Caching at Netflix: The Hidden Microservice (2016) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzdxgx3RC0Q <comment><USER2> i'm curious. which one netflix is currently using evcache or dynomite ([https://github.com/Netflix/dynomite](https://github.com/Netflix/dynomite)) ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Whos YouTube channel is this</comment>


Show HN: I made a graph to help determine which health insurance is cheapest. - <AUTHOR> http://nonegames.net/healthcare/

<comment><AUTHOR> I made it for myself but I thought others might be interested in seeing it as well. If anyone has any feedback (other than site design :)), let me know. I tried running this by as many people as I could before posting it here to try to see if my thought process in picking insurance made sense.

</comment><comment><USER2> The key to understanding this is that it is missing time as a variable. With Premier 10, you will never have to shell out more than $3000 at once. With Solution 2500, you may have to shell out $5000 at once. The other costs are spread evenly throughout the 26 payments.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is true but even if you have to shell out $5000 up front once, you are still paying $2000 less by the end of the year. So it's like your risk is $2000 greater but you save it by the end of the year, even if that risk was actualized.

Also, it's important to look yearly rather than just as separate events because the out of pocket max resets yearly rather than per event.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thinking in more detail about it, Because I am starting insurance halfway through the year, I will actually have around 13 pay periods rather than 26. So that shows the chart in a different light as well. Solution 2500 isn't the clear winner at 13 pay periods that it was at 26.</comment></comment></comment>


TSA Security Theater Described In One Simple Infographic - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120405/04390118385/tsa-security-theater-described-one-simple-infographic.shtml

<comment><USER2> Can I ask what classifies an image as an 'infographic' as opposed to 'fancy type applied to some bullet points and encoded into an image'? The purpose of an infographic is to make important, or otherwise difficult-to-communicate information available at a glance; accessibility is paramount. Yet for information such as this, I feel I'd prefer a list of bullet points that I can copy and paste; hyperlinks I can click on instead of URLs I have to type character-by-character into my browser. These days I could take almost any paragraph of text or slide deck, apply a few H&FJ typefaces, colors and borders, and call it an 'infographic'.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I also do not see how this infographic is 'simple'

<comment><USER4> Based on most infographics I've seen a better definition would be "information jumble with hidden SEO motives"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We need a word other than "infographic" for these things. A good infographic is more than big numbers next to pictures -- in a successful design, the images do most of the heavy lifting in communicating the shape or trends of the information.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that people are attracted to (real) infographics. Using a more accurate word means fewer visitors. So, sadly, I doubt it'll ever happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> TSA in a sentence:

$60 Billion spent with zero terrorists caught, 16 so-called flew undetected, 7 out of 10 weapons undetected and all scanning machines bought in the past and present are worthless.

(and so effective, coming soon to a bus-station, train-station and highway near you)

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, if you can't trust the unbiased thinktank at OnlineCriminalJusticeDegree.com who can you trust?

</comment><comment><USER9> LOL at "Chances of dying in a terrorist attack: 1 in 30 million. Chances of getting cancer from a single TSA scan: 1 in 30 million."

Some of the statistics are kinda iffy/fuzzy at this point, but you can't argue with the thrust of the thing.

Re: Infographics... they are simply static dashboards rearranged into easy-to- read patterns. This one gets bonus points for a few custom graphics.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love that the "infographic" is created by OnlineCriminalJusticeDegree.org

</comment><comment><USER11> The most interesting data for me is the timeline near the bottom and it's the one thing they didn't illustrate.

</comment><comment><USER12> In politics and religion, rational arguments are usually overruled by emotional arguments.

</comment><comment><USER13> When islamic extremist terrorism comes back to this country, we will not be physically able to stop them and keep a free first world country. There are a billion ways for anyone with half a brain to go on killing sprees where they take out 100 innocents before the police take care of him.

The islamic extremists are not attacking because it would be suicide to do so. Now they are building a power base in america, when the signal is given for terrorism to resume, a groin pat down by the tsa will not lower the death toll/day at all.</comment>


Expanding your service to multiple verticals - <AUTHOR> http://spencerfry.com/building-blocks

<comment><USER2> If you're adding more verticals to a parent product, make sure the verticals you add are closely linked in the mind of consumers, and not just in the data that defines them.

We've seen both sides of this at HotPads. The site started out with rental housing only and added for-sale listings a bit later. Those two verticals are closely linked and we made a 'buy vs. rent' search to tie them together. The addition of the real estate vertical worked out very well.

Last year we added hotel and vacation rental listings. Aside from tighter scheduling rules, the data behind these listings is very close to apartments, but nobody thinks about finding a place to stay the same way they think about finding a place to live, so getting users for those verticals has been much more of a struggle.

<comment><USER3> similar to "buy vs. rent" you could probably have something like "hotel vs lease"? It seems like the duration of stay is key. Another key might be business users - if you travel for business and have to stay with client for e.g. three weeks or a whole months maybe there is a gap in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The bigger question is how you decide which vertical to go after, and if it is a big enough opportunity.

Ideally, you want to address the biggest market possible, but you can't do that and have passionate early adopters at the same time. No having your cake and eating it too. Picking the right vertical and sticking to it in the beginning requires a fair bit of effort.</comment>


Apply for the Microsoft Hololens Development Edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us/development-edition <comment><USER2> Have the fixed the issues with the EXTREMELY NARROW field of view?

<comment><USER3> no they haven't, its still narrow as hell.

nice one hackernews, downvoting the most important question in this thread...

i guess this is full of MS fanboys that don't mind being scammed out of 3k dollars..

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure the narrow field of vision is that important for a dev. kit. The goal is to let people work out how best to produce apps for this kind of interface.

If they can't sort it for consumer release, that's a much bigger issue of course. My guess (and it's just that) would be that they'll be trying to improve field of vision for the consumer release, as from the reviews I read it was the one major negative people cited.

<comment><USER3> well i would be more inclined to agree if they didn't announce their product with full view (at least 120º) capability.

i mean, we all saw the videos from the announcement, and the "live" demos. and that was just pure lies no matter how you want to paint them.

also even if they didn't lie, don't we need the dev kit to have the same full capabilities as the final product? would you acquire an early dev kit for some new console, only to find out that it has less ram, gpu and/or cpu than the final product? how can we actually test it fully?

<comment><AUTHOR> > would you acquire an early dev kit for some new console, only to find out > that it has less ram, gpu and/or cpu than the final product? how can we > actually test it fully?

I guess for MS is important to have a good portfolio of apps before the product is launched to the public. This class of unpolished dev kits are not unheard in MS world, Do you remember when the dev kits for the XBox were Apple Power Macs?

<comment><USER3> they were, but the hardware was the same was it not?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really, just the processor was the same, but it was the best they could do in a short time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good God, $3,000 USD is a little outside my price range. Hopefully the consumer edition will be able to knock the price down a little bit.

I really wanted to get my hands on one of these, but it looks like I'll have to wait a little longer.

