I Built a Lisp Compiler - <AUTHOR> https://mpov.timmorgan.org/i-built-a-lisp-compiler/ <comment><USER2> Me too! ;-)

Back in 2006 –when I was studying CS at Rollins College– I wrote a Scheme (subset of Lisp) interpreter that also shows a visual representation of linked lists and function calls. You can check it out here: [http://davidpilo.com/pvts/](http://davidpilo.com/pvts/)

The interpreter was written in Java and while it does not support the full R5RS grammar it supports quite a bit of it (see [http://davidpilo.com/pvts/language.html](http://davidpilo.com/pvts/language.html))

Cheers!

<comment><USER3> > Scheme (subset of Lisp)

There are people who'd fight you over that one. :)

From Wiki: [http://wiki.c2.com/?IsSchemeLisp](http://wiki.c2.com/?IsSchemeLisp)

> One of the interesting debates in Lisp circles is the question of whether or > not SchemeLanguage should be considered part of the LispLanguage family. > There are more than a few Lispers (and perhaps a few schemers) who think > that the LispSchemeDifferences are sufficiently large that Scheme should not > be considered to be a "Lisp". This topic has spread across many pages, so > this page has been created to quarantine this particular HolyWar.

And one interesting reason why not:

> The philosophies of the Lisp and Scheme communities have diverged quite a > bit. SchemeLanguage focuses much more on FunctionalProgramming; CommonLisp > on metaprogramming and multi-paradigm programming (especially OO with > CommonLispObjectSystem).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did a MAL implementation too, and am currently working on an LLVM compiler, but dear god I'd never frame it as "spent x years learning to make a compiler".

MAL is easy, and straightforward - I'm not saying this to devalue your work (great job!) but to point out that the language is by design simple to implement and doesn't require any prior knowledge of how an interpreter works. People who want to write their own implementation should try that right now, and definitely not be scared off by "I spent 10 years working on this". Turning that interpeter into a compiler is an extra step on top.

<comment><USER5> > People who want to write their own implementation should try that right now, > and definitely not be scared off by "I spent 10 years working on this".

Certainly, but the problem with implementing languages is the HUGE cliff on complexity after your first "calculator" or lisp.

You can make a simple interpreter in hours, even minutes. Then, suddenly, you get AMBITIOUS.

That is what take years!

P.D: I'm also in the hunt for a relational language ([http://tablam.org](http://tablam.org)), and I now in the what, 3 years of it? (Whoa! I search for my old mentions of it and the first I found is from 2013! [https://www.clubdelphi.com/foros/showthread.php?t=84835&high...](https://www.clubdelphi.com/foros/showthread.php?t=84835&highlight=crear+lenguaje))...

<comment><USER6> "Become a spiritual attempt at the dbase/foxpro family of database-oriented languages, in the sense manipulate data(bases) is natural and integrated"

This is a personal dream for me as well. The commenters in this thread (@gavinpc, @vidarh) will also agree with you: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18634555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18634555)

<comment><USER5> How I miss that thread?

Anyway, if you wanna join the dream, I will not complain ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Glad you wrote this set of experiences up.

I've followed BuildYourOwnLisp[0] in the past, so it's cool to see something that is more focused on the compilation of Lisp rather than its implementation as a language.

[0] [http://buildyourownlisp.com](http://buildyourownlisp.com)

<comment><USER8> Ha! If I only knew about 'Build Your Own Lisp' three months ago!

I needed a simple language as a vehicle for a compiler talk I'm preparing for this summer, so I hacked along an extremely reduced LISP (a 'Non-LISP', as I call it), whose C++ implementation from scratch came out at about 1K -- 1.2K LOC with the AST optimizations I meant to demonstrate for the talk. Self- contained code here -- no libs or (much) STL: [https://github.com/blu/tinl](https://github.com/blu/tinl)

OP, thank you for sharing Tim Morgan's work -- it's a work of love!

<comment><USER9> > whose C++ implementation from scratch...

You're aware of clasp?

[https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp](https://github.com/clasp- developers/clasp)

Which builds (in part) on embeddable common lisp:

[https://gitlab.com/embeddable-common-lisp/ecl](https://gitlab.com/embeddable- common-lisp/ecl)

See around 20-30 minutes: [https://youtu.be/8X69_42Mj-g](https://youtu.be/8X69_42Mj-g)

<comment><USER8> Nope, I'm seeing clasp for the first time -- Christian Schafmeister's talk was extremely nice to listen to!

I did come across some small LISP implementations at the early stages, but by that time I already had the AST builder done. Maybe because I didn't actively search for LISP implementations, as I didn't need a 'proper' LISP per se, more of a DSL for quickly writing ASTs of arbitrary complex computational expressions. Those ASTs were the final goal ; )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice! Lots of really practical advice.

I wish I'd been given that advice before I wrote a compiler. Back then, the best advice was in Richard Bornat's _Understanding and Writing Compilers_ and the dragon book - useful, but not a walkthrough.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Writing C code and trying to keep it indented was a bit of a pain and I wish > I would have done something else. I believe some compilers write ugly code > and then "pretty it up" with a library before writing it out. This is > something to explore!

There's a tool for this nowadays: `clang-format`.

<comment><USER12> +1 for clang-format. I have been using it as a beautifier on generated code in a TypeScript to C++ compiler.

There are some other features I wish it did for me in cleaning up my generated code. For example it doesn't remove superfluous parenthesis. It doesn't remove unused labels. It doesn't remove superfluous semi-colons (a single line of just a semi-colon). And so on. (I should, of course, just be building up an AST and pretty-printing the AST instead.)

<comment><USER13> clang-tidy?

<comment><USER12> Haven't looked into it. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great post! I started writing a Lisp interpreter in Go with the mal guide but switched to Norvig's _(How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (in Python))_ [0] since it was more approachable (IMO) as a Lisp beginner. I'm looking forward to writing a compiler next like the author.

[0] [http://norvig.com/lispy.html](http://norvig.com/lispy.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice write up! It coincides a bit with my progression: I first wrote a scheme interpreter, then a scheme to LLVM IR compiler, and now I'm working on a custom lisp JIT compiler (the JIT bit plays well into macro expansion). It's interesting how that path naturally unfolds.

<comment><USER16> I'm curious what you mean by "the JIT bit plays well into macro expansion" since most lisps will expand macros AOT rather than JIT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Same here, one of my long ongoing projects is a scheme compiler following the same ideas as chicken ([https://www.call-cc.org/](https://www.call-cc.org/)) and cyclone ([https://github.com/justinethier/cyclone](https://github.com/justinethier/cyclone)).

The compiler is written in rust which generates C (that's currently dependent on being compiled by GCC or Clang). [https://github.com/nitros12/some-scheme- compiler](https://github.com/nitros12/some-scheme-compiler)

</comment><comment><USER18> The author states:

>"I saw an x86 assembler written in Ruby which intrigued me, but the thought of working with assembly gave me pause."

Might anybody know the name of this Ruby-based assembler and/or where to find it?

<comment><USER19> Could be Wilson:

[https://github.com/seattlerb/wilson](https://github.com/seattlerb/wilson)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lately, I experimented with a 'functional' script language, that uses lazy evaluation for generating C code and does not do any concatenation. It has a build-in debugger, which lets you break at output locations, which proved quite handy when debugging code that generates code. See: [https://github.com/FransFaase/cyclonedds/commits/xtypes_ts](https://github.com/FransFaase/cyclonedds/commits/xtypes_ts)

</comment><comment><USER21> Lisp is a better choice than most for the first compiler/interpreter, but I would recommend starting even further down the complexity scale with Forth [0] since it lowers the risk of running out of motivation/loosing track of the goal.

[0] [https://gitlab.com/sifoo/snigl](https://gitlab.com/sifoo/snigl)

<comment><USER12> Scheme is wayyyy simpler than Forth IMO (even when you include macros and call/cc). I wrote a minimal stack-based language years ago and I still cannot get a handle around Forth. The inner interpreter and immediate words? Even after reading Let over Lambda, Forth is greek to me.

But, to be fair, getting to the point of being able to implement a recursive fibonacci algorithm is not too difficult taking either path.

<comment><USER22> Forth is really a kind of assembly language for a virtual machine, and not really a higher level language. It looks higher level because it doesn't have registers.

Register machine languages are "catenative" also. We can take a "mov eax, ebx" and catenate that with "move ecx, $foo" in any order we want. We are constrained, though, because different sections of code use different input and output registers (or combinations of input and output registers and stack locations and such). Forth makes those conventions uniform, and that leads to some degrees of freedom which give it a higher level flavor.

The thing to do is to make some higher level language that uses Forth as a VM; then you have understandable code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if the approach of making a compiler from an interpreter leads to lots of suboptimal code.

One point I can think of is, in an interpreter you're presumably keeping track of program's vars in your own data structures instead of just throwing pointers around. Though, this might be unavoidable with a dynamic source language.

