Crispr is less like molecular scissors and more like molecular malware - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/syndication/2019/07/14/crispr-is-less-like-molecular-scissors-and-more-like-molecular-malware/ <comment><USER2> I don't think that the alzheimers consensus is the amyloid beta hypothesis anymore where it's one protein going rogue. Otherwise interesting article, though I disagree with this idea that its "less" like scissors and "more" like malware. They pretty much are molecular scissors, but they're definitely not malware. They're actually the anti-virus system of a bacteria. Calling them malware doesn't make sense as a metaphor (they arent Infcetious etc) and just confuses things more.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, I think the disconnect here might be that the author has no idea how malware works or what malware really is.

<comment><USER2> If the author had said that crispr based gene drives are malware then I can see that metaphor working, but I don't think that was what was the case here. Also, crispr for neuro diseases isn't just knockouts, there's work with single base change Cas forms and RNA targeting crispr, it's a broad range of tools

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Replacing an inadequately descriptive term with an incorrect term doesn't really help anyone.

There's an important point in the article about the cascade of unforseen consequences that occur when you start tweaking genes using CRISPR - and that it really isn't the straightforward silver bullet many make it out to be.

But the use of the word malware is there exclusively for the clickbaity headline.

<comment><USER2> I'd argue that the molecular scissors argument is actually adequately descriptive and holds up to a bit of metaphor overextending. You totally can cut and paste gene sequences using CRISPR. That's the whole point of Homology Directed Repair (HDR). And much like actual sets and crafts, it is a lot easier to make crude cuts all over the place than to elegantly glue pieces back together into a useful end product. HDR still suffers from low efficiency and so on. And the riot analogy for alzheimers is great, but it doesn't require you to give up the scissor analogy either. You arent stopping a riot with scissors, while on the other ha d you totally could stop a riot with malware (shut down every messaging service somehow so that there isn't any way to coordinate).

<comment><USER5> The most important part of CRISPR (Cas9) is its ability to colocalize with specific, arbitrary DNA sequences. It has a second function, which exists is many many other proteins and is not special at all - to cut double-stranded DNA. And in fact, that it cuts, is not actually desirable most of the time. Some of the most interesting uses of Cas9 actually try to get rid of its ability to cut the DNA (while retaining its ability to home in on specific DNA sequences).

I'm all for metaphors, but don't be afraid to shift them around when you think of a better one. (and 'malware' is _not_ a better one...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's actually, literally, a molecular antivirus program.

Much like antivirus software scans your computer for a signature of a computer virus in order to remove it, CRISPR is part of a bacterial mechanism to scan DNA for the signature of an actual virus and snip it out, preventing the virus from using the bacterium to reproduce. Biology is NUTS.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I think a better analogy would be an antivirus program that simply deletes any file (or more accurately parts of a file) it thinks is suspicious.

.. by no means an optimal antivirus program, but in a sense, it is effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think most negative comments here are a bit harsh. Of course the analogy has its weak points (every analogy has), but what I took away from it is the following:

\- the DNA is not the Internet, but rather the Code (capital C) that governs everything in the "city": the buildings, the football fans, the FIFA, everything - including not only how they behave, but also how they are created.

\- CRISPR is not malware, but it's (as the article mentions in passing) a search & replace function that allows you to change the Code, but with the described limitations - the biggest of which is that every "edit" can have any number of unintended consequences.

<comment><USER9> I agree that every analogy has its weak points, but Crispr's actual function in cells is the exact opposite of malware, so it just seems like a very odd analogy to pick. It also creates a sense of fear and distrust that is bad to associate with a tool that the public really doesn't understand as-is.

<comment><USER8> Of course "malware" is maybe a bad word for it, because it contains "mal" (i.e. "bad"), which is contrary to the (hopefully) beneficial effects of CRISPR. But the fact remains that CRISPR is using an exploit to hack the "Code" I mentioned above, with potentially dangerous results, and if you think about it in these terms, "malware" doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They take a decent technical concept aspect (Crispr is a subversion of existing cells running itself as opposed to something we must do manually every time like scissors), an extended metaphor that makes a bit more sense (bodies as cities of interacting cells - changing one still leaves a whole interacting system to keep in mind) and then proceed to butcher it needlessly instead of going anywhere sensible sadly.

Still their start had promise and raises some interesting semantic questions. Even if Malware is the wrong term for the intended use of the tool it is certainly what it would be flagged as by the immune system because of where it treads - just like Anti-Virus software in many cases. Even so Anti-Virus is such a misleading term for Crispr both from scope collision of computer and physical viruses. Even if it how it works literally it risks confusion.

</comment><comment><USER11> My (layman) analogy so far was to think of proteins as wires and transistors, cells as microcontrollers, DNA as the program _of a single microcontroller_ and our body as the result of billions of microcontrollers which all run (mostly) the same program, interacting with each other.

At least, this gives some appreciation of the complexity of it all.

</comment><comment><USER12> Also CRISPR is being used for diagnostics, similarly to PCR. It can detect certain DNA sequences or select regions of the genome for targeted sequencing.

<comment><USER13> This isn't exactly crispr, it's more an application of Cas9 and friends. These are sometimes modified. The DNA and RNA binding capabilities of these proteins is opening up a lot of new possiblities!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could it ever be used maliciously? Supposedly some countries are poisoning people via Polonium and inducing heart attacks: [https://citizentruth.org/cia- heart-attack-gun/](https://citizentruth.org/cia-heart-attack-gun/)

<comment><USER2> Anything can be used maliciously. But it's way harder to make an bioweapon an bioweapon out of crispr than it's worth. And it's not like you'd have any particular advantage from using crispr, I guess you could load a bunch targeting some essential gene into an AAV and spray it on people but it's probably easier just to wait for the flu virus to mutate and do its thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Life is tolerant to meddling so even idiots like human beings can meddle with it and it still continues. To a point and then it comes crashing down. Humans however are too stupid and arrogant to realize this simple fact and instead are emboldened at each step that they meddle with it and it solves some problem and does not collapse. However nature also does similar insane experiments and produces plenty of catastrophe on its own, so maybe we can justify human intervention as the lesser of two evils. Queer business in a mostly dead universe which is out to eliminate the little life it has in it, and so are humans.

<comment><USER16> > However nature also does similar insane experiments and produces plenty of > catastrophe on its own

I'm curious about this, any references for me to read about?

<comment><USER17> Well, the Great Oxidation Event might count. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event)</comment></comment></comment>


Public consultation on UK's Digital Economy Act was a sham - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/digital-economy-act-a-foregone-conclusion-110731/

<comment><USER2> I know, I complained to my Member of Parliament when she didn't show up to the meeting in Westminster when it was being passed, and explained how important that I felt that she should not allow this act to pass and then I realised she was Labour and didn't give a shit and probably ignored my email.

<comment><USER3> and I got the same treatment from my LibDem, the reply back said they lacked the numbers to stop the bill, so he was not even going to turn up for the vote.

<comment><USER4> Tell him you'll make sure he'll lack the numbers to get elected.

<comment><USER3> I would have if boundary changes had not made my vote moot in terms of getting him reelected

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does the word 'democracy' mean in a society where an unelected member of the cabinet is allowed to force through legislation unopposed? Setting aside the debate over the electoral system, what does your vote count for when so much power is held by unelected peers, civil servants and 'advisers'?

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't everything that comes out of the government in the last few years, regarless of Labour or Conservative rule?

Same agenda, different face.

<comment><USER7> _Same agenda, different face_

That seems to be the common pattern in democracies these days. You either vote the devil you know or the other devil you know... And if they do promise change it's forgotten as soon as the election is over.

<comment><USER8> Seems to be common in two-party democracies anyway.

I say scrap political parties, it's not like they stick to their roots or make sense anyway.

Edit: by two-party democracies I mean democracies where there is only a real choice between the two main parties, and these two main parties pretty much never change.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Seems to be common in two-party democracies anyway_

The UK has three parties, in fact we have a coalition government (albeit perhaps only technically)

<comment><USER9> The UK has _16_ political parties represented at national or international levels:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_Kingdom)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Revisiting the Collatz Sequence – Laurent Rosenfeld - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/laurent_r/2020/04/revisiting-the-collatz-sequence-pwc-54.html <comment><USER2> FWIW, the following Python code has about the same run-time. (The raw numbers are a bit faster on my machine than the reported numbers, but that means little given the unknown difference between the machines.)

        # http://blogs.perl.org/users/laurent_r/2020/04/revisiting-the-collatz-sequence-pwc-54.html

        # If the previous term is even, the next term is one half of the
        # previous term. If the previous term is odd, the next term is 3 times
        # the previous term plus 1

        # Calculate the sequence length for all starting numbers up to 1000000
        # and output the starting number and sequence length for the longest
        # 20 sequences.

        import heapq

        def main():
            MAX =  1_000_000 #  0.78 seconds
            #MAX = 10_000_000 #  8.2 seconds

            arr = [0] * MAX # cache Collatz length for a given number. 0 = not computed
            arr[0] = -1
            arr[1] = 1

            for i in range(2, MAX):
                if arr[i]:   # Already computed. Go to the next one.
                    continue

                values = [i] # Keep track of the missing terms
                while 1:
                    if i % 2:
                        i = i*3+1
                    else:
                        i //= 2
                    if i < MAX and arr[i]:
                        # Found a hit. Back-fill the missing parts.
                        n = arr[i] + 1
                        values.reverse()
                        for val in values:
                            if val < MAX:
                                arr[val] = n
                            n += 1
                        break
                    values.append(i) # Extend the sequence

            # Report the top 20
            for i in heapq.nlargest(20, range(MAX), key=arr.__getitem__):
                print(i, arr[i])

        if __name__ == "__main__":
            import time
            t1 = time.time()
            arr = main()
            t2 = time.time()
            print(f"{t2-t1:.2} seconds")

<comment><USER3> Edit. I just realized tio.run is running raku from 2018 which is a LOT slower than current raku, whereas it's running a more recent python. I could well believe the sequential raku numbers are much closer to the python numbers and the parallel could perhaps be an order of magnitude faster.

