Sharpening the Saw - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001236.html

<comment><USER2> I disagree about his choice in link aggregation sites. HN rarely has any good programming articles. Programming Reddit is all programming articles, but they are usually so stupid that it's not even worth checking out. (And God help you if you accidentally start reading the comments.)

If you want something passive to do, I recommend reading the blog aggregator for your favorite programming language (Planet Perl, Planet Haskell, etc.). There is obviously some junk in there too (the Perl people get to read all my Lisp articles), but the articles are generally "primary sources" describing new projects and techniques. (That is to say, the author of new module foo is the one talking about it. It's not some pundit that thinks it's cool.)

Anyway, read social news sites if you want, but remember that they are mostly entertainment, not work. If you want to be a better programmer, the most important thing to do is to program and be aware of other ways of doing things. Read the source code to your libraries. Read the academic papers that the documentation links to. Experiment with new ideas and techniques. Those things will actually make you a better programmer. Reading blogs, not so much.

<comment><USER3> > _all my Lisp articles_

Completely off topic (and I apologize to everyone else), but in viewing your profile to find all your Lisp articles, I noticed we are rocking the same top color... it _is_ quite pretty.

<comment><USER4> I like 77aaff. Try it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I could never read codinghorror again after reading this article <http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/nothing-to-say>

<comment><USER6> Same here, I removed coding horror from my RSS reader just the day I read that article.

Not because of the article alone, but it summed up with an almost creepy precision what had already unconsciously reduced my interest in his writing over the past months. Most of his blog-posts _really_ match the template.

When I dropped the feed there were still 10 or 20 articles in the queue. Don't think I missed out on much.

<comment><USER7> Dude's problem is that he thinks he's (still) primarily a developer, whereas what he is (now) is a blogger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Only yesterday, Jeff was agreeing with someone on reddit that HN is "sterile"; that people here are "on their best behaviour", and yet now he's recommending HN like he's used it for years?

I don't 'get' the backtracking.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I'm not sure how to reconcile this comment:

        There's the same amount of crap, it's just dressed up in more pretentious verbiage. IMHO.
        90% of everything is crap, no matter how "non-lame" your audience is.

with his apparent recommendation to use HN the following day. The only thing I can think of is that he wants to dilute the HN community with his own.

<comment><USER10> _The only thing I can think of is that he wants to dilute the HN community with his own._

A brilliant yet terrifying insight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think HN is a good place to sharpen your programming saw. However, it's an exceedingly good place to sharpen your entrepreneurial saw, as well as an excellent place to keep track of the pulse of start-up things on the web.

</comment><comment><USER12> I do learn somewhat from reading stuff online, but it's often because I'm inspired to play around with something on my own. Like a lot of people, I learn the most by doing. So I think the point that a lot of people are making is a good one: write more code.

There are some concepts from practicing music that might be interesting to consider in the context of coding:

1\. Play music that's beyond your current abilities; playing the things you already know won't help you improve. This is pretty easy to put in the context of writing software: don't write yet another little ruby app, write it in Haskell or Io or Clojure or Erlang...

2\. Isolate weaknesses and focus on specific things to improve. I think this is tougher in software than in music, because a good musician is always listening to good music to benchmark against, but it's probably not as common for developers to constantly be reading good code. So, maybe go find some good code to read and find ways in which it's better than what you're churning out.

3\. Don't practice music with mistakes; it's better to slow down and get it right than to learn it incorrectly. So maybe a test suite for that weekend hack isn't a bad idea...

I should do more of that... in both music and coding...

</comment><comment><USER13> The funny thing is that most of Jeff's articles get ridiculed here, and he still recommends it. Does he post here? I don't remember ever seeing him defend an article or anything, not that I think it would be very effective.

Does anyone else think Jeff finds a crafty little picture, and then writes a post about it.

<comment><USER14> For some reason his articles are always voted up no matter how ignorant and devoid of insightful observations they are.