<comment><USER24> It certainly leads to code for a different purpose. In an interpreter you need to store enough information so you can choose the right subroutine to call at runtime. This must also include enough information as inputs to let the subroutine produce the right results. Generally I think of this as a reference to code and references to data, and a references to where to store the results. For a compiler you need all that information to decide what code to emit but you don't need to keep it around when the emitted code is used, unless you want to debug or replicate decisions at runtime that were already resolved at compile time.

For example, if you had an index into a block of memory that you could prove was only large enough to address elements in the block, there is no need to check at runtime that it won't be used to create out of range references for a compiler. If the same operation was done by an interpreter you might still check because the code that does the interpretation may not be solely used for that instance of the indexing/addressing operation, as you can guarantee with code produced by a compiler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Thank you for sharing this, it highly encourages me to embark on a similar journey.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hello! Can I just ask, how did you learn to do the incremental bit of this?

</comment><comment><USER27> since rely on gcc, why bother tcc

<comment><USER28> tcc is much faster, like 20x faster. You don't need any gcc optimization, you'll do the optimization by yourself in your compiler.

You'd link to libtcc.a and don't need to worry anymore

<comment><USER27> I mean when I execute "./malcc --compile hello.mal hello", not rely on gcc to generate executable file will be good.</comment></comment></comment>


The life and death of Google Flu Trends - <AUTHOR> http://www.medanthrotheory.org/read/11446/algorithmic-futures <comment><USER2> This neglects to mention the follow-up work Google did on Flu Trends, where they corrected for media and "online" interest and made it work again.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26234783](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26234783)

<comment><USER3> They correct the predictions for past data, but I'm sceptical as to whether it's possible to correct for emerging feedback loops when the results of the analysis are public and cause a change in the behavior patterns being analyzed.

<comment><USER2> Well they stopped the analysis being public too.

Instead they release it to other groups who use it as a single combined with others for predictions.</comment></comment></comment>


Fundamental Flaws of Qubit Concept for General-Purpose Quantum Computing [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ijesi.org/papers/Vol%283%2910/F031059070.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> The patent mentioned in the references of the paper is also interesting.

Quantum Computing Circuits

US 20130057314 A1

[http://www.google.com/patents/US20130057314](http://www.google.com/patents/US20130057314)

<comment><USER2> Yes, the patent is definitely interesting.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9950206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9950206)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The author doesn't seem familiar with quantum measurement. Yes of course the measurement apparatus disturbs the state... There's plenty of theory for this and how it works into computation.

<comment><USER2> I would say he's more than familiar:

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Wu%2C+Cheng+Hsiao%22...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Wu%2C+Cheng+Hsiao%22&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C26)

However, his concerns about "disturbing the state" do deserve further attention and elaboration.

<comment><USER3> Huh? What there suggests he's familiar with the theory of quantum measurement?

<comment><USER2> You're right, whoops. I thought that was the search which included this paper near the top of the list, but I failed to double-check:

 _Quantum network theory of computing with respect to entangled flux qubits and external perturbation_

[http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/113/15/10.1...](http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/113/15/10.1063/1.4801807)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


680+ free icons inspired by OS X Yosemite. Consistent and retina optimized - <AUTHOR> http://www.iamraffaella.com/monomite/

<comment><USER2> Why? I mean, Yosemite is easily the ugliest GUI since, ... ever really. It won't last long.

<comment><USER3> Yosemite is gorgeous!

Oh, wait, computer thing... nevermind.</comment></comment>


The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx310zM3tLs

<comment><USER2> My query deals with the social implications you mentioned at the end of your talk. Are we, as a society, equipped to deal with the changes the surge in computational efficiency deep learning is about to bring when a large portion, including the policy-makers, aren't even able to properly acknowledge them? Can you expand on your last slide's point where you mention that "better education" won't help in dealing with the upcoming upheaval?

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for this interesting talk and best wishes for the success of your company. Here are a few questions it raised for me. What references would you recommend for someone who wants to know more about machine learning algorithms from a technical point of view? Does the coming economic upheaval you envision with its exponential growth depend on the assumption that machine learning will be applied to the design of computers themselves? The reason I ask is that the applications you demonstrated concentrate on pattern classification, which doesn't seem to me like it would be much help for the work of electrical engineers and computer scientists (albeit a game changer in other fields). Are you aware of any evidence to the contrary?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would start with the Intro to Machine Learning Coursera course, and then the Intro to Neural Networks course. That will get you to a point that you can understand current papers.

The demo I showed actually showed that it's possible to design an algorithm in minutes that previously would have taken years, but combining machines and people. So I do strongly believe that machine learning allows us to create new, better, programs more quickly than before!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm the speaker from this TEDx talk (and Enlitic CEO / Kaggle Past President) - happy to answer any questions or respond to any comments about it here. Sorry for some rather extreme simplifications in the talk... I only had 18 mins to cover a lot of territory!</comment>


JavaScript got better while I wasn't looking (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://eev.ee/blog/2017/10/07/javascript-got-better-while-i-wasnt-looking/ <comment><USER2> My honest favorite is the use of destructuring object parameters so you effectively get named parameters. I find it super nice, especially in the absence of a first class enum system.

<comment><USER3> One of the few features I miss when going back to other languages.

e.g C# 7's destructuring is good, but it's no where near as powerful and ubiquitous as JavaScripts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Lua doesn't need a special case here, since it uses an iterator protocol that produces values rather than mutating a visible state variable, so there's no problem with having the loop variable be truly distinct on each run through the loop.

Lua works the same way, every iteration has different 'i' in iterative version of for loop:

      local fs = { }
      for i = 1, 5 do
        table.insert(fs,
          function () print(i) end)
      end
      for i,f in ipairs(fs) do
        f()
      end
      -- 1 2 3 4 5

What Lua lacks is a will of its authors to add real-life features like (de)structuring, __[gs]et, multi-spread, quick lambda syntax, generic classlib, generic byte buffers, etc. Read FRs in mailing list before any release for details. It is a DIY in C kit, but how long do you DIY until it's annoying?

As a long-time Lua 5.1/2 user who likes it, I must admit that with all js quirks and lacks js is simply more practical and that's what matters.

<comment><USER5> What behaviors do you wish for __get and __set that aren't covered by __index and __newindex?

EDIT: I just realized you want to overload assignment and reading of the table variable, so this doesn't apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Needs a "(2017)" tag

<comment><USER7> Added. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ready to play the Quantum Game with Photons 2? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantumlah.org/about/highlight/2020-04-play-new-quantum-game <comment><AUTHOR> It's all open source: [https://github.com/Quantum- Game/](https://github.com/Quantum-Game/)</comment>


Docker might be eating your batteries? - <AUTHOR> https://www.beatworm.co.uk/blog/thinkpad/docker-ate-my-battery <comment><USER2> Might? I catch the Docker deamon regularly to eat through a full core while no container is actually up. Also every now and then I have to manually delete all the dangling docker images because the filesystem runs out of nodes because Docker doesn't clean up after itself (although this could be on purpose, I don't know, or I'm doing something wrong...)

EDIT: I guess this has nothing to do with docker0, but still, docker is feasting on my battery every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER3> docker0 is just a regular Linux bridge and there's absolutely nothing special about it.

I've always assumed that powertop was mis-reporting power usage for those decidedly non-physical interfaces.

Therefore, the author's reported decrease in power usage surprises me. Can anyone reproduce/explain this?

<comment><USER4> This needs to be analysed with ebpf

[http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2019-01-01/learn-ebpf- traci...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2019-01-01/learn-ebpf-tracing.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it anything to do with this issue, where Docker is waking the cpu from sleep too often?

[https://github.com/docker/for- linux/issues/382](https://github.com/docker/for-linux/issues/382)

</comment><comment><USER6> etcd by way of minikube eats your batteries for sure

<comment><USER7> I switched to microk8s, doesn't slow down as much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Serverless is not go green(environmentally). Saves only green in your pocket.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hmmm, so running an operating system on your operating system consumes 20% more resources. Who would have guessed? :)

<comment><USER10> You didn't read the post. They stated this was the case with no containers running, but the bridge network up.

<comment><USER9> Just skimmed it, thanks :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I think more holistically? - <AUTHOR>

I have noticed a trend: when I am developing and I find a solution to a difficult problem it is normally because in some way I have regained sight of the bigger picture. For example, I might see any easy way to sidestep the issue all together or I might gain an understanding of how seemingly disparate objects influence each other. To make matters worse, the more difficult a problem gets, the narrower and more intense my focus seems to come which blinds me even more to the bigger picture.<p>Does anyone experience this? Does anyone have a solution that works for them? Is "sightedness" just an attribute of inherent intelligence that I have no real control over? <comment><USER2> Try doing something else and letting your subconscious do some work. I try to have three or four tasks at once so that if I run into a problem, I can switch to a different task. Once I come back to the first task, something will usually click and let me continue.</comment>


Show HN: Exploring curated must-watch coding videos suggested by developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.codingvideoz.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> CodingVideoz - A curated list of best videos for developers suggested by developers.