Fwiw, I ran the above on tio.run. It took 0.9s.

I also ran the perl code in the OP in the section headed "Using an Array Instead of a Hash". That took about twice as long.

The changes in the section headed "Further Optimizations" supposedly deliver about a 30% improvement. So, closer to your Python code -- but still noticeably slower.

The changes in the section headed "Combining Caching and Parallel Execution" then sped things up a further 15x on 32 cores -- more than an order of magnitude faster.

(I presume it would be fairly easy to parallelize the python code too and it might be equally efficiently implemented, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding...)

In the meantime the sequential raku code is way off, something like 5X as slow as the perl code I tested on tio.run, so 10x slower than the python code you wrote.

Then again Liz made some mods to the raku code that she says doubled its speed.[1]

And it's typically relatively easy to parallelize raku code, so presumably the raku code could relatively easily be made to outperform your python code on hardware with enough cores -- at a guess around 10 or so.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/rakulang/comments/g2au9v/revisiting...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rakulang/comments/g2au9v/revisiting_the_collatz_sequence_laurent_rosenfeld/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the followup!

I last seriously used perl in the 1990s and wasn't really able to follow the code shown in the link. Do you know if they are the same algorithm?

It might be that the performance difference is more due to my coming up with a more efficient implementation.

EDIT: Just tried with PyPy 7.3.1 implementation of Python 3.6.9. It's about 8x faster than CPython - 0.091 seconds. (0.20s if I include startup costs.)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Deepkit: the first desktop app for deep learning experiments - <AUTHOR> https://deepkit.ai
Hi guys, I'm the founder of Deepkit. An app that helps you visualize, debug, track, and run ML/DL experiments, directly on your workstation or on your own servers, in your LAN or in the cloud. Deepkit will be free for individual users and available in all app stores. You can use the app alone or use the real-time collaborative features within a team using the Deepkit team server.
We're are looking for alpha users that want to help us building a better, cheaper and more efficient way of doing ML/DL experiments. If you're interested, please register at the website. We currently only support MacOS, but Windows & Linux will follow. Follow us on Twitter @deepkitAI to get notified once we release the public version. If you got any questions, I'm happy to answer in the comments. <comment><USER2> This looks really great.

I think you should make your post with "Show HN" prefix.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you doing to improve your mental health? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Carnivore Diet. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaGCraBhCqXkRPGxVKLcs0A/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaGCraBhCqXkRPGxVKLcs0A/videos)

In the past I used NAC for depression. It helped tremendously. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044191/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044191/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Get out. Go to places that aren't your couch or your desk. This could be a bar with friends or a walk in the park by yourself. Activity is great, but it's really the act of sitting in the same rooms perfectly still that I think is unhealthy.</comment>


Learn Vim in a easy way - <AUTHOR> http://www.openvim.com/index.html

<comment><USER2> Previous submission with comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3043866>

<comment><USER3> And it is just 10 spots below this entry right now having been submitted 18 hours ago.</comment></comment>


Deprecating the "X-" Prefix and Similar Constructs in Application Protocols - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6648 <comment><USER2> What is the point of "X-" prefixes? To make it clear that the thing in question is implementation specific and should not be relied on if you want it to work on all implementations.

Should "X-" things be created? Yes. If the people creating new implementations can't be bothered to make their changes official, or what those things does changes, then they use "X-". You should assume "X-" means "don't use this".

Why do the "X-" things persist and get implemented by everyone eventually? Because bureaucracy and standards groups suck and don't keep up with the times.

What does a standard group saying "don't use X-" mean? It is just a lame attempt by the group to stop people from doing things they aren't informed of or in charge of.

Guess what IETF: The people who care that you said this don't create "X-" things for the most part. The people who do are just going to ignore this.

</comment><comment><USER3> This makes a lot of sense - either the software is maintained, at which point the handing of the header (without the prefix) is updated when the spec changes, or the software is not maintained and broken.</comment>


Java Garbage Collection Distilled (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/2013/07/java-garbage-collection-distilled.html

<comment><USER2> Oracle or Sun should just have bought Azul back in the day. I have no idea why they did not. Both there JIT and GC were way better then what they sold to there costumers and maybe hardware would be further along by now as well.

Its awesome that we now see opensource project shooting for a pausless gc.

<comment><USER3> Gil & Azul have always been very focused on their particular market segment, but it's not a solution that suits every workload or can be deployed generally (C4 requires OS enhancements to operate).

<comment><USER2> I have not suggested that they put C4 or the orginal passless as a standard. While they did focuse on a perticular market segment the performance and paustime numbers they showed could easly have been usful for tons and tons of other markets.

While C4 does currently require OS enhancements, they could make it without it, it would just be slower. However the problem that Azul has tried to overcome with the OS could have been much more powerful attacked with the full force of oracle/sun behind it. They once put some linux patches but it was never there focus and it never went upstream.

At a big company this technogoly could have had a bigger impact, they could have talked to microsoft, apple and the linux team. I know that Azul also tried to strike up a conversation with Intel but in there words "it was like moving a mountain".

And im not suggesting Sun/Oracle should have done this for the greater good of all humans. They would would have created a gigantig benefit for java products over the competition C# and C++ in the server space.

I rember talks by Cliff Click that mentioned that they were really suprised that Sun did not have more intresst in them, considering some simple things that Sun could have to get huge increses in some of the high end server systems they were selling (am searching for the refernce ...).

Edit: See Cliff Click talk about intel and sun.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uljtqyBLxI&](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uljtqyBLxI&) t=54m33s

He mentions that the sun shareholders should put there exutive staff into prison.

<comment><USER4> I agree with everything you said. Here is an interesting lwn article from when the azule people originally tried to push their change/enhancements upstream.

[http://lwn.net/Articles/392307/](http://lwn.net/Articles/392307/)

Seems like either the quality wasnt there or the linux people where resistant to change.

Some more info here. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AzulPM/Managed_Runtime_Ini...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AzulPM/Managed_Runtime_Initiative)

Its a pitty that this type of GC hasn't found widespread use because it gives us the best of both worlds, in terms of automatics memory management and performance.

 _edit for spelling mistake_

<comment><USER5> It looks like their attention has turned to LLVM.

[http://www.philipreames.com/Blog/2014/06/04/code-for-late- sa...](http://www.philipreames.com/Blog/2014/06/04/code-for-late-safepoint- placement-available/)

[http://www.azulsystems.com/about_us/careers/llvm-compiler- en...](http://www.azulsystems.com/about_us/careers/llvm-compiler-engineer)

<comment><USER6> I've been following Philip Reames' blog, it's good to see LLVM get some serious precise GC love.

Reading the job advert, I would have to wonder if they want to avoid an all in, 100% bet on the Hotspot JVM, not to mention strict JVMs in general. I wouldn't be surprised if they have the best concentration of knowledge on Hotspot in the world, including Oracle, might be getting a bit tired of it, and certainly would know the limitations of its code base by now.

<comment><USER2> I think that they might just want to profit from all the love going into LLVM. Currenlty hotspot has costum optimization and if you have a product based on it you have to maintain this and improve it. If you manage to creat a fast powerful LLVM based JVM you can profit from the other work going into that space and maybe distance yourself from the orcale standard.

However, currently not that many JIT are LLVM based so it seams that it needs some love to get this to working well. Both for GC and compilation speed. Thats at least my guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone interested in newer GC strategies would be well off looking at two, one commercial, one that's hopefully going to make it into OpenJDK.

The commercial one is already available, the other is still pretty POC/not ready yet. Both look to provide 'pretty pauseless' collection.

[http://www.azulsystems.com/zing/pgc](http://www.azulsystems.com/zing/pgc) [http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/189](http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/189)

<comment><USER3> There was good talk on Shenandoah at Strange Loop [http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&...](http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCgQtwIwAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DQcwyKLlmXeY&ei=K7N1VPfECpLWau2LgfAK&usg=AFQjCNFIuEyAMJ4EHUU8f6tBJzhLGp1kyQ&bvm=bv.80642063,d.d2s)

<comment><USER2> Sadly this video is incomplet but the most importent stuff is there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be nice to have something like this for Google's GC in Android. Does anyone know how close this is to what Google has implemented--especially in later versions of Android.</comment>


BlockSign Transaction Specification - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blocksign/blocksign

<comment><USER2> I'm a little skeptical- why can't core developers build contracting into the blockchain so that it is totally decentralized? I suppose my question is, why do we need a company, BlockSign in this case, to perform this function?