<comment><USER6> They have said it was a full Windows 10 computer, so I'm not entirely shocked by the $3000 price, but I do think that the consumer version will likely have to be cheaper to sell it to the average consumer.

<comment><USER7> They can define what "full Windows 10 computer" means. If Microsoft ported it, that $9 ARM based computer that showed up on kickstarter last year could be a "full Windows 10 computer".

They're trying to weed out early adopters to avoid dooming a product with known shortfalls that can be solved with product iteration and time (low FOV, tracking lag, etc).

Like what Google Glass is doing, except they seem to be making it less "glamorous" and possibly tethering it to a PC of some sort.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, I think they've defined pretty well what "full Windows 10 computer" means in this case: You are strapping a full Xbox One with Kinect onto your head. Last I checked, you can't run a Kinect very well on a $9 ARM chip. Based on graphics we've seen in demos I doubt the system hardware is anything less than we see in an Xbox One, but it's definitely not less than what we see on a Surface Pro, form factor for form factor.

It's possible that they are trying to weed out early adopters with a high cost, but with entire new hardware that's not been mass produced to date (the holographic display, the proprietary holographic processing unit) it certainly seems like this is probably more a reflection of actual production costs today. It's certainly long been a tradition of console game systems that the early development machines are an order of magnitude (as much as even 100x, historically) more expensive than the final retail hardware. (Which also historically has been a profit center for some console generations when they were charging the same development box costs long after the retail cost margin drops.) It's very much a case that I think the only real comparison is to the Xbox One and we don't have a lot of data on that as Xbox One never sold dev kits to the public, that's certainly something new with the Developer Edition of the HoloLens.

Also, for what it's worth I've not heard any reports of "tracking lag" (in fact just the opposite from articles I've followed to date, that the HoloLens seems to have "tracking magic") and I'm willing to believe that the adjustments of the device's FOV are as much for safety reasons as anything else (we humans use our peripheral vision for a lot of things when navigating the real world). Certainly the same journalists complaining about the FOV have also stated that they've experienced different FOV in different demos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> TLDR: $3,000 dollars.

This is basically using the free market to sort out who really needs the kits.

Whereas the Rift dev kits could, and still can be, Ebayed for hundreds more than their purchase price.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have any thoughts about the pros and cons of this over the Oculus rift for scientific visualization? It seems that it might be easier to deal with user interaction for the Hololens, but without playing with one, it would be hard for me to say.

<comment><USER8> The hololens's first big advantage here is that you don't have to loose sight of the other people around you while using it. A couple of people can sit around and see both each other and the visualization they are working on.

Secondly, you can see the environment around you. For science purposes this may not matter, but for industrial visualization, this makes all the difference in the world.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for that--I hadn't even considered the possibility of multiple viewers!

<comment><USER6> Yep, multiple viewers, including remote viewers, seems to be a big deal for Microsoft. Certainly that has been a big explicit focus of the JPL, Architecture, and Skype demos they've been showing. (It's also an implicit part of all their on-stage demos as well; supposedly the fancy camera rig is acting just like any other HoloLens and sharing the same scenes directly as the actual devices will in real time.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >To build a vibrant community, we are looking for a wide spectrum of developers to create diverse experiences.

Oh, great!

>You are a developer in the United States (including Puerto Rico) or Canada where the Development Edition will first be available.

>Please note that the Development Edition hardware and experiences are in English only.

Oh.

</comment><comment><USER11> """holographic computing"""

Pretty sure they don't use any holographic technology and it's "just standard AR". US only...meh. There also doesn't seem to be any university licensing program. Could be done quite a bit better.

<comment><USER12> They use a holographic waveguide, but it isnt like looking at real volumetric hologram, the actual image formed is still flat at fixed focus. But you do get stereo and parallax from head movement, the only thing lacking is variable focus/eye accommodation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm just getting an Error while trying to get to the Survey form.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, there is a development one. Looks forward to download it for my project development. Love it!</comment>


Autoencoding Blade Runner: reconstructing films with artificial neural networks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Terrybroad/autoencoding-blade-runner-88941213abbe <comment><USER2> > The model also struggles to make a recognisable reconstruction when the > scene is very low contrast, especially with faces.

It could be getting this wrong if his error function is calculating linear data from the given image pixels, which are in the totally not linear sRGB colorspace. That would make it badly underestimate any error in a dark image.

Quick check of the PIL docs doesn't mention gamma compensation, so they probably forgot about it. People usually do.

<comment><USER3> Actually, it would be even worse if it was run on gamma-corrected (proportional to light intensity) pixels. The sRGB space is designed to approximate human perception, which is only advantageous for this application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The autoencoder converts an image to a reduced code then back to the original image. The idea is similar to lossy compression, but it's geared specifically for the dataset that it's trained on.

According to the defaults in the code, it uses float32 arrays of the following sizes:

      image: 144 x 256 x 3 = 110,592
      code:  200

Note that the sequence of codes that the movie is converted to could possibly be further compressed.

<comment><USER5> This should be mentioned in the article, I was looking for a simple mathematical comparison.

<comment><USER6> Point taken! I have edited the article now, there has obviously been some confusion and was an oversight on my part not to have explained that properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Correct me if I haven't looked into this closely, but one glaring problem is that all the results are from the training set. So it's not surprising you get something movie-ish by running the network over a movie _it was trained on_ ; the network has already seen what the output of the movie should look like.

<comment><USER8> He only trained it on Blade Runner, I think. (This is doable because a single movie has a lot of frames.) So all of the other movies should be out of sample.

<comment><USER7> Some of the other movies (the really bad examples) are out of sample. The last example is also from training set, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is incredible, and almost sounds like the algorithm dreamed up by Pied Piper's middle-out. Incredible application of machine learning technology.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a little confused by the article: it appears to me that the input to the neural net is a series of frames, and the output is a series of frames? So it works as a filter? Or is the input key-frames, and so the net extrapolates intermediary frames from keyframes?

[ed: does indeed appear from the github page, that the input is a series of png frames, and the output is the same number of png frames, filtered through the neural net. No compression, but rather a filter operation?]

<comment><USER11> When one talks about autoencoding it usually means "compression"

I think it's doing something like this (but more complex) [https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/demo/autoe...](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/demo/autoencoder.html) where you have a bottleneck on the network

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What I found most interesting was that A Scanner Darkly, which is rotoscoped, looked live action in several of the coherent frames that had been filtered through his Blade Runner-trained network.

</comment><comment><USER13> Correct me if I am wrong, but it is not so much "reconstruction" as "compression". (Or I got it wrong. Or the description is utterly unclear: reconstruct what from what.)

If it is the compression case, I am curious for the size of the compressed movie.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a developer who knows nothing about AI but is fascinated by the recent painting/music/"dreaming" applications of it.

What would be some good resources for 1. getting the bare minimum knowledge required for using existing libraries like Tensorflow 2. going a bit further and having at least some basic understanding of how most popular ML/AI algorithms work ?

</comment><comment><USER15> What is the difference between using a neural network to do this and using a filter that obtains the same or similar effect by distorting the frames of the input randomly?

