailed kind of keep you right there, there's too much going on to give the imagination some leeway. The same is true for films, music, etc.

<comment><USER7> I stopped gaming ages ago but the few I see in videos or at family reunions bores me to death. The immense landscapes and rendering gives you basically the same amount of control as zelda III (I'm exagerating). It doesn't stimulate you much more if at all.

<comment><USER9> I stopped playing gaming as well except for simple logic games (chess, board games, word games, puzzles etc), but did play with some younger friends a few games a while back and while fun they got boring pretty fast and didn't feel compelled to play again. We played a game called Halo, it's a very immersive game and it is well made but it did not engage creatively at all. You have to shoot one another, that is the main premise of the game but it surely gets complex, you have some missions, etc. The patters of the game is the same with other modern action games - the shoot to kill type of game only what's changed is the decorum, weapons, characters, but it's the same recycled idea over and over. I found games that break that paradigm rarer. Anyways I'm not willing to sink hours into video games, life is short after all

<comment><USER7> Halo is old already, but this line of games seems very similar. My cousin made me play something quite recent (CoD or something like that) and it was a more action paced Counter Strike without all the finesse. Something is lost in that generation.

<comment><USER9> Yes, last time I played that type of game was 10 years ago. I've seen the new call of duty you mentioned and while it's realistic I don't find it too interesting. Sure, it may be used for training for soldiers or something, that type of simulator has good use cases but it leaves me cold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It reminds me of Pico-8. Albeit it being a virtual retro console it does encourage building games that have certain limitations. Some of the games, such as Pico Tennis, are very fun to play in the browser on a phone even.

[https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php](https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is exactly the kind of project I was looking for to try out my idea of an alternate palette to the standard RGBI

[http://blag.fingswotidun.com/2020/07/a-nicer-4-bit-colour- wi...](http://blag.fingswotidun.com/2020/07/a-nicer-4-bit-colour-withhout- fancy.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> The era-appropriate rendition of Golden Brown during the game is a lovely touch, all coming out of a bit-banged resistor ladder! It's a shame game development on this platform seems to also require era-appropriate levels of concentration. That's a device to be proud of.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is similar to my project: [http://www.dodolabs.io/](http://www.dodolabs.io/) Which is a retro 6502 portable game console.

</comment><comment><USER14> Voja Antonic, creator of this project, is also creator of the first widely built and used personal computer in SFRJ (Yugoslavia in communist period) named Galaksija, back in 1983. The very first computer magazine there printed complete manual how to build it in its first issue, and so triggered personal computer revolution.

</comment><comment><USER15> Site looks to be down. Is there a mirror somewhere?

<comment><USER16> [https://web.archive.org/web/20200825090517/http://www.voja.r...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200825090517/http://www.voja.rs/PROJECTS/GAME_HTM/1_intro.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Neat, the Sinclair ZX80/81 had also largely software based video generation, that on the ZX80 had the unfortunate side effect of the screen flickering while typing since both reading input and generating the video signal was too much for the poor machine. What a long way we have come...

</comment><comment><USER18> Jumping Jack, one of my first Speccy games.</comment>


The Secret Pregnant Founder - <AUTHOR> http://melmiranda.com/post/45274414810/the-secret-pregnant-founder

<comment><USER2> You rock - can't believe that you brought two new babies into the world at the same time. I've worked full-time with 3 kids the entire time, including at as a senior leader at a start-up. It can be done! My rule of thumb - there are glass balls and rubber balls in your life. Know which ones will bounce back if you let them drop and which won't

</comment><comment><USER3> If a founder raised money without disclosing that they've already scheduled a sabbatical next year, I would expect them to get crucified for it. Now women might get worse deals unless there's some way they can signal to investors that they'll prioritize the startup above everything else.</comment>


Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/farbrausch/fr_public

<comment><USER3> Most people who were a part of the scene in 2000 remember The Product (1). I remember it winning The Party and being struck by how impressive their work was. If you're on windows, I guess you can download the demo itself (2). At 64kb, it should be a pretty quick download ;-) Their impressiveness has only gone up since 2000, as you can see by watching Debris (3), which at 177kb beats the living crap out of most things you see today.

The amount of work that goes into the tools these guys make is incredible. Quite happy to see ryg, kb and team release all this stuff. There should be a ton of things worthy of checking out in all this source code.