<comment><USER15> Duh, it's because there's no downvote button :)

[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-value-of- downvotin...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-value-of-downvoting- or-how-hacker-news-gets-it-wrong/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> :-) all these discussions itself is showing HN is good site for tech discussions.

If at all his post is worst post ever, i don't agree all of us won't comment like this.

Hidden meaning is, we do agree with his post but not completely.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think most people need to spend more time coding and less time surfing hacker news/proggit. I know I do.

The article is still right on though.

<comment><USER18> A lot of people who read such sites say they ought to read them less. And Jeff's point is that if you don't read such sites, you ought to.

It could be that there is a happy median and those of us over it ought to read less while those of us under it ought to read more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious how new users from Atwood compare to new users from TechCrunch.</comment>


Once-Flush Startups Struggle to Stay Alive as Investors Get Pickier - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/once-flush-startups-struggle-to-stay-alive-as-investors-get-pickier-1492948802 <comment><USER2> "Bart, it's over."

"What do you mean, "It's over"?"

"We're bankrupt. The stock is at zero."

"But I have 52 million shares. What's 52 million times zero? And don't tell me it's zero!"

"Bart, it's not about how much stock you have. It's about how much copper wire you can get out of the building with!"

<comment><USER3> Video, watch the whole thing, it's gold: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arENYYkYBts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arENYYkYBts)

And another on Bill Gates acquiring Compu Global Hyper Meganet from Homer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This doesn't come as a surprise to me. Beepi was, quite frankly, idiotic in it's spending - as are most of these companies. 100 engineers doesn't always mean you get things done quicker - WhatsApp had something like 15 engineers with > 500 million users on their platform at the time of the Facebook acquisition of $19 billion.

Note to startups: Hire quality, not quantity. And ONLY hire if you're absolutely desperate. If you're technical, do the work yourself instead of throwing your investors money at it. If you're lucky enough to get an investment, treat it as your last one, and never assume more money is coming.

<comment><USER5> If I had a dollar for every time I have heard and ignored the opposite advice -- hire as much as you can to impress investors -- I'd... well... actually we do have many dollars for ignoring that advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Relevant bits from the article:

 _As venture capitalists became more discerning, investment in U.S. tech startups plummeted by 30% in 2016 from a year earlier._

But: Investment in 2016 is still higher than any year from 2002-2013.

 _"There are companies that everybody wants to invest in and there are a large set of companies that almost nobody wants to invest in," said venture capitalist Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures._

But: isn't this always the case?

 _"There's going to be a shakeout" for companies that can't show a profit, said James Beriker, the chief executive of meal-delivery service Munchery._

Well, eventually a business needs to show revenue and a path to profit. Otherwise the music stops and the equity has no value.

 _Beepi guaranteed sellers a price, and if it couldn't find a buyer in 30 days, it purchased the car. Beepi marked up the price and pocketed the difference._

 _Beepi was whipsawed by cars that sat unsold for a month, and that Beepi therefore had to purchase. Losses on those cars could reach more than $5,000 per high-end car, former employees said._

For all the posters admonishing Beepi for spending so much money so fast: this looks like a legitimately capital intensive business. It also looks like it has unlimited exposure to high expenses related to immobile inventory.

<comment><USER7> The admonishment is deserved; High capital requirements don't necessarily mean high burn rates, they mean that you'd better be damn sure that you have a viable business model to make returns on all that capital. The "unlimited exposure to high expenses" isn't some nit, it's a fatal flaw in their strategy.

<comment><USER8> All that does is ensure that only the largest companies, who can eat losses, are the ones that innovate on hard technologies.

Some things have no precedent in the market and I sure don't want those companies with out sized power already to be the only ones that can exploit it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Archive snapshot: [http://archive.is/nSVGF](http://archive.is/nSVGF)

</comment><comment><USER9> > 'after burning through 120 million dollars of capital'

Wow. Remarkable a start up could be so successful at raising and so bad at developing anything approaching a product.

<comment><USER10> How about burning 250 million, going bust and then finding another 16 million?