I guess I feel like there's no practical result here. It's only interesting from an aesthetic point of view.

Am I being unfair?

<comment><USER16> After reading the article, I'm still not sure what the purpose of the training is. If they're trying to reconstruct a film from stills, it seems like a failure since it looks like they wind-up with all sorts of swirly stuff rather than, say, the original film.

If they're trying to create interesting swirly stuff, where do they intend to go after that?

I mean, sure it's aesthetic though not on the level of weirdness of deep dreams modification.

<comment><USER17> I am not an expert, but: This approach creates powerful embeddings for images. It can convert an image into embedding space and vice-versa, generate images back from embeddings. It is built to function like a perception and imagination module. The embeddings are much lower dimensional and the latent variables are disentangled. There is a component for "has glasses" which you can flip and get the same image + glasses, for example. It is obvious this would be very useful in building all sorts of classifiers, image generators and agents (because agents need to compute reward over state and action space and disentangled representations of the state space are good for this task).

<comment><USER7> The article does not evaluate the quality of the embeddings, so there's not much to say about all of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a cool thing this guy did.. It would be interesting to see how small the files are that are generated in this process.. Just low pass filtering the video like somebody else suggested would probably achieve a similarly lossy image. I guess what I take away from this is that maybe the way we store info in our brains looks kind of like this? Kinda fuzzy versions of the real thing?

Would be interesting if somebody one of these days can actually reconstruct to a high level of fidelity what our brain is "seeing".. I bet it would look kind of like this..

<comment><USER19> 2011: [http://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain- movies/](http://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/)

There's probably newer research out there too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> on a side note, I never heard this voice over version before. I am only used to the Harrison Ford voice over. This one lets me understand why many didn't like the VO.

Now back to the article, can someone explain about how many passes before it gets to near film quality? Can it extrapolate missing frames eventually?

<comment><USER21> That particular voiceover is from the theatrical trailer, it wasn't in any of the 125050123.07 versions of the movie. You can see it here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lW0F1sccqk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lW0F1sccqk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article lacks some details (I guess many can be found in cited papers), but it definitely seems to be a giant step toward usable large scale image analysis (providing a meaningful description). Maybe this could benefit google's new cpu...

</comment><comment><USER23> What are the potential applications for an autoencoder, aside from an exercise in neural networks?

Lossy compression with super high compression rates?

</comment><comment><USER24> Very interesting. This makes me wonder if a similar technique can be used for compression?

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. The point of an autoencoder is dimensionality reduction: boil a big set of data down to a few hundred or thousand numbers in a vector which summarizes it. You could treat it either as lossy compression and store just the encoding, or you can treat it as a hybrid format in which the autoencoder lossy encoding is then corrected to lossless by additional bits in the stream.

In practice, even the hyper-efficient compression algorithms used in something like zpaq tend to use only very small shallow predictive neural networks because no one wants to wait days for their data to be compressed or ship around big neural nets as part of their archives, so it's more of an information-theoretic curiosity. Few enough people will even use 'xz'.

<comment><USER25> You could, but I don't think this would be competitive on compression ratio at all, even allowing for an order of magnitude more time.

<comment><USER26> The technique is very effective, after all a variant of paq holds a compression record. [http://prize.hutter1.net/](http://prize.hutter1.net/) You can try paq yourself in PeaZip. [http://filehippo.com/download_peazip_64/](http://filehippo.com/download_peazip_64/)

<comment><USER25> Last I checked, PAQ only uses a shallow (two layer) neural network as a last step to weight the predictions from the multiple handmade next-bit prediction models it contains.

<comment><USER26> So, you think the additional accuracy of the larger neural network isn't enough to overcome the storage size of the network itself?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Klikaklu - iPhone Treasure Hunts with GPS & Image Matching - <AUTHOR> http://klikaklu.com

<comment><USER2> Cool! Really like the idea. If you play your cards right, you could make Klikaklu a wonderful example of what social integration can do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Do you have something in particular in mind?

<comment><USER2> Nothing in particular, at least for now. Seeing your app was the first time I've ever thought that social integration would make sense.</comment></comment></comment>


Despite Netflix and Amazon Prime, most of the world watches pirated content - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/most-viewers-watch-pirated-content <comment><USER2> Most of the world does not have Netflix, let alone Amazon Prime. And even when they start expanding, content selection is between 10-20% of the ones available in western countries.</comment>


Rethinking Police Searches of Computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/gizmodo-warrant-searching-journalists-terabyte-age

<comment><USER2> _At the very least, the courts should forbid the police from looking at any file timestamped before March 18, 2010_

As already pointed out timestamps can often be a problem.Limiting searches to a specific timeframe is difficult because of how the forensic tools work. It's infeasible to tell the tool "only search files and data between these dates". Indeed I wish that _was_ possible - it would make things much faster!

But more importantly we _are_ limited in what we can investigate. Not just for legal reasons but for cost as well. As a forensic examiner I feel (and I know most of my colleagues do as well) ethically obliged to stick to the requirements of the case - as tempting (for personal interest) as it is to poke into other corners of peoples lives it is entirely unethical and wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> > At the very least, the courts should forbid the police from looking at any > file timestamped before March 18, 2010

Except that timestamps can be altered.

<comment><USER4> True, but if someone is ordered to turn over 'all documents pertaining to topic X', they still might withhold documents. We don't allow the police to search all documents, just in case.

{edit} It would get messy if he was on a computer that had a faulty cmos battery (i.e. randomly your system clock is reset to the unix epoch). Trying to figure out the true date of files with timestamps of December 31, 1969 would be difficult. ;-) (I know that's prior to the epoch, but I had a faulty cmos battery in an old PowerBook and that's what would happen)

<comment><USER5> The timestamps are before the epoch because you live in the western hemisphere, so your timezone is GMT-N.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the police are going to confiscate, why would they confiscate the whole computers, and not just the drives? Furhter, why not provide the option for the guy being served to get some new drives and copy the data to them before the police confiscate the original?

<comment><USER2> Usually the answer is that police, generally, have no clue about computers - enough to seize machines but not to safely remove the drives. Clearly that's not the case in this specific incident.

But there are other reasons. Firstly, when you remove drives from the machines you have to open it up, photograph them in situ, remove the drives, image and replace them. It's a reasonably time consuming job (and I doubt you'd want police in your home for hours doing it :)). Secondly there may be issues imaging the drive; wrong connectors or just fickle drives. Usually in such a case you can fire up the original machine with the drive attached and load a forensic imager from CD to pull the data (in other words it's a fail safe). And finally you have to photograph the computer CMOS time next to an atomic clock to help validate any timestamps on the hard drives.

<comment><USER6> Awesome detailed answer, thanks! My questions come from a basic concern for the suspect, and presumption of innocence before proven guilty. A confiscated computer not only may require extra care in "plain sight" restrictions as outlined in the article, but also extra care in "undue hardship". If I keep all my records on a computer, and that computer is confiscated, I am now without any way of doing basic stuff like paying bills. It would seem that being able to retain a copy of the data is relatively trivial, so such an option should be made available. Given that current practices seem to be "never see your stuff again", is there any reason not to allow it? (Perhaps not as its taken, but shortly thereafter).