Collected in One Place. So you can easily find the best video in every topic.

When you watch videos on YouTube, you have a high probability of finding yourself taken by the storm of YouTube suggestion. Hence, why you find yourself watching some weird video of a cat jumping around instead of mastering Blockchain. CodingVideos.com helps you focus and watch videos that can improve your programming skill and your general knowledge. Daily, work on your information intake and take a step forward in the direction you want. Avoid malicious divergence and watch coding videos on codingvideoz.com without distraction.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by questions like

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16224165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16224165)

<comment><USER2> Then adding a favorite feature would make sense</comment></comment>


Campus Activists Weaponize 'Safe Space' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/how-campus-activists-are-weaponizing-the-safe-space/415080/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Why do college students sound so childish? They expect university administrators to become the new parent, protecting them from the evil boogeymen of scary thoughts.

<comment><USER3> More so than childish. The behavior of those students sounds sociopathic. They are essentially bullying the photographer, but calling the photographer the aggressor. This is unreal. It really makes me wonder how often have these attacks been used?

<comment><USER4> I've been treated that way by police. Surrounded and backed into a corner - threatened with being beaten and having my camera broken if I "resisted arrest" by continuing to take photos - and held there with nowhere to move for over five minutes while the threats continued.

And this was for photos of the city skyline from across the water.

Groups like this (police and protestors) attract people who want to act like that. They'll find any reason, and they _hope_ it gets ugly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The clue meter's reading zero...

(Credit where due: I stole that from Dilbert.)

These students are not actually thinking about what they're saying and doing. They're doing stuff that's somewhat clever tactics, and they're arguing with somewhat-plausible-sounding lines, but they clearly aren't thinking.</comment>


Notable – The Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck - <AUTHOR> https://notable.md/ <comment><USER2> Would pay subscription if paired w phone and web app. Needs good image support too.

Use google drive for storage in case startup dies.

Big apple notes fan, but the markdown sucks and they will never improve the app. Need multi-line indent.</comment>


Banksy anti-immigration birds mural in Clacton-on-Sea destroyed - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-29446232

<comment><USER2> I hope it was Banksy who called in the complaint which got it removed.</comment>


Carl Herold - a new step in web learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.highercomputingforeveryone.com/ Hope it helps <comment><USER2> Some of you may be interested in this reddit post. [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ckcjc/reddit_can_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ckcjc/reddit_can_you_please_help_me_for_five_years_i/)

<comment><USER3> tl;dr? Reddit is helping Carl to rank in google higher. Apparently there is an undeserved rip off report that has been damaging his reputation for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've worked with Carl in the past and I can say with confidence that he's one of the smartest people I've had the pleasure to work with.

He's extremely well organized and a quick learner.

Just my 2 cents.

-Nash

</comment><comment><USER5> No contempt directed at Carl because this sort of thing is _exactly_ what the internet needs more of- but I would like to remind everybody of the excellent opencourseware offered by most major universities.

<http://www.academicearth.org/subjects/computer-science>

<comment><USER2> There is also <http://www.khanacademy.org/> and <http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm>. In fact, by now there is probably a aggregator for these websites.</comment></comment>


The New Yorker claims credit for Torvalds' apology on behaviour - <AUTHOR> https://www.itwire.com/open-source/84590-new-yorker-claims-credit-for-torvalds-apology-on-behaviour.html <comment></comment>


Steve Jobs is Trying to Bypass the Web - <AUTHOR> http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/21/beltzner_on_apple/

<comment><USER2> > Jobs also bars apps that use Java and other "deprecated or optionally > installed technologies."

I'm still not sure how Objective-C and HTML aren't "old" technologies, Steve.</comment>


Indian men arrested for suspected leak of TV show episode - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/game-of-thrones-pirates-arrested-for-leaking-episode-early-170814/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just find it crazy that people would be _arrested_ for something so trivial.

How is that even a crime, surely its civil in nature.

<comment><USER2> Its a pay per view for the broadcasters in the form of subscriptions. While I don't support this kind of activity I can see the damages done to a business if they are robbed of their audience. Broadcasters pay to have the show on their channel, why should they not be bothered when they are about to lose potential numbers because people have already seen the show before they air it? Viewers count is very important in this business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, they might have grounds to sue the leaker, but the fact that the police are interceding on the side of the broadcaster is what I find disturbing.

<comment><USER2> the police are involved because they have been asked to be involved. Do you think police only act on their own all the time? They provide a service and this one involves people violating law

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, laws. Is leaking an episode of a TV show a crime in Inida? Seems crazy.

The ideal of the justice system is to, well, maintain justice. Seems in practice they are, as you said, a service, a private goon squad for the rich.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AirPods Are Disposable and Hard to Recycle (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://ifixit.org/blog/8690/airpods-are-disposable/ <comment><USER2> I respect iFixit's ideals, but this is just ridiculous. Highlighting the lack of repairability in a MacBook Pro is one thing, but AirPods are a marvel of compact engineering. There's barely room for the battery; there is positively no room in there to replace glue with clips or screws so that a few tinkerers can try to fix them at home. Plus, you can replace just the earbuds or the case on its own (it's unlikely you'll break both at the same time) for ~$60.

<comment><USER3> AirPods being a technological marvel does not negate the fact that its disposable nature is a pretty big problem. As far as I am concerned, if the environmental cost of the existence of a product is not factored in to its design, it should not exist.

This may be a bit of a stretch, but on the same token, K-Cups being super convenient does not negative the fact that they are an ecological nightmare.

<comment><USER2> What I'm saying is there's probably no reasonable way, given the current state of the art, to create an equivalent product in a more repairable form. The comparison to k-cups seems overblown, as a person throws away a couple of those a day, whereas AirPods are quality devices (of a similar size) that will last years at the minimum.

<comment><USER2> iFixit rightly makes noise about the pointless unrepairability of some other Apple devices, but this one just feels like they're reaching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is just stupid.

Just take AirPods to an Apple store in any corner of the world or simply ship directly to them to recycle almost any product.

[https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in](https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in)

iFixIt is just disingenuous in that they have a fixed view of what's acceptable and it highly favors their own business. Their content parades as an objective viewpoint but isn't by a longshot.

</comment><comment><USER5> The average Western European/North American consumes 220 pounds of plastic per year. A pair of AirPods (0.016 pounds) are 0.007% of that figure. I think there are much bigger categories in our plastic consumption that we might want to target before AirPods.

</comment><comment><USER6> Love my AirPods, but if they can't even get a battery replacement that's a huge downside.

As for disposal, like any electronic apple will at the minimum help recycle them for you (as will others like best buy)

We definitely have new problems like k cups but our electronics tend to be much smaller than those of old. More people are Marie Kondoing too. Just think of all the waste we are avoiding just by virtue of digital games, music, books,and movies.

There's still hope to be had, though we need to REDUCE across the board.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't like the narrative of ifixit, you cannot have this tiny a device and have it build with bolts and screws.

I'd like to know if there's any competitor on this category (Samsung galaxy buds, pixel buds) that doesn't have the same problem.

Besides, no battery can last forever, they all degrade, that's how the current tech works unfortunately. I do want Apple to offer cheaper battery replacement, right now replacing the battery of the AirPods and case equals to a brand new set of AirPods.

<comment><USER8> iFixit has done a teardown of Samsung galaxy buds and rates them more favorably than AirPods: [https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Teardown...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Teardown/120693)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> that's from 2016

<comment><USER10> And with the popularity of the product, the environmental concerns of the unrepairability are even greater and more relevant today.

<comment><USER11> I admit that I know next to nothing about hardware engineering, but I can't fathom how it would be possible to continue to miniaturize consumer products at scale while maintaining durability, quality and keeping them repair friendly? Would love some one with the right background to explain how they would design an AirPod like device that could be fixed by your average repair professional/shop/dealer/etc (let alone me at home).

Recyclability is a concern though!

<comment><USER12> Maybe miniaturization isnt really a great goal?

At some point we are going to have to start trading convenience for environment

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't the environmental impact lowered by how expensive it is? By getting AirPods they're likely to spend less on other stuff that has a higher environmental impact, like plane tickets, right?

<comment><USER14> That feels wrong. For one, the environmental cost of goods/services are not reflected in their prices, currently. Further, AirPods are luxury goods. Purchasers are probably already high carbon users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also, they make you look so dumb. Wearing-Q-Tips-and-being- proud-of-it-dumb. About 8.5 on the Google Glass Index.

9.5 if you wear them while riding electric monocycles.

<comment><USER5> This is highly subjective. Almost no one in the real world is obsessed with how "dumb" a pair of wireless earbuds looks.

