Whisper Suspends Editorial Team Involved in Guardian Visit - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/26/whisper-suspends-editorial-team-involved-in-guardian-visit/ <comment><USER2> The article includes a link where the CEO posts some rebuttal: [https://s3-us- west-1.amazonaws.com/whisper-ten-answers-oct-2...](https://s3-us- west-1.amazonaws.com/whisper-ten-answers- oct-24/Setting+The+Record+Straight.htm) .

> We then fuzz the location on the server.

Why not fuzz it on the device, before sending to the server?

> All data is stored in the United States, and has always been.

Why not just amend your Privacy Policy to state that data is only stored in the United States? Anything less, such as this nonbinding account of what you've historically done, strikes me as hand-waving and not fully above-board. It's like you acknowledge this is a legitimate concern, decline to formally commit to anything, but tell people a truth (or at least true at this moment) you think they want to hear, hoping they'll feel like the concern was resolved.

<comment><USER3> _Why not fuzz it on the device, before sending to the server?_

Now that is a legitimate question. Although, fuzzing it on the server is better than not fuzzing it at all.

 _Why not just amend your Privacy Policy to state that data is only stored in the United States?_

Actually Whisper did the opposite, amend their privacy policy so that data can be stored outside of the US, but their new ToS are not active yet.

I think, what he is saying is basically just: "We have content moderators in the Philippines. The Guardian is acting like we keep that secret, but here are 5 media articles where we talked about that ourselves. It is also not against our ToS. The provision that the Guardian is referencing is about servers.".

I must say, that it really looks like the Guardian article was somewhat sensationalist. Yes whisper is "tracking" it's users by sending location data to the server, but that is obvious since that is an integral part of the app.

<comment><USER2> > Actually Whisper did the opposite, amend their privacy policy so that data > can be stored outside of the US

True, I neglected this. Guardian points out (perhaps too imprecisely) that they changed the ToS to include storing data in other countries, and their response is essentially, "Calm down, right now we're only in the US." They've obviously made a deliberate move to open the door to storing data somewhere other than the US, but expect everyone to be reassured that they haven't actually walked through the door yet. Like the server-side location fuzzing, it's an unverifiable promise of security/privacy, not actual security and privacy.

> their new ToS are not active yet.

How not? [http://whisper.sh/privacy](http://whisper.sh/privacy) , dated 13 October, has the "other countries" clause, and says "Any changes become effective when we post them on the Site."

> that is obvious since that is an integral part of the app.

I have to admit, I'm also a bit surprised that this, of all privacy issues, is blowing up so much. Still, I support raising awareness of privacy, and I'm getting sketchy vibes from Whisper's damage control, so that I wonder if they have more to hide or something.

<comment><USER3> > How not? [http://whisper.sh/privacy](http://whisper.sh/privacy) , dated 13 > October, has the "other countries" clause, and says "Any changes become > effective when we post them on the Site."

I don't know, I got my information from this Guardian article:

"These new terms, which were posted on Whisper's website on 13 October, come into effect on 12 November."

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/16/-sp-whisper- pri...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/16/-sp-whisper-privacy- policy-terms-of-service)

Maybe the website and app have different ToS?

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I guess this is based on "The new Terms will become effective thirty (30) days after we post the notice on our Site."[0] in the Terms, which also seem to incorporate the Privacy Policy I linked, which is stated to take effect immediately. I don't know which statement about effective date takes precedence (another sign of sketchiness/sloppiness?), but at least I know what you and the Guardian are talking about.

[0] [http://whisper.sh/terms](http://whisper.sh/terms)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This is OT, but having just looked at some content on Whisper, my gut reaction is that this has the potential to be even more toxic than Facebook et al. I saw stuff like "I'm ugly. No matter how many times or who tells me I'm beautiful, I don't believe them. (Pic of me)" superimposed over an alleged photo of the poster. Replies may include "I think you're beautiful" (fairly useless if the OP's text is truthful and accurate, potentially harmful if poster is depending on others for validation) or "You're an attention whore" (potentially hurtful.) My gut also says just "vocalizing" negative thoughts with such finality could be harmful. Maybe my intuition is exactly wrong, but there's probably _something_ dangerous about crowd-sourcing therapy anonymously.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Guardian may have shown up a whisper pretending to be pushing a "will no one think of the children?" Angle. Demanding how whisper will help when used as a tool of child abusers and so on. With that they got their info and decided which angle to actually pursue.

Reporting secret information that people don't want you to know that may affect decisions you might make that have a pretty strong affect on your life. That's really, really good reporting. If it really did turn out to be fabrication that would be awful, but it seems unlikely at this point. Time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's worrisome that a senator is getting involved in a niche social apps privacy practice to this degree. However when it is a government agency that violates American's privacy the same Senators couldn't be bothered.

<comment><USER6> This struck me as odd as well. I'm curious whether Rockefeller or someone close to him has been Whispering info they shouldn't have or would be embarrassed by. I haven't cared enough to look at the data stream between Whisper and its servers, but does anyone know if they send the GPS tag of each Whisper down to the app? You could build your own database this way. Even if they don't, with their "nearby" feature, you could make posts with fake locations and then look at what order they come up in the "nearby" results at different locations. You could then calculate a relatively precise fake GPS location necessary to feed to the nearby feature to pinpoint Whispers from a specific location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wait... _Whisper 's_ editorial staff and Editor In Cheif?

I thought I read that wrong. Why does whisper have an editorial team?

<comment><USER2> Probably to curate stuff like "17 Childish Beliefs We Still Hang On To"[0]. Their jobs page has some openings that sound like that.

[0] [http://whisper.sh/stories/05f0a487-1b6d-4634-8d3f-c394d5ac4d...](http://whisper.sh/stories/05f0a487-1b6d-4634-8d3f-c394d5ac4dda/17-Childish- Beliefs-We-Still-Hang-On-To)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Imho anyone who uses the phrase "vicious lies" is usually the guilty party.

</comment><comment><USER9> _> ... its database could locate users within 500 meters (a little less than a standard city block in distance) of their location..._

that's one very, very big 'standard' city block.</comment>


Show HN: Clojure Redis pubsub client with keep-alive heart beats - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aravindbaskaran/redis-pubsub <comment><USER2> Very nice! Quick observation, what is the purpose of the # suffix on your variables? I haven't seen this much and would like to know what it signals, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! If you are referring to the # in this area of the code - [https://github.com/aravindbaskaran/redis- pubsub/blob/master/...](https://github.com/aravindbaskaran/redis- pubsub/blob/master/src/redis_pubsub/core.clj#L29) \- then that refers to a Clojure macros autogensym for symbols created within the macro. If the # is removed, the symbol is resolved from the top namespace where the macro expands. If you are up for some more reading on the weird symbols of Clojure, I have it here - [https://hackernoon.com/clojure-macros-lessons-from- unspoken-...](https://hackernoon.com/clojure-macros-lessons-from-unspoken- symbols-c4945d8ed8bf)

<comment><USER2> It is now clear I don't write enough macros :)

Your blog post was great. Thanks for the share.</comment></comment></comment>


Too bad :( - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2010/tc20100917_955268.htm hopefully they can come back stronger <comment><USER2> A related article about NewsTilt's failure was on HN , cant find the link though. Would be great if there was a more descriptive title for your submission!

<comment><USER3> The other link was [http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt- down...](http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down/), and the HN discussion was at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1699411>.

HN tends to prefer neutral titles (though I appreciate the OP's sentiment :)).</comment></comment>


The White iPhone Is Finally Here - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/the-white-iphone-is-finally-here/237329/ <comment><USER2> I have the solution to the white iPhone glass problem:

[http://www.corning.com/lifesciences/us_canada/en/technical_r...](http://www.corning.com/lifesciences/us_canada/en/technical_resources/product_guid/shp/pyro.aspx)

You're welcome, Apple.</comment>


Ask HN: Is yahoo still generating revenue? - <AUTHOR> Is yahoo still profitable? <comment><USER2> A bit of a tangent, but a tenth of my organic search traffic comes from Yahoo. So people are still using it.

<comment><USER3> What! That's quite a bit more than I expected. I suspect it have to do with your niche?

<comment><USER2> The site doesn't rank well on Google, because of competing sites in the niche. It turns out 8th page on Google does worse than first result on Yahoo.

In order, traffic comes from: Bing, Duckduckgo, Yahoo, Ecosia.org, Oceanhero.today, Google, and the various country based Yahoos (nl.search.yahoo.com, and so on).

<comment><USER3> Wow, this is actually very weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have Yahoo as my mobile homepage. It has news from a variety of sources. Yahoo finance is also very useful.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Is yahoo still generating revenue?

> Is yahoo still profitable?

Revenue is different from profit. It seems like last year their revenue was about 2.5 billion and their profit was around 23 million - [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/annual- report-2019-outlook-20...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/annual- report-2019-outlook-2020-071815598.html)

<comment><USER6> That page doesn't seem to be about Yahoo.

According to Wikipedia, Yahoo's revenue in 2016 was $5.2 billion. Yahoo is now owned by Verizon Media.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo%21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo%21)</comment></comment>


Plantsnap – A mobile app that helps you identify plants, flowers and trees - <AUTHOR> http://plantsnap.net/ <comment><USER2> I'd be interested in technical details about the app - the linked article doesn't offer much.</comment>


Universal Basic Income is not a popular idea, even in the Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajdellinger/2019/06/30/andrew-yangs-proposals-arent-as-popular-in-silicon-valley-as-you-might-think/#16f107d6e5b6 <comment><USER2> Bandwagoned appeal to authority. This article uses these fallacies as a means toward discrediting his policy. This isn't an argument.</comment>


Ask HN: Which tool do you use to configure your DNS entries? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I suspect most individuals use online control-panels, from their domain- registrars.