<comment><USER3> This IS totally decentralized contracting built into the blockchain :). The link above is to a specification that allows everyone can create contracts in a consistent manner. It's independent of the company, Blocksign, who offers packaged a way for consumers to do it, but any developer (or determined consumer) can use the specification to create contracts themselves that will be compatible with any other system created with the same specification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worked great!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad to hear that. (one of the developers here) But what do you mean exactly by "worked"? You mean you have tried the implementation on blocksignit.com ?</comment></comment>


Flatley's Law: The Company Speeding A Genetic Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2014/08/20/flatleys-law-how-one-company-became-the-force-behind-medicines-genetic-revolution/ <comment><USER2> Every time I see articles like this, it reminds me how much the FDA's poor treatment of the genetic testing market infuriates me. What the FDA has done to 23andMe is disgusting (an Illumina customer).

Why can't I spend $99 and find out if I have a prominent heart disease marker, that killed both my father and grandfather by 55? Because the healthcare market is regulated by the government for the benefit of various cartels. They want me to spend thousands of dollars and be forced to go through layers of doctors to get the same results instead.

<comment><USER3> I guess you missed where people were getting different "interpretations" from different companies.

<comment><USER4> People also get different "interpretations" from different doctors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd make two observations:

1) Illumina/Solexa's breakthrough was to convert sequencing into a problem limited by computing resources (reassembling the jigsaw), so they were able to leverage improvements in semiconductor processing.

2) This quote grabbed me:

"But Flatley is confident that Illumina's footprint, which includes not just machines but also the software to handle genomic data, will make the company hard to unseat."

A call to arms for the Free Software movement?

<comment><USER6> As for your first point, shotgun sequencing was not invented by Illumina. Shotgun sequencing, or sequencing many small fragments and then computationally reconstructing a larger contig, was first done in 1979, and later used by many groups (most famously by Celera Genomics in their quest to beat the human genome project). Shotgun sequencing can be done using any short sequencing reads, so this is neither a breakthrough nor even an advantage for Illumina.

Illumina's chemistry was better than the others, and they marketed their advantages better. The Illumina machine produced longer reads than SOLiD (Life Technologies), and produced more reads than 454 (Roche). They produced reliable instruments that were relatively easier to use than the others also, which made them favorites for core facilities.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much time do you spend with your spouse or partner? - <AUTHOR>

How much time approximately do you spend with your significant other on weekdays and weekends? <comment><USER2> Some will answer little, others with answer a lot, yet others 'it depends'. And all can be happy or complete unhappy with that scenario. Sorry to be negative here. Even if this was a poll (and polls on such a small demographic don't work) all you'll get is anecdotes.</comment>


Wikipedia Search on an Intel NUC with Strus - <AUTHOR> http://www.project-strus.net/wikipediaSearchNuc.htm <comment><USER2> Very fast:

[http://demo.project- strus.net/query?s=BM25pff&q=hacker+news&...](http://demo.project- strus.net/query?s=BM25pff&q=hacker+news&n=6)

I wonder why they choose "C++98". The project seems recent.

"The open source project Strus provides a collection of C++ (C++98) libraries and command line tools for building a competitive, scalable full-text search engine."

[http://www.project-strus.net/index.htm](http://www.project- strus.net/index.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just a decision that has been made. A decision should be kept as long as you don't make a real turn. Random mixing of standards is bad for portability. For the SDK, with the aim to have some more comfortable building blocks for development of Strus components, we want to change this decision, because there we get in touch with developers, that wish (for good reason!) a newer version of C++. This is reasonable and we want obey that. By the way: It is already now possible to write Strus components (weighting function summarizers etc.) as dynamically loadable modules (.so) with C linkage in any newer C++ standard.</comment></comment>


Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if 'tip stealing' rule is finalized - <AUTHOR> http://www.epi.org/publication/women-would-lose-4-6-billion-in-earned-tips-if-the-administrations-tip-stealing-rule-is-finalized-overall-tipped-workers-would-lose-5-8-billion/ <comment> temp-dude-87844 There have been a number of studies that found that attractive people, especially attractive women, receive bigger tips from customers than other groups [1][2] in some contexts. The implications of this are perhaps just as interesting as women being the primary group disadvantaged by this proposed policy simply due to there being a higher proportion of women than men in tip- receiving jobs.

One could argue that if this proposal were to go through, people in tipped industries would receive an allocation of wages that's less tied to subjective consumer tastes about inherent physical attributes that don't directly contribute to the quality of service received. Though I lack polling data on this, I'm hypothesizing most people would perceive that as more fair.

[1] [http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...](http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1159&context=articles) [2] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487015...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748701500046X)

<comment><USER3> If this is true, then it could also lead to a reshuffling of who becomes a tipped worker. People who are attractive are currently incentivized to become tipped workers because they are relatively well-compensated in a tipped job. If tips were to go away (or be pooled), this incentive would become much weaker. Perhaps attractive people would shift from tipped jobs into other jobs, where their attractiveness (be it physical or personality-based) are still effectively compensated. Pharmaceutical sales comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a good reason to get rid of tipping entirely and pay reasonable wages to all employees.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hate tipping culture. When I was young and a waitress in college, I noticed horrible racism from waiters who treated minorities badly due to tipping stereotypes.

Please just get rid of it for living wages.

<comment><USER6> Have you been in countries without tipping culture? Almost all of them have much worse service quality.

<comment><USER7> I've been to four places without tipping in restaurants, Italy, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. I would say all of them had better service than here in the US. In particular, the East Asian countries I visited all have _excellent_ service without tips.

I suspect quality of service has a lot more to do with cultural factors unrelated to tipping.

<comment><USER8> Italy? I don't believe your experience was universal.

<comment><USER9> I experienced nothing but exceptional service in Italy.

<comment><USER10> As an Italian, I'm happy that at least _somebody_ did get great service :)

To be fair, it really varies so much between regions and even towns. Restaurants are usually ok, but regular shops in big cities... eh.

<comment><USER7> I was just referring to my restaurant experiences, which ranged from fine to excellent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While we are on the subject of tipping does anyone find it slightly annoying that every point of sale system now is configured to ask for an additional tip? Clover, Revel, Square, etc.

Some have different levels of UX where you are basically prompted to give 15%, 20%, 25%. I wonder where the tip actually goes in this case?

<comment><USER12> "Tip creep" or "guilt tipping" is simply milking [1][2][3] the social conventions around tipping while you're standing in front of the would-be beneficiary, card in hand.

Most of the tip goes to the seller, of course. But most payment processors deduct their fees from the total amount after taxes and tips, like Square does [4], so if the final transaction amounts are higher, as they are in this case, they make more money too.

[1] [https://qz.com/730315/squares-design-guilts-us-into- tipping-...](https://qz.com/730315/squares-design-guilts-us-into-tipping- basically-everyone/) [2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/business/dollar3-tip- on-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/business/dollar3-tip-on-a- dollar4-cup-of-coffee-gratuities-grow-automatically.html?_r=0) [3] [https://www.fastcodesign.com/3022182/how-square-registers- ui...](https://www.fastcodesign.com/3022182/how-square-registers-ui-guilts- you-into-leaving-tips) [4] [https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5068-what- are-square...](https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5068-what-are-square-s- fees)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why would anybody tip if the tip doesn't go to the server? That's the only reason that I tip.

<comment><USER14> I doubt that's going to be publicized.

<comment><USER15> It should be put in bold letters in restaurants that "Tipping is optional". Or get rid of tipping fully and pay minimum wage.

<comment><USER16> Won't most people still assume that if they do supply the optional tip it will go to their waiter (with perhaps some also going to the busboy and/or cook)?

There needs to be a sign that explains how tips are actually distributed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm struck by how significantly the effect varies between states - <USER2> to table 2, 25% of the transfers (around $1.55 billion) are accounted for by Connecticut and Delaware alone (which collectively are around 2% of the US population).

Does anyone know why the effect is so strong in these states? In the notes the authors say that Delaware is one of the states with unusually strong protections - so I'd expect transfers would actually be unusually low in that case!

</comment><comment><USER18> So how, as a customer, could I actively tip my wait staff and not the establishment?

Will this lead to the abolishment of tipping in general?

<comment><USER19> God, I hope it does.

Tipping is just a way for restaurant owners to exclude the cost of labor from their listed prices.

<comment><USER20> Counter point -- Tipping is a way to insure excellent service on return visits to service oriented establishments.

<comment><USER21> As a counter counter point, there are places which don't take tips, and they offer some of the best customer service in the world.

Japan is a good example. In the food service industry, establishments will usually put their own service charge which they think is reasonable onto the bill (usually a small amount). They don't expect (many will refuse to take) further tips because they price the cost to serve into it.

<comment><USER20> My example is clearly assuming the customer is in the United States. I don't think we can copy a few things about Japan's food service industry and expect to have a similar dining experience here. Culture is too complex for that to work.

Japan's entire service industry always leaves me pleased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > as long as they pay those workers at least the minimum wage

Do US employeers not have to pay workers the minimum wage?

<comment><USER23> Tipped employees make less: "According to a common labor law provision referred to as a "tip credit", the employee must earn at least the state's minimum wage when tips and wages are combined or the employer is required to increase the wage to fulfill that threshold."