<comment><USER16> Are you sure? Aesthetics is a huge part of the success of a product. A lot of wireless earbuds are much larger, and thus AirPods are much more desirable (they look less stupid). People absolutely buy mostly based on aesthetics, provided the functionality is reasonable. In fact, I argue that this is why most people buy Apple products...</comment></comment></comment>


Why tech makes us dishonest – ways to reduce cheating at self-service checkouts - <AUTHOR> http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/07/comment-why-technology-makes-us-dishonest-ways-reduce-cheating-self-service <comment><USER2> Breaking news! Customers finally realised the long-promised gains of automation /s Is anyone surprised though? You get less and less of service (having to fish shit out of massive pallets, self-weighting produce, fighting with the retarded auto-checkout) just to pay more and more. Great deal! Yes, you pay more (or the same for less - it is riddiculous how much cheap filler is now in every single thing that can be cut with it)

<comment><USER3> I find the cardboard boxes that are massively larger than required for the contents to be very annoying, like I've been bait-and-switched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the rate of theft is so high, I wonder if switching from barcodes to the more expensive RFID tags would actually end up saving them money.

<comment><USER3> In Australia the high value cuts of meat recently started to have RFID tags embedded in the packaging, so the checkout scanners do have RFID readers in them already. So maybe people have been putting sausage barcodes on the beef fillet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A major supermarket chain in my area is in the process of phasing out their self-checkout lanes.

A family member is friends with many of the staff at their store. The inside word, not promoted publicly, is "shrinkage".

They are losing enough that the cost of remodeling out the self-checkout lanes, and the cost of additional staff, is still seen as a net savings.

For my part, I'm glad for the change. Their staff are competent and helpful, and it's a union shop: Wages at least for long-term employees seem to be living wages, people actually get vacations, etc.

They still employ young adults, providing initial jobs and e.g. jobs for people in the local community college.

And staff, while hardly idle, have enough time and the freedom to e.g. provide enough boxes for my friend's recent move. (Already collected in a shopping cart as they had worked, so it really didn't cost them much if any productivity to do so.)

<comment><USER6> May I ask what chain?

<comment><USER5> I keep my presence at least somewhat vague and anonymous. Major metropolitan area chain. Big, but not "regional" or national -- although now owned by one or another of the nationals; it's changed hands a few times in the last some years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The tech didn't make us dishonest. It only made it easier.

</comment><comment><USER8> Honestly if I'm going to risk going to prison/getting prosecuted it's going to be for much more than claiming a $5 lemon wasn't organic and switching the barcode over ...</comment>


Why Dwarf Fortress started killing cats - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-04-13-why-dwarf-fortress-started-killing-cats <comment><AUTHOR> It's a 10 minute video. Cats were dying and the symptoms pointed to alcohol poisoning even though cats were hard- coded not to desire alcohol. The answer is: a calculation bug that became more visible due to a feature introduced in prior years. I hate to spoil the complete explanation as it goes well-beyond what you might think, and it's fun to hear all the details of DF's systems that led to cats dying. Tldr: a system was introduced to allow characters to clean individual body parts without showering, e.g. blinking to clean your dirty eyeballs. Cats were coded to clean all of their body parts and to injest what they cleaned off. The cats that were dying were the ones who were following dwarves into bars where there were puddles of alcohol.</comment>


Mapping the Spread of Drought Across the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/mapping-the-spread-of-drought-across-the-us.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumMediumMediaFloated&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

<comment><USER2> What's the evidence for the link between west coast droughts in recent years and global warming? (I'm not trying to start a debate, just genuinely asking).

<comment><USER3> I apologize for not having time right now to track down primary sources for you, but if you're interested in learning more about the current research specifically on this drought and climate, look up stuff related to the position and strength of the North Pacific High, how it's affected by the Arctic Oscillation (and decoupling of the AO from the North Atlantic Oscillation), and how those are related to extreme jet stream configurations (regarding which there is emerging evidence for a relationship with Arctic sea ice extent).

And if you find good stuff, post the links!

<comment><USER4> Dr. Jennifer Francis at Rutgers has a great talk on the polar vortex and climate: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETpm9JAdfcs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETpm9JAdfcs) (40m, polar vortex starts at 24m)

Full unedited: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtRvcXUIyZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtRvcXUIyZg) (1h24m)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We really, really need to stop growing lawn grass as a region.

<comment><USER6> I'm only 1 season in, but clover is nice.

A part of the grass thing I think is the fairly recent desire to have a pure Fescue/Bermuda/etc grass lawn.

I don't remember why, but a few months ago it popped into my head: You know, when I was a kid in Harlingen, there was clover everywhere. We'd pick a bit out of lawns as we roamed the neighborhood and chew on it. It's been decades since I've seen a neighborhood like that...

So I bought some clover seed and spread it around. Within just a couple weeks (4 or 5 days of daily watering at the outset to establish it) it was crazy green, spread through most of the lawn, while not being disruptive to the grass. The grass actually seems to be benefitting. It is chocking out weeds OTOH, so win win win. Overall my lawn is a whole lot brighter/greener/more- alive and it doesn't take more than the twice weekly watering schedule allowed by DFW's water conservation ordinances.

Now at the height of summer my lawn looks better than most of my neighbors and unlike the retirees' manicured lawns I'm not out there watering with a hose (a loophole the water conservation ordinance allows to please the demographic) daily.

I just thought it was noteworthy that there's a middle-ground between green painted gravel like Sun City, AZ, and golf-course lawns.

<comment><USER7> > watering with a hose (a loophole...)

Are you sure that's a loophole? I've seen statistics that hand watering and drip irrigation systems are much less wasteful than sprinklers. And sprinklers are the only thing that are banned to twice-weekly in my region of DFW at least.

<comment><USER6> I think drip is in a different category.

I wouldn't argue your overall point, but my point is that it's not like those neighbors don't run their sprinkler systems. They're supplementing with hand watering. Not substituting.

And who has time for that except empty-nesters?

Don't get me wrong. I love my neighbors. Living in the city has been an entirely different experience for me coming from the suburbs. There's an actual feeling of community here I never experienced out there.

Maybe it's unfair, but I just expect City Hall would have a hard time going to usage based billing instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few water and the southwest related articles:

Water and Texas: [http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/who-stole- the...](http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/who-stole-the- water-20140623)

Arizona and wildfires (and water): [http://www.azcentral.com/news/wildfires/yarnell/arizona- wild...](http://www.azcentral.com/news/wildfires/yarnell/arizona-wildfires- homes-forests-risk/)

SoCal's current water management (shorter than the other articles): [http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti- south...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-southern- california-drought-20140709-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I think there's a certain point at which we need to accept, and are accepting, that droughts will happen and that we need to prepare for them.

</comment><comment><USER9> Mike Bostock and D3!

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! I submitted it because @mbostock ([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mbostock](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mbostock)) is a contributor here, and I think (?) this is his first direct appearance in the NYT. Congratulations!

<comment><USER10> Not true: Mike Bostock's stuff is all over the NYT website very frequently. He and Jeremy Ashkenas seem to be key players over there. Very inspiring work from both of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recall reading that Napa and Sonoma are going downhill as a result, and that 10-15 more years of this will make the Washington and Oregon wines just as good, if not better. I hope the Microsoft millionaires are investing in wine country. :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this excellent feature also serves as a great example of the shortcomings of maps. When I saw the tweeted screenshot of the most recent version of this map, I thought, "Oh shit, the drought is all over the place!"

However, actually going to the article and seeing the D3 animation...I see that it's...kind of the same as before? That is, still not great, but not overall more of a severe drought? Or is it? Just because it looks like a few areas have receded, I can't say for sure my eye is summing up all the drought- areas correctly...so even with the time-lapse, it's hard to tell if things have gotten worse, or better...

And of course, "better/worse" compared to the last few months is just one thing to care about...I'd also like to know how the drought level right now compares to last year, last decade, etc....and while we're looking at the past, I want to see what the _rates of change_ were in those past timeframes, so I can judge whether or not the change from this month to last is drastic or expected (based on the cycle).

The bottom of the article contains just that chart (which is why I think this is such a great feature)...of course, you lose the geographical information, but at least the perspective is there. One minor improvement, with a small tradeoff in clutter, is to overlay a small part of the Palmer Drought Index chart on top (or near) the map, so that anyone visiting this map, now or in the future, can have some perspective at a glance on how bad the drought is...because without that frame of reference, just about _any_ quantity of orange/red over a geographical map will be dramatic.

<comment><USER13> The map is just for this summer, so it's not really trying to show a progression. Just which areas are in continuous drought vs a 1 off.

An annual map going back a 100 or so years would be vary interesting, but I don't think we have that data.

<comment><USER14> This. There may be some correlation between AGW and this drought, but this map is not doing a good job of illustrating that.</comment></comment></comment>


Ustream's Audience For Apple's iPhone Announcement: Bigger Than Cable News - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/500000-people-watched-apples-iphone-announcement-over-ustream-2009-6 <comment><USER2> The biggest take-away I had from this is that production value, graphics packages and big studio sets aren't what attract people to some content. If the screenshot is any indication most of these videos where poorly lit handheld streams from a single camera. One hopes that if the television industry takes anything away from this it is that people care less about how you dress your show up and more about what the actual content is. If this had been covered on TV we would have had to sift through commercial breaks, into graphics outro graphics and the incessant jabbering of a couple inane hosts along with the inevitable text crawl at the bottom from viewers texting in (just to show that the network understands social media).</comment>


What happens when you stand for 5 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7JaBHZXfQw <comment><USER2> Standing desk user here, since 2009. I'm in general agreement with the OP.