If you need to be dynamic, or outsource your DNS, there are options from Dynn, Digital Ocean, Amazon, etc, which allow you to use their API (and optionally a panel-interface).

Those APIs can be wired up to allow you to update things frequently if you wish, for example automating zone-transfers from a hidden-master, or converting a git-repository of text-files into live DNS entries.

Really your question is quite broad, and a more specific question would be required to provide a decent reply.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started using Google Cloud DNS and I find it nice that I can export my DNS entries as yaml and then keep it version controlled.

</comment><comment><USER4> Configuring mostly through the web interface of dnsmadeeasy. Great service, good pricing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cloudflare.

</comment><comment><USER6> vim. I've been operating my own DNS servers for over 20 years.</comment>


CSS3PS: Convert Photoshop layers to CSS3 - <AUTHOR> http://css3ps.com/

<comment><USER2> Yay! Clean code that makes sense to those just learning CSS (as opposed to CSSHat just that spits garble at you for $30) and a beautiful introduction. Love that it's free and Windows-compatible too. Interested in seeing how it compares to this project as well: [http://dribbble.com/shots/591127-Codie- CSS3-Photoshop-Plug-i...](http://dribbble.com/shots/591127-Codie- CSS3-Photoshop-Plug-in)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice site design. And probably very useful app for designers.

On a side note what I discovered yesterday - you can create nice vector graphics in InkScape (free tool), open its source (it's just XML) and copy- paste <svg>...</svg> into HTML page and bang - you got your design in your page and you can manipulate each aspect of this image via JavaScript just like you would manipulate plane HTML code.

I bet it do not work across browsers tho...

</comment><comment> hendrik-xdest Does this only work for vector objects enhanced by layer styles? What would happen if I wanted to extract, for example, the CSS3PS logo?

I don't have Photoshop ready but would like to show this to creative. That's why I ask instead of testing it myself :)

<comment><USER4> at this moment you will get just div with logo size and if it use layer effects they will also convert to this CSS3 div

we will add export raster layers as images but lates now we have list of more priority features

<comment><USER5> If i can throw a PSD file at your site, and get "valid" html5 and CSS3 back, please submit another story to hackernews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm looking for an app that does the opposite, since IE is still around ;-)

<comment><USER7> Check out LayerCake if you want to easily "cut up" a psd into it's individual images. With LayerCake you can even set it up to auto-export your images every time you save the psd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hope You like it ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Love the install instructions and site. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is really nice, it's very similiar to <http://csshat.com/> though?

<comment><USER10> CSSHat is a commercial self contained plugin CSS3PS is a free plugin that relies on a web service for processing

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Agree with csshat. It works great but the code is really difficult to grasp. Going to give css3ps a try.

</comment><comment><USER12> nice work!! Can we have some info on the "list of more priority features" ;)

<comment><USER4> we will update our site on the next week stay tuned

for more question you can write to email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> wow.</comment>


Ask HN: How to save an offline copy of all bookmarks? - <AUTHOR>

Any known desktop apps (e.g., OSX) or browser addons, to save static copies of all bookmarks in the browser? (say Chrome) <comment><USER2> It's not a desktop app or browser addon but a Pinboard archive account might work for you - [http://pinboard.in/upgrade/](http://pinboard.in/upgrade/)

I can't check right now but I -think- you can download the archive at any time, not just if you're closing your account (but I could be wrong.)

</comment><comment><USER3> You can just copy off Chrome's bookmarks file. It's at ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Bookmarks

<comment><AUTHOR> I want an actual copy of the webpage to be saved offline, not just the links.</comment></comment>


There are far more Muslims ready to fight for the West than against it - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/there-are-far-more-muslims-ready-to-fight-for-the-west-than-against-it/2015/11/20/ce2ef78a-8ee2-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html <comment><USER2> TLDR; Muslims serve in Western Armies, so shut your pie hole about Muslim terror attacks in Mali, Paris, Sinai, Boston, London, Madrid, Bali, New York, etc. etc. etc. etc.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the tips/tools/hacks helps you most to become more productive? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Adderall

</comment><comment><USER3> Adderall too</comment>


Symptoms, signs, and the riddle of Morgellons - <AUTHOR> http://harpers.org/archive/2013/09/the-devils-bait/

<comment><USER2> Can we please stop posting articles behind magazine and newspaper paywalls.</comment>


SoftBank's Yahoo Japan and LINE are merging to fend off US tech giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/18/tech/softbank-yahoo-line-merger/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Mods: The article title styles it as "Line", but LINE style it as "LINE", so I went with that instead :)</comment>


Migrating 1200 databases from MySQL to Postgres - <AUTHOR> http://psyenix.blogspot.com/2017/08/migrating-1200-db-from-mysql-to-postgres.html <comment><USER2> I wrote an open source tool that migrates between any 2 relational databases.

[https://github.com/seanharr11/etlalchemy](https://github.com/seanharr11/etlalchemy)

This includes automatic migration of the schema, constraints, indexes and obviously data. It leverages fast bulk loading tools like mysqlimport, and PostgreSQL's COPY FROM. It doesn't need any config. Just plug and play.

The tool uses SQLAlchemy to abstract column types, and handles various column type conversions between any flavor of SQL.

The one thing it needs are tests, and scalability support for tables bigger than a few GB!

<comment><USER3> Thanks much - going to test it between MSSQL and MySQL in a few days here!

<comment><USER2> Let me know how it goes...please open issues if you find them!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm working on migrating an app right now (just one MySQL database) but can highly recommend [pgloader]([http://pgloader.io/](http://pgloader.io/)). It has a bunch of built-in and configurable rules to cast different column types to PostgreSQL and the developer has been very responsive in helping me make weird column types work, too.

<comment><USER5> Pgloader can be very powerful. Despite never having using Common Lisp, I found it easy to add in a custom column conversion functions without modifying pgloader itself. You can write additional lisp files with custom procedures and load them at runtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the approach and think something like this is fun but i don't understand the businsess case at all.

I would have migrated MySQL 5.5 to 5.6 first, than cleaned the shit out of it, normalized everything, added a few indezes and suddently realize that there is not much left to do.

I like to work with postgresql but if you have 1,2k dbs which are more or less not claned up and crappy, what are they used anyway?

<comment><USER7> I agree. It sounds like they decided to do a cleanup ahead of an investment and not much of a real business case. Your migration path seems much, much simpler - and that's assuming the cleanup is even needed in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing author did not touch on: since the tables were denormalized-ish in the original MySQL DB, did his application lose significant performance by having to perform the joins for every single query in the renormalized PostGres instance? Or were the DB's small enough and indexed properly enough so it didn't really matter?

Might have been worthy of testing this to see if it was worth it to materialize certain views and refresh them every 15-30 minutes or so.

<comment><USER9> At least in my experience, joins in 100s of GB databases are not a performance problem. I've always been somewhat baffled by the claims I see pretty regularly that joins are a major performance concern. Was this a big deal in the past?

<comment><USER10> _Was this a big deal in the past?_

In MySQL, yes. It lacked the concept of foreign keys.

<comment><USER11> Lack of foreign keys does not effect performance.

In fact, having foreign keys is a net-negative performance-wise because it means that each foreign key must be checked for every insert/update/delete.

<comment><USER10> Errm, we're talking about performance of joins

<comment><USER11> They don't help with that either.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps parent is conflating indexes with constraints? I believe InnoDB creates indexes automatically with foreign keys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing that Postgres lacks is accent insensitive collations. Having clients with databases in Spanish, this is one of the reasons I wouldn't consider migrating to Postgres. I know I can use the unaccent extension, but I consider it a poor substitute to proper collations. I guess this isn't a problem for most people because it's never mentioned.

<comment><USER14> It appears work is active (May 2017) in this area, but accent-insensitive collations are still a ways off: [https://blog.2ndquadrant.com/icu-support- postgresql-10/](https://blog.2ndquadrant.com/icu-support-postgresql-10/)

edit: fulafel corrects me below that you can get accent-insensitive collations working using PostgreSQL 10's new ICU collation support. Note that PostgreSQL 10 is currently pre-release.

<comment><USER15> That post says that they currently work, but there is a new os-independent collation method coming.

Edit re your edit: the already working collations are in PG 9.x - the OS independent collations are coming in 10.x. (Hence the post title, "More robust collations with ICU support in PostgreSQL 10")

<comment><USER16> But do these "already working" collations include accent-insensitive variants? I didn't think so, and I don't think they are coming in PostgreSQL 10 either. Do you have other information on this?

<comment><USER17> They do. The problem is that equality is still strict binary equality for text, for obscure technical reasons. So, while you can get extremely flexible customizations to collation with icu [1], you can't have case insensitive equality, or equality that ignores accents. This is recognized as a problem, and is probably going to be fixed in v11.

[1] [https://www.postgresql.org/message- id/CAH2-Wz=bcgmk97YaZ3rs4...](https://www.postgresql.org/message- firstname.lastname@example.com)

<comment><USER18> > The problem is that equality is still strict binary equality for text, for > obscure technical reasons

AKA performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you are migrating to AWS RDS, I recommend AWS Data Migration service. I migrated my live database (~50GB) from Mysql to Postgres (both RDS) with zero downtime.

I used AWS Schema Conversion Tool for initial PG schema. I customized the generated schema for my specific needs.