<comment><USER2> Yeh. You've touched on the inherent trade off of my job. If you have critical stuff on your computer then we will do our best to get a copy back to you asap (of course I can only talk for us).

The problem is not retaining the data. We work from images anyway. The issue is that if the drive contains evidence returning the original would probably kill the case in court. If a defence analyst questions the data - say accuses us of faking it - how do you prove that if it goes back to the suspect.

<comment><USER6> I totally understand that last part, about evidence custody stuff. I find it vaguely totemic, in that the "one true datathingy" must be preserved. (not on your part necessarily, on the whole court system in general). Good on you guys for getting data back to the suspect. I presume that if it all comes from Images anyway, it would be trivial for me to bring in a couple TB of NAS and say, "data please" and just get raw image dumps.

I think to clarify my above stuff: Rules of evidence should state that images of the computer files in custody should be made available to suspects in some short amount of time after they are processed, due to the easy copy aspect of digital media, and the critical nature some data on the drives.

<comment><USER2> Yes I wish that happened more to be honest.

Currently the issue is that it is a logistical nghtmare die to how large police forces work. Unfortunately we are on the outside so our suggestions mostly fall on deaf ears at management level :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess we're going to find out how good Jason Chen's back up strategy is. I doubt he'll write anything for Gizmodo for a little while, but I wonder how long it will take him to get back up and running with all of his systems seized.

</comment><comment><USER8> If I'm a paranoid tech journalist (I'm not), everything would be tucked away in a hidden TrueCrypt volume masked as a swap file, and all my other files would be in the cloud. Not sure seizures are even useful in such a case.

<comment><USER9> I get the feeling that your "cloud" service provider will turn over your stuff quickly and inform you later.

<comment><USER10> IANAL but I don't think they can compel you to give your truecrypt passwords as they're in your head. There was an ongoing court case (involving child pornography) about this topic.

<comment><USER8> Even then, I think TrueCrypt lets you create a second volume within the initial volume, and leaves no trace that the second volume even exists.

<comment><USER4> The problem therein is programs that record your 'most recent documents.' If they refer to documents that aren't anywhere in what they confiscated, and/or on a volume that doesn't exist they may suspect that you have a hidden volume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Forensic guys want to take images of the storage devices. They use tools such as dcfldd or purpose-built devices (Tableu) to do this. They'll then analyze the images and probably never touch the guy's hardware again. It will sit in a evidence room for eons. They could return the hardware as soon as they've done the imaging, but I've never seen that happen. Use whole disk encryption everywhere :)</comment>


"Solar Freaking Roadways" in the wild - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/02/solar-roadways-public-test/ <comment><USER2> But they put them in the middle of the town square instead of a road, and the lights are barely visible at day.</comment>


Six Levels of Interaction with a System - <AUTHOR> https://www.charlieharrington.com/the-six-levels-of-interaction-with-a-system <comment><USER2> I'd like to go one level further add what I believe is one of the most important ways of interacting with a system, which is what I'll call "re- purpose".

To carry on with the automotive analogy, I've likely achieved "level 5" of a car: I've done several clutch replacements, rebuilt a suspension, and my living room is full of car parts turned art pieces. But there are still things I want to do that extend the functionality of the car, so it can do things the original designers never intended, but that suit my needs better.

I think this is the critical step in innovation: taking something as it is and being able to extend traditional "mastery" of the subject and create something new and valuable. At that point, the cycle starts over: most people won't use the thing, or some will use it for its first order purpose, but some dedicated group of folks will dive deep and build on what you did to create something new.

Educationally, I used to chat with my professors about how the theory they used to write tests, and the best ones always fixed 100% at something we had not yet learned, but could be derived from what we had been taught. You could still get an A (90%) by regurgitating information by rot memorization, but that extension was what showed you could move the field forward. Not only did it make the tests more challenging, it also made the tests more fun.

<comment><USER3> OP here. I love the concept of "re-purpose" \- I was thinking that Level 5 meant that you could build/re-build the system however you choose. But there's definitely a difference between re-building to a spec versus building something new from same components or, as you say, designing something the designers never intended. Would love to hear your ideas for what you want to re-purpose on your car!

My economics professors in college followed the same school of thought for our midterms and exams. So many students couldn't handle the idea that we were going to see things on the test that "hadn't yet been taught" to them. The tests were brutal, but felt like real learning was happening.

<comment><USER2> > But there's definitely a difference between re-building to a spec versus > building something new from same components or, as you say, designing > something the designers never intended

I think this is where I like the distinctions below on extension vs invention. Sometimes you're just taking what's there and re-arranging it; sometimes, you're adding new things to replace the existing ones, sometimes you need to clean slate using what you learned from the previous steps.

> Would love to hear your ideas for what you want to re-purpose on your car!

Here are a few examples:

\- [https://f87.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1675296](https://f87.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1675296) \- [https://f87.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?p=26245043](https://f87.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?p=26245043)

It's a surprisingly good intellectual exercise during quarantine :D

I think that the other critical piece you mention is "having a goal". Most people are only interested in getting from point A to point B, so they stay at level 1 of cars (or computers, or investing). Once you set a goal for yourself, the incentives shift and you're willing to dive deeper into the levels mentioned here.

I often get asked for recommendations on "what programming language to learn" from people interested in learning to code, at which point I ask them "what do you want to do?" Having a goal for which programming is a solution is far more important than learning a language, and the intrinsic motivation will push people to discover the solutions vs the people just doing it because they've been told they should.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great article and it's a nice model for understanding users.

I think I would add at least two levels beyond 5: (6) extend (7) design (8) invent

Admittedly level 8 is going beyond the useful purpose of this model. Still, it's how I think of things.

<comment><USER3> I love these extensions, and completely agree. If I write a follow-up, I'll definitely add these levels. Especially because, right now, my article doesn't talk at all about where these systems come from in the first place. They are not invented by gods, but real people who have traveled this journey. By adding these levels to the model, the notion of making a "Claude Shannon-like" invention or discovery (something at its core that is simple yet powerful, and obvious-in-retrospect) becomes more approachable for a mere learner.

<comment><USER4> I always like this quote:

What I can't create I don't understand -Richard Feynman

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to compare and contrast e.g. a F1 racer driver vs a pit stop mechanic in this model (or an airplane pilot/mechanic/aeronautic engineer).</comment>


What insights can an LCD display give us about time's arrow? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160913-the-physics-of-time-puzzle/ <comment><USER2> This article ends disappointingly in a series of mental exercises. The "LCD" involved is the 8-shape commonly used in LCDs to allow any digit to be displayed. There is no discussion about how light traversing a liquid crystal display illuminates time's arrow, nor the change undergone when a liquid crystal is electrified.

<comment><USER3> I'm also not sure why LCD is used as the example. Wouldn't a cellular automata (or a simplification of one) be a better example here?