MY "PROS"

o Standing eliminates post-lunch lethargy, for me

o I perceive an increased focus while standing

o I still feel a bit of back soreness while standing, from time to time—standing helps but is not a miracle solution

o Some argue standing is good for dieting as it burns more calories than sitting: [http://lifehacker.com/5798791/calculate-how-many-calories- yo...](http://lifehacker.com/5798791/calculate-how-many-calories-you-can-burn- if-you-switch-to-a-standing-desk)

MY "CONS":

o Standing all day, like sitting all day, is hard on the body, but in different ways (for example, it increases the risk of varicose veins)--to compensate, alternate between standing or sitting, and take breaks, walk around, and so forth, as OP does

o I lost two overhead storage cubbies, in transitioning my desk, to a standing desk--something to consider if you need to consolidate materials

o I'm 6'1" tall and find colleagues shorter than ~5'5" find my high work- surface challenging, during desk-side meetings (a good reason to keep at least one lower work-surface)

Some random other tips:

o Face monitors toward a low-traffic area, to minimize passer-by distractions/eye-contact

o The OP stands on wood floors, but I think that's nuts; get a highly-rated anti-fatigue mat (I got one via ULINE)

o A chair with an adjustable seat height represents a really nice-to-have; the Herman Miller Aeron Stool's high variant represents the nicest one (again, personal preference, here), with a seat height up to 34"

<comment><USER3> >> Standing eliminates post-lunch lethargy, for me

I quit drinking sugary drinks for that.

<comment><USER2> Congratulations on choosing a healthier diet; controlling sugars definitely helps, as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm coming up on my 5-year standing anniversary.

One thing I've noticed that the video doesn't mention is what it's like to work at a sitting desk after having exclusively stood so long.

It sucks.

My hip flexors aren't used to sitting for more than short intervals, which means I can't work at a sitting desk for a whole day without having hip pain.

This was an issue last year when I did some consulting at a company where they didn't have any standing desks available. (At some companies I've actually started the standing desk trend, but this Major US Cable Company was having none of it).

<comment><USER5> Do you work out regularly?

I'd imagine if you exercised/stretched your lower back and hip flexors regularly (deadlifts and squats) that you would be OK to sit for long periods of time.

<comment><USER4> I started basic barbell training 3 times per week, including squats and deadlifts, about 3 months ago.

I guess I didn't notice any problems with hip flexors when sitting on a few very long flights recently, so maybe you're right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cashiers, doormen, and croupiers do it.

<comment><USER7> I stood all day assembling automobiles years ago. Took a couple weeks to get used to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Been standing for three years. I was having pretty frequent lower back pain, which made sitting very uncomfortable. It took a while to get used to standing (leg fatigue).

Back pain is basically gone. Legs still get tired sometimes and it is nice to take a break and sit occasionally throughout the day. I would not go back to sitting but would like a more interchangeable standing/sitting setup.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm reasonably fit, but I'd never stood for the whole day, until two weeks ago. Then I started running the family business while the parents went away for vacation. I decided to stand / walk instead of grabbing a stool because I thought it would compensate for the lack of other exercise I'd be getting - business hours are fairly long, and I really don't feel like workout out after.

Take-aways so far:

\- When standing, I automatically change it up - sometimes I stand up-right, sometimes I stand with my legs split a bit.

\- After a couple of days of discomfort, I can basically stand all day, no issues.

\- I come home, and sit. And if I'm watching TV, I pass out for a good 20 minutes. Automatic nap.

\- I don't feel sleepy at work at all. Zero lethargy. I don't feel sleepy after lunch.

Some advice:

\- Try to engage your core, your glutes, legs.. different muscles to keep you upright.

\- Change things up. I try not to lurch. To lower myself, I split my legs a bit. Sometimes for fun (while reading email, random junk online..) I do a half-squat.

</comment><comment><USER10> For all you guys who have standing desks and have been using them for years, have you noticed any type of leg vein issues (vericose veins)?

Years ago when I looked into making a standing desk I vaguely remember a couple studies hinting that prolonged standing drastically increases the chances of getting them.

<comment><USER11> Nope, but then I've always used compression socks (for long before I started standing due to having it drilled in to my head by a soccer coach I had back in the day) which I think helps prevent such problems, I also have a standing mat.

Anyway, I've been standing for three years now and apart from about a month of adjusting myself to the idea, it's been great, primarily my lower back which used to hurt somewhat and stiffen after a work day, other benefits although not dramatic is some weight loss (atleast initially) and better posture.

<comment><USER10> Interesting, I haven't heard of those.

That was my only concern for a standing desk really. I already walk a few miles a day, but I wanted to add more standing into my daily routine.

It's funny, after you do it long enough your body craves it.

<comment><USER11> >Interesting, I haven't heard of those.

Basically they improve blood circulation and prevent varicose vein problems.

My old coach was convinced it improved recovery time for lower-leg muscles after hard training and more or less made us swear to use them as much as possible :)

>It's funny, after you do it long enough your body craves it.

I'm doing daily (well at least 5-6 days a week) walks myself as well, I do between 50-70 minutes depending on how I feel, and yes it does become something of a craving, I typically feel uneasy if I don't get out and walk.

The reason I started was as part of rehabilitation after a knee injury I sustained during sports, and it became a great habit (something good came out of that injury).

This might also play in to avoiding vein issues when standing since you get the leg circulation up and running during high pace walks.

<comment><USER10> Do you have any recommended compression sock brands?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ije.d...](http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ije.dyv191.full)

Conclusions: Sitting time was not associated with all-cause mortality risk. The results of this study suggest that policy makers and clinicians should be cautious about placing emphasis on sitting behaviour as a risk factor for mortality that is distinct from the effect of physical activity.

</comment><comment><USER13> My father-in-law was using standing desk for past 40 years (works at street market). He is pretty healthy.

</comment><comment><USER14> I use the same little laptop stand thing, can recommend it as a cheap way into standing desks.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes! Also cool to note that a post a while back on here showed leg strength correlating to increased intelligence.

<comment><USER16> Then you should do squats because standing all day doesn't give you big strong legs.

Note, I'm not claiming that squats will make you smarter. For some reason we get a lot of "correlation science" on HN.

<comment><USER17> No no no. You should read more. That will increase your intelligence which makes your legs stronger.

<comment><USER18> I just rip off pages from textbooks and eat them. Much, much less time consuming and the calories aren't that bad. Great source of fiber.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone summarize the video? Can't watch video right now.

<comment><USER20> It's an ad for an app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not denying it</comment></comment></comment>


Blohm and Voss BV 141 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blohm_%26_Voss_BV_141 <comment><USER2> For a somewhat similar but more modern configuration, there's Burt Rutan's Boomerang: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Boomerang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Boomerang)

<comment><USER3> It's hinted at in the wiki article, but one of the advantages of this configuration is that it is supposed to be safer if one of the engine goes out during takeoff. Multi-engine planes tend to be less safe than single-engine planes (for general aviation) despite the redundancy of an extra engine because if an engine goes out during takeoff most pilots have a very hard time maintaining control of the aircraft.

<comment><USER4> And I assume it is safer because to distance between them engines is smaller than it would be if neither was mounted in front of the cockpit.

<comment><USER3> Yep that's right. There are also planes like the Cessna Skymaster[0] that have two propellers in a push-pull configuration, where both propellers are in line with center of the fuselage.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_O-2_Skymaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_O-2_Skymaster)

<comment><USER4> Wow, that is even better. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ubisoft Sues Apple, Google over Alibaba's Rainbow Six "Ripoff" "Area F2" - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-16/ubisoft-sues-apple-google-over-alibaba-s-rainbow-six-ripoff <comment><AUTHOR> 'Ubisoft Entertainment SA sued Apple Inc. and Google LLC, accusing the companies of selling a ripoff of its popular video game "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege."

'"Area F2," created by Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.'s Ejoy.com, is a "near carbon copy" of Rainbow Six: Siege, and that can't be "seriously be disputed," Ubisoft said in a complaint filed Friday in federal court in Los Angeles.'

Added context to original title; added the name of the game in question. Unedited title was:

Ubisoft Sues Apple, Google Over Alibaba's Rainbow Six "Ripoff"</comment>


If your app emits RSS, think about the title you generate for each user's feed - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2011/12/11/ifYourAppEmitsRss.html <comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I know RSS is dead.</comment>


The Effect of Shorter Trial Periods for SaaS - <AUTHOR> http://www.kashflow.com/blog/the-effect-of-shorter-trial-periods-for-saas/

<comment><USER2> I reduced my trial period for Planscope from 30 days to 14, and have already seen a dramatic uptick in sales. Unless you're doing something that takes a long time to really shine (like KISSmetrics), 14 days is more than enough to demonstrate how things work and see if there's a fit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if part of the reason is that on shorter trial periods, people are still in the 'honeymoon phase'. When you make a good first impression, people will go 'oh this is the best thing ever'. Nothing ever is, of course, and it takes a while (weeks to months, depending on the product) to find out that some aspects aren't that great. But when you've made the first payment, you've committed yourself, and now you're prone to confirmation bias.