</comment><comment><USER2> A few of these steps could be solved with this tool, including schema/index migrations, and even initial (fast) data transfer: [https://github.com/seanharr11/etlalchemy](https://github.com/seanharr11/etlalchemy)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not against the idea of using postgres, but I have a sneaky suspicion, that you could have gotten that 30% speed benefit from MySQL, if you did some performance work on it. Or in other words, I don't feel that migrating from one relational database to another similar relational database was worth that much trouble.

<comment><USER21> Thats interesting, as my dev experience would allow me to tune queries better in Postgres (the visual query planner makes it easier and there are more join types), while tuning them through configuration on either database would involve a lot more trail and error reading. I would more likely know what to do by migrating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I went through a similar process a few years ago (4k dbs into a single db, all mysql). You'll get something working fairly quickly and then spend days debugging data anomalies that have crept in over the years.

We ended up with a frankenstein mixture of bash scripts, a sequence of sql transformations, some python and some php to decode some of the data that had been stored in pickled / php encoded packages.

It's not something I want to repeat any time soon :-)

<comment><USER23> It truly sounds like a nightmare. How much time did it took to move everything to psql, and how long until it was stable enough to not keep an eye on it?

<comment><USER22> To clarify, it all stayed on mysql — just pulled everything into a single db.

I can't remember exactly but the whole project was done in a real hurry, about 4 weeks I think. It included a rewrite of the application / website (about 20k lines of backend code, html and js / css), migration of all the data, creation of new transcoders, migration of a lot of data asset/video data from another server.

No idea how we got through it all in retrospect, but I had to. A few days after we finished I got married and went off on my honeymoon, so I guess I decided it was stable enough the day I released it...! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One of the main things I ran into when migrating from MySQL to postgres was that the default text columns (TEXT, VARCHAR, etc) behave differently when searching. MySQL matches text case insensitive, while postgres matches it case sensitive. This resulted in searches for content suddenly not returning data. Luckily there's an official CITEXT extension for postgres [1], which matches text case insensitive and adds the correct indices for doing so efficiently.

[1] [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/citext.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/citext.html)

<comment><USER25> _" MySQL matches text case insensitive"_

This is of course only when you set a case insensitive collation (_ci).

But I agree this can be a problem because case insensitive collations are used a lot in MySQL.

Also other collations can be a trouble. For example the collation that returns results for both 'ß' and 'ss' (German)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm not entirely sure what the technical reason for this change was. Of course, cleaning up your DBs and whatnot is a good thing. But why did they move it to Postgres instead of simply clean?

</comment><comment><USER27> Would love to do this to the monstrosity I inherited in new job but it's a sispheyan task.

One day.

<comment><USER28> One time I saw a database, with a single table, with a single text column that contained the old database.

<comment><USER29> This sounds similar to what I saw at a client a few years back. All XML responses from a REST API were inserted into a single VARCHAR(MAX) column (one row per response, but a response could have multiple "records") in a SQL Server database.

All interaction with this was through a byzantine web of XPath expressions using the severely neutered dialect of XQuery that shipped with SQL Server 2008.

Apologies for the mini-rant, your comment appears to have triggered some painful memories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is it an universally accepted truth now that it's generally better to use Postgres then to use MySql?

Would anybody here use MySql for a new project? If so, why?

<comment><USER31> Yes, I would use MySQL. I'm very familiar with it for one, and the extra storage engine options turn a sure thing into a no-brainer decision.

Ultimately, I think familiarity is and will always be the biggest driver for experienced devs who choose a DB.

<comment><USER32> What storage engines and options do you use?

<comment> forgot-my-pw XtraDB if you can, InnoDB if you can't.

<comment><USER33> FWIW, MariaDB 10.2 no longer defaults to XtraDB, now considering InnoDB mostly on-par. [0]

[0] [https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/why-does- mariadb-102-use-i...](https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/why-does- mariadb-102-use-innodb-instead-of-xtradb/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Now is when one of the main reasons to take Postgres as our new database > server. Postgres allows the use of Views(include link) supporting INSERT, > UPDATE and DELETE meanwhile the relation between views and tables are one to > one, ....isn't it awesome?

Just a heads up, I think you missed a link in there

</comment><comment><USER35> When talking about replaying live activity on the test system:

>We took the third option because the other two options were quite intrusive and they might interfere at the normal use of our app because in both cases they were going to be in between our users request and our app

One of those two rejected options was goreplay. It is passive, like tcpdump. Right from the docs:

"Gor is not a proxy: you do not need to put 3-rd party tool to your critical path. Instead Gor just silently analyzes the traffic of your application and does not affect it anyhow."

</comment><comment><USER36> Now that is what I call a proper migration. Great content! I was wondering how could somebody end up with corrupt data, I guess it was due to MySQL not strict enforcing the types probably.

</comment><comment><USER37> [https://github.com/the4thdoctor/pg_chameleon](https://github.com/the4thdoctor/pg_chameleon)

</comment><comment><USER38> I tried to migrate from Firebird to Postgres once and I failed, it needs more administration than Firebird.

</comment><comment><USER39> What was the reason to first migrate and then repair data? Repair scripts could've been ran against the old setup too and you would've had less stuff to migrate.</comment>


Researchers Map Locations of Servers in Netflix's Content Delivery Network - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/researchers-map-locations-of-4669-servers-in-netflixs-content-delivery-network <comment><USER2> It's interesting to contrast this with the Google Global Cache nodes at the edge ([https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure](https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure)). As Netflix expands globally, will they be in just as many locations? (Perhaps not because streaming video is less latency sensitive than API responses and search results).

I'm also curious if the public disclosure of this info means the researchers didn't bother to do the same reverse engineering for say YouTube?

Disclosure: I work at Google on Cloud, but don't work on edge caching.

</comment><comment><USER3> In a similar vein there's a project at the moment to map the world's internet infrastructure called The New Cloud Atlas ([http://newcloudatlas.org](http://newcloudatlas.org)) which describes itself thus:

> The New Cloud Atlas is a global effort to map each data place that makes up > the cloud in an open and accountable way. We have set out to find and map > each warehouse data centre, each internet exchange, each connecting cable > and switch. Anything of any physical significance in the operation of the > cloud should be observed is some way, and recorded for everyone to see and > use.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a friend that runs IT for a large college campus in the Midwest. They not only have a Netflix cache, but an Apple one as well.

The Netflix one runs at a few gigabit/sec at all times. The Apple one keeps the WAN from going down on update day.

<comment><USER5> What cache server do they use?

<comment><USER6> Netflix provides their own - [https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/)

I would imagine Apple provides something similar.

<comment><USER4> From what I've been told, it's a rack-mounted unit that's sealed. That's about it. The Apple unit contains iTunes content as well as iOS/OSX system updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Direct link: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.05519v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.05519v1.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, much better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly, why that's research worthy? That's not a new knowledge, that's information is somewhat known to all employees, partners, various NMS vendors, ISPs. 'Nice' graph and latex formatted article doesn't make that scientific research. I guess there is to much useless "since" in style of 'I run ping/traceroute from the couple of locations and here is my scientific research'.

<comment><USER10> It's not about "ping and traceroute"; it's about _organizing and mapping the data_ (both logically and geographically) that come out tools like ping and traceroute.

They aren't saying they've demonstrated quantum teleportation, or anything. But for the subject matter at hand (and given that Netflix runs one of the largest CDNs in the world), it's quite impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought that the "Netflix CDN" was AWS.

<comment><USER12> Hasn't been for a while, the egress would be insanely expensive.

They use devices they call "Openconnect" for peering in ISPs [https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for clarifying. Very informative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It sounds like Netflix's host naming scheme is what made it possible for the researchers to do this. I assume that means using regions and incrementing counters in the hostnames.

Who wants to bet that in the next year we'll see their hostnames change to be random-looking instead?

<comment><USER14> This won't happen. It would cause havoc when attempting to work with peering partners and transit providers when troubleshooting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone provide more information on the server infrastructure than this article:

[http://www.techhive.com/article/2158040/how-netflix- streams-...](http://www.techhive.com/article/2158040/how-netflix-streams- movies-to-your-tv.html)

It claims each server serves up to 10,000 streams simultaneously. So operational peak capacity is at ~50M simultaneous streams.

Also, 10k streams at 1080p would be ~70Gbps per machine at full HD, or ~20Gbps per machine at SD. With some blend of course being the norm.

There is of course a big difference between being capable of and actual and FUD.

I'd really love to know what the internals of one of their streaming servers might look like.

Anyone here who has architected a box with that capacity?

<comment><USER8> Someone pointed out the original paper, which has better estimates than my back of the napkin calculation for traffic throughput. Good stuff.

Still would love to know more about the internals of their servers and support infrastructure.

<comment><USER15> [https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/)

I believe there are some slight differences between what Netflix uses and the OpenConnect machines placed inside ISP networks, but not by very much.

<comment><USER8> Awesome thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Zero severs in Russia, China, Turkey, India..? Over 2 bn. people left out of the market? I know not all have network access, but still. Not Russia or India at least?

<comment><USER17> Outside of the US, content on Netflix varies from "bad" to "meh".

<comment><USER16> Why not use VPN services like F-Secure + Netflix to access movies? Is Netflix blocking them? I imagine they should not be, because of the recent ISP- throttling scandals.

<comment><USER18> There are several levels of answers.

Is Netflix blocking VPNs? Yes. They didn't use to, but they started doing it around a month or so ago. Some VPNs could route around it, some couldn't.