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

<comment><USER24> This is not true for every state. Oregon, among others, pays minimum wage to servers and other tipped employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If an employer is really intent on stealing their employees' tips, they could just

1\. Increase their prices by 15-20% across the board

2\. Instruct their waiters to tell all customers that tipping is not required, nor accepted

3\. Pay the waiters only 0-10% of the bill, and keep the rest for themselves

If we're relying on leaky laws like these in order to protect the under- privileged, we really need to reconsider our social safety net.

</comment><comment><USER26> So the articles says that they can take tips if they pay the minimum wage -- given the minimum wage for jobs that traditionally have a significant tip component is typically much lower than the "minimum wage" (because it's made up in tips, right?), does this mean that they're referring to the non-tip minimum wage?

</comment><comment><USER27> I would be fine with this if they require businesses who are taking tips to advertise that fact. Then I can happily not tip. Why would I voluntarily pay extra for my meal if it isn't going to the server?

</comment><comment><USER28> And men would lose $1.2B. Why the gendered title? Why not "Waiters would lose $5.8B in earned tips"?

<comment><USER4> To highlight who the biggest losers are -- the subset of workers that already face wage discrimination would face 80% of the tip loss.

<comment><USER29> I would be shocked if female waiters in the US are paid less than male ones. Got a source?

<comment><USER4> I was mainly referring to general wage discrimination across all industries, but here's a few references for the restaurant industry from 10 seconds of googling:

[http://rocunited.org/publications/tipped-over-the-edge- gende...](http://rocunited.org/publications/tipped-over-the-edge-gender- inequity-in-the-restaurant-industry/)

 _– The industry follows a conscious business model of confining women to the lower-paid positions within restaurants. Women are hired for only 19 percent of chef positions, for example, even though traditionally most women are more likely to do a majority of the cooking at home._

 _\- In addition, women are confined to the lower-paying segments of the industry such as quick-serve and family style rather than the highest-paying fine dining segment. So even within the same job classification of server, full-time, year-round female servers are paid just 68 percent of what male servers are paid ($17,000 vs. $25,000 annually)._

[http://fortune.com/2015/10/23/wage-gap- restaurants/](http://fortune.com/2015/10/23/wage-gap-restaurants/)

 _\- Women and workers of color are often pushed into the lowest-paying jobs in the food service industry, according to a report from the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a labor advocacy group._

 _\- Women are pushed toward lower-paying jobs at more casual restaurants, and people of color are channeled toward even lower-paying jobs such as bussing and kitchen positions._

<comment><USER30> > women are hired for only 19 percent of chef positions, for example, even > though traditionally most women are more likely to do a majority of the > cooking at home.

This is a ridiculous statement. Cooking at home has zero to do with going to culinary school and becoming a chef. If you visit most restaurant kitchens -- the line cooks and dishwashers are almost always men (or at least 80%+ of them,) based on my experience in working in probably 10 different restaurants in my life.

Working as a line cook is often part of the career progression of becoming a chef. At the finer restuarants, the line cooks are often "staging" while they're in culinary school. If anyone has ever worked as a line cook in a real restaurant, one would know that it's pretty brutal work -- lots of dirty cleaning, standing in front of hell-fire ovens and grills for entire shifts -- at a pretty pitiful level of pay. Certainly, women do it, but even remotely comparing that career with making lasagna in a home kitchen is like suggesting that I should be a race car driver simply because I drive a car every day or that I should be a stand up comedian just because I can make my kids laugh.

> Women and workers of color are often pushed into the lowest-paying jobs in > the food service industry, according to a report from the Restaurant > Opportunities Center United, a labor advocacy group.

At the beginning of the comment, we just were discussing how only 19% of chefs are women, but then we complain that women are pushed into the "lowest-paying jobs" \-- such as the kitchen. The kitchen is where you start if you want to be a chef. And, most kitchens I've ever worked in had few women. Most of the women were in the front of the house making real money, while those of us in the back were cutting and burning ourselves for $10 per hour with the goal of moving up in the kitchen brigade at some point. The dishwashers are almost always men. I don't think I've ever seen a female dishwasher at any fine dining restaurant I've ever worked at. Obviously there are women dishwashers, but there are a heck of a lot more front-of-the-house women than there are in the back of the house. I've seen very few female busboys. I can't remember a single one. I've seen many men barbacks -- but can't remember seeing a single female barback. In fact, the pretty women are typically in the highest paying position in the resturant (aside from the general manager) -- bartenders. I've been denied many jobs as a bartender because the bar "only hired women bartenders." Although I had no problems getting a job as a doorman or a barback.

> ..people of color are channeled toward even lower-paying jobs such as > bussing and kitchen positions.

Chefs didn't start in the kitchen as chefs. Managers typically didn't start as managers. Almost universally chefs started by working on the line. Managers often started as waitstaff or even busboys. Whoever is providing this "data" seems like they've never actually worked in a restaurant, nor experienced how the business works and how people move up in the industry. Also, a non-trivial number of back-of-the-house workers are illegal aliens who are both "of color" and willing to work for far lower wages.

It isn't that people "of color" are being sent to the kitchen as punishment -- but often those with limited English proficiency aren't generally going to be front-of-the-house. In my anecdotal experience working in a variety of restaurants in Houston, black people and white/Hispanic women were typically working as waitstaff -- and making far more money than the white/Hispanic males working in the kitchen. Bartenders trended female, general managers trended white male, kitchen managers were black, white/Hispanic and male. Sous chefs were commonly white male or female. Pasty chefs were generally white or black female, dishwashers were older hispanic men, busboys and barbacks were young Hispanic men. Line cooks were white or Hispanic men. Executive Chefs -- typically white or black males. Completely anecdotal for sure -- but, at least in Houston, restaurant racism was something I don't think I ever saw; and I worked in a lot of places, especially in the high end. I was a manager of a few places, mostly at the bar, so I saw the nightly tip declarations -- anyone making the claim that women make less in tips than men or that certain races make lower tips than others -- I would have to doubt their experience in the business. Women often made more. People of color made just as much as anyone else.

Here's an article from a Houston magazine about black chefs in Houston: [http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/2017/02/in-praise-of- color-i...](http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/2017/02/in-praise-of-color-in- cuisine-celebrating-black-chefs-in-houston/)

Key quote: "I see many African Americans [chefs] in good restaurant kitchens in Houston—too many, in fact to cover in this article.."

One of the most exclusive restaurants in Houston, Tony's has a female chef. The 2017 Houston James Beard semi-finalists were an extremely diverse group: [https://www.visithoustontexas.com/culinary-tours/culinary- bl...](https://www.visithoustontexas.com/culinary-tours/culinary- blog/post/10-houston-chefs-restaurants-named-among-the-2017-james-beard- awards-semifinalists/)

There might have been only 2 white males among all those nominees.

<comment><USER4> >> women are hired for only 19 percent of chef positions, for example, even though traditionally most women are more likely to do a majority of the cooking at home.

> If you visit most restaurant kitchens -- the line cooks and dishwashers are > almost always men

So your argument is that the discrimination begins much earlier in the chain?

<comment><USER31> Line cooks make a lot less than wait staff. So what you're saying is that it's actually men who are discriminated against!?

<comment><USER4> More men are ending up in line-cook positions that are on the career track to high paying chef positions, yet you think it's the men that are being shortchanged?

<comment><USER29> What fraction of line cooks become well-paid chefs?

<comment><USER4> I have no idea, but the previous commenter said that there are few women chefs because there are few woman line cooks, and most chefs are line cooks first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "DOL has masked the fact that this rule would be a windfall to restaurant owners and other employers—out of the pockets of tipped workers—by making it sound as if this rule is about tip pooling."

Sounds like this one must've been written by lobbyists? Assuming this article is accurate, why would this seem like a good rule to get rid of?

<comment><USER30> Here's an idea -- why don't we let business owners decide how to pay their people? If waiters don't like tip pooling, then they can work for another restaurant that doesn't do it. It's ridiculous that the government even gets involved in this -- assuming minimum wage is met and taxes are being properly paid -- what business is it of the government how restaurants operate (beyond health and safety obviously.) Does the government get involved how a car saleman's commissions are paid? How about the compensation structure of other sales-based professions?

<comment><USER32> Most employers (especially of cheap labor) will take advantage of their employees to the fullest extent of the law. If stealing tips is legal, there won't be "another restaurant that doesn't do it."

We are talking about owners being legally allowed to pocket money that was given directly to their employees to keep. How can you possibly think actual theft is a "free market" issue?</comment></comment></comment>


Fabric, the next-generation Facebook data center network - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/360346274145943/introducing-data-center-fabric-the-next-generation-facebook-data-center-network <comment><USER2> This general spine-leaf, and subsequent super-spine construction, are talked about frequently in recent networking conference talks. Using ECMP on top of OSPF/BGP are very well established ways to build super-switches to scale to super large fabrics.

I'd be really interested in the specifics that they don't describe very well regarding cable layouts and automated configuration of pods.

Also, for anybody stuck in the old paradigm of super-expensive inflexible switches from the traditional network vendors, be sure to check out the commodity stuff that was mentioned previously in this HN thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8400953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8400953)

<comment><USER3> These topologies (both logical and physical arrangement) were quite popular for non-ethernet networks in 90's (in both super computers and phone switches). AS it is reasonable way to get large fabric that has reasonable performance yet is composed from relatively small switching elements with reasonable cable routing between them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > What's different is the much smaller size of our new unit – each pod has > only 48 server racks

48 Racks seems pretty darn large by itself, and that is the smallest unit they deal with. At only 20 servers in a rack, thats 960 servers in their smallest unit. And they make it seem like there are hundreds of these pods in a single datacenter...