[http://uk.businessinsider.com/renault-acquires-failed- taxi-s...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/renault-acquires-failed-taxi-startup- karhoo-2017-1)

EDIT: I hate BI for burying at the very end that their 250 mil number at the head of the article is actually 50-something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not mentioned - the Fed raised interest rates in December and March. With some signaling that this could continue. This has impacts across all of Venture Capital, but particularly late stage... And especially capital-intensive business, which seem to be the prominent examples here.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's nothing capital intensive about Beepi's business - all car purchased you can finance with a floor plan line. Beepi wasted money on market (over $20M last year) when it didn't have product market fit.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it possible to read the article without paywall? Even using the 'web' link and going via Google does not work.

<comment><USER14> WSJ seems to allow full access via Twitter.

My strategy: Search for the title on Twitter:

[https://twitter.com/search?q=once+flush+startups](https://twitter.com/search?q=once+flush+startups)

Click from there, you should be able to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> To get past the paywall: [https://t.co/dfxOzeF66S](https://t.co/dfxOzeF66S)

That's a redirect via Twitter.</comment>


I changed my LinkedIn avatar to include my toddler - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/yipe/status/1278387975064190976 <comment> dan-robertson A somewhat related story of someone who changed their CV from "Kim <lastname>" (also noting that they were married with children to imply stability) to "Mr Kim <lastname>": [https://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/...](https://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/how- i-discovered-gender-discrimination)

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I've experienced similar despite being a black man. My name is pretty similar to a woman's name. Recruiters are probably surprised to get a deep voice on the phone when they reach out to me. I've also been referred to as 'miss' or 'she/her' on emails several times until I clarify I'm a man :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I deleted my Linkedin about a month ago and have also seen a sharp decline in recruiter interest.

</comment><comment><USER4> 2 months ago was April/May. The stock market was crashing, layoffs were surging, and hiring freezes were everywhere. Absurd time to test this and declare the reason.

<comment><USER5> The market crash happened in mid March, and immediately started to recover. I don't think that had anything to do with it.

<comment><USER6> I haven't been looking but I am not under the impression that hiring has bounced back. Didn't I see articles saying some big cos had a hiring freeze for at least the rest of the year?

And with the market flooded with big layoffs from businesses hit hard by lockdowns (Uber, Airbnb, probably others), whatever jobs are available probably have more competition than usual. Although perhaps enough time has passed so that the dust has settled for people affected.

<comment><USER5> I don't really have a good sense of whether hiring has "bounced back" except based on the volume of LinkedIn messages I get, which seems to have remained about the same (I haven't actually gone and checked). But, it's not clear to me that, within the tech industry, enough people got laid off that it would have made hiring measurably more competitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would you bring your kid to the job interview? Being able to separate your work and family life is important to productivity.

It's not discrimination, it's that the author lacks professional boundaries.

<comment><USER8> An avatar photo on the world's shittiest Facebook clone is not "a lack of professional boundaries". Or do you scoff at coworkers who put up photos of their kids at their desk, too?

<comment><USER9> LinkedIn is clearly aimed at the professional world and recruiters are arguably using it as a professional tool.

Putting you child into your profile picture is more akin to bringing it to the interview.

<comment><USER10> This implies that recruiters set the order and people using a tool should oblige the recruiters.

There are LinkedIn users who use it to just keep in contact with people they have worked with, don't accept recruiter contact requests and so forth (I am not one of those people, but I have seen their periodic articles on how they use LinkedIn, and also I know one guy who is basically like that - he has some recruiters but only the ones he actually worked with)

At any rate dependent on your job putting your child into your profile picture might not be a problem for the normally understood parameters of that job, as for me it wouldn't affect my view of the person's suitability for any position I can think of but then I tend to be more on the lax spectrum of social requirements and etiquette.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It really is insane to do this during COVID-19 where companies know that the US is on track for a second lockdown and thus slowing hiring. And doubly so around July which is EOFY and where hiring is massively impacted either side of this date.

Also I am probably unique but I prefer keeping my work and home lives very seperate and wouldn't be that keen to work with someone who was so publicly looking to blur that boundary.