<comment><USER4> That is a cellular automaton, whether or not they call it one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry, naive question here: how do we know that time's moving forward? If it moves back and forth, wouldn't we, being inside time and our own internal states dictated by the physical state of our own matter, be unable to perceive that differently from time going forward-only?

<comment><USER4> The question of "time" and what you might call "metatime" are two different ones. "How does time work?" is a legitimately interesting question on its own without considering "metatime", and amenable to at least a certain amount of investigation. "Does time perhaps get scrambled around in ways we can't possibly observe?" is at least academically interesting, but in contrast, not very amenable to investigation. How could we _prove_ that the multiple-world hypothesis is true? How can we _prove_ that the universe does not simply stop five minutes from now? Or ram into what proves to be something else that we intersect in our future? How could we _prove_ whether or not the Great Simulator does or does not roll back the simulation sometimes because It did not like the particular set of results? If there are ways of investigating these questions, they are much less obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Why is the time we call "now" so special to us in the real world, but not at > all special in any way in physics

Isn't this, trivially, just that it represents the most updated information we have in order to elaborate what to do next?</comment>


Show HN: I made a social news aggregator - <AUTHOR> https://newster.app <comment><AUTHOR> Been working on this project for the past month, it's still a work in progress but take a look if you're interested.

Would love to hear your thoughts on how to make it better,

-Markus

</comment><comment><USER2> every thumbnail is strange.. looks like they were intended to be square but stretched?

don't bug me to log in until i've gone through a couple stories first?

amazon link just cause, seems a bit out of place</comment>


SQL Operations Studio - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio <comment><USER2> Oh please please please postgres support! The only free+open source option for Linux is Sqlectron ([https://github.com/sqlectron/sqlectron- gui](https://github.com/sqlectron/sqlectron-gui)) which has massive performance issues.

I badly want an alternative to DataGrip. It's great, but it's not free and its open source license criteria are frankly ridiculous [[https://www.jetbrains.com/buy/opensource/?product=datagrip](https://www.jetbrains.com/buy/opensource/?product=datagrip)]:

>> Your OS project may not offer paid sponsorship; receive funding from commercial companies or organizations (NGO, education, research, or governmental). You do not provide any paid support, consulting or training services for your OS project, and you do not distribute paid versions of your OS software. Contributors who are paid to work on the project are not eligible.

<comment><USER3> Well, basically they only want to give it away for free, if you actually cannot pay for it. That seems reasonable. But I agree, an OS alternative would be great, and this seems like it could be it.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I understand the logic behind the licensing.

However, under the guise of promoting open source, what this actually does is it promotes _giving your work away for free_ and discourages making money with open source products.

As a huge proponent of open source myself, I have no problem with projects that are open source and make money; anything that isn't "hobbyist level" should be able to make money, and if you want to make money your mindset shouldn't fall back on going closed source.

Huge shout out to Sentry in that matter: They are open source, and if you're open source they service you for free. [https://sentry.io/for/open- source/](https://sentry.io/for/open-source/) \-- Comparatively, DataGrip is closed source, and they only give you a free license if you can't make money. Very different mindset...

<comment><USER3> I get your point, but also... You are complaining that they are not willing to give _their_ work away, unless you are willing to give _your_ work away.

<comment><USER2> But it's not symmetrical like that: DataGrip isn't open source.

It's not so much a complaint (they're within their rights), I just find it uneasy to ask people to forego revenue. I feel it sends the wrong message and promotes the wrong mindset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess it's a good thing I didn't do the project I was thinking about. I observed the fact that SQL Server had no management tool that was cross- platform, and thought perhaps I would build such a thing. Nice work Microsoft!

On a side-note, I'd love to see an even more minimalist stripped-down, read- mostly query/tabular result only (with pivot tables) tool, which had some local columnar storage caching/query engine, and simple import/export to common file formats as well. A simple "SQL notebook" that was cross platform, if you will, but worked more like a traditional query tool. And not embedded in MS Excel, like PowerQuery or PowerPivot (although it's powerful!).

Something lighter weight than BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, etc., definitely lighter weight than tools such as SSMS, DBeaver, SQuirrel, etc. - not for administrative use. I've seen a few applications that are coming close listed on HN lately, but would be nice to have something as pretty as this and which is open source.

Perhaps a fork with the admin features stripped out, some additional plumbing added, and read-only connections, I'm not sure.

Will have to think about it. Main use case is data scientists / data analysts / SQL power users.

<comment><USER5> As for cross-platform, VS Code has a plugin for SQL Server. It doesn't provide all the graphical management tools that SSMS does but all the stored procedures are available, naturally.

If you're on a Mac, i suggest [1] Hankinsoft's SQL Studio. I've been using it daily for a couple of years. It's very light weight and supports most db's. It has some neat functions too; like marking rows and columns, right click and get insert statements. It's not free, but for me, it has been well worth the price.

If you want something for quick data analysis, I would suggest looking into queryStorm [2]. It was on HN's front page [3] last week, but for it's C# capabilities. It started as as SQL query tool for excel. I have yet to try it but it seems very useful and fast. Although I don't think it has any column store caching.

[1] [http://www.hankinsoft.com](http://www.hankinsoft.com)

[2] [https://querystorm.com](https://querystorm.com)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670030)

<comment><USER4> QueryStorm looks cool and appears to use SQLite for local joins on the desktop, which gets you pretty far (column store would probably get you further). My only gripe here is being tied to Excel and potentially what looks like limited data source support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In case you're wondering, or just want to confirm the reason for the presence of a "privacy statement" \--- yes, it does phone home:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio/tree/master/src/vs...](https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio/tree/master/src/vs/platform/telemetry)

At least the source is available, so it should be relatively easy to remove, but as the saying goes, "look before you leap"...

<comment><USER7> Looks like it's opt-in [0]

[0]: [https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio/blob/6e05dd7fa13d2...](https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio/blob/6e05dd7fa13d2e5b7260314609e69093cc2142f2/src/vs/platform/telemetry/common/telemetryService.ts#L146)

<comment><USER8> That looks like opt-out (it's named "telemetry.enableTelemetry" and has "'default': true").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No Postgres support yet. Looks like a great app though. [https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio/issues/56](https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio/issues/56)

<comment><USER6> You're kidding, right?

This is a Microsoft product. Microsoft have their own database. What value is it to them to help people continue using competitor's products?

Besides, it's not like Postgres doesn't have plenty of GUI tools already:

[https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Community_Guide_to_PostgreS...](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Community_Guide_to_PostgreSQL_GUI_Tools)

<comment><USER10> I was actually in the room listening as the question came up to the team that makes this tool, its not off the table at all.

The value to them is Azure, which hosts open source databases, why not give your customers the decent tooling at the same time?

You'll even find things in the tool that reference non-Microsoft language, eg the button generally labeled "Estimated Execution Plan" in SQL Server Management Studio is labeled "Explain".

The methodology behind the plugin absolutely allows abstracting out the MSSQL specific components, its just an open source fork of VS Code.