Alternative answer: using a VPN is against Netflix' TOS, so it's not really different from regular piracy. You could argue that you pay for convenience, but you could also argue that if you are going to open yourself to a lawsuit, you might not want to do it with your personal credit card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How many did they find in Kansas?</comment>


SEO for Software Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/07/17/seo-for-software-companies/

<comment><USER2> This was a conference presentation for mostly folks who had never heard of me, so it has substantial overlap with what I've written about SEO. Still, if you haven't seen it it is new to you.

Folks seem to have liked it, so I'm happy.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll get back after the next presentation is over.

</comment><comment><USER3> Summarizing: pollute the Internet with cheap content as hard as you possibly can and then "milk" it.

Assume my company has finally nailed the text recognition, I must tell you I'd be disappointed by having the need to employ $10/article English majors to keep my site "up to date".

The issue I'm having with SEO is this: if millions of fake articles/blogs didn't generate so much noise, my hypothetical speech recognition startup would have gotten a few rave reviews organically via handful of legit tech news outlets _and that would be enough_. But thanks to the current situation this won't be enough (I know from experience) - you need to spam the hell out of everybody to "be in".

<comment><USER4> I am sad watching Google losing the battle... It is beyond me how Digg pages (that only have a link!) show up higher in search results than the actual content they're pointed to?

Just yesterday I wanted to learn more about SAN storage and no matter what I searched for I could only get "buy! buy! buy!" links on Google's front page, until I retreated to wikipedia. Look at this crap (below), how could it possibly be included in the index, the text-to-link ratio (as well as text-to- dd) is horrendous, why not just ignore these?

Here, I think it was search result #3 for "how fast SAN storage is?", the usefulness of google is fast approaching Altavista circa 1996: [http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,si...](http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid5_gci1089810,00.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the advice (find out what your audience is searching for and write that content), though I'm not a big fan of building a ton of throwaway content ala Demand Media.

That aside, it sounds like your teacher connection is working really well!

What type of advice would you give a business with a less niche focus to try and find good keywords to write for?

For example, my salon is called "Bloom Beauty Lounge" and the site is <http://bloombeautylounge.com/>

99% of our keywords coming in are either 'Bloom Beauty Lounge' or 'Bloom Salon Lounge' or 'Bloom NYC Salon.'

I really feel like our google offering could be stronger, but I'm wondering if writing yet another blog post about "how to layer haircuts" is really the best way to go about it.

Any advice?

<comment><USER2> Your business has customers coming in every single day and agreeing to be restrained in a chair by an employee holding sharp implements next to their head. If that isn't a wonderful scenario for pumping them for information I don't know what is.

Ask your customers what they don't know about hair. What concerns them about their hair? What concerns them about their children's hair?

Write down _exactly_ the words they use. Answer their questions. You'll probably notice patterns: How do I X for a person with Y hair? With a few exemplars of X and Y you can start doing multiplicative idea generation. (10 values for X and 10 values for Y = 100 articles. Get cranking. Better yet, write up outlines and get the freelancers cranking. Note that if Y is irrelevant for some value of X, and the process is actually the same regardless, _your customers do not necessarily know that_ and they'll include Y in the query anyway.)

You'd also want to get some links to have trust to rank for non-branded pages. There is a newspaper in New York City which you might have heard of. They have an ongoing interest in racial/gender equity and many other things of concern to upper East Side liberals. "Hair is a race issue" is the sort of just- counterintuitive-enough-to-be-novel-but-nonthreatening that their editors eat with a freaking spoon. You can plumb that for many, many ideas. _cough_ What White Moms Don't Know About Their Black Kids' Hair _cough_ (If only there were a prominent US politician who was black, raised by a white woman, and beloved inside the newsroom -- the editors would fight over themselves about what got to cover the article.)

Does that get you started?

<comment><USER5> That's a great start :) We've definitely been successful getting links and I'll think about racially charged pieces :P

For sure the 'ask your customers and track the results then go for the most common denominator' is a great idea. We'll run with that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the authors of these SEO blogs should come clean at the end of the article about the real purpose of the article - SEO.

<comment><USER2> I know a lot of ways of getting a backlink which don't involve flying from Japan to Texas. (I went to learn stuff and socialize with folks who helped me get my business off the ground several years ago. I presented because I'm fairly decent at this topic and helping people gives me warm fuzzies.)

<comment><USER6> Well, maybe I was wrong about you - I'm cynical. When I watch a late night informercial with some guy claiming he'll sell me his super simple plan to make lots of money, I tend to think I already see his plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like content that can be bought for 2.2 cents/word is exactly the kind of content that isn't "competitively defensible".

Any ideas for scaling the creation of higher-quality content? Ghostwriting and editing, perhaps? Interviews with domain experts instead of pieces written by domain experts?

<comment><USER8> It's not completely defensible, but it's not a lyrics site either because they'd have to write the bingo card generator too.

The point seems to be to relate the content back to something else you own that nobody else has built yet.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, you're right. By combining generic content with domain expertise (in the form of software), Patrick has created content that is defensible.

What I was wondering, though, is if he had any ideas for creating defensible content at scale w/o a software tie-in--like having articles ghostwritten based on outlines by domain experts.

<comment><USER2> Pick a niche, any niche (though one that I'd grok well would be better). I'll give you an example or two.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Software Maintenance via Genetic Programming - <AUTHOR> http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2009/11/software-maintenance-via-genetic-programming/

<comment><USER2> Apply random modifications to the code until the test passes. Some people call it names like "shotgun programming" or "bad practice". Others call it "Software Maintenance by Genetic Programming".

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if this automated bug sniffing could evolve into something that can actually restructure a program to make its architecture better.

Further, if that's where this is going, maybe we'll be a step closer to "Do what I mean" programming.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, I think the article (and the original paper) do more than bug sniffing; the code that fails test cases is being automatically modified to eliminate the bug.

The "Do what I mean" programming idea is certainly a good one. One of the pioneers of genetic programming, John Koza, once described the possibility of using genetic programming as a companion for human innovation. Intead of the algorithm completely replacing human written code/design components, it could produce potential solutions to problems posed by an operator which then go through tweaking or analysis by humans and can be sent back for more evolution, turning it into a sort of partnership (I can't find the exact source, but I used it in a project presentation a few years back). Kind of cool to imagine: pair programming with a computer partner!</comment></comment>


A File Format Led to a Crossword Scandal (2019) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aHfK8EUIzg <comment><USER2> Hi, this is Saul. If you like this kind of simplicity-first data-exploration approach, you might want to check out another project of mine, VisiData (visidata.org). It's specifically for lightweight data exploration and analysis and it runs directly in the terminal.

<comment><USER3> Hey, just wanted to say that this looks like a really cool and useful project. I work with a few medical databases and sometimes I just need a very quick breakdown of specific data and while I usually just write a short script, the utility and portability of this code looks fantastic to me. Which brings me to a question, how well does this program handle moderately large databases (~100GB-1TB) in your (or anyone else's) experience? In other words does it try to load everything into memory, or does it query as needed when given a database?

<comment><USER2> It loads everything into memory, so it works well with <1GB datasets. The architecture could be changed to allow for larger datasets like yours, but that would likely be a large undertaking and would probably be a paid feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Despite Parker's denial, many in the crossword world see willful plagiarism > in Parker's puzzles, and they see the database that revealed the repetition > as a tool of justice. "It's like a murder mystery solved 50 years later with > DNA evidence," Matt Gaffney, a professional crossword constructor, told me.

There's a response to postmodernism that says "reality is that which, when you ignore it, doesn't go away".

I have a hard time seeing this as a "scandal"; it's firmly in the class of things that aren't a problem unless someone tells you you have a problem. A murder has victims. But if you're unhappy that the crossword puzzle you solved last week was secretly a rerun from 10 years ago, it's not obvious whether the blame for your unhappiness should go to the guy who reran the puzzle, or the guy who told you it was a rerun.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's the rerunning that's the problem, but the misattribution, claiming others' work as their own or denying them credit (and presumably royalties).

<comment><USER4> If the originality of the crossword has no value, why would it matter whether someone's claim that it is original is true or false? The most logical basis for attributing value to the claim of originality is that there is value in the originality that bleeds through to the claim.

Compare e.g. someone being jailed for resisting arrest when there was no justification for arresting him in the first place.

<comment><USER6> The law tends to disagree: crossword puzzles are copyrightable material just like any other published text is, so their value comes from the material that they help sell, whether that's a newspaper, or a crossword puzzle book, or a website, or any other published, in the legal sense, work.

<comment><USER4> But misattribution is not a problem at all in that analysis. It's just as illegal to violate a copyright with proper attribution as it is if I claim the work is my own.

The law doesn't care whether you claim a copyrighted work is yours or not. It cares whether, if you copy a copyrighted work, you have the license to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the FiveThirtyEight article about this mentioned a few times in the video [1].

[1] [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-plagiarism-scandal- is...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-plagiarism-scandal-is-unfolding- in-the-crossword-world/)

<comment><USER8> There's a footnote about Saul's interesting name, which leads to:

      Pawanson is a bit quirky — his unusual
      last name is the product of a decision
      he made years ago.

      "I was born Paul Swanson," he said.
      "But I thought, 'there are lots of Paul
      Swansons out there. 'So I changed it."

Amazing!

<comment><USER9> As someone with a name completely unique in the history of the world (so far as I have found), there are certain advantages! I wouldn't be surprised if people do this more often in the future. It is pretty nice that if you Google my name, you only get results about me.

<comment> matt-attack Interesting. I relish the fact that when you google my name you get pages and pages of a semi-famous figure that, honestly, most people haven't heard of.