<comment><USER12> > Also I am probably unique but I prefer keeping my work and home lives very > seperate and wouldn't be that keen to work with someone who was so publicly > looking to blur that boundary.

I don't understand what you mean here? You wouldn't want to work with someone who posts pictures of their children online?

This seems crazy to me.

<comment><USER11> I would just be wary of someone who was using Linkedin, which is a professional social network, for posting photos of their children.

When you're hiring someone all of the little details are amplified and things like this give you a window into their judgement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a cartoon penguin as my LinkedIn profile picture. I've considered changing it to an actual photo of me to appear less "unprofessional". But, I never have and honestly I don't think I ever will. Why do people need to see what I look like to consider giving me a job?

<comment><USER7> because people are shallow,

a really intelligent platform would include more important data, like smell

you can't tell how bad someone smells until they come in for the interview, that's where zoom is lacking

<comment><USER13> This is a lacking feature. To much higher degree than appearance strong smell can inhibit other people's work who are in close proximity at the office.

I used to work with someone who had such terrible breath that I would go out of my way to avoid communicating with them in person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Change my view: it's unprofessional to have a group photo (2 or more people) as your LinkedIn avatar. Doesn't matter if the other person is your kid, SO, friend, or coworker. There's exceptions if you're the focus of the photo and other people are in the background, especially in a professional setting or if the photo represents a professional accomplishment.

If my LinkedIn avatar is me and my friends hanging out, it doesn't communicate that I value work-life balance, it means I don't pick up on social norms.

<comment><USER15> That's certainly a valid interpretation, but it's not everyone's interpretation. Someone could post that picture with different intentions and be a potentially stellar coworker. So you're welcome to your worldview of course, I'd just suggest being careful about judging everyone according to it — otherwise you're guaranteed to make miscalculations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Using a kid as a prop to get jobs resulted in less job offers, suprise!

And please stop publicly posting other people online. You don't have that moral right.

</comment><comment> jerome-jh So kids are supposed to hamper productivity?

Twitter and LinkedIn are productivity killers, both at home AND at the office contrary to kids. Plus well behaved kids can typically leave you alone for a 1-3 hours. People active on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc can barely have 5 minutes of sustained focus.

</comment><comment><USER8> Startups should actively hire people with kids, because it's way too hard for them to leave the job when the startup invariably ends up treating them like shit.

<comment><USER4> Why would it be harder? Software engineers generally have enough opportunities to leave with another offer in hand.

<comment><USER8> Depending in where you are located, and how much time your kids take away from networking, that may not be the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So basically he is just showing he has zero interest in privacy, if he doesn't care about privacy of his own children.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seeing a lot of, "if my employer wanted me to have a kid, they would have included it in my yearly bonus" going on in this thread.

</comment><comment><USER18> causation is not correlation, something like that.

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems a little presumptuous to assume that the decline in outreach was personal and not associated with the heavy decline in companies hiring during uncertain times.

<comment><USER5> > I was still getting tons of messages after covid and shelter in place > started. My snapshot is from 2 months ago, not 4 months ago. Covid > definitely caused some drop-off but not much tbh, I still got a ton of > recruiters who are playing the long game.

[https://twitter.com/yipe/status/1278504924284772352](https://twitter.com/yipe/status/1278504924284772352)

<comment><USER4> Covid lockdowns started 4 months ago. Companies took longer to react. Google only rescinded contractor offers end of May. My organization was hiring right through April. Things take time to propagate.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree. I was just providing extra context from the Twitter poster, because Twitter is not good for context.

<comment><USER4> Fair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm honestly suspicious of anyone that posts photos of their young children on public social media. It shows poor judgment and security/privacy precautions.

I think the point of this post was that they're trying to show that somebody who publicly demonstrates a commitment to their family, vs full time dedication to career, will be offered fewer senior roles.

But I see it from a different perspective. How would you feel as a 14 or 16 year old teenager someday in the future knowing that your parents had posted hundreds, or possibly thousands of photos of you from birth up to early teenage years all over the internet with no privacy precautions whatsoever?