<comment><USER11> I implore you to do this. Every time pgadmin dies, I also die a little inside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what SSMS can do that this can't? SSMS is not cross platform as far as I know, whereas this is. Would be nice if they elaborated on the differences and pros/cons.

<comment><USER13> On my first cursory glance: no table designer, no execute stored procedure GUI

There's a lot of little things I wish SSMS had/did (like inline text search for sproc/table) and was hoping this would have it. The execution plan screen (explain in this IDE) is a lot cleaner, though.

<comment><USER14> What do you mean "inline text search for sproc"?

I use a combination of SQL Hunting Dog [http://sql-hunting- dog.com/](http://sql-hunting-dog.com/) (quick search all object names) and a SQL script from the (free) SSMSBoost plugin that looks at most object definitions but not table columns unfortunately. I've used Red Gate's SQL Search in the past but it's always been slow and buggy over the VPN.

If you're looking for a better execution plan utility, check out SQL Sentry's Plan Explorer. It's free.

<comment><USER13> In the object explorer just some text input that would filter accordingly. Some of our databases have a TON of tables/sprocs and it would be a nice convenience.

SQL Hunting Dog looks exactly like what I've been wanting, thanks for the recommendation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Currently extracting the 16819 files in the archive.. ;-)

That said, the screenshots look decent and I've been looking for an alternative to the SQL Server Management Studio a couple times already. So I already applaud the effort.

<comment><USER16> Same here - I'm glad I have a NVME drive, dread to think about the extract on a SATA one. :D

Very exciting development, looking forward to trying it out.

<comment><USER17> Why on earth would it be dreadful on a SATA SSD? Does it really matter if it takes 15 seconds vs 18 seconds?

<comment><USER18> Don't get it either. Took at most a minute here on my non-SSD laptop.

<comment><USER16> Maybe something else was going on with my laptop, but it took several minutes for me.

Was using a few instances of Visual Studio 2017, but I don't think they were going flat out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would this be the "Visual Studio Code" to the SQL Server Management Studio?

No mention of CosmosDB (I want some kind of SSMS equivalent for CosmosDB).

<comment><USER20> They added some preview support for CosmosDB recently to Azure Storage Explorer. [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/features/storage- explorer/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/features/storage-explorer/)

But I haven't used it with CosmosDB yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunate license, you can't redistribute it, verbatim or otherwise.

<comment><USER22> I just logged an issue suggesting a change of license: [https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio/issues/102](https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio/issues/102)

<comment><USER23> I had a discussion with MS about it, and they're going to update the Github issue soon. Short story is that they're not going to consider changing the license until general availability, but they're gathering feedback in the meantime.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a good time to ask: is there any good SQL IDE for Oracle better than SQL Developer?

<comment><USER25> JetBrains DataGrip is pretty good. It's not free, though.

[https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/](https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> how does this compare with datagrip?

[https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/](https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/)

<comment><USER27> This one's directed at Microsoft SQL offerings, including the ones in the Azure cloud. Whereas DataGrip is for most SQL databases. Also this one's free, and DataGrip isn't (almost a shame but it's worth it's salt). DataGrip definitely is more featureful since it's been around a bit longer. Funnily enough the one Microsoft made looks like it derives from Visual Studio Code, much like MSSQL Management Studio derives from regular Visual Studio, and I think that'll mean Microsoft might embed some features from this into Visual Studio Code, but that's me just speculating, and it could take a while before they do.

<comment><USER28> It'd be nice if SQL Management Studio and Visual Studio from the same generations were based upon the same platform, although I can understand why that's difficult and why SQLMS lags behind. I did get a little sick of having VS 2010 components kicking around for years after I'd moved on.

<comment><USER29> I am wondering if the long-term solution is going to be that SQL Management Studio goes away, in favor of SQL Operations Studio and possibly some other graphical tools for more specialized things like data warehousing etc. The more good next-generation cross-platform tooling that MS roll out, the more it sort of grates to have to flip back into a Windows system for that one specific thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Where was this last month when I was at a Microsoft Hackathon with my Macbook Pro trying to browser MS SQL hosted on Azure?

</comment><comment><USER31> An overview would be awesome: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql- operations-studio/w...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-operations- studio/what-is)

</comment><comment><USER32> This looks like SQL Server Management Studio will be deprecated once this project reaches a v1.0. About time too - as SSMS barely supports SQL Azure at all; pretty much all the useful GUI screens are not available.

<comment><USER14> If that's true, it'll be years before 1.0. There are many admin screens that this new tool will have to replicate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is actually quite decent for a first version. I can see that it has git integrated. What workflows do people use to combine git and sql?

</comment><comment><USER34> Be aware of the non free license

</comment><comment><USER35> With minimal effort this may prove better than SSMS.

</comment><comment><USER36> No Support for SQLite?

<comment><USER37> With this being Public Preview 1 I hope they add more DB type support over the coming months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> DataGrip from Jetbrains is good for SQL stuff.

</comment><comment><USER39> Finally, DBA's can experience the "wonders" of electron too.

When you accidentally select * and get 100,000 items back how does the non- native table view hold up?

<comment><USER40> It works well for large data sets. The UI is indeed virtualized (using SlickGrid), and the backend streams query results to a temp file to avoid memory usage growing too high. Note: As you might guess from the details, I work on this tool. Please try it out and let us know if you run into any issues!

<comment><USER41> I'm loving it so far. Thanks for your work!</comment></comment></comment>


Xobni Decides To Start Making Money, Launches Premium Upgrades - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/xobni-decides-to-start-making-money-launches-premium-upgrades-for-your-smarter-inbox/

<comment><USER2> Announcement from Xobni already posted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=705107></comment>


Ask Questions for Nick Takayama, Developer of Early Edition from Glasshouse Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.cidercast.com/p/listen-live.html Nick Takayama is coming in. He worked on The Early Edition from Glasshouse Apps. Leave a question you want us to ask him and we will ask him the good ones. Listen Live at live.cidercast.com, check twitter @cidercast to see when we go live. <comment><AUTHOR> Nick Takayama is coming in to the Cidercast podcast. He worked on The Early Edition from Glasshouse Apps. Leave a question you want us to ask him and we will ask him the good ones. Listen Live at live.cidercast.com, check twitter @cidercast to see when we go live.</comment>


Show HN: The Snap Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/snapscript/snap <comment><AUTHOR> Snap is a tiny optionally typed object oriented language with first class functions and coroutines. The interpreter targets the JVM including Android variants such as ART and Dalvik.

</comment><comment><USER2> You might want to rename your programming language - when I saw this on the Show HN listing, I thought it was the educational programming language Snap!: [https://snap.berkeley.edu](https://snap.berkeley.edu) / [https://github.com/jmoenig/Snap](https://github.com/jmoenig/Snap).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I noticed this a while back and I have been intending to rename it .. writing a language/interpreter is the easy part, coming up with a name is the tricky bit ... suggestions welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Its pretty cool to have your own language + source code of games like mario! Is there a page where you compare language features - i.e what motivated you to create your own? Also, what is your team size and how long you all are behind this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, its just me working on it as a hobby, there is no team. The reason I did this was part of a bigger project, writing Android games some of which I released. It gives a much nicer development experience.. i.e no emulators and no need for building and dexing. You simply update the source and press go :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love your debugger/IDE and the detail that your readme goes into!</comment>


Wikipedia:Unusual articles - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles <comment><USER2> Good stuff for idle Sunday reading.