      [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkEsP9H2HGM
      [2] ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/demos/groups/farb-rausch/fr08_final.zip
      [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_efKXc4zd6w

<comment><USER4> I imagined that demo skills would eventually die and the more recent stuff would just end up being bloated or lame. But it really has improved. Infeasibly improved. Debris is amazing. But it isn't the only more recent amazing demo. Someone once asked me whether there was a limit to how realistic demos can be made. I would normally prate on about Shannon information or something, but it was a very smart mathematician who asked me. I did eventually think of a reason though. A demo is never going to contain a model of a piece of paper on which its own source code (plus additional information) is written in the demo. So there have to be some limits. But the limits don't seems to have been reached yet, especially with better and better modelling in the hardware.

<comment><USER5> Your piece of paper example caught me a bit off guard. It sounds pretty similar to a quine ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)> ). I think that the same thing is possible with a demo - write the code to render a piece of paper from an array of letters, and put that part of the source code into the array.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I'm wrong. What I had in mind I guess, is take an existing very impressive 64kb demo, then do this. That might be much harder, but not necessarily impossible in theory.

<comment><USER4> A far better argument for me to have made is that it would be impossible to have a 64kb demo which models a surface on which is printed the source code of all 64kb demos written since the start of the scene decades ago. Of course, if equations that describe all of reality are discovered and fit in 64kb, and the graphics card contains a universe simulator, then maybe it's possible.

<comment><USER6> Such a demo would be possible, it would just take an infinite time to run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember trying to figure out how a certain lensing effect was done in the werkzeug a few years back. I really invested quite a bit of effort in this, and I never did work it out (yes, I did use all of the umm, obvious techniques for this). I'm really looking forward to finally figuring out this one thing that eluded me for so long. Farbrausch are the greatest. Long live Farbrausch.

</comment><comment><USER7> Farbrausch are one of the most amazing demo scene groups out there today. I highly recommend watching the video captures of their demos on Youtube. Alternatively -- or perhaps more authentically -- you can download the executable demos and watch them on your computer. Highly worthwhile!

</comment><comment><USER8> I have been incredibly impressed with their demos over the years.

Their wikipedia entry lists 28 (!) members.

Did these guys work with any well known software/game companies/products?

<comment><AUTHOR> ryg has been at RAD Game Tools for a while now, and mentioned yesterday on Twitter that he's been doing contract work on Valve's hardware experiments. [1]

      [1] http://twitter.com/#!/rygorous/status/190907866037760000

<comment><USER9> While at RAD he's also worked on the D3D stack for Larrabee under contract with Intel and on optimizing the low-level graphics layer for Iggy (RAD's Flash-based UI middleware) across several platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Heaven 7 by Exceed was always one of my favourites - watching it again now, it's still incredibly impressive:

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

<comment><USER4> For the longest time, my favourite was Prophecy.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1tUfIbqKl8>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, I never thought VC++ and MFC are this extensively used in demoscene groups.

<comment><USER12> The PC demoscene started out on DOS and Watcom C++, and switched almost exclusively to Windows and Visual C++ around 1999. It was a natural choice at the time, as Linux wasn't ready for primetime and MSVC really was the best compiler around.

The choice of platform had to take the majority into account: most people didn't want to write demos that ordinary people couldn't watch. The opinion of programmers was not the most important factor anyway, simple because most people in the demoscene were not programmers -- there were musicians, graphics artists and all sorts of non-productive members besides.

<comment><USER13> Really, the demo scene, which started out in the 80's, was using Watcom C++? Watch the behind scenes video of Second Reality (1993). They're coding Pascal and (duh) assembly.

The demoscene was really born out of cracks/intros/loaders which means its origins are C64/Apple/Atari etc and assembly language.

<comment><USER14> In a very distance past, Watcom C++ used to be the best optimizing compiler for MS-DOS.

It was also the first to support extended memory in MS-DOS.

<comment><USER13> I'm not arguing the existence of Watcom C++ 9.5/386 :) But let's be clear the first version of Watcom C++ was released in 1993. To suggest the demoscene started there is ludicrous.

<comment><USER14> There I agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I didn't know this whole demoscene existed. This is amazing.

<comment><USER16> A good place to start looking around is here:

(<http://www.pouet.net/index.php>)

Remember that a youtube capture of a demo will be bigger, and not as good quality, as the actual demo.

<comment><USER17> But the processing power needed to run it will be less.

<comment><USER18> Depends if you're using Flash to play the video :-p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Farbrausch is one of the few very good reasons to be very proud of german programming!

<comment><USER20> What does nationality have to do with anything?

<comment><USER21> From what I remember as an observer, nationality always was a point of pride in the European demoscene, even when tongue in cheek.

<comment><USER22> Eh, no. Or, well, not the last 15 years at least.