I think at least some of us are fortunate enough to have grown up in the time period before widespread full-saturation use of camera phones, and parents who take pictures of literally everything and share it publicly as widely as possible.

<comment><USER21> Almost every parent and grandparent I know - even those who work in tech - post pictures of their (grand)kids to social media.

<comment><USER22> That doesn't make it a good thing.

<comment><USER21> It does mean that discriminating based on this would lower your candidate pool significantly, to the point where it's likely you will miss out on otherwise good candidates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Whatever works, works. I stopped caring about LinkedIn a while ago, so I just switched my profile pic to a pic of me shooting a flamethrower with a hawaiian shirt on about a year ago.

Results: interest from recruiters didn't drop at all, in fact, it increased (though I do not attribute it to the pic). However, a few recruiters specifically mentioned that they thought the pic was cool, and that alone was worth it.

Also, it isn't just recruiters from "hip tech startups" responding positively to it. I got hit up since then by a bunch of different places, including the usual FAANG, finance companies (Citadel/Two Sigma/etc.), tech startups, etc.

No one seems to have an issue with the profile pic, and I like it, so why not. And no, it wasn't intended as a humblebrag, a lot of people I know get hit up by recruiters in the same way, despite them having pretty standard pictures and not being some coding superstars. And I am not one either.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there anyway to track analytics of an image? - <AUTHOR>

Is there anyway to track analytics (like putting a "google analytics" track code) of an image? How this could be possible? <comment><USER2> If you have a backend routing your image request, it's as simple as counting the request and save the count somewhere, along with meta info for that specific image.

</comment><comment><USER3> What specifically do you mean? If it's an image from your server you already know because request logs.</comment>


How We Automate Our Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://segment.com/blog/automating-our-infrastructure/ <comment><USER2> This seems to be the "new standard" when it comes to startup infrastructure beyond Heroku.

However, what frustrates me the most about it, is that every startup is left to figure out everything from scratch and it seems impossible.

There are many tools you need to familiarize yourself with, too many to be comfortable with.

Companies that already figured it out write blog post like this, which provide insights but it's super high level, as a startup engineer this gives you absolutely no value other than "yes, they are using it too".

I wonder if there's a solution for this generic enough to open source that will be a good start for startups.

You check out the project, read some docs and in 2-3 hours you have a cluster running. Kind of a "batteries included" devops solution.

<comment><USER3> We've actually been considering if we should turn our internal environment into a product and/or service-product mix.

We've got a mostly automated cloud-agnostic process for spinning up a multi- datacenter Mesos cluster which integrates nicely with a docker CI workflow.

I'm pretty sure it's quite valuable, though I'm also unclear what people would be willing to pay.

<comment><USER4> > I'm pretty sure it's quite valuable, though I'm also unclear what people > would be willing to pay.

Your solution probably works great for your needs, but this stuff is expensive to productize. See [https://www.openshift.org/](https://www.openshift.org/)

<comment><USER3> Who I note basically decided to start from scratch because this docker thing happened. Cloud Foundry has had to do a lot of re-thinking too.

But my impression of openshift is that it's really a work in progress and that they haven't actually gotten it adequately productized yet.

Docker has gotten enough developer buy-in into containerization that I think it's fundamentally changed what it means to do infrastructure, be it PaaS or IaaS or whatever.

<comment><USER5> Probably an oversimplification on my part but it seems like OpenShift is nice enterprise friendly features sprinkled on top of Kubernetes. Which is no small thing, they've contributed quite a few patches to Kubernetes that are critical for a lot of enterprises. And a read/write GUI shouldn't be a hard requirement these days but a lot of big companies have this ingrained habit of treating IT like a commodity and subsequently hire people that are so uncomfortable with the CLI they're openly hostile to the idea of even touching it.