A couple of days ago I was browsing a deft annotation of Peter Gabriel's lyrics+ which could have used the Father Thames illustration in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink)

(+ Here: [http://starling.rinet.ru/music/song1.htm](http://starling.rinet.ru/music/song1.htm) )</comment>


Harold Ramis dies aged 69 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/26327020 <comment><USER2> I reckon Harold Ramis is one of those guys where it's okay to make jokes about his death because doing so is actually a better way of remembering him than being all sad and miserable.

So... I'm looking forward to Ghostbusters 3 even more now! One question, though: Are ghost actors eligible for Oscars nominations?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but to really honor him, the jokes should be funny.

<comment><USER4> I actually laughed out loud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A while back I read an article using Groundhog Day as an example how we can never have perfect information in an economic system.

"The movie Groundhog Day (1993) illustrates the importance of the Mises-Hayek paradigm as an alternative to equilibrium economics by illustrating the unreal nature of equilibrium theorizing."

[http://archive.mises.org/5546/the-economics-of-groundhog- day...](http://archive.mises.org/5546/the-economics-of-groundhog-day/)

<comment><USER6> > _The ability of this fictional character to relive a single day points to > vital issues in economics. Perfectly competitive equilibrium requires > perfect information. Ignorance leads to errors that put the ideal state of > equilibrium out of reach. Ignorance and error exist due to perpetual change. > In a world where everything stays the same — except our knowledge of > previous days — we can approach perfection._

And it makes sense too! I mean, I already knew that practically _every_ religion out there somehow manages to turn it into an example of teaching X or scripture Y, but if even economists can relate it to their field you know you have something special.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I want to cry. As Egon, he was an idol for me when I was a kid--some kind of amazing nerd superhero. I wanted to be that smart and cool. RIP.

<comment><USER8> His character in Ghostbusters 2 was a tech role model for me too. The idea that science and engineering could solve practical problems was eye-opening as a kid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day are both truly great films with an astonishing influence on American culture. He'll be missed, but never forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER10> This man was a legend! He wrote/directed/produced/started in some of the most icon comedy films every (love me some Stripes). Its strange that he was able to slip under the radar. I think he liked it that way.

Harold seemed like a great guy. Always smiling. Always willing to give the funny lines to everyone else.

I hope he gets the coverage that he deserves. He truly was one of the greats!

I know this sounds a bit selfish of me, but I kinda wish there was a third Ghostbusters movie (ya ya ya, the game was the "3rd" movie). It would've been great to see him in a suit again and to be praised for the amazing films he brought to us.

R.I.P. Mr. Ramis

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igfRYtwpQyU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igfRYtwpQyU)

<comment><USER11> He did fly under the radar. He was one of my favorites. I'd always talk about him, but few knew who he was. But seeing the memorials on twitter and the net, I see many others recognized him. RIP Russell Ziskey. You will be sorely missed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a bummer. It's nearly impossible to overstate his impact on modern Hollywood comedy.

Groundhog Day blew my mind. There was something so dark about the idea that Bill Murray's character couldn't even kill himself to escape the cycle, and also the idea of how lonely it would be to have eternity but no one to share it with. I can't think of another comedy that was so thought provoking.

<comment><USER9> Agreed 100%. Not just comedy, but culture. It's amazing to me that "Groundhog Day" has entered American English as an idiom meaning something unpleasant repeating itself from this movie. An incredible accomplishment by Ramis, Murray, and everyone else involved in the film.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Near the end of the article, it said that Ramis was visited recently by Bill Murray, from whom he'd been estranged for years. I wonder what that was all about, given their history together?

<comment><USER14> There was some animosity as a result of Groundhog day I think. Creative difference I believe.

<comment><USER15> _Offscreen, Ramis and Bill Murray were trapped in a cycle of personal strains. Murray's marriage was breaking up, and he was behaving erratically—the whirling, unpredictable personality that Dan Aykroyd calls "the Murricane." Ramis sent Rubin to New York to work with Murray on the script, because he was tired of taking his star's 2 a.m. calls. Rubin says that when Ramis phoned him to check in, Murray would shake his head and mouth the words "I'm not here." "They were like two brothers who weren't getting along," Rubin says. "And they were pretty far apart on what the movie was about—Bill wanted it to be more philosophical, and Harold kept reminding him it was a comedy."_

 _"At times, Bill was just really irrationally mean and unavailable; he was constantly late on set," Ramis says. "What I'd want to say to him is just what we tell our children: 'You don't have to throw tantrums to get what you want. Just say what you want.' "_

 _After the film wrapped, Murray stopped speaking to Ramis. Some of the pair's friends believe that Murray resents how large a role Ramis had in creating the Murray persona. Michael Shamberg, a Hollywood producer who has known Ramis since college and who used to let Murray sleep on his couch, says, "Bill owes everything to Harold, and he probably has a thimbleful of gratitude."_

From the New Yorker profile of Ramis, which is worth reading in its entirety: [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/19/040419fa_fact3?c...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/19/040419fa_fact3?currentPage=all)

<comment><USER16> It would be interesting to see a remake of Groundhog Day, but as a dark drama instead of a comedy.

<comment><USER17> I guess I'm the only one who thought of it as a black comedy. Doesn't Bill Murray's character kill himself several times? Hasn't he been trapped in the day for the equivalent of several lifetimes? Sounds amazingly awful.

<comment><USER18> apparently the scriptwriter had the Murray character visit the library each day and read one word on one page of a book, as a way of marking time in a world where nothing could be written down. The first drafts had him finish the library - thousands of years in the same day.

RIP

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Groundhog Day is one of my favorite films of all time. I think it's really Important that when trapped in his lonely cycle Murray finally settles on taking care of others as perfectly as he can. Beautiful.

<comment><USER20> I could literally watch that movie over and over and over..

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Left this in another thread, but here's the definitive profile of Ramis, by Tad Friend of The New Yorker. It examines the how and why Ramis's movies have stayed so funny for so many years. The author has unlocked it for the next 24 hours:

[https://www.byliner.com/tad-friend/stories/comedy- first?AFID...](https://www.byliner.com/tad-friend/stories/comedy- first?AFID=273784&share=243720620f3aaa8a0e9e8308f0f067d0)

<comment><USER22> Here as well, unlocked indefinitely:

[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/19/040419fa_fact3?c...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/19/040419fa_fact3?currentPage=all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As I understand it, on his deathbed, he received total consciousness.

<comment><USER24> Which is nice.

<comment><USER25> You left out that he has that going for him.

<comment><USER24> "So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet..."

Now I have to commence a Ramis Remembrance Week. He provided me many laughs over the decades for which I gladly give him a mulligan for Caddyshack II. RIP, funny man!