A single pod is bigger than the vast majority of the top 500 super computers...

<comment><USER5> The previous smallest unit was a "cluster" \- imagine for sake of example that it is the same number of racks as 3 pods. Some time ago, clusters were somewhat arbitrarily limited in size by a few things - human understanding was definitely one, management software and visualization, network layout and port density issues, and so forth. However, each cluster had a bunch of overhead associated with it that outweigh the benefits, including the primary one - failure domain. If we only needed one more pod-worth of servers, we would have to add a cluster with 3 pods worth of racks.

I don't know the actual strategy (I work in a nearby team, but my focus is mostly on load balancing and CDN infrastructure), but one could imagine that in future it may be more normal to augment existing clusters/failure domains (say, add one pod) rather than building whole new ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> their schematics of datacenter reminds about schematics of a big server 15 years ago. Server racks instead of CPU-boards. "The datacenter is the computer."</comment>


How I got my Google AdWords account (un)suspended - <AUTHOR> http://www.decalmarketing.com/page/How_I_got_my_Google_AdWords_account_unsuspended <comment><USER2> I know there are a couple of quotes from me somewhere in a Google bugtracker with variants of "Google support and policy enforcement is like something out of a Kafka novel", but in case any HNer Googlers want to file a new one: pervasive _uncertainty_ about whether clearly within-the-lines behavior would trigger a business shutdown caused several software company CEOs of my acquaintance to avoid reliance on AdWords for customer acquisition, to the tune of 6+ figures a month.

I say this as somebody who shot down the "We'll send ad clicks to a squeeze page!" option several times (including on HN: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599162](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599162)). I was able to wave a few companies away from that, and in some cases get compliant AdWords campaigns up and running, but CEOs/marketing officers often felt that they could just wake up one day and find their AdWords account permabanned for specious reasons. As a result, many of them intentionally limited the size of their AdWords accounts and/or the amount of strategic importance they allowed AdWords to get internally.

You know what I told my clients who were worried about Google enforcement? It was not "Don't worry, Google enforces policies in a consistent manner and, in the unlikely event you are caught up in a heuristic, you will be able to talk to someone and resolve the issue in a timely fashion."

Net revenue impact to Google across my consulting client base caused specifically by worries about Google's enforcement/CS would be, probably, somewhere in the 6 figures a month region. (B2B/enterprise software companies can afford to spend an awful lot of money on ad clicks.)

<comment><AUTHOR> _I say this as somebody who shot down the "We'll send ad clicks to a squeeze page!" option several times (including on HN: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599162](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599162))._

This is more in response to the content of the linked comment, but creating a landing page for a not-quite-finished product and/or idea before launch is okay and so long as your CTR is high (which you can achieve by targeting your spending in exact match keywords) your quality score is still good.

The Unbounce page I mentioned in the article which had reasonable QS (6 or 7/10 IIRC although there's no historical QS view in AdWords and I've since changed the landing page) AND which, despite initially violating their "Information Harvesting" policy has since been cleared, is this one:

[http://unbouncepages.com/your-first-3-months-on- adwords/](http://unbouncepages.com/your-first-3-months-on-adwords/)

I think that it's a very different landscape that what it was 5 - 7 years ago when you could get THOUSANDS of visitors for pennies per click to a page to test an idea, but you can certainly still get < $2/click traffic for _very_ targeted search terms to test out an idea.

Sometimes I'm not only interested in testing the market (ie. testing conversions) but just seeing what traffic there is and how much it costs. The free data you receive via the KeywordPlanner is notoriously inaccurate, so while a "real" website is being developed I'll often put up a simple landing page so I can start running the AdWords campaign and be ready to "hit the ground running" after launch.

EDIT: just to reply to this bit, as well:

 _You know what I told my clients who were worried about Google enforcement? It was not "Don't worry, Google enforces policies in a consistent manner and, in the unlikely event you are caught up in a heuristic, you will be able to talk to someone and resolve the issue in a timely fashion."_

I think this is changing and Google is wising up. In fact, the screenshot of Google's support documentation that I provide in the article isn't the same page I saw when I was suspended. The page I saw just said:

"If you have received an Advertising Policy violation we will no longer accept advertising from you".

I think that this is a function of 2 things:

1) Clicks are more expensive, and losing individual advertisers affects Google more now than it used to. You can see the strategy clearly: shut down fake SEO link building, drive people onto AdWords, increase CPC, improve support.

2) They're targeting a lot of non-tech-savvy type small businesses now who are far more likely to "bluster their way through" than to sit down and carefully analyse Google's terms of service, so they are being far more lenient.

The funny thing is, that since Google is becoming more lenient in reinstating suspended accounts now, a bunch of companies have sprung up saying "WE'LL HELP YOU GET BACK ON GOOGLE!!1" but that's only because it's so much easier to do than it used to be anyway :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When you search for a phrase like "how can I get my account unsuspended?" and see thousands and thousands of results and horrible pitchmen selling you "the secret to getting reinstated" you know there's a massive disconnect between tons of desperate people and a company that is unwilling to provide any customer service to address problems. A faceless algorithm bans you and you're screwed.

Every account suspended isn't automatically a spammer - oftentimes they are legitimate businesses that have to let employees go and shut down because they cannot figure out a way, despite numerous desperate attempts at communication, to get back on the web. This has happened to me before, and I couldn't get anybody at Google to respond to me in a way that wasn't a complete form letter where they couldn't tell me what the issue supposedly was.

The worst part? Bad actors have an endless supply of fake identities and just sign up again and again and create new fake companies while legitimate people are completely screwed.

If any company other than Google provided this bad of a customer service experience, we'd view them as a flat out scam.

Any Google employees out there that give a damn for your customers? Provide some human customer service. If the volume is too high, charge money for it, whatever. But do something to help people who are completely screwed. You should be better than this.

<comment><USER4> On a very personal note, I just find it very refreshing to finally see some critical analysis of Google lately. It appears to me as if people a getting past the "idolatry", and sarting to fully grasp Google's grip on today's IT realm, with all it's bad sides.

<comment><USER5> >lately

Ah yes, because everyone thought Google was sunshine and roses before "lately".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _That 's right, folks: in the policy it states that the page cannot have the "primary purpose" of collecting information, but the way that's judged is whether or not you can get to all areas of the site without putting in an email address or filling out any other personal information. Even though there were no other areas of the site (because it was just a single page with a form on it that had a single field), the email address was a required field and this was enough to violate the policy._

That's some top-quality thinking and engineering from the people responsible for Google's AdWords policy enforcement.

<comment><USER7> How about this little solution: "The way I fixed my "Information Harvesting" policy violation was to make it so that the form on my lead capture page could be submitted without filling it in."

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, pretty ridiculous. I wouldn't believe it if you told me, but it worked (and has worked, since). Who knows, maybe that'll change in future!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > It took me just over 5 months of regular phone calls, being patient, and > being nice, to get my account reinstated

> It took me just over 5 months of regular phone calls

> just over 5 months

> 5 months

Lolwut

</comment><comment><USER9> We desperately need real competition in search ads. At this point, I guess that means I'm rooting for Bing.

<comment><USER10> Yahoo might become competitive again: [http://readwrite.com/2014/01/31/yahoo- microsoft-search](http://readwrite.com/2014/01/31/yahoo-microsoft-search)

If Yahoo gets serious about search, I think they could gain a lot more marketshare than Bing can. Bing has a lot of "Microsoft baggage". I think many people rule it out simply because they trust Google more than they trust Microsoft. Yahoo feels more like a clean slate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is what a monopoly looks like.

</comment><comment><USER12> Be patient and be nice? Uh, no.

</comment><comment><USER13> Be glad you don't have to deal with a company like Amazon. Once you are suspended, they will refuse to talk to you on the phone and direct you to their "online support".

Online support consists of canned responses to questions and never any actual help.

I had my account suspended after 3 years of business with 100% feedback at almost all times. I always treated my customers really well and I was never able to get to the bottom of why my account was suspended.

I am now a buyer on Amazon for my business. Something I find funny is that as a seller, you are told that you are only representing Amazon (not representing yourself on Amazon). You can't contact your customers directly, any attempts to send a url or an email address will get you suspended.

As a buyer, I have customers constantly sending me wrong or damaged items. The seller should pay for return shipping. When I contact Amazon about it, they act as if they are completely hands-off and can't do anything about it because I bought my item from a 3rd-party seller.

They really need to make up their minds...because it seems they like to change their tune on situations when it benefits them..which is shady.

Unlike Ebay, they also sell products that compete with their 3rd-party sellers. They have used the marketing and order data (which they get from all 3rd-party sellers), to undercut anyone selling a hot-selling product and essentially put them out of business.

As soon as I had a decent selling product, a "shipped by Amazon" listing would soon appear within a few weeks (undercutting me by a large percentage) and I would lose most, if not all, of my sales.

This is why it is important to not rely on any 3rd party platform for a long- term business. It's really only a good idea when you first start out.</comment>


Never Mind E-Books: Why Print Books Are Here to Stay - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323874204578219563353697002.html?mod=WSJ_GoogleNews <comment><USER2> My sole concern about e-books is DRM--I don't want to be tied to a particular device, or to only be able to read a book as long as a particular server is up, a particular company is still in business, or I can run a particular proprietary program.