Then there's command and control. OpenShift seems to be more friendly to keeping things under someone's thumb. In an ideal world people would use Kubernetes the way Google uses Borg and devs would be trusted the way they are at Google. But between corporate fiefdoms and the aforementioned hiring practices many companies are still very far from that ideal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This past summer I spent some time learning Ansible. I've written scripts for the configuration and the deployment of my application's various services. The built-in idempotency of the commands was a big win for me and I feel fairly productive using the tool now.

My only complaint with Ansible really has been that it feels slow at times.

I'm interested in checking out Docker. What exactly does it buy me over my Ansible config/deployment scripts? Does it obsolete them?

<comment><USER7> Ansible and Docker are orthogonal technologies. Docker buys you repeatable, application packaging to solve dev/prod parity. Ansible can then become your orchestration tool, doing the heavy lifting to manage not just containers, but hosts, dns, LBs, etc.

<comment><USER6> But by using Docker, it does change the way you use Ansible, right? I'm not going to be executing Playbooks against a set of hosts anymore to configure them.

Instead, I guess I'll be using a Ansible to configure a container locally (in place of using Dockerfiles)? Then perhaps a different Playbook to deploy this container to my hosts?

<comment><USER3> One way I like to think about it: docker pull is the new apt-get

<comment><USER8> if you aren't setting capabilities, changing users and limits, and docker is a packing system

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really wish this article either included more details or segmentio open- sources a few of the tools.

<comment><USER10> Totally hear you.

We're planning on open-sourcing some pieces of our Terraform config and service toolkit in the next few months. We're definitely excited to share our internal tooling with the rest of the community.

<comment><USER9> Awesome, looming forward to it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Checkout Convox.com. Stellar team behind an awesome project.</comment>


Diary of a Trauma Surgeon: 12 Days of Covid-19's Surge - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0shhpATFwKw <comment><USER2> What I really don't get is why people are _still_ downplaying this.</comment>


RFI: Request for Input - <AUTHOR> https://theurge.com <comment><AUTHOR> I have spent the last 9 months so heads down and focussed on the urge, that coming up for air is kind of scary. Showing the urge is to the world is nerve- racking and the questions from family and close friends like 'So, when are you launching' or 'how is work going' is possibly the most daunting thing ever.

However, it feels like we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel as the user growth is growing every day and we can see shoppers finding the fashion they are looking for.

The purpose for my post was to get some feedback and input from some people that have possibly worked in the space, been there done that, or just want to let us know what they would want to see on a domain specific search engine such as ours.

Cheers Doron doron - at - theurge.com</comment>


Sex doll maker creates replicas of dead partners to combat loneliness - <AUTHOR> https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/18/sex-doll-maker-creates-replicas-dead-partners-combat-loneliness-im-providing-comfort-9997632/ <comment><USER2> So just like in Black Mirror's Be Right Back... [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2290780/?ref_=ttep_ep1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2290780/?ref_=ttep_ep1)

Although it wasn't just for the sex.....

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of Black Mirror's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back)

</comment><comment><USER4> I am a widower and this is creepiest shit I've ever heard of.

</comment><comment><USER5> And now they have three problems.</comment>


Introducing Nullable Reference Types in C# - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/11/15/nullable-reference-types-in-csharp/ <comment><USER2> This is great! TypeScript (another Microsoft language) did something similar not long ago but used a flag to opt-in to strict null checks. It seems this setting is strongly encouraged.

Looking at the examples, the compiler can determine if not null by reading the if statement like so

        if (str != null)

But what about if the code uses the following?

        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(str))

TypeScript has a way to solve this using the `is` keyword but I'm not sure if this is introduced in C# yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if it can be called a breaking change but it does feel like this is a pretty big deal. All your existing solutions are going to start throwing hundreds of warnings.

In particular these future warnings should be all over everyone's code:

 _1\. Assigning or passing null to a non-nullable reference type_ : many functions have non optional arguments and for some actually expect null as an argument

 _6\. Leaving a nonnullable field of a newly constructed object null after construction_ : there are many reasons why you may want to populate a field at a later stage, say you create two objects and you want them to cross reference each other's.

It's basically a fundamental change in the expected behaviour of reference types.

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks a lot like Swift optionals - which to me