After 2 months, people are more likely to have hit the not-so-great parts and may think 'meh, I'm going to try other options first'. The shorter the trail period, the more people (at least of those who actively try at all) will still be in the honeymoon phase and more likely to sign up.

Just thinking out loud, I have no numbers to back this up, and I wonder how one could measure this. I guess you'd need to correlate user activity to the duration of the trial and the likelihood that somebody signs up - maybe there is an overarching trend to be found there somewhere. It would require a fairly homogeneous set of users though, or otherwise a large number of users and additional data (either user traits or usage pattern commonalities) to slice the users into more homogenous groups.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to see you perform some more tests (10, 20, 30) now that you have settled into your new website - for the good of the Internet!

Mileage, I'm sure, will vary depending on the audience.

Our company serves organisations of all sizes. I reckon a 14 day trial period would improve (at least the immediacy of) our conversions of small business customers, but it would simply cause difficulties and annoy our enterprise customers, often with a team of people involved at varying levels who are often spread over the world, resulting in a slow ramp-up to testing.

Targeting different trial lengths at different stereotypes of lead would be an interesting project...

<comment><USER5> It would be an interesting project, but possibly detrimental too! Play with your own baby, leave mine alone : )

<comment><USER4> Thought you might say that!

But you never know - despite the substantial improvement, 14 days might not be your sweetest spot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I happen to signup for a 30 day free trial for a service using my credit card. Yet I always put it aside to try it until my first payment was sent. I guess shorter trials will force the user to actually try it quickly and see if it fits for his requirements.</comment>


FBI: Hillary Clinton Didn't Know 'C' in Emails Meant Classified - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/hillary-clinton-had-11-blackberrys-while-secretary-of-s-1786108731 <comment><USER2> Here's what the FBI report ([https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3039030/Hillary-C...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3039030/Hillary- Clinton-FBI-Investigation.pdf)) actually says:

 _The FBI identified three e-mail chain, encompassing eight individual e-mail exchanges to or from Clinton 's personal e-mail accounts, which contained at least one paragraph marked "(C)," a marking ostensibly indicating the presence of information classified at the CONFIDENTIAL level. The emails contained no additional markings, such as a header or footer, indicating that they were classified. State confirmed through the FOIA review process that one of these three e-mail chains contains information which is currently classified at the CONFIDENTIAL level. State determined that the other two e-mail chains are currently UNCLASSIFIED. State did not provide a determination as to whether any of these three e-mails were classified at the time they were sent.

When asked about the e-mail chain containing "C" portion markings that State determined to currently contain CONFIDENTIAL information, Clinton stated she did not know what the "(C)" means at the beginning of the paragraphs and speculated it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order. Clinton identified tied a "CONFIDENTIAL" header and footer (inserted in the document by the FBI prior to the interview) and asked if the "(C)" related to the "CONFIDENTIAL" header and footer. Clinton did not believe the content of the e-mail was classified and questioned the classification determination. When asked of her knowledge regarding TOP SECRET, SECTET, and CONFIDENTIAL classification levels of USG information, Clinton responded that she did not pay attention to the "level" of classification and took all classified information seriously._

<comment><USER3> Thank you. Gizmodo's article is grossly misleading, starting with its 100% inaccurate title ("C" doesn't stand for "classified"). This makes their terrible "Facebook is censoring conservatives" story look like Pulitzer material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been in the computer security industry for decades, 20 years ago I did intrusion detection and computer network security for a large government location as part of a team of about 12 people. I referred people to the Inspector General for prosecution when they attacked our networks.

I am really shocked at the level of incompetence here. Even 20 years ago we had 300,000 to 450,000 probes and hack attempts on that one network alone, on a weekly basis. It seems almost certain that her emails were compromised.

Destroying them is inexcusable, at the very least those records could have been used to determine what data had been potentially compromised.

I can't imagine what went on at the State Department where this kind of thing could happen. And, it isn't just Hillary Clinton who is guilty here.

I remember the first day after my security clearance and background checks completed, they spent several hours explaining security policies to me; that felony charges would be brought against me if I walked out the gate with so much as a hard copy of an internal email. I only had the lowest level of clearance for "classified" of "confidential" and even then only as was relevant to performing my job. There were entire buildings in our complex that had "secret" data, and only certain members of our team could investigate those systems for potential intrusions.

Even at that level, when you work with potentially classified material, the default behavior is to act is if all information is classified. If you want to published, or release information, it needs to checked and approved, even if it's not sensitive, just to be sure.

The only excuse I can possibly imagine, is that the clintonemail.com server was actually an elaborate ruse to leak misinformation to foreign actors.

<comment><USER5> Remember that all of the classified information on the server was either not classified at the time or was 1 of 3 incorrectly marked classified emails. Also remember the official state server at the time was also confirmed hacked.

<comment><USER6> But, why was she moving any State-related content off government computers? Why would she put herself and others at risk like that? These weren't all personal emails she was sending - she was discussing State department business with the foundation and with her trusted operator, Sidney Blumenthal.

Worst of all is how sloppy everyone involved in this fiasco has been. I feel bad for Obama, what a cluster!

> Also remember the official state server at the time was also confirmed > hacked.

Look, clearly Hillary engaged in unsafe IT practices. Could it be she was phished? Maybe she was the one who enabled the hack!

<comment><USER7> Simple: the NSA refused to give Clinton the same secure BlackBerry setup they had provided President Obama.

<comment><USER6> Has she claimed this anywhere in testimony? The reason I heard given was she needed a way to send emails of a personal nature.

That reason and the one you've given sound like a dodge.

Fact is, if she even tangentially admitted to knowingly transmitting information _marked_ confidential off State networks (which she did), she'd be guilty of multiple crimes and none of her friends could save her. She would be frog-marched off to the hoosegow. Hence, the endless excuses, waving-off, and feigned ignorance.

The drip, drip, drip of damning evidence will continue and to save her skin all she can do is shrug absent-mindedly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The "C" designation actually means "confidential", which is one of the levels of classification, the other common ones being "secret" and "top secret".

"[Confidential] is defined as information that would 'damage' national security if publicly disclosed"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States#Levels_of_classification_used_by_the_U.S._government)

<comment><USER9> > The "C" designation actually means "confidential"

Good point. Though original quote still makes sense as "Confidential" is a classification level. So (C) does mean classified, as does (S) and (TS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doubtless this article will be flagged and removed. But I'll put in my 2 cents before then.

Only 3 of the 30,000+ emails had these markings. The C marking in the body on its own is not a proper or common method of classification. Comey said that missing this was entirely reasonable in his explanation. This is a non story.

<comment><USER10> It's not a method of classification, it's a way to mark what is classified (and at what level) and what is not. While I have never sent/received classified email, in the past, I have dealt with classified Navy message traffic. Markings like (C), (S), and (TS) were "portion marks" and marked subjects, paragraphs, etc. throughout the message. (U) is used to mark portions which are unclassified (in a classified message).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Clinton took deliberate and illegal action to hide her emails from FOIA. She either told bald-faced lies during a federal investigation, or she was too stupid to deserve to keep her security clearance. And now she will probably be the Commander in Chief of the USA.

It kinda makes me miss Bush.

<comment><USER12> > It kinda makes me miss Bush.

You mean how they knowingly and willfully revealed that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent as payback against her husband who had written an article critical about the basis for the Iraqi War?

<comment><USER13> Any indication Bush was involved in that, and not just Armitage?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The state department is so twisted up in intelligence-related operations. She was read in and briefed on all these classified operations. She was the SECRETARY of STATE: the top of the food chain.

I roll my eyes at the excuses given for all her money/power related moves while at State, especially when she could have compromised our agents or moles with her carelessness. She was abysmal as top diplomat (russia reset, all for cratering Syria, Libya and Egypt governments, Benghazi CIA cluster f-). And the whole thing with the Clinton Foundation and her "private" (ClintonEmail.com) email server is icing on the cake - just stinks of pay-to- play, pure greed.

She's going to win the presidency, not go to jail or ever be impeached, and she's a terrible person. All that is acceptable to me because Hillary Clinton is just one of those problems that is out of my control.

</comment><comment><USER14> It doesn't matter. Ignorance of the law and all that... but I suppose that only applies to us little people.

<comment><USER12> The law is worded as "knowingly and willfully". This situation is a decent argument for incompetence, but in that case, she isn't criminal.