And especially not in Germany. Saying you're proud of Germans when you're a German in Germany is considered _scary_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> piece of art.. [https://github.com/farbrausch/fr_public/blob/master/genthree...](https://github.com/farbrausch/fr_public/blob/master/genthree/_viruz2a.asm)

</comment><comment><USER24> Great find. Holy crap does this bring back some memories.

</comment><comment><USER25> the werkkzeug IDE was beautiful - you could take apart every scene in The Popular Demo and see exactly what they did, all while rendering in real time. The interface wasn't pretty, but after working through that first rusty-iron texture, it made me feel like a genius.

</comment><comment><USER9> Fabian just posted the companion blog post: [http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/if-in-doubt-go-to- th...](http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/if-in-doubt-go-to-the-source/)

</comment><comment><USER26> > To whom it may concern,

> Yes, this source code is a total mess. Good luck getting it to compile - <USER2> > had to take out lots of things to make a source release possible.

Well that sounds promising for a release. Good for seeing the idea behind the code though and then write your own tools I guess.</comment>


Ad guy says the tracking cookie will be dead in five years - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/27/tracking-cookie-dead-soon-maybe/

<comment><USER2> He thinks we're going to opt in? Tracking cookies are going to go away, but nothing is going to replace them.</comment>


The 'Robotech' Master - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/05/06/apop050610.DTL

<comment><USER2> "Warner Brothers had acquired the live-action rights for "Robotech," which is being developed by Tobey Maguire's production company. Where is the petition I need to sign to not let Tobey McGuire play Rick Hunter</comment>


An introduction to git-svn - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fournova.com/2011/11/an-introduction-to-git-svn/

<comment><USER2> FYI: These instructions are specific to the Git Tower app on OS X.

<comment><USER3> Actually, this introduction really is independent of a specific GUI application. 95% of it are valid in any case (be it Tower, the command line, or any other frontend you use to access Git).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> git-svn is the best svn client (as you're also using local git).</comment>


Git2Go – GitHub client for iPhone and iPad - <AUTHOR> http://git2go.com <comment><AUTHOR> Did some testing and the user experience is surprisingly great! Didn't think git on iOS could be this easy, but I haven't tried resolving a merge conflict yet.

Looking forward to support for custom git repositories, or even better, private Gitlab servers.

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks extremely nice; well done!

How much is the In App-Purchase to unlock private repositories?

<comment><USER3> 9,99€ :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great. Planning a product hunt post?

<comment><USER3> Thanks! We already have one. ;) [https://www.producthunt.com/tech/git2go-2](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/git2go-2)

<comment><USER4> Voted!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But iOS 9 only ):</comment>


Fiverr IPO's at $700M valuation - <AUTHOR> https://www.barrons.com/articles/fiverr-stock-ipo-strong-debut-gig-economy-company-freelance-marketplace-51560439843 <comment><USER2> Fiverr is effectively a spam factory. I would be curious to see the breakdown of its most popular offerings. How many of them are legitimately creative tasks, and how many are "I will post your link to fifty web 2.0 sites?" More importantly, how much revenue can Fiverr attribute to these "gigs" that are borderline legal? Their F-1 filing does not mention it as a risk factor. [0]

This website has its roots in the gray-hat side of the SEO and affiliate marketing industries. It's shocking to see it valued at $700M. Surely we are in a bubble?

[0] [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1762301/000104746919...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1762301/000104746919003413/a2238869zf-1a.htm#da46501_risk_factors)

<comment><USER3> I spent $500 usd on Fiverr in the last month getting design done, getting studio musicians and rappers recording parts for music. Previously had full animated videos made there. It's pretty great.

<comment><USER4> How do you ensure quality? I usually find 4-5 people for the same tasks and 1 or 2 are in the end to my expectations.

<comment><USER5> Aren't the prices usually low enough that you can have the work done multiple times and choose the best one?

<comment><USER6> Do you pay all the prices, then I don't know that it would be cheap. Do you not pay the ones you don't choose, then I'm not sure it's ethical.

<comment><USER5> At some point, I needed a logo for my hobby website. Nothing fancy, just better than what I could cook up with my non-existent creative skills.

I asked 5 different people on Fiver to create one for $5 each and chose the best one.

This is obviously an example on the low end, but you could expand this to the $500 dollar range per designer for a full website template and still end up with a decent looking thing for $2500.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also use Fiverr, and you can find quality designers with portfolios from Dribbble and even some developers that are competent. You have to dig deep but the quality is there. The negative attitude in this thread is misplaced. Not sure where it is coming from.