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Ramis#Writing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Ramis#Writing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Please join me in straightening a Slinky in honor of a truly great actor and director.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sad news. He directed one of my favourite movies Groundhog Day. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a little kid, Egon was my hero. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER29> Dr. Spengler was my favorite ghostbuster when I was a kid and when I watched the movie last weekend.

</comment><comment><USER30> This makes me sad, Harold made me laugh so very hard and I will always remember him for that.

</comment><comment><USER31> Horrible news.

Today's passing of Ramis added to the passing of John Hughes in '09, means the two powerhouses of the Golden Age of cinematic comedy (70's, 80's and early 90's) are gone.

Thanks for the laughs, Harold.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hughes. Ramis. We are starting to lose what might be, for all its diversity, be called a significant "generation" of filmmakers. Certainly significant for the generation that grew up with and a bit on their work, and for the generations of filmmakers who have followed them.

Feels like a transition -- or the defining final notes for such transition.

</comment><comment><USER33> He was involved in some of my favorite movies: Animal House, Caddy Shack, and Groundhog Day. He will be missed.

</comment><comment><USER34> Kids: we need to talk about Stripes!

</comment><comment><USER35> Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day, sure... but he was great on SCTV as well.

I won't forget Harold.

</comment><comment><USER36> LEGEND</comment>


List of U.S. Government shutdowns - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown#List_of_U.S._government_shutdowns

<comment><AUTHOR> I know there's a high chance this will devolve into useless political arguments, but I was fascinated to learn how often this sort of thing happened in the past (essentially under every president from Ford to Clinton), and I thought it provided some interesting context both for those outside the US and for those of us inside with short memories, since much of the reporting gives the impression that much of this is fairly unprecedented.</comment>


We Can Now Build Autonomous Killing Machines. And That's a Very, Very Bad Idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/02/can-now-build-autonomous-killing-machines-thats-bad-idea/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I don't see the problem, but I don't see the problem with robots hunting down and killing humans. As long as the robots are controlled by the side I am on, I am good with this. Yes, there are some technical issues to overcome that guarantee we keep them under our control, but those issues will be overcome before deployment.

I wouldn't mind having a future where someone attacks my country or needs to be wiped out (ISIS, Al Qaeda in "Some cesspool of a country") and we just unleash the robots on them. Set some parameters and tell the robots where they can and can not operate and under which circumstances and be done with it. Some place like Syria would be a no brainer. Drop a 100,000 robots in there and that's the end of ISIS, Al Qaeda and Assad. Let the AI figure out who the bad actors are and then help rebuild the country when done getting rid of said bad actors. In the big picture, I don't see any downsides with this.

<comment><USER3> > those issues will be overcome before deployment.

Really? We'll invent a 100% secure computer system? With no way to be hijacked? How about we build that system first, and use it to protect our social security numbers, credit cards, email, voting, and patient health information!

It's because there is no way to make a perfectly secure system. In a worse- case scenario, our enemy hijacks those 100,000 robots you wanted to send, all at once, and sends them against good guys.

> Set some parameters and tell the robots where they can and can not operate > and under which circumstances and be done with it.

Some parameters... Like, holding a firearm? Mad at the United States' policies? Defending their home against invasion? Bowing to Mecca? Skin pigmentation?

Remember, war isn't even fought between nations any more. Most of our recent interesting enemies have been merely citizens inside of third world countries.

If your GOAL was "kill everyone inside of these borders," then maybe you could control that. That's never the goal, though. Not since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

> Let the AI figure out who the bad actors are

Humans can't even do that.

> are and then help rebuild the country

That's a neat idea... How about we win hearts and minds with agriculture / health / construction / education robots FIRST, rather than sending an army of death robots to murder every human in a death zone?

<comment><USER4> > Really? We'll invent a 100% secure computer system? With no way to be > hijacked?

That's obviously not _actually_ a requirement of killing machines if humans - being as phenomenally easy to deceive as they are - are acceptable options for assuming that role.

The system wouldn't have to be 100% secure in order to be good enough, by the standards we've already set as a species. It would only need to be more secure than a human.

<comment><USER5> It's not at all clear that a human being is easier to deceive under battlefield conditions than a machine would be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or in other words [https://xkcd.com/652/](https://xkcd.com/652/)

<comment> X-combinator So true... [http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/more_accurate.png](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/more_accurate.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't stop it. Any autonomous toy plus some poison, explosive, or sharp warhead == weapon.

<comment><USER6> I think this is referring to target identification systems that will autonomously pull the trigger without a human in the loop. Not a thoughtless landmine or blanket explosive (we know those are bad)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I honestly don't think this is a bad thing. Or, at least, it's no worse than humans doing the killing.

The article complains that such machines will never be able to make correct judgements about their targets with 100% reliability. However, neither can humans. Furthermore, I'd reckon that an artificial intelligence - with the hypothetical ability to tap into exabytes of raw data to base its decisions upon - is _far_ better suited to those sorts of decisions.

The article incorrectly assumes that there is a distinction between the brain and any other ordinary computer. Once one realizes the sheer lack of such a distinction between organic and inorganic computing devices beyond rather- minor implementation details and computing capacity, the whole premise of the article is moot.

We already _are_ using autonomous killing machines, and have been for hundreds of thousands of years. Those machines are called "humans".

</comment><comment><USER3> I recommend the techno-thriller fiction novel "Kill Decision" by Daniel Suarez.</comment>


DevOps Reading List: 10 Books & Blogs You Should Read - <AUTHOR> http://www.tracelytics.com/blog/the-devops-reading-list-10-books-blogs-you-should-be-reading/

<comment><USER2> Here's a dump of blogs I follow that have lots of devops-oriented contents.

<http://www.kartar.net/>

<http://www.kitchensoap.com/>

<http://www.masterzen.fr/>

<http://blog.nistu.de/>

<http://www.jedi.be/blog/>

<http://www.krisbuytaert.be/blog/>

<http://www.unixdaemon.net/>

<http://www.rottenbytes.info/>

<http://blog.lusis.org/>

<http://bitfieldconsulting.com/>

<http://agilesysadmin.net/>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, will include these in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Don't forget <http://twitter.com/DEVOPS_BORAT>

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not know how I could have forgotten to include devops borat. oops!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> DevOps Weekly:

\- <http://devopsweekly.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> no silos!</comment>


Why Would Anyone Own Bonds? - <AUTHOR> https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/08/why-would-anyone-own-bonds-right-now/ <comment><AUTHOR> While the returns can be good at times, there are two other probably more important reasons:

* Reducing volatility of retirement funds (the primary reason most people are saving/investing) as the age of retirement approaches.

* Rebalancing opportunities: having bonds means having capital that can be liquidated to purchase equities when they dip.

A lot of folks talk about the "lost decade" of the S&P 500 between 2000 and 2009. But if one rebalanced, and were _not_ 100% equities, then the returns were actually pretty good:

* [https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2010/12/17/the-lost-de...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2010/12/17/the-lost-decade-was-a-golden-age-if-you-rebalanced/)</comment>