Once that problem is solved--so far, I stick to buying e-books I can get in a format for which there are open source readers, e.g. O'Reilly books in PDF format--e-books are great. I have too much stuff already, I don't need the clutter. (Yes, there's the issue of backups, and always having a usable reader at hand... but that's ever easier as time goes on.)</comment>


Newsblur runs into MongoDB bug – can't replicate DB - <AUTHOR> https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-9059 <comment><USER3> Here's what I do not understand:

Every last tool I have ever worked with has trade-offs. I don't have any problem with that; I've sometimes even gone as far as phrasing it as, "If you don't hate your tech stack, you aren't really using it." I can tell you all kinds of things that C#, the .NET CLR, IIS, Apache, Mercurial, Git, elasticsearch, Redis, Gunicorn, Python, Celery, and SQL Server do that make me livid, because I've used them heavily. But that's _because_ I use them heavily. I've never had _any_ of these tools bite me in the butt early in the process, and _definitely_ not had any of them bite me in the butt in _unexpected ways_ down the road. They bite me when I push them incredibly hard, right to their limits, and, due to well-understood design constraints that I'm frequently anticipating hitting ahead of time, they fall down. That's normal and fine, and handling those situations is just good software engineering. Your tools will have limits, and that stinks, but handling those limits is part of what your job entails, and you need to deal with it.

I do not use MongoDB. But here's what I see: about once a month, I come across an article where something incredibly fundamental to Mongo does not work properly. Not only does it not work properly: the way it doesn't work properly is _exceedingly bad_. In this case, Newsblur can't shard, which removes one of Mongo's best benefits, and the _way_ it fails isn't to tell you early on that you will not go to space today, but rather to segfault and die after six hours of replication.

That's not predictable. That's not documented. And that's not something you can anticipate. As a developer, that concerns me, and it should concern you, too.

I understand that 10gen is an awesome, responsive company, and they have always been there to help. I don't want to malign that. When the Trello team had Mongo-related issues the other week, they were trying to help them out, too. But I genuinely do not view as paranoia my belief that the frequency and severity of stories like this mean that MongoDB is _still not a good technology choice_.

<comment><USER4> I have to agree - if I had the choice to make again, I wouldn't have chosen MongoDB. It is a fundamentally broken product _by design_.

For example, for their sharding setup they require three separate servers to host shard config data. The idea is to have high availability of that data should one of those config servers go away.

However, _by design_ , losing a _single_ config server can cause multiple shard masters to die, requiring a manual restart. How they die and when is random, determined by where in a block migration a server is.

How is this high availability? All three config servers must be running at all times without interruption for your cluster to be stable. Their roadmap to deal with this issue is sometime next year.

One month not too long ago, my company found 90% of the bugs listed in their bug tracker for a specific release of MongoDB - many of which would have been found with a basic unit testing suite and some minor load testing. We were effectively performing QA functions for 10gen in our production environment.

I've gone through _nine releases_ of their PHP driver to deal with broken Data Center Awareness and none of them have worked - DCA still eludes them two years later. We have to do an OS level hack to make this work, that breaks other HA functions.

Finally, their mmap design means that memory use is extremely inefficient - <USER2> a box with 256GB of memory, with a database that is only 100GB in size, it _still hits disk on db reads_ because they offload memory management to the OS. Any other enterprise-level DB would preload the entire dataset in memory if there's room, but not MongoDB.

It really is terrible.

<comment><USER5> > it still hits disk on db reads because they offload memory management to the > OS

Or rather: It hits the OS's disk cache. I'm not saying that this isn't a problem, but it's far from as bad you make it sound.

([http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Tuning_Your_PostgreSQL_Serve...](http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Tuning_Your_PostgreSQL_Server) actually recommends limiting `shared_buffers` (PostgreSQL's in-memory cache) to let the OS disk cache do its magic.)a

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> NewsBlur's developer here. Just want to point out that this bug has bitten me back in 2.2, a few months ago. I need to be able to replicate my db in order to shard. But the biggest beef I have with this bug is that it doesn't become apparent until AFTER you spend 6 hours replicating (which results in poor load times for the primary db).

I would love it if I could choose which server to sync from. This option used to exist, but they removed it. But that would only solve the performance penalty of replication.

To their credit, the MongoDB folks have been stellar. I had a hardware failure a year ago and the CTO ssh'ed into my machines to figure out what was wrong. This time I'm having a bit more difficulty getting the problem fixed, but it's understandable as I have 100GB of highly variable data.

<comment><USER7> 100GB takes 6 hours? That's ~4.7MB/sec - is that right? That seems, sorta like slow?

Not to sound rude, but what is so difficult about managing 100GB of data? You can fit that in RAM without much work.

<comment><USER6> The transfer speed is between data centers. West coast to east coast.

As for the 100GB, I have 12 task servers with 6-8 processes each reading 25-50 stories each every 4 seconds. I also have 18 app servers with 6-8 processes each reading 12 stories every second. Each story is on average 4KB. That's several MB a sec.

<comment><USER8> I just signed up for newsblur and paid $24. Love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Funny that just two days ago he posted: "It's easy to be negative on Mongo. It's far harder to scale the alternatives. I've been through many ups and downs w/ Mongo. Sticking w/ it." <https://twitter.com/NewsBlur/status/314120501356265472>

<comment><USER9> Greek tragedy tier hubris backfire.

(Speaking as a user of Postgres and MongoDB, I'm way more worried about the latter screwing me than the former.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I dont understand why you are posting this on here? Is it to point at him and laugh? Its seems pretty childish to point out someone's hardship on here.

<comment><AUTHOR> NewsBlur is one of the top contenders to replace Google Reader, which is closing in 3 months. The guy behind it posted some of his scaling troubles before <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391713> and his twitter @NewsBlur has been keeping users up-to-date with performance issues and planned downtime for migration etc. This story is interesting to watch.

<comment><USER11> "This story is interesting to watch."

This is a JIRA. It became a story once you posted it and commented on it in Hacker News.

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant the whole story of NewsBlur being at the right place at the right time and trying to scale really, really fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just going to get on the hater train here. (not any poster in particular but Mongo in general). The day Postgres releases an upgrade, I expect, and get 100% functionality. So the fact that this is "Just Released" is FAR from an excuse, in fact it shows EXACTLY why you shouldn't use Mongo. Also a 100GB DB, with 300 connections and several MB per second.. Seriously. WTF is wrong with you people? Multiply by 10, and you can still do that on 1 machine.

<comment><USER4> MongoDB performance is abysmal - I'm running 50 machines with massive memory, CPU and disk resources to get, maybe, 20,000 queries/sec per master.

There appears to be _zero_ CPU or memory optimization in place. Mostly I blame the mmapped files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hope this issue can be resolved in manner that isn't toxic. I actually ran into this issue like this on a fairly large collection 2 months ago (almost 300GB, happened on a single replica set). It looked like an index got irreversibly corrupted. Luckily for us this collection got rebuilt everyday, so we could just delete the whole thing, but the pain was we weren't aware of the issue until a user reported he couldn't access data. When ever the corrupted data was accessed, it would lead to an assertion failure. Seemed like one of those dreadful moments when mongo decides to corrupt your data.

</comment><comment><USER14> First, they are not attempting to shard, they are just adding redundancy. Second, it is not surprising that someone encountered a bug in a piece of server software released literally two days ago.

<comment><USER7> I guess people tend to expect server _database_ software to not have critical bugs like this. I understand, mistakes happen. But this doesn't help Mongo's less-than-stellar reputation.

<comment><USER15> Or he could have, I don't know, tested it first? Nah, no one tests first before making such a large change on a production server. And don't give me crap about it's a one man operation either and we should feel sorry for him, if he's hoping to take over a good portion of Google Reader's subscribers (which he seems to hoping to do) then he should be planning better. If he can't plan to cope with a big influx of new users, that he's asked for by advertising his service, then perhaps migrating to his service isn't the right thing to do. I'd rather have Google Reader notify me that they're shutting down in 3 months than a one man operation shutdown without notice because they can't handle the load and the hassle and costs are way over what they were expecting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you actually can't shard a 2.4 db, I feel like we'd have heard about it earlier. There's (almost guaranteed) something else going on here, but nice sensationalist title.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't sensationalize the title. That's just what the bug report says. _I can't make any new copies of the data! And I need to start sharding because my service is exploding in growth. What am I supposed to do if I can't replicate?_

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks remarkably similar to this bug, which they claim is fixed: <https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-6228>

Though the error in that bug was due to a regular replication event ("Fatal Assertion 16360") and this one was happening during an initial sync ("Fatal Assertion 16361"). Maybe the bug was fixed in one and not the other.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love how Google kills reader and newsblur's Alexa graph goes off the charts

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/newsblur.com#></comment>


Ask HN: Will Y Combinator launch topic-related threads? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a UK reader. I've noticed that anything that anything that is not related to US very rarely gets on the front page here. Also, there is a lot of Apple news. Do people think it's worth creating sister sites - or even topic-related threads - so we can tag submissions and make them suited for different audiences?  How would that work? <comment><USER2> I think tags/categories would be a great idea. For example, my favorite topics are the "Ask HN" ones, so it would be nice to be able to see just these by clicking a tag. Same thing goes for hiding all topics tagged "Apple". Even if the tags were "hard-coded" it would be useful to have say:

Ask HN, Rate My App, Tech News, Acquisitions, Job Postings, Hacker Tips,

etc...

<comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/ask>

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I didn't even know that existed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People always suggest that when there is a temporary overflow of stories about some topic they're not interested in. Don't worry, things will get back to normal eventually.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think pg is generally against segregation, obviously segregation needs to happen if you are looking to scale the community to as many users as possible.

but I dont think the goal for ycombinator is to scale to lots of users, more to keep a relatively small self selecting group of people interesting in the same topic (technology startups).

at least I hope so.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would love sub-reddit functionality e.g.:

news.ycombinator.com/hn/technews

news.ycombinator.com/hn/python

news.ycombinator.com/hn/webapps

etc.</comment>


Duostack (Ruby/Node.js platform) releases docs & info on pricing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.duostack.com/post/3630628054/new-blog-scaling-instances-and-pricing

<comment><USER2> 3 cents per hour per instance instance after the first. With this space heating up so much, how do you compete with competitors offering free apps at the entry level. Sure, maybe you pick up better clients, but the other model still give you more prospects.

Either way, it's nice to be able to create dev / staging / experimental instances which aren't costing 3 cents per hour. I could host these on my own VPS and use Duostack for production only, but I'm more likely to use Heroku for the full stack.

Edit: The first app is free, but my point is still valid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, the way we list it might not be clear. The first instance for each app is free. So all apps are free, unless you add extra instances.

<comment><USER2> Ah, that makes a world of difference. Thanks for the correction. Next question... when do you I get my invite? I tweeted under gexla - johnDOTfullerATgmailDOTcom

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is an interesting pricing model. Most of the others are going for a fixed monthly rate. This is very fair. Let us see how it works.</comment>


Apple Will Start Paying Back Taxes to Irish Government Next Month - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2018/04/24/apple-irish-back-tax-payments-begin-in-may/ <comment><USER3> When the people complain about the European union taking too much autonomy, this seems like a pretty good example.

It seems crazy to me that Ireland is "not allowed" to set taxes as low as it would like to attract foreign investment. Even states in the US can freely do that!

<comment><USER4> I don't like some EU taxation rules, e.g. the minimum 15% VAT, which effectively sets an upper bound on government efficiency, but this has nothing to do with that.

Ireland is not being penalized for having taxes that are too low, but, in the words of the EC[1]:

        > Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to
        > €13 billion to Apple. This is illegal under
        > EU state aid rules, because it allowed Apple
        > to pay substantially less tax than other
        > businesses. Ireland must now recover the
        > illegal aid.

You can elect to have low taxes in the EU, but it's anti-competitive behavior for a government in the EU to give preferential treatment to some companies over others.

Ireland is perfectly within their rights to have Apple pay the same taxes they've been paying already going forward. But to do so they need to adjust the general corporate tax rate, not just give Apple specifically those illegal benefits.

1\. [http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-16-2923_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-16-2923_en.htm)

<comment><USER5> It's interesting that this is true, because (at the state level, not federal) this is table stakes to lure large corporations to locate in one state over another. Just look at some of the pitches cities/states have been making to Amazon for their HQ2, or the Foxconn deal in Wisconsin.

[https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/05/foxc...](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/05/foxconn- package-cost-wisconsin-eight-times-much-per-job-similar-2017-state-jobs- deals/1080214001/)

<comment><USER6> This is very negative behaviour in sum, because it becomes a race to the bottom where you either forgo all tax revenue, or you dont attract large companies.

Its good the EU has rules in place to prevent this destructive behaviour.

<comment><USER7> I don't see the negative outcome. Cities know the economic activity of 50,000 highly paid workers makes up for the loss of some property tax revenue. The alternative is no highly paid jobs and no property tax revenue (as the land is undeveloped).

<comment><USER8> Then give the same opportunities to all the companies not only to some

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Government is putting the money in an escrow account until they figure out what to do[0]. The money would cover Ireland's social welfare bill for a year which is a major cost to the Irish tax payer.

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-apple- taxavoidance/ire...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-apple- taxavoidance/ireland-chooses-bny-mellon-to-manage-apple-escrow-fund- idUSKCN1GJ190)

<comment><USER10> Well I hope they will be sharing it prorata with the other eu members that lost :-)

<comment><USER11> I don't feel so guilty about this any more. We bailed out German, French and other bank bondholders for billions (that unlike TARP we will never see back) when we should have give them 50% haircuts. 18% of my countrymen now live abroad, far higher rates for young people - including way too many of my friends. Most of the reasons for our mistakes are entirely our own but the EU can bugger off if it thinks it should be able to set our tax rates - <USER2> citizen will be paying back debts because of their banks for decades - financially and at the human level.

<comment><USER12> I usually don't engage in this sort of trivial nationalism. But I just have to inject that your retelling of this story omits the fact that Irish banks were obviously first in line to go belly-up.

It is true that those banks had various lenders in Germany/France/wherever, and that the consequences of an all-out collapse of the Irish economy would have had negative effects in those countries as well.

But presenting it as some sort of altruistic sacrifice to allow them to rescue Ireland from a potato-based future is just adding moral bankruptcy to the other.

It's also frustrating to see such uninformed hatred, considering EU funding of 44.6 Billion Euros since 1976 was what essentially allowed an agrarian society to catch up with Western Europe in the first place.

Plus, obviously, a large fraction of those 18% of Irish living abroad are beneficiaries of the EU's open borders.

[0]: [https://ec.europa.eu/ireland/about-us/impact-of-EU- membershi...](https://ec.europa.eu/ireland/about-us/impact-of-EU-membership- on-Ireland_en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is wonderful news. Let's hope they go after Google, MS, and all the other tax dodgers out there after this.

<comment><USER14> They are, it's just that Apple was by far the worst tax evader of the bunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Finally some good use for that foreign Apple cash hoard. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> The Irish Supreme Court has previously held that _ex post facto_ civil laws are illegal in the Republic of Ireland. Is this not _ex post facto_ taxation?

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure the EU law underlying this was in force in Ireland before the taxable events, so no, it's just a retrospective determination of tax owed under law in force at the time of the act.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Irish government along with Apple is filling an appeal against this. These Irish politicians sure have best interest of their countrymen in mind.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hopefully they use this to build more housing.

<comment><USER20> I thought Ireland already had a huge glut of housing that nobody wanted?

<comment><USER21> Quite the contrary. There is a monumental housing shortage.

But this is not where this money will go. When all is said and done, if Apple still owes that much, it'll be divided with the rest of the EU according to Apple's sales. Thanks to its tech hubs (it seems every other person on the train is a software engineer), Ireland may end up with some part of it, but most certainly not all.

<comment><USER20> What happened to that huge number of empty estates built during the boom? Are they in the wrong place? Can people live there but work from home?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You have to hand it to the Irish. As a plan to collect more tax in the long term, offering (effectively) tax free status by not enforcing "Double Irish w/ Dutch Sandwich", to attract big players, letting them dig themselves into tax- debt holes for a few years while letting them feel they will get off scott- free, then enforcing it and securing a deal to get back-taxes paid, is pretty genius. Very stable genius to help rebuild their economy that was pretty crushed after 2008.

<comment><USER23> Ireland is not "enforcing" anything; the European Commission are the party that ruled that Apple received unfair tax treatment. Both Apple _and_ the Irish government are appealing that ruling.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-apple- taxavoidance/ire...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-apple- taxavoidance/ireland-expects-apple-eu-tax-appeal-to-be-heard-in-autumn- idUSKBN1HV1OT)

<comment><USER22> Yeah, sure. That was a condition by IE of the EU bringing this ruling. "You have to make us look culpable as well, it's just better for business." You really don't think that's how it works? You're too naive!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Higher taxes are always passed on to the consumer, businesses are greedy.

<comment><USER25> That's not true. Research shows that, while some of the increases are passed along, a large chunk is absorbed by the shareholders.</comment></comment>


Journalist Arrested and iPad seized at IT security conference - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/journalist-arrested-at-it-security-conference-20110517-1erjh.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, talk about sour grapes.</comment>


Jail Lost Epstein Video Related to First Suicide Attempt, Officials Say - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-video-suicide.html <comment><AUTHOR> I mean really, who do they think they're fooling here?</comment>


Why Hiring Is So Hard in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javascript-scene/why-hiring-is-so-hard-in-tech-c462c3230017 <comment><USER2>
      most engineers are terrible at interviewing candidates

Well, _interviewing_ shouldn't be their primary role. Skilled engineer(s) are necessary, though, as part of the vetting processes (fact-checkers, if you will) to ensure that skills claimed by the candidate via resume, CV, or recruiter are, in fact, genuine.

Also, including an engineer from within the team being hired for can give a feel for how the candidate may fit in with the team dynamics.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems a bit odd to couple "there will be dramatically more demand for candidates than society can support" with "do all this extra work to prove you are qualified". Shouldn't one trend obviate the _need_ for the other, even if it remains both a decent idea and a good way of getting the exact job you may want?</comment>


Nim Language Draws from Best of Python, Rust, Go, and Lisp … - happy-go-lucky http://futurewavewebdevelopment.com/wp/2017/03/brucemwhealton/nim-language-draws-from-best-of-python-rust-go-and-lisp-16/ <comment><AUTHOR> This appears to be a web-scraped, word for word plagiarism of:

[http://www.infoworld.com/article/3157745/application- develop...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/3157745/application- development/nim-language-draws-from-best-of-python-rust-go-and-lisp.html)

(which, by the way, was posted here 25 days ago).