For example, I use an iOS developer that charges me $50/hr on Fiverr, and I'm willing to put him against any Google or Facebook developer for quality and exceeding expectations. Although, I will admit that he is a rare find on Fiverr.

<comment><USER8> > developer that charges me $50/hr

> any Google or Facebook developer for quality and exceeding expectations

Something about basic economics tells me that's an exaggeration. But I do agree with your point that there are hidden talents to be found on sites like Fiverr.

<comment><USER9> What part of basic economics tells you this?

I could think of a few ways that this makes total sense.

$50 is $400 in an 8 hour day. There are places where $1000-1500 covers you for the month, even with non-local, white guy pricing.

My hourly comes out to "only" $20/hr more, but my apartment alone is likely a few hundred more than this guy's entire monthly expense profile.

He's going to get consistent work at this price point, so he won't have to hustle for contacts. That's more time billed or spent on the beach.

Stepping away from the economics and getting into comparison to Google/FB engineers, there are tons of people that could outproduce many Google engineers in a startup setting. They just aren't good at Leetcode problems or never took a shot at FB/Google. A lot of stuff just works as an engineer at Google that you don't get for free elsewhere. They're good at leveraging the output of some truly amazing engineers across their org. They're also generally overstaffed.

<comment><USER10> > There are places where $1000-1500 covers you for the month, even with non- > local, white guy pricing.

This is hilarious. There are places were $300 covers you for the month. I was paying $7 a day rent at a hotel at one stage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> LOL

"We are believers in the long-term potential of these marketplaces," MKM Partners' Rohit Kulkarni wrote Wednesday before trading began"

says the guy offloading risk onto a public market -- that's a statement so hilariously full of shit it deserves to be laughed at.

Even worse, he' going to follow up with "unclear pathway to profitability."

good god, here we go again.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow. I know Fiverr for years but I never thought of it more than as a cheap version of freelancer dot com and now it goes to IPO with $700M valuation? That's crazy!

<comment><USER13> Especially crazy given that, as far as I can tell, they have never turned a profit and never will.

<comment><USER14> I'm surprised Fiverr has 360+ employees. I always figured it was 50 folks max, "craigslist" type of company.

<comment><USER15> What the hell those 360+ do there?...

<comment><USER13> Well, some of them are required to manage the others. Those managers need secretaries. Some of them are required to prepare reports for the managers. Some of them provide HR support for such a large workforce. Also, you need IT support for all those secretaries, report-generators, managers, and HR people. Payroll department needs to be larger given how many people work there. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

<comment><USER16> I work at a warehouse with ~300 employees, selling over 70,000 different skus, etc. We have 3 Programmers, and 3 IT/network people, 1 hr, etc. We're hiring more programmers though.

What the heck are 360+ employees doing? You're right you do need lots of management, but there's no way they need that many people. Like, thats a LOT of people.

<comment><USER17> They have 7 offices so there's probably a lot of people who have jobs to communicate between offices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Had a bad experience with a designer on Fiverr. They were "highly rated" and all.

The task was a logo for a side project and we settled on a clean design that was just text and code brackets with a specific font and color scheme (I ended up doing this on my own in the end)

The design was acceptable, but the delivery/communication/execution was atrocious.

The request I made from the start was SVG over transparent backgrounds with the font in two different colors, and three different positions for the logo, so six total SVGs

What I got were:

PNGs JPGs Illustrator files

I went back and forth four times before giving up and just marking the job as complete.

Once I finally got SVGs, they were not over transparent backgrounds and/or they were weirdly cut in ways where you could see border lines halfway below the image, and the SVGs were mixed in with the other file formats.

Every time I asked for what I wanted in explicit detail, I would get the complete opposite with, say, one SVG fixed in an acceptable way but another (which was already acceptable from the last delivery) completely broken again

Overall, completely frustrating

<comment><USER10> Hmmm, I wonder if, no, it can't be. But I do wonder, sometimes, if you get what you pay for.

<comment><USER18> I don't believe this kind of snark is welcome on HN

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One of my favorite songs was produced with Fiverr: [https://youtu.be/v1V5Oc3hMbc](https://youtu.be/v1V5Oc3hMbc)

<comment><USER20> [https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UO3iBE0nsuayzNceZPeK2mynHj...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UO3iBE0nsuayzNceZPeK2mynHjwuktvu)

Here's a tune I made with Fiverr.

Bassist from venezuela, rhodes keyboard from greece, rapper from washington dc, rhythm guitar from finland, jazz guitar from USA, mastered by a guy in croatia.