I cherish the anonymity.

<comment><USER10> I have a teacher friend named Mike Pence.

He tells me that it's impossible for students to snoop on him because he is "google-proofed."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an awesome story, I especially like the speaker's organization of the narrative taking us along for the ride. Maybe this will be the push I need do a better job learning Unix tools.

<comment><USER12> The delivery was very engaging and a good example to other engineers on how crafting a compelling narrative can help drive home the importance of your work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "It's not hoarding if it's organized."

Oh, that's getting thugged.

<comment><USER6> If it's organized, now it's archiving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author's biography is quite fascinating. If there's a museum of visualization, it'd be an exhibit: [https://www.saul.pw/biograph/](https://www.saul.pw/biograph/)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting that while sophisticated plagiarism detecting software is commonplace for writing submissions at newspapers, book publishers, universities etc., they don't bother doing the same with crosswords (and probably other puzzles like Sudoku).

</comment><comment><USER16> I didn't realize unix tools were this powerful. That's an amazing story.

<comment><USER17> I think the point is that they're not, usually, this powerful. Saul made a deliberate choice to create a file format that would be extremely amenable to these tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Were the misattributed authors aware that they were being given credit for puzzles they didn't write? I'm assuming they must have been.

<comment><USER2> The misattributed authors are fake names, admitted by Timothy Parker himself. "Tim Burr" is one mentioned in the talk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Data is beautiful</comment>


Show HN: Api-stuff: Making Twitter's API Easy Again - <AUTHOR> http://api-stuff.azurewebsites.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

I'm Alex. I built this wrapper API since I remembered the "good old days" when fetching a tweet was as easy as doing a getJSON with jQuery. Well, unfortunately those days seemed to be over. So I built this simple wrapper API. Nothing too fancy, but it makes fetching a simple tweet easy again.

It also supports Instagram and the unofficial Vine API.

</comment><comment><USER2> Well done! Enthusiastic thumbs up!</comment>


Yahoo Finance API Discontinued for Good - <AUTHOR> https://forums.yahoo.net/t5/Yahoo-Finance-help/Is-Yahoo-finance-down/m-p/387165#M6147 <comment><USER2> works for me.. using datareader in python</comment>


Newegg sues patent troll that dropped its case - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/newegg-sues-patent-troll-that-dropped-its-case/ <comment><USER2> My bias is that I think patents are over-used, over-granted & over-litigated. I think the system is fundamentally broken in favor of incumbents, lawyers, the wealthy. Between the brokenness of the systems these days, and some fundamental mistakes in original the assumptions about what a patent system would do, I think it makes a mockery of the stated intention of patents, to promote innovation. On patent trolls, I think they're an ugly boil that pops up when the underlying system is bad and the running of that system is worse.

So FWIW.. I have an opinion going in. Disclosed.

All that (verbosely) said, I can't join into the delighted cheering wen I hear about a broken and unfair legal system where "my" side is getting the better of it.

This whole system of cherry picking courts, maneuvering, intimidation… When the normal legal strategy is to bury the opponent in legal bills for years while psychologically piling on weight via drawn out legal processes, we (anywhere, I'm not american) do not have a judicious legal system. It's not fair. It's not justice. It's not doing a good job and it's there for lawyers and their wealthy clients. Newegg might be in the right, but that's not why they're winning. They have more money, or better lawyers or whatnot.

What if you don't have the money, disposition or bad ass legal team to fight back, in a bullshit rules fight?

I'm offended.

<comment><USER3> From the article: "Newegg's lawsuit asks only for a judicial ruling of non- infringement, not money damages."

What is not fair about this?

<comment><USER4> As the OP wrote, that you have to have the financial wherewithal of a Newegg to have any hope of fighting these patent troll lawsuits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very delightful to read. I can imagine the casual off-the-cuff remark that one of Newegg's lawyers made over coffee one morning when they heard the news that their adversary had dropped the case.. "ha ha, they didn't know what they were in for, no wonder they pulled out... (pause, and a sip of coffee).. heck, we should probably just sue them for dropping the case." laughs all around the table... then, everyone silently staring at each other.

<comment><USER6> Agree, very delightful! However, the backstory is little more calculative..

"Newegg Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng says the move is necessary since Minero dismissed its Texas lawsuit without prejudice, meaning it can refile the case at a time of its choosing.

Cheng noted that Minero continues to litigate against other retailers that sell Rosewill-branded products and that Newegg may have defense obligations to those other companies. Minero continues to press its case against more than 20 companies, with the defendants including Office Depot, Walmart, and Amazon—three big retailers that sell Rosewill products.

Newegg's lawsuit asks only for a judicial ruling of non-infringement, not money damages..."

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/newegg-sues- paten...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/newegg-sues-patent-troll- that-dropped-its-case/)

<comment><USER5> I don't believe it. My dramatization of that moment in time is much more movie-accurate, and therefore, much more believable.

<comment><USER7> Also, Newegg have always stated they would fight every single patent case to the death. And they haven't just stated that, they've gone ahead and done it.

That's actually not only awesome, but smart. You do _not_ want to sue Newegg for patent infringement. Notice how fast that company dropped their patent suit? Unfortunately for them, Newegg never, ever gives in. Ever.

<comment><USER8> _Newegg have always stated they would fight every single patent case to the death_

Blue Jeans Cable took much the same approach to Monster Cable. The response was an all-time classic. I've posted snippets here before but can't resist doing it again:

       if you file on this sort of basis, you are in
       Rule 11 frivolous-claim territory
       ...
       You are required, as a matter of legal ethics,
       to display good faith and professional candor
       in your dealings with adverse parties, and you
       have fallen miserably short of your ethical
       responsibilities
       ...
       Read the patents narrowly, and Monster loses;
       read them broadly, and Monster loses.
       ...
       I spent nineteen years in litigation practice
       ...
       I am "uncompromising" in the most literal sense
       of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with
       litigation against me I will pursue the same
       merits-driven approach: I do not compromise with
       bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand
       dollars on defense than give you a dollar of
       unmerited settlement funds.
       ...
       Not only am I unintimidated by litigation;
       I sometimes rather miss it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284093)

<comment><USER9>
       Not only am I unintimidated by litigation;
       I sometimes rather miss it.

That is one of the better lines to ever be written in a legal letter.

<comment><USER10> > That is one of the better lines to ever be written in a legal letter.

Along with: [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/08/arkell-v- pressdram.html](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/08/arkell-v-pressdram.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is not the first time newegg goes after patent troll. I think what they are doing is amazing, but unfortunately a lot of small companies don't have the resources to do the same

<comment><USER12> I think that's why Newegg is doing this. They try to invalidate the patents of patent trolls so they can't abuse them against smaller companies.

<comment><USER13> But Newegg isn't suing to invalidate the troll's patents. Newegg is asking for a judgment saying that Newegg hasn't infringed the troll's patents.

<comment><USER14> I agree with this, but there's probably a side-effect of building up a library of case law that can be used in the future by all for patent troll disputes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting. I never knew that Rosewill was their house brand. Makes a lot more sense seeing all their products there and gives me a bit more confidence in buying Rosewill in the future.

<comment><USER16> Really? I know you can buy Rosewill on Amazon.

<comment><USER17> Second sentence in the article:

> ... dropped its East Texas lawsuit against Newegg subsidiary Rosewill ...

And later on:

> Beyond the possibility of being sued again, Cheng noted that Minero > continues to litigate against other retailers that sell Rosewill-branded > products and that Newegg may have defense obligations to those other > companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Could be an interesting tactic to increase the costs of patent trolling. No longer is merely dropping a lawsuit when a company pushes back a way out -- now the patent trolls also have to deal with a separate litigation in a far away jurisdiction. I hope we see more of this.

</comment><comment><USER19> Newegg, fighting the good fight. I try to buy all my computer products from them.

<comment><USER20> Speaking of, what if they put up a check box at checkout where buyer could opt in to donate amount X or percentage of their total Y and let that go into a general "fight patent trolls fund". Even get other sellers to join "the consortium" \--with oversight, of course.

<comment><USER21> Please don't. The last thing we need is someone to get the idea that we need more dedicated non-profits to fight tasteless legal battles.

Supporting their business is a better option in the long-run. Hopefully, their success will signal to other companies; going out of your way to do the right thing _is_ a good business strategy.

<comment><USER20> My thought was that a united front would pose a disincentive for trolls to think of launching patent attacks against weaker players who don't have the resources a NEgg has.

<comment><USER21> In principle, I wholeheartedly agree. In a perfect world that would be a great solition.

In reality, non-profit groups will inevitably grow in scope relative to the ambition of its leaders and/or accessibility to easily acquired sources of funding.

At some point the organization will grow the the size where it'll have to seek funding via membership dues and/or direct sponsorship.

The 'we stand up for the little guy' will become a marketing facade to justify the organization's existence. Meanwhile, membership and the protection it provides will be carefully meted out and sold to the highest bidder.

NewEgg is doing something much more beneficial overall. Instead of building alliances and hedging resources for an impenetrable defense. They're saving all that wasted effort by going on the attack.

They accepted a much greater degree of risk at the start but legal policy is relativistic. The more they win, the more they will win because they can use the outcomes of prior casses to support their arguments.

In a way, their success is literally writing the future law of patent litigation and filling in all the gaps that the trolls have been aggressively exploiting for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This might be a naive question, but why has there been no strong push to reform patent law in a way that eliminates non-practicing entities? It seems like it would be wise to have a law that a patent expires if the company who holds it goes a certain length of time (2 years, perhaps) without producing a product covered by the patent or transferring it to a company who does.