<comment><USER14> What "law" are you talking about? Because I was referring to the general, long established rule that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law. Try your "knowingly and willfully" argument with a cop or with the IRS and see how far that gets you. It doesn't work that way and you know it, they proceed with the ticket or the tax + penalties and the courts back this procedure up. The point of my comment is that Clinton broke the law and mishandled classified information. Anyone who accepts that responsibility has to accept the consequences, even if they "didn't mean it", of failing to protect the info.

<comment><USER3> Some crimes are defined by intent. Look up "mens rea". It's what distinguishes manslaughter from murder, for instance. Federal law distinguishes between accidental mishandling and intentional leaking of classified material. The former is what Hillary Clinton did. The latter is what Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning did.

<comment><USER14> I am aware of such distinctions but these legal classifications are defined to determine the appropriate punishment not to let someone off the hook. If you killed someone because you lost control of your car in the rain on bald tires you don't get a pass because you "didn't mean it". Comey made a recent speech and basically said the evidence shows that Clinton violated the laws regarding the handling of classified material but we aren't going to charge her. If it was due to incompetence or brain seizures or an honest mistake or selling out her country for financial gain, these are separate questions apart from the fact that a crime was committed and that she did it (or was complicit).

<comment><USER3> That isn't true. Most crimes require mens rea of some kind. This can include intent (I'm going to kill that guy with this brick), recklessness (I'm going to toss this brick out the window, who cares if it hits anyone), negligence (I'm going to put this teetering pile of bricks on the windowsill over a busy street, hope nobody knocks it over), and some others.

This is true of all kinds of common crimes. If you accidentally enter the wrong house, it's not trespassing. If you accidentally pick up your friend's phone instead of your own, it's not theft. If you get in your car and drive away without realizing a strange kid had gotten into the back seat, it's not kidnapping. These are all acts that only become crimes if the person doing them has a "guilty mind".

"Ignorance of the law is no defense" does not speak to intent or mens rea at all. Mens rea is "officer, I hit that guy with my car because I hit a patch of black ice and skidded out of control". An attempted ignorance defense is "I didn't know it was against the law to hit someone with my car." Similarly, "I didn't know this material was classified" and "I didn't know it was illegal to distribute classified material" are very different arguments.

<comment><USER7> Another important caveat is that Clinton, as far as we know, hadn't intended to leak or otherwise share classified information. While the server may not have been up to State Department security standards, it was not there with the intent to disseminate classified material to anyone without clearance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you presume everything she told the FBI was true then she was woefully incompetent to be a Secretary of the state and should not be allowed near the oval office.

If some or all have proven to be lies then she should have been indicted.

</comment><comment><USER16> AKA the Bill Gates defense.

</comment><comment><USER17> It means "Clinton"

<comment><USER18> Maybe she thought it was the MSN "coffee" emoticon? [http://neowin.s3.amazonaws.com/forum/uploads/post-32224-1119...](http://neowin.s3.amazonaws.com/forum/uploads/post-32224-1119483807.gif)</comment></comment>


Operation b107 - Rustock Botnet Takedown - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2011/03/18/operation-b107-rustock-botnet-takedown.aspx Rustock- a botnet with an estimated infection count above one million computers and capable of sending billions of spam messages per day. Some statistics suggest that, at peaks, it represented as much as 80% of spam traffic and in excess of 2000 spam messages per second. <comment><AUTHOR> TEST</comment>


12 new file formats in the Google Docs Viewer - <AUTHOR> http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/02/12-new-file-formats-in-google-docs.html <comment><USER2> Great, yet more formats that I have to try and get around Google Docs with. Worst of all is PDF: Some of us have browsers and platforms that don't hate the format, and viewing PDFs natively in Safari/Chrome is a million times better than sending them through Google Docs for mangling.

Easily my most despised GMail "feature", that.

<comment><USER3> If you're using Chrome, Gmail opens PDF's using Chrome's own viewer now.

<comment><USER2> So why is their platform the only one to get special treatment? Safari also has a (better, faster) native PDF viewer, why not hand off to it too?

Don't like this precedent of funnelling the web via their servers and translators unless you're using their browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They support Adobe Illustrator! Amazing. I would love to know how they do it internally.

<comment><USER5> Assuming they did not want to entirely roll their own impl, I would guess they used the same (code|technique) as Inkscape: [http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Output_format_requir...](http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Output_format_requirements)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome. We've had it on Mibbit for some time now to view pdf, ppt and doc files.

(Inline viewing next to chat, see screengrab)

[http://blog.mibbit.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/03/Picture-2....](http://blog.mibbit.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/03/Picture-2.png)

Excellent we can now pass on support for the others.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a shame it's so chatty. Unless you're using it as a simple IFrame embed, it will fall over on xss errors.

In Twiddla, for example, we'd like to include a bit of custom script to detect when you click the "next page" button so that we can keep everybody synced up. That means we have to proxy it through our server and mess with the markup a bit. That's easy to do in Scribd's viewer, and it actually worked fine in Gdocs' view before October last year.

Then they changed things & got all fancy. Shame.

</comment><comment><USER8> I uploaded an SVG and it converted it into a read only image. I tried inserting an SVG into a drawing and it failed.

<comment><USER9> I was also curious about how they handle SVG. I was hoping I'd be able to edit it as a vector drawing. Nope. It gets rendered to a bitmap, by all upload methods I tried.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found a couple people surprised by this in another context, so I'll include it here: while nice and featureful, Google Docs requires viewers to be logged into Google. This is a problem for some curmudgeons like myself, so if at all possible, try to have at least some alternate means of providing the data.

<comment><USER11> Not necessarily true, if you set it to public, right?

<comment><USER10> Ah, I couldn't say since I don't use it myself. I know I've been asked to log in to view publicly disseminated document links.

If setting it to public solves the problem, by all means do that!

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it looks like documents can be viewed publicly (without a Google account) if going through the Viewer: <http://docs.google.com/viewer>

Pretty handy if you have a bunch of files in their original formats available for downloading, but want to have links available for easy online viewing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very cool. I wish I could use it:

 _Google Docs is not available for jedsmith.org. Learn more about Google products you can use with firstname.lastname@example.com._

I love the Google Apps Unified Account, but it seems like every now and then I run into yet another service that hasn't been "migrated" yet.

<comment><USER14> I think you can enable support for more products in the Google Apps management page. I have access to pretty much all Google products in my GApps account

<comment><USER13> No, it has to do with the single sign-on conversion. Docs is enabled:

<http://dropbox.jedsmith.org/hn_1.png>

But I get this when I click through:

<http://dropbox.jedsmith.org/hn_2.png>

It was a caveat I was informed of when I performed the conversion on my domain, but I didn't expect something flagship like Docs to not work.

<comment><USER15> > It was a caveat I was informed of when I performed the conversion on my > domain

Can you explain that. I have no idea what it means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have just tried to open a word file and it was impossible since Google Docs support Word files only up to 1MB! This is a big limitation in case that somebody would like to co-edit scientific articles.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does the autoCAD open up into google sketch up? B/c that would be cool.

<comment><USER18> DXF and DWG import requires Sketchup Pro in the current version. Older versions of Sketchup at least up to 7 supported DXF/DWG (that's why I still have them installed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The xls viewer looks bugged, the merged cells don't show up properly.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd love to have that as an API to integrate into a webpplication. Much like Crocodoc, only support for far more file formats.

<comment><USER21> You can embed <http://docs.google.com/viewer> links in an iframe.

<comment><USER20> But it only works if the visitors are logged into google / gmail, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> No way! Finally illustrator doc support!

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice. Very nice. Big fan of this feature of gmail.

If only Zimbra could do Doc files this well... :(

</comment><comment><USER24> The Illustrator and Photoshop formats are what caught my eye.

What happens if you try to view an Illustrator file in Google Docs Viewer?

Does it render the file just as Illustrator would?

Since Google Docs offers the ability to export to PDF, it would be impressive if you could open an Illustrator file in Google Docs and export it to PDF format without the need to own a copy of Illustrator.

<comment><USER4> > Does it render the file just as Illustrator would?

I doubt it, but just managing the basic structure is an amazing feat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is one of my favorite features of Gmail, the easy opening of docs. Also very necessary on the cr-48.</comment>


The CPAN Pull Request Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/neilb/2014/12/take-the-2015-cpan-pull-request-challenge.html

<comment><USER2> I'm in.

Some years ago I tried to motivate people to contribute to Perl 6, and found that while many had some lingering interest in doing so, they needed some steering.

This was hard for me to do, because usually in Open Source communities, you aren't supposed to tell people what to do; they are free to chose the occupation after all. But I found that it worked very well.

So I think the CPAN Pull Request Challenge is a very good approach to steer people to particular projects, without causing too much work for those who steer. At least it's a very good experiment to try.

<comment><USER3> I'm still amazed at the number of developers who have a block around filing bugs or send out pull requests for the tools/libraries they use.

<comment><USER4> I'm not. Especially on larger projects, new contributors usually face something between indifference and hostility. After spending weeks in mailing list battles trying to contribute to a few projects, many people conclude it's not worth their time.