<comment><USER21> Both of these are so cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've never liked Fiverr since I heard about how they really screwed over voiceoverpete. For reference: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anbBwpoI9TI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anbBwpoI9TI)

<comment><USER23> It is legitimately terrifying the power over our lives these tech companies are amassing. The ability for them to arbitrarily cut us off from our livelihood is terrible. I'm afraid that we are headed toward a world of corporate tyranny if this trend can't be reversed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's crazy to me that a marketplace like this can be trading at 10x revenue w/ -50% net margins when a company like Blue Apron is trading at 0.2x revenue when they're turning the corner to profitability.

<comment><USER13> It is, in fact, crazy, but that doesn't mean Blue Apron is the one whose result is out of whack with the fundamentals. Quite the opposite, in fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> hiring talent in under 24hrs, to stand in front of the Taj Majal[0] to say your (past)startup's tag-line [1]..for just $5... is priceless.

[0][https://www.fiverr.com/arjunrocks/record-a-video-at-taj- maha...](https://www.fiverr.com/arjunrocks/record-a-video-at-taj-mahal--2)

[1][https://www.dropbox.com/s/98udl9ypeuqvcph/M4H07189.mp4?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/98udl9ypeuqvcph/M4H07189.mp4?dl=0)

\- edit - seems like he 2x his rates as of 5yrs ago.

<comment><USER26> That's outstanding!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been a long-time Fiverr user. I've had my share of hits and misses, and it looks like many of you are in the same boat.

Would any of you be interested in Slack group where we can trade Fiverr referrals? If so, I'd be happy to set it up.

<comment><USER26> Yes please.

Like a lot of comments here, the only winning strategy I've found with Fiverr is to hire 3 or 4 sellers for the same task and pick the best.

But I have to admit, I once ordered a completely custom logo for $8 and it was perfect (the 2 week wait was worth it).

<comment><USER28> Seconded!

<comment><USER27> Slack group is created! Instructions on how to get the Slack group invite here [https://www.lewis-lin.com/blog/2019/6/14/better- freelancers-...](https://www.lewis-lin.com/blog/2019/6/14/better-freelancers- slack-group)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Fiverr's competitor Upwork IPOd last year and is currently valued at 1.68B

<comment><USER30> I'm amazed Fiverr is "worth" close to half upwork. Upwork seems to be in an incredibly strong position and that service has improved a ton in the past 2 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are some quality people on Fiverr,but as others already mentioned, you need to spend time finding them. The valuation,on the other hand, is complete overblown nonsense baloon.

<comment><USER31> Then you must believe that about nearly every valuation..

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have used fiver for finding developers to do small business Wordpress work, for telecom consultants, for windows server consultants, for an audio engineer to discuss soundproofing, for a tutor in a new programming language, and for a bit of graphic design.

There is no better market on the web for finding low cost talent if you ask me. I love this website.

</comment><comment><USER33> Fiverr is awesome. Where else can you pay someone to dress up like Jesus and record a personalized Happy Birthday video?

</comment><comment><USER34> I use FIVERR for micro secretarial services and research work. Works great!!!

<comment><USER30> Can you elaborate on exactly the types of things and roughly the pricing you pay for to do this?

<comment><USER34> Sure. 5-10 USD per hour and I create "tenders" for every 2 hour job hence the micro part.

The jobs must be meticulously thought through so they can be communicated succinctly to a person in the other side of the planet.

I also have to go over all the work, because sometimes there are errors.

Sometimes I have several contractors working in the same Google Drive Spreadsheet on separate sections at the same time. That is pretty cool to do, and watch happen in real time.

<comment><USER30> Thanks, out of curiosity, how is this work not better suited for Mechanical Turk?

<comment><USER34> Maybe you are right. I never tried it.

<comment><USER30> Cool. Not meaning to criticize, but am genuinely curious if fiverr has something special here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is not having a LinkedIn that big of a deal? - <AUTHOR> It seems like somehow every application I fill out these days has a box to insert your LinkedIn profile URL to it. Do recruiters really care about it that much? <comment><USER2> > Do recruiters really care about it that much?

This is a quick cheat for _' are they HOT or NOT'_ when it come to determining if your candidate profile is within range.

Oddly enough, in some circles -- the ZERO Online profile candidates are the most desirable.</comment>


Global Censorship on Revolutions? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/legex/global-censorship-on-revolutions-72741f1ca330 <comment><USER2> The whole premise of this post is incorrect.

The EUCJ did not rule that national courts can order Facebook to take down content globally. It simply ruled that EU law did not say anything about this one way or the other when asked if it did.

Let's take a deep breath, and calm down.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my take on the latest ruling by the European Court of Justice. Please do go through it and let me know your valuable opinions.</comment>