Would such a law increase innovation (companies are more willing to build products without fear of being sued by patent trolls) or decrease it (patents being less valuable might decrease R+D investment)? My hunch is that it would increase innovation, but I'm not completely sure.

<comment><USER23> The claim is that it would hurt small investors as they start out life as a non-practicing entity.

Which is really what patents are for, to give the inventor time to become a practicing entity before a large company can copy it. Just that the world doesn't work like that anymore, and patents are now abused by large companies to hurt the little guy.

<comment><USER24> IANAL but my understanding is that patents cover the implementation not the idea. If you aren't capable of practicing (yielding the product), you probably shouldn't be holding/filing a patent.

<comment><USER23> Let's say you invent a doodad in your garage. You have the implementation, you have a working device, but you don't (yet) have a product you can sell. You are unlikely to be setup to manufacturer this, so you'll you need to find a partner to produce that doodad. Patents protect you during this process, so that a manufacturer can't just go "oh cool we'll not pay you and instead just go do this under our house brand without you"

At least that's the theory. The reality is it's increasingly unlikely you'll be able to invent anything physical by yourself in a garage anymore in the first place and things like software have no barrier to mass distribution like physical goods do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, if that's a publicity stunt, it totally worked with me. I'll search Newegg before Amazon now.

</comment><comment><USER26> In addition to being aligned with business strategy, this is a great recruiting strategy as well.

I'd be giving Newegg a call if I were a patent attorney looking for my next gig.

</comment><comment><USER27> A few news articles say Minero Digital is a shell for Intellectual Ventures. Can someone please help confirm?

<comment><USER28> According to this, IV transferred the patent to Minero in April last year: [http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/09/nest-ceo-and- ex...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/09/nest-ceo-and-ex-apple- star-are-inventors-in-patent-troll-suit-over-usb/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of patent trolls is that they make all their threats and legal actions through shell companies they can light up and shut down for a few hundred dollars. How much good does it do to go after them? Is Newegg piercing the corporate veil, or are they just trying to invalidate patents?

Aren't there tens of thousands of bad patents? Wouldn't it cost billions to invalidate them all, and by the time you were done there'd just be another ten thousand new ones?

I think what they're doing is great, but I just wish it wasn't so sacrificial. Does it make economic sense for them to do this? As long as it doesn't, the primary focus should be on legislation.

<comment><USER30> They're trying to get invalidation of patent on record. And it does make sense, as plaintiff can refile (ostensibly after they sue a few others and get precedent in place)

<comment><USER13> Where do you see Newegg asking for the troll's patent to be invalidated?

<comment><USER30> Just responding to question of motivation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> glad to see this is where the delta between amazon and newegg pricing goes.

<comment><USER32> I just bought a bunch of parts and I got them all from newegg, specifically in support of them fighting the good fight on patent trolls. In nearly every case, newegg was a _little_ more expensive than at least one other supplier—but not by very much, and totally worth it. (Nice side benefit: ordering all the parts from one place meant the orders were aggregated into less deliveries....)

<comment><USER33> I haven't ordered from newegg in a couple years, but this will motivate me to start buying from them again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Newegg Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng says the move is necessary since Minero > dismissed its Texas lawsuit without prejudice, meaning it can refile the > case at a time of its choosing.

To me this sounds like self justification by the legal staff at Newegg. Most likely the troll is away for good. If they come back at that point engage legally with them. There is a cost to any litigation and this could also backfire. A troll who comes after them and knows that they sue even when a case is backed away from (regardless of prejudice) will be less likely to drop the case at that point.

The other side to this of course is the hope that the troll won't defend the suit so they have bought themselves some insurance. However it's unclear exactly why that matters if the probability of the troll returning is low. Why would they return? Why not just go after an easier target? Newegg has already proven their point.

<comment><USER35> > A troll who comes after them and knows that they sue even when a case is > backed away from (regardless of prejudice) will be less likely to drop the > case at that point.

Perhaps, but it also serves to deter future trolls from engaging Newegg in court over patents. Newegg is making it clear that if you sue them over a patent, that suit is going to be taken to a verdict, whether you like it or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > "...Now that they have started the litigation, it would be irresponsible for > Newegg to not finish it."

Cheng is a badass :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Why is Newegg the only company I've ever heard of in any industry that does this? I know small companies can't afford it, but there are a lot of companies bigger than Newegg. Obviously it costs money in the short term, but the benefits in the long term seem clear enough.

<comment><USER38> Newegg gets sued more than most companies because it's the big seller of imported products made from companies with no US presence. Since you can sue newegg instead that is a bigger target.

Most midsized or small companies don't get sued nearly as often. So they don't have a shot at building a reputation like newegg does.

Another reason is that Newegg is mostly targeted by small trolls. You aren't going to get a billion dollar verdict against newegg. They don't sell enough of any one product for that.

So newegg has leverage too. The trolls don't want to go to trial blow a million dollars on legal fees then win 500k in damages.

But trolls are willing to trial for a 20% shot at a 200 million dollar verdict against Apple or intel. And Apple and Intel aren't willing to risk a trial with a 20% chance of 200 million loses if they get a settlement offer for 10 mil.

But companies like Apple and Intel do fight a huge number of troll cases. So little trolls with shit patents don't go after the big dogs. They know they'll lose. Newegg just adopts a Stalingrad approach to appear like a big dog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting, if slightly irrelevant: The patent lists Tony Fadell and Steve Perlman as inventors.

[https://www.google.com/patents/US5675811](https://www.google.com/patents/US5675811)

</comment><comment><USER40> How the heck does a weak patent filed by General Magic end up at a patent troll?

<comment><USER41> After General Magic filed for bankruptcy, their patents and other assets were auctioned off. (To Intellectual Ventures via Paul Allen). IV then sold or rented it out to the patent troll. (IV protests their hands are clean but won't say why or how their patents end up with trolls).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Remember, the patent system can only be abused if people participate in it. I hope nobody here cheering for Newegg has benefited from their company's "patent award" system (which many companies have, where they pay you a small bonus for every patent you help the company get). You can't claim that software patents are bad while getting paid for helping to write them.</comment>


My hobby C compiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lugon/LuxCC <comment><USER2> Nice. How many lines of code?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know exactly, but I estimate it must be around 15-20K LOC.</comment></comment>


The next disruptive iPhone feature? High definition audio call - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/28/the-next-disruptive-iphone-feature-high-definition-audio-calls/ <comment><USER2> I'm sure that's part of the evolution of FaceTime technology, but the article's author doesn't seem to really understand the technology he's touting. If cell phone antennas result in poor audio quality, they will also result in poor data quality, and thus poor audio-over-data quality. Either the antenna works well or it doesn't.

Similarly, ALAC would be a horrible way to send voice calls over wireless. Lossy codecs will require less bandwidth and thus be less susceptible to dropouts on poor-quality connections.

And while I know almost nothing about codecs, I'm pretty sure you have to design one specifically for streaming - you can't just take a write-to-disk format like ALAC or FLAC and decide to stream it wirelessly.

<comment><USER3> Audio and video codecs are generally stream/packet based. You'd really have to screw up the container format to make a codec completely incapable of streaming. (Like putting the last frame of video at the start and the first frame at the end of the file)

If you use a player like VLC you can generally watch videos while they are downloading.

<comment><USER4> The issue is more so whether the codec can handle dropped packets. It wouldn't surprise me if FLAC could not recover in such a case; usually lossless codecs employ something like Huffmann coding which places a large dictionary at the start of the file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Subpar telephone audio quality is one of those things that is so pervasive that most people are probably only vaguely aware it's a problem.

I'm convinced that if you brought an engineer from the 1940s to today and showed him an iPhone, he'd be absolutely overwhelmed and ecstatic that technology has progressed so far. That is until you let him make a call. Then he'd ask you why the girl on the other end sounds the same as she did in 1940.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was thinking about this the other day.

The voice quality on the majority of networks suck. I don't know a better way to put it. We can have HD video streaming to a phone but I can't have crystal clear audio?

Don't even get me started on conference calls and volume. Am I the only one that wishes the volume on my damn phone could go about 10x higher than the preprogrammed setting?

</comment><comment><USER7> It would be nice if instead of creating another proprietary protocol, they'd just use something that's already in place <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_audio>

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Telecom is basic infrastructure like the highway system. If Apple were building cars they'd want to have special super smooth tastefully designed toll roads that only Apple cars could run on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I fully expect this to happen. iMessage is a clear shot across the carrier's bows -- in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd have preferred that Apple go after voice _first_ before the obscenely marked up texting market. They're getting gutted from the inside out, and I can only imagine the frantic rent- seeking that's going on even as we speak to get this sort of thing "sorted out".

<comment><USER10> I don't see this. Carriers already compete with messaging services like AIM creating AppleTalk-for-mobile doesn't seem that disruptive considering. The article's evidence looks more like ATT responding to a bifurcating market with no-text and text-heavy users. It's profitable for them to fold mid-level users into unlimited plans and attract more people who'd rather have the $15.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> With HD audio you can hear absolutely everything in the background. We need signal compression in the frequency range to hear just our voice signals in the range we want to hear. You can't speak over HD audio in busy traffic or where there is significant ambient noise.

</comment><comment><USER12> "How are you going to send high quality data, Mr. Anderson, when you can't even get signal?"

AGENT SMITH LOOKS AMUSED.

</comment><comment><USER13> Apple had enough clout to leave the carriers silent for iMessage, but this could be the straw that breaks the innovation-fearing camel's back.