Who is the real author?

Serdar Yegulalp, Senior Writer, InfoWorld, January 16, 2017?

Bruce Whealton, Future Wave Tech, March 17, 2017?

<comment><USER2> Wow, every other posting of his there is blogspam, preceded by a one-sentence introduction:

[http://futurewavewebdevelopment.com/wp/author/brucewhealton/](http://futurewavewebdevelopment.com/wp/author/brucewhealton/)</comment></comment>


Microsoft Fluid Framework Preview - <AUTHOR> https://fluidpreview.com <comment><USER2> I like to think about Fluid as "OLE 3.0" (I used to own COM in Windows a few years ago - also disclaimer - I don't work on this team but am a big fan of their work). It's about making it easy to create components that can connect with each other through a cloud message queue service. So this "collaborative OneNote" experience shows just one aspect of that. You can build much more granular things using the SDK.

This video is the best explanation of it that I know of: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMzXmkrlFNg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMzXmkrlFNg)

<comment><USER3> This is exactly the feeling I got as well. Being able to take components and paste them to other containers.

Reminded me the experience of editing for example Visio picture inside Word document.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is this Google Wave coming back in the form of Office.com? Open-source! Definitely a different Microsoft than the one I grew up with.

Announcement support page

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started- with-...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-with-fluid- framework-preview-d05278db-b82b-4d1f-8523-cf0c9c2fb2df)

In the news

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21260005/microsoft- office...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21260005/microsoft-office-fluid- web-document-features-build)

'Microsoft is creating a new kind of Office document. Instead of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, the company has created Lego blocks of Office content that live on the web. The tables, graphs, and lists that you typically find in Office documents are transforming into living, collaborative modules that exist outside of traditional documents.

'Microsoft calls its Lego blocks Fluid components, and they can be edited in real time by anyone in any app. The idea is that you could create things like a table without having to switch to multiple apps to get it done, and the table will persist on the web like a Lego block, free for anyone to use and edit.

'"Imagine you could take those Lego pieces and put them in any place you wanted: in emails, in chats, in other apps," explains Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365, in an interview with The Verge. "As people work on them, they will always be updated and contain the latest information."

'Microsoft's Fluid Framework sounds a lot like Google Docs, but it's actually Google Docs on steroids. Microsoft is so confident it has built the future of productivity, it's now open-sourcing its Fluid Framework so the rest of the world can help shape what it has created. Some Office.com users will even be able to start getting a taste of this Fluid future in the coming months.'

<comment><USER4> It sounds a lot to me like OneNote, where you paste in bits and bobs of standard Office formats.

It feels like we see a new Office app every few years that's supposed to enable some magical flow of business, but every Office app I actually see used in offices has been around since 1995 or earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I crazy for wanting more than ever to fully embrace offline, privacy preserving technology? I'm okay with my Excel file on my HDD that I am in control over (and I've been spending time migrating away from the 'cloud' to a fully offline experience, where I can do anything I need without an internet connection, possibly for months at a time).

This sounds like it ties you further into the MS ecosystem; it's likely you'll need an MS account and be willing to agree to their privacy policy to use this feature - hopefully there is an "opt out" at least if it's integrated into their applications. And I'm not seeing anything that says this can work if you disable your internet connection, which is crucial for many people.

I also wonder about the longevity of these things. Imagine if an email was "alive" and could be "edited" after it was sent by anyone, like a 'module' as they're proposing.

There's a value into having a static, in-time thing, like an email, that will contain the same content 50 years from when it was sent and isn't reliant on some database to get the content (and can be easily exported/imported at will).

Dislike this. Moving everything to an online service sounds cool, except there are drawbacks to this approach.

<comment><USER6> >Am I crazy for wanting more than ever to fully embrace offline, privacy preserving technology?

Yes because great work gets done collaboratively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I get the following message:

> The Fluid preview experience is available on desktop versions of Edge > Chromium and Chrome. Please use one of these browsers on your computer to > access the preview.

Guess not so fluid afterall.

<comment><USER8> FWIW, their docs[1] mention it should work on desktop Safari and Firefox, they just haven't built a mobile UI yet I Guess.

[1] [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started- with-...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-with-fluid- framework-preview-d05278db-b82b-4d1f-8523-cf0c9c2fb2df)

<comment><USER7> It's just the name fluid generally refers to design patterns that scale from desktop to mobile automatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I get this message:

Microsoft Sign in

Sorry, but we're having trouble signing you in. AADSTS50020: User account '<redacted>@live.com' from identity provider 'live.com' does not exist in tenant 'Microsoft Services' and cannot access the application '660d4be7-2665-497f-9611-a42c2668dbce'(Microsoft Fluid Framework Preview) in that tenant. The account needs to be added as an external user in the tenant first. Sign out and sign in again with a different Azure Active Directory user account.

<comment><USER4> I think you're expected to be using an Office 365 account, not a generic Microsoft account.

<comment><USER10> Using my Office365 account, the screen continuously refreshes on Mac Chrome

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The best explanation of this I've encountered is from The Verge: [https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21260005/microsoft- office...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21260005/microsoft-office-fluid- web-document-features-build)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm endlessly redirected between [https://fluidpreview.office.net/#access_token=somethingveryl...](https://fluidpreview.office.net/#access_token=somethingverylong) and [https://fluidpreview.office.net/](https://fluidpreview.office.net/), is there something I'm missing?

Edit: in a Private Window it asks me to log in my Microsoft account, so I guess it has detected I was logged in, but goes in an authentication loop?

<comment><USER13> This is a well-known bug with ADAL.js that I've personally struggled with on our own corporate sites. It's a library that enables OAuth integration with Azure AD for single-page apps. Switching browsers can fix it. If they're using MSAL instead, it's possible that copying the link and pasting it into a new window will fix it as well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Steve Lucco looked at it from the fundamental level of 'What if we built every experience on top of a data structure that was inherently distributed?'"

CRDTs under the hood?

</comment><comment><USER15> So far, it basically looks like it wants to become Atlassian Confluence. Presumably it will become more tightly integrated with Office 365 than Confluence can be.

</comment><comment><USER16> 3 announcements about this, first 2 it was fluff with barely any details. Now account required. Not good MS

<comment><USER17> It's an office 365 product why would you expect it to work without an account? Especially when it's purpose is collaboration

<comment><USER16> a framework is a user level product ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Didn't someone mention this is open source? Where is the code?

<comment><USER6> Will be available next month on Github.

[https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft- build-2020-te...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft- build-2020-teams-gets-more-versatile-and-fluid-framework-goes-open-source/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> it seems like what dropbox paper was supposed to be? or not never sure what was supposed to be the unique value of it

</comment><comment><USER20> What is it?

<comment><USER21> [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started- with-...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-with-fluid- framework-preview-d05278db-b82b-4d1f-8523-cf0c9c2fb2df)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is it something like Notion?

<comment><USER23> It's ole objects but for web

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thought this was a framework for fluid dynamics :(</comment>


Show HN: Casual – Menswear simplified - <AUTHOR> https://casual.firebaseapp.com

<comment><USER2> If this were for high-end suits and shirts, then maybe. But there's nothing difficult about buying and laundering a bunch of jeans and solid t-shirts. (Jeans shouldn't be washed that often anyway.)

From a marketing perspective, I do like the "I would pay ____ for a casual subscription."

PS - "Receive at your door" has a typo in "Receive."

PPS - Another reason this shouldn't be done with jeans: Like a baseball cap, they eventually take shape to fit the wearer, which is why your "ol' pair of jeans" feels so comfortable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Typo fixed, thanks for catching that.

To address your first point, I think the hassle of washing clothes, getting rid of old clothes and buying new clothes varies greatly by lifestyle. I guess I'm trying to figure out how many others like me there are out there!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, OP here. This is the first MVP of a project I'm working on. Please feel free to ask any questions - I'll be lurking here for a while to try to be as helpful as possible!

<comment><USER3> This looks really cool.

I did an internship once with Schlumberger in a field base for a month. I bought more than 30 socks and boxers because I didn't want to be washing mine so I thought I'd just wear it, then wear another and then bash was them or use them for something else.

I also brought a lot of t-shirts (since we would wear coveralls, they were just causal t-shirts).

I didn't know they would cater to us the way they did and my clothes ended up being washed (you just had to leave it in a special net they provide, and someone would pick it and wash it) so I ended up having a lot of clean socks and boxers and shirts oh my.

Bear in mind that when I'm home, I wash my own clothes by hand because they are nice fabrics and would never put them in a machine or at the dry cleaner. But it would be nice to have some casual clothes you could change rapidly.

Interesting idea man.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing, I appreciate the support!</comment></comment></comment>


DebtRank: a PageRank-like measurement of systemic financial risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120802/srep00541/full/srep00541.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a question for people smarter than me:

This method differs from PageRank by excluding walks along the graph that repeat edges. I always thought it was an interesting property that PageRank represents the probability of reaching a given page by following links at random. Does excluding cycles change this property? (My intuition is yes, but I'm bad at math!) If not, what would DebtRank values represent? Likelihood of some unit of debt ending up held by a particular institution?</comment>