<comment><USER5> This. Even mildly popular library maintainers will be indifferent or hostile for even the most agreeable PR. Sometimes its just easier to fork and run your own version for this reason, but it makes contributing back to the community difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Count me in! The last time I wrote Perl, the Camel Book was a _thing_ and I thought it was cool to have the least number of digits in your slashdot id as possible.

I find it pretty fun to try to modify code that lives in a world that I'm largely not part of, this is a nice little impetus!

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's about the same for me. Perl was the first real language I picked up outside of school, with many hours spent inside cgi-bin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm in. People around here are sometimes cynical of Perl, but there's a lot of high quality code on CPAN that definitely shouldn't fall by the wayside.

<comment><USER9> CPAN was Perl's claim to fame. It's what gave it the "edge" over Python and Ruby a decade ago. I think people have finally realized that edge is rapidly fading. I still occasionally use Perl but I'm trying to make my goto language Python or Go, unless I find a better functional language. After all, in 2015, shouldn't we be using OCaml or F# for our quick jobs?

I guess I'd rather invest in the future rather than try to save the past.

<comment><USER10> Although having a central repository of code on the web is no longer unique to Perl, there is still some of CPAN's infrastructure that would be nice to have in other communities. For instance, cpantesters[1].

As far as I know, only the Lisp community has something similar to cpantesters in their cl-test-grid project.

On the other hand nowadays a language community could probably set up something similar to cpantesters using travis so hopefully we'll see more of those sort of systems in the future.

\--

[1] - If you want to play buzzword bingo you can think about cpantesters as a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-organizing, volunteered run, cross-platform continuous integration platform that is free to end-users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a fantastic idea. I think this will really speak to those of us that may need a little nudge before feeling comfortable. I've dusted off my PAUSE ID and signed up.

Does anyone know of any other langs/communities that have tried something like this? This seems like a great idea to learn and contribute.

<comment><USER12> Almost every langs have a CPAN alike. They just copied it.

CTAN for TeX, CCAN for C, forgot the ruby name, LISP has it even with a cpantesters alike testers grid, PHP split it into PECL for binary extensions (higher quality) and PEAR, which struggles. emacs lisp, node.js, ocaml, ...

go uses git only for their distributed module system, which is a nice and simple idea, (github as default) but also appeared in common lisp before.

<comment><USER13> I think the question was less "What other languages have module repositories like CPAN" and more "Does anyone know of other module ecosystems that are running projects like this to get people involved?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Add don't forget to use [http://www.cpantesters.org/](http://www.cpantesters.org/) so you can see how your test cases run on a variety of platforms.

</comment><comment><USER15> You never know when that pull request could turn into co-maintainer permissions. ;-) That happened to me with 3 packages last month!

<comment><USER16> Well volunteered!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am in, nice iniciative. I've just released [https://metacpan.org/pod/Task::BeLike::FIBO](https://metacpan.org/pod/Task::BeLike::FIBO) and I'm quite glad of my minimal style. Perl is for servers like JavaScript for the web, it is obiquitous. I like other languages too, but, Perl is really fun specially for the community, a great one!

</comment><comment><USER18> I signed up. Sounds like a good opportunity for those who want to help, but don't quite know where to get started.

</comment><comment><USER19> In as well. Hope I don't get something like SOAP::WSDL :)

<comment><USER20> Let me check if it's on github ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> 1\. Join the challenge 2\. Get any module assigned 3\. Check the gaps in it's test coverage using [https://metacpan.org/pod/Devel::Cover](https://metacpan.org/pod/Devel::Cover) 4\. MOAR TESTS 5\. Profit!

<comment><USER22> Doing it manually? Now we've got www.cpancover.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm interested, but I don't know Perl. Is knowing Perl a hard prerequisite?

<comment><USER24> I wrote a brief introduction to Perl from philosophy to pragmatic efficacy. It's available free online:

[http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl_2014/](http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl_2014/)

It works best with at least six months practical experience in any programming language.

<comment><USER23> I'm going through it right now. Looks very useful, thanks for writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds great, is there anything like this for php?

<comment><USER26> I don't think php has reached the point where a lot of libraries have reached stagnation.

In general though it would be cool to just automate this in some fashion. Occasionally email participants a link to projects that haven't had commits in many months but have open bugs or feature requests.

<comment><USER27> It's not necessarily _just_ about dealing with stagnation. It's also about finding a way for people to start contributing to open source. If you've never released anything, just patching someone else's work is a great way to start. This automates the selection process so you don't necessarily have to look around for something that needs help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm in. Been looking for an excuse to use my budding perl-fu.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sounds cool, I'd do something like this if it was in Ruby. Haven't used perl in several years, not sure I'd be much help

<comment><USER30> Well, nothing is stopping you from suggesting (or implementing!) this except the willingness of the target repositories to accept incoming pull requests. This[0] discussion is especially relevant to that limitation.

I get the impression this CPAN campaign is an attempt to introduce, or reintroduce, folks to Perl, which might not be as big of a problem with Ruby. That is, of course, my opinion.

0 = [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8819930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8819930)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> absolutely cpancited! should probably come up with a more taggable acronym for this

</comment><comment><USER32> Sounds desperate.

<comment><USER33> Given the number of people registered to the challenge, it looks like it's going to work just fine

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > The goal is to help others, possibly learn something, and hopefully have a > bit of fun

Seems like it shouldn't be limited to CPAN modules.

<comment><USER35> What else would you include?

<comment><USER34> I guess I was just being a bit cynical, he should have stated a goal to revitalize CPAN.</comment></comment></comment>


Here's why the eight-hour workday doesn't work - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-managing/heres-why-the-eight-hour-workday-doesnt-work <comment><USER2> Working link: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small- busi...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb- managing/heres-why-the-eight-hour-workday-doesnt-work/article28666545/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> sorry, didnt notice the link expired!!

thanks @maysonl for posting a working link.

and here is another link to the original article from where it was synidicated: [http://www.talentsmart.com/articles/Why-the-8-Hour- Workday-D...](http://www.talentsmart.com/articles/Why-the-8-Hour-Workday- Doesn't-Work-1242528347-p-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> 404

</comment><comment><USER4> broken/dead link</comment>


FreeSSL - <AUTHOR> https://www.hostpoint.ch/en/ssl/freessl.html <comment><USER2> Mostly advertising for hostpoint ... you can hardly call something FreeSSL, if you are paying quite an amount just for the domain-name. SSL certificates can be had for ~$9, so this is just included in the domain-price.</comment>


If you don't trust your employees to work remotely, you shouldn't have hired - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/891537/if-you-dont-trust-your-employees-to-work-remotely-you-shouldnt-have-hired-them-in-the-first-place/ <comment><USER2> I agree a lot more with the line:

>Remove the safety nets and let the bad actors fail

But even that should be done carefully.

I don't really agree with the title as it really does take time to build up trust and even onboard and establish a relationship with coworkers ... and no amount of interviewing means you know who you hired until they have worked a while.

I was hired as a n00b web dev a while back and recently sat with my boss and the president of the company and we talked about how long it takes until you're sure about someone.

These days I work from home +50% of the time... sometimes a lot more.</comment>


Announcing PressHat: News aggregation, distribution, and reporting - <AUTHOR> http://www.presshat.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> So this is the "startup" -- more "colossal undertaking" -- that I and a couple of friends have been chewing away on for a couple of months.

Hit the blog link at the bottom for grainy video of our iPhone app in action and other pretty pictures.

We've decided that since we're going to have a longer development cycle than the average weekend project, we're going to announce our presence much earlier in the development process and see if we can get some helpful feedback -- and maybe a bit of a following -- along the way.

<comment><USER2> welcome to the party competitor :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there! I remember bumping into you on HN a while back too.

In all seriousness, I'm excited by this. There's plenty of room for a couple of people to work on this, and we'll probably have slightly different approaches anyway.

Can you say yet how yours is coming along?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> my first thoughts:

boy thats an ugly website. especially the coming soon icon. why so much white? show me the product. show me the product.

at a guess it seems like you're solving 3 really hard problems: news reading [like broadersheet], news publishing [content cms] and citizen journalism [like windycitizen or whatever].

can't wait to see it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

I agree on the design: none of us is a graphic designer, so that's on the to- do. We just needed to get _something_ up.

The product is still under development; we're taking a risk by announcing our intention ahead of our product, but we've got enough done at this point that product releases should start happening Real Soon Now.

There's also a fourth (and fifth) problem in the mix: advertising (and revenue in general).

Man, Broadersheet's website really blows ours away. :-)</comment></comment>


How to make 10 million in one night - <AUTHOR> http://designcodelearn.com/blog/2012/12/01/how-to-make-$10m-in-one-night/

<comment><USER2> Interesting hack, definitely some potential around socially aware devices. But that is a terribly horrible title for the post, it's misleading and probably makes more people _not_ want to click through to read more who otherwise might be interested in open hardware or using the social graph in hardware.</comment>