I'm almost certain they're planning it.</comment>


Cliqz shutting down their browser and search engine - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/MarcAlHames/status/1255601343605211138 <comment><USER2> That is the link to the English press release: [https://www.burda.com/en/news/cliqz-closes-areas-browser- and...](https://www.burda.com/en/news/cliqz-closes-areas-browser-and-search- technologies/)

</comment><comment><USER3> does any one else find it strange to see announcements like this from widely grinning Profile photos.</comment>


Ask gwern: Who are you? - <AUTHOR> We know so much about you, and yet, so little.  What's your day job?  Where do you find the time to do all this writing? Does your site make a significant amount of money? Why do you choose relative anonymity? <comment><USER3> I was originally not going to answer this, but kiba posted his request <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5654008> and to my astonishment, it worked: through Paypal I have currently received $293.01 in 7 donations, through Bitcoin, 1.62btc ($189) in 4 donations.

I have replied to the Paypal donators (but not the Bitcoiners, since they're unreachable) thanking them but I would also like to thank them publicly here: I get very little feedback on my writing aside from little numbers ticking upwards in Google Analytics, and am often plagued by doubts - are my writings any good? Are they usually confined in a ghetto? Are people going away laughing at my ignorance and amateurism? Will they contribute meaningfully to anything at all or just represent an indulgent waste of time and intellectual masturbation? So to see a few comments raise almost overnight ~$500 moves me.

> What's your day job?

Various things; as I say on <http://www.gwern.net/Links#personal> I sometimes write for people.

> Does your site make a significant amount of money?

No. I sometimes get donations, but not very much; they are all recorded in <http://www.gwern.net/About#popularity> if you're curious about specifics.

I recently added Google AdSense and Amazon affiliate linking because money was tight. These don't make very much either. Specifically:

\- Google AdSense: $241 lifetime total (over 269k pageviews) - <USER2> Affiliate: $59 total or ~$0.8 a day: [http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85192141/2013-05-04-total...](http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85192141/2013-05-04-totalamazon.txt)

> Why do you choose relative anonymity?

For the reasons I've said in the past. To which I can add personal safety: my Silk Road page is a bit questionable legally, and we all know that there are ways to exploit knowledge of one's True Name and address (even if, as far as I know, I have no enemies willing to resort to, say, 'swatting' me) - one group of stalkers called up a college they thought I worked at to see if they could get me fired or otherwise ruin my day.

<comment><AUTHOR> gwern, thanks for the reply.

I admire your prolific output, even if I don't agree with a lot of your conclusions (historical and political, that is, because your math/stat is too complicated for me to understand). I have to say, you have sparked a lot of discussion amongst me and my friends recently. The importance of argument from argument instead of from authority is made even more clear when the writer, by virtue of his (her?) anonymity, has no authority to fall back on, which makes his arguments even more critical. But it doesn't matter: some of the most accomplished people in history were amateurs. All that is required is a love of the subject, and you seem to love your subjects. Keep up the good work. BTC coming your way.

<comment><USER3> > I admire your prolific output, even if I don't agree with a lot of your > conclusions (historical and political, that is, because your math/stat is > too complicated for me to understand). I have to say, you have sparked a lot > of discussion amongst me and my friends recently.

Hm, intriguing - I don't write about politics very much, I wonder what it could be... My little thing about the American Revolution, perhaps.

> BTC coming your way.

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you find value in it, does this really matter? Knowing these things about a person does little more than give you something to like/dislike, approve/disapprove, etc. about them.

Why should we care what this person does? How much money they make from the small parts of their life we see? Why they choose not to bare their souls to us, the morbidly curious?

If this question were actually answered, in my opinion, this site would become less interesting. Keep and enjoy a little bit of mystery and wonder, even if it is just a very little bit.

<comment><USER5> +1. Why does it matter? It's totally his right to remain (pseudo-)anonymous. Plus, it might be part of the fun.

I wrote about _why for this reason, too: [http://kevinw.github.io/2013/04/30/why-did-why-the-lucky- sti...](http://kevinw.github.io/2013/04/30/why-did-why-the-lucky-stiff-quit/)

<comment><USER3> That's a nice essay. I was especially moved by the parts about the ephemerality of programs as compared to ordinary writing - indeed, what program will still be read a century from now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately, he doesn't have a day job and he's really poor. If you like his research, consider a donation in paypal dollars or bitcoin.

<comment><USER7> This is what consistently appalls me ( and yet astounds me at the same time )

That companies and organizations are full of utterly untalented and wholly ill-suited & miserable folks who somehow lucked into lofty and well-paying jobs.

And yet there are gifted people like gwern who cannot seem to catch a break no matter how demonstrably prolific they are.

I think we should stop telling kids that life rewards the passionate and the skilled. (By rewards I don't mean some inner solace coming from indulging in what you love, but the conventional rewards of recognition and remuneration.)

Life is rigged in favor of the opportunists.

The schemers, hustlers, the witty-talkers and the seize-rs.

But certainly not the plainspoken and the adept.

No matter how you dice it, your conscience tells you that this is more than a bit unfair and disenchanting.

<comment><USER8> "That companies and organizations are full of utterly untalented and wholly ill-suited & miserable folks who somehow lucked into lofty and well-paying jobs."

Why does it astound you that opportunities go to the opportunists?

I think that what you're seeing here is that gifted people _do_ eventually catch a break and luck into a lofty and well-paying job. And then their employer starts telling them what to work on (because, after all, people don't pay you for being smart - they pay you to do things for them), and they don't have time to work on the cool-but-relatively-useless public-domain stuff. From the outside, it looks like they've suddenly become utterly untalented, ill- suited, and miserable. But from the inside, they're just as smart as they ever were, it's just that their talents have been redirected into invisible things that people will actually pay for.

I used to do cool stuff like teach folks how to write Scheme interpreters in Haskell or port Arc to Javascript or spend half a day re-implementing Tetris on a webpage. Eventually enough people noticed that I got a nice job at Google. I still work on cool stuff, but nobody notices anymore, partly because everybody takes the fact that Google Search _just works_ for granted and because I work with enough other talented people that I can't claim sole credit for anything I do anymore.

If Gwern wants a job at Google, I'll be happy to refer him.

<comment><USER9> > I still work on cool stuff, but nobody notices anymore, partly because > everybody takes the fact that Google Search just works for granted and > because I work with enough other talented people that I can't claim sole > credit for anything I do anymore.

Just curious: Are you equally satisfied with the not-so-public work you're doing now?

<comment><USER8> Tough question. The work I'm doing is challenging and I'm paid well for it, so yes, on that end I'm satisfied with it. I'd be lying if I said there weren't moments where I wish more of it were public, though, or that I could do something impressive in its own right rather than part of a major software system (and hence constrained by the other design choices made for that system), or that it doesn't sting when the project you're working on, which is doing some very cool technical things, gets canceled because it doesn't fit into the direction that your group is going.

I'd say that on balance, yes, I'm equally satisfied. But that probably means that I'll end up switching between the two a few times during my career.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A comment gwern left in reply to something like this 2 years ago: <http://www.gwern.net/About#comment-257772944>

</comment><comment><USER11> "I'm kinda hoping that if I do enough statistics because I find it interesting, I'll stumble into a real job" - <USER3>

One of the more resourceful and consistently interesting people I have had the pleasure of knowing.

</comment><comment><USER12> I reply with a question, in what way is gwern so famous that "we" need to know about him, his day job, his schedule, his site revenue,...?

I heard about gwern (and his site) this week when I stumbled on <http://www.gwern.net/otaku> from a NGE website (3.33 just got out...) and didn't search the website further. Now I've seen the same website appear for its article on the death of Google Products.

So now I've gotten a glance, seen some articles I already read,... But what is this all about? Maybe it's because we are used to popular bloggers always writing under their full name, with their blogs always being related to their work-personas,... What makes you want (or think we deserve) to know so much more about him?

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the most bizarre submission I have ever seen on the front page of HN.

<comment><USER14> Why? I think it's lovely. Is there any way to interpret this other than a tribute to Gwern and his work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think he is, or was, a researcher for the Singularity Institute [1] (now known as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute).

[1] [http://lesswrong.com/lw/9t8/the_singularity_institute_needs_...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/9t8/the_singularity_institute_needs_remote/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Pretty easy to find out with some Google-fu, but certainly there is no reason to make a big deal out of it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> gwern answers here: <https://pastee.org/bebat></comment>


Mojang updated commercial guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://account.mojang.com/documents/commercial_guidelines <comment><AUTHOR> Some of those items read very strange, and i doubt they can be even enforced (worldwide)? Can they actually demands things like:

"you don't make and sell more than 20 product items using the same (or a substantially similar) Unique Design. This means you can make 20 T-shirts using Design A and 20 T-shirts using Design B, but you cannot make 21 T-shirts using Design A; nor can you make 20 T-shirts using Design A plus 3 mugs using Design A;"

</comment><comment><USER2> They aren't going to worry about it unless something turns up in sufficient volume to hit their radar. Then they know that it is worth investigating and it is an easy win because the volume allowed is so low.</comment>


Yii Framework 2.0.0 GA - <AUTHOR> http://www.yiiframework.com/news/81/yii-2-0-0-is-released/ <comment><USER2> > _Yii 2.0 helps you to write more secure code. It has built-in support to > prevent SQL injections, XSS attacks ..._

This is just a minor complaint, but it's so pervasive among web frameworks that I must complain yet again.

According to the documentation for Yii 2.0, the recommended way to output a variable to a web page is:

        <?= Html::encode($var) ?>

Not the PHP standard:

        <?= $var ?>

Because if you do the latter, you will be vulnerable to XSS.

But why does every framework (and many template engines) insist on telling you to call a specific function in the template in order to get XSS protection? HTML escaping should be turned on by default, by whatever means possible.

The simplest template syntax should also be the most secure, not the other way around. Because sooner or later, somebody is going to forget to call that function.

Auto-escaping also saves a lot of clutter in templates, since there are usually only a few places in any given page (usually the content of a post) where HTML content needs to be printed unescaped (but filtered, of course).

Some frameworks escape everything by default and only allow you to print raw HTML if you add a "noescape" flag. This is better, but some of them only do this if you turn on some sort of "autoescape" flag at the top. This is just as bad, since it is insecure by default.

One might point out that not all escaping is the same, since different escaping rules apply in different contexts. But do we really have no way to detect, when parsing and compiling a template, which context we're currently in?

XSS protection in modern template engines should be opt-out, not opt-in. Otherwise they have no right to claim XSS protection as a feature.

<comment><USER3> Twig, at least, escapes by default. Laravel's Blade templates don't, unless that's changed recently.

But the price you pay for that of course is no longer working directly in PHP but a templating language with its own syntax (for instance, array shorthand in Twig templates [] has worked since I don't know when but only recently has PHP gotten around to supporting it) which has to be parsed, and partially compiled into PHP classes.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, frameworks that use raw PHP files as views at least have that as an excuse. But the cost of using a simple template engine with good caching support seems to be minimal compared to the benefit of XSS prevention. CodeIgniter, for example, can convert short tags to full PHP tags if short tags are turned off in php.ini. They might as well wrap htmlspecialchars() around every {$var} while they're at it.

Non-PHP frameworks, on the other hand, really have no excuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a lot of fondness for Yii as it introduced me to MVC and moved me from a designer into a developer. When I went on to learn Ruby and Rails everything seemed to click together and I recognised quite a lot of what Yii had taken from Rails.

That said, I get the sweats when I have to wade into an old Yii-powered app that I wrote. Entirely faults of PHP (lack of symbols, array(...) declarations, semicolon-itis) and my lack of experience back then (no testing, fat controllers). I do miss the simplicity of deploying a Yii app, and its speed compared to Rails. The creator, Qiang, is a PHP whizz.

<comment><USER5> > _Entirely faults of PHP (lack of symbols, array(...) declarations, > semicolon-itis)_

Sorry, but those are entirely trivial syntactic issues, and not very interesting at that either...

<comment><USER6> Symbols are not a syntactic issue. They are an optimization issue. They do not have the creation overhead of objects and they exist across the application in memory without the lookup overhead of a constant (PHP's closest cousin to a symbol).

Lisp, Erlang, and Prolog (sure some other languages I've missed) have direct equivalents to Ruby symbols; they are sometimes referred to as symbols other times as atoms.

Saying they are a trivial syntactic issue just means you don't understand what symbols are.

<comment><USER7> It's a bit silly to worry about the overhead of strings over symbols when the PHP environment itself is not persistent across requests.

<comment><USER6> That seems to be missing the whole point of symbols/atoms. They are uniquely identified with an O(1) lookup time and persist in memory after the initial creation. Symbols persist across multiple requests; this is a big part of why they are so beneficial.

<comment><USER8> I'm not disagreeing with you, but

 _> Symbols persist across multiple requests; this is a big part of why they are so beneficial._

That is still not really useful, PHP throws the entire execution context away after the request has finished. There _is_ no sharing nor anything to persist unless you're doing so with an external data-store.

<comment><USER9> Wait, isn't that just if it's used/configured as a CGI? If you use it as a webserver module (Apache/IIS/Lightspeed), the execution environment can persist in a similar way to an app domain, right?

<comment><USER5> Nope, it's still cleared at the end of the request (as it should be, this is not a bug or mis-feature, and is actually one of the things PHP got right for scalable apps).

What doesn't happen compared to CGI, IIRC, is loading the whole PHP engine from the start for every invocation. But no request specific memory is ever shared between invocations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Out of all the PHP frameworks I've used (CakePHP, Kohana, Laravel, Symfony) I have to say Yii is the one of the best.

It's hard to describe why, I think mostly because it feels like it was built and designed by one person who had a lot of experience with other frameworks and knew PHP inside and out.

<comment><USER6> Never was a fan of Yii myself. The one PHP framework I really do like though is the Fat-Free Framework.

<comment><USER8> FFF is pretty rad, as is Slim framework. I like Slim so much I've been cloning it for Hack[0]. With the next week off work, I'm looking forward to getting it close to parity!

[0] [https://github.com/LeanFramework/Lean](https://github.com/LeanFramework/Lean)

<comment><USER6> Cool. My personal preference is towards these leaner micro-frameworks in general. I've looked at Slim, seems cool, but never worked with it. Good luck on your project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _> Yii 2.0 helps you to write more secure code. It has built-in support to prevent SQL injections, XSS attacks, CSRF attacks, cookie tampering, etc. Security experts Tom Worster and Anthony Ferrara even helped us review and rewrite some of the security-related code._

+1 for opinionated security at the framework/platform level rather at the programmer level, such that security features can be evolved, refined, debugged over time and pushed back upstream, rather than reimplemented from scratch each new project.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm a Yii fan but it takes some time learning the "yii" way of doing things i.e. structure, naming conventions. I decided to move on though because the community and module ecosystem are small.

<comment><USER13> You've meant "were small in 2008"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're serious about web development in PHP try Yii, chances are good you'll fall in love! If not love at first sight, give it second chance. It's really good inside :)

You can jump start using the new app templates:

1) [https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2-app- basic](https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2-app-basic) \- simple app

2) [https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2-app- advanced](https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2-app-advanced) \- if you need multiple interfaces (frontend/backend/api)

</comment><comment><USER15> If your namespaces are all lowercase after adopting PSR standards, you haven't really adopted the PSR standards.

<comment><USER16> none of the PSRs specify that the namespace name should be capitalized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Currently I working into the Cakephp and Django framework. Now I wanna to work in yii. which is the best between Yii and laravel in large concept application. anyone tell which is best framework for large application in Cakephp, Yii, laravel. please describe.

<comment><USER13> What do you mean by large _concept_ application? If you mean large or famous projects in production, Yii 2.0 was just released so there aren't many.

For 1.1 there are some:

[https://www.facebook-studio.com/](https://www.facebook-studio.com/), [http://2gis.ru/](http://2gis.ru/), [http://itop.fm/](http://itop.fm/), [https://www.humhub.org/](https://www.humhub.org/), [http://www.x2engine.com/](http://www.x2engine.com/), [http://zurmo.org/](http://zurmo.org/), [https://www.rebilly.com/](https://www.rebilly.com/), [http://buildwithcraft.com/](http://buildwithcraft.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yii 1 is one of the best framework i used.

</comment><comment><USER19> Currently i'm working with Yii 1. Its good to know that Yii 2 is released. Thanks to all Yii Team!!

</comment><comment><USER20> This is great news.A lot of thanks to YII Dev team for making the magic happen!

</comment><comment><USER21> YII is awesome and speedy framework to build. I love to work. I yet to start 2.0.0

</comment><comment><USER21> Really it is awesome and very quick.. I love to work

</comment><comment><USER22> vs. Laravel? anyone?

<comment><USER23> A matter of taste. Try both and see which one you like best for yourself.

<comment><USER24> Agreed. They are both solid frameworks and I've used both fairly heavily. I personally find Laravel more 'natural'. I have to refer back to the documentation in Yii far more often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yii, feels more complicated, and rough around the edges to me...than laravel... There's just a lot of things that make sense to me in Laravel.

<comment><USER16> Yii is actually incredibly polished, it's not rough around the edges at all. It is not particularly easy on newcomers though, which is the main reason it's not more widely known.

If you put the effort in to learn it thoroughly, you'll be rewarded with an incredibly productive platform that is great not just for getting apps out of the door super quickly, but also provides a secure, scalable foundation which is easy to grow and maintain.</comment></comment>


Why the iPad doesn't have a camera: Apple doesn't want you to look fat - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/why-the-ipad-doesnt-have-a-camera-apple-doesnt-want-you-to-look-fat/28138

<comment><USER2> Apple doesn't want us to look fat with a bad camera angle? You must be joking. Please tell me this post is a joke. LOL</comment>


On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a God - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainstorm/200803/the-internet-nobody-knows-youre-god <comment><USER2> This is an interesting and insightful article, but in my experience a person's superstition leads to the exact opposite effect: it gets in the way a person deducing a correct model of a how something works on a computer. The article postulates that because the forces at work in software are unseen and made up, that a person who believes in magic will be better equipped to understand it. I counter that precisely because the mechanism is unseen, it takes a sharper scientific mind to model the hidden mechanism - which is essential to predict cause and effect for new phenomena. As a software developer I've worked very hard to make things easy in a program's interface, only to find the users perpetuating myths from trainer to trainee about very complicated things they have to do to get it to work - sequences of actions which don't have any effect but which worked once and are repeated superstitiously instead of doing things easily.

Another example of how a belief in "spirits" hobbles your ability to properly use the internet, would be my father: he consistently misspells URLs, and gets angry when it doesn't work. When I tell him they have to be typed exactly, he always dismisses it by saying "oh they'll know what I mean." No matter how hard I try, I cannot convince him that _there is no THEY_ on the other end of the address box!! But his superstitious nature will not allow him to change his convictions that all these purely mechanical things the software does are not orchestrated by "spirits" (a.k.a. imaginary human operators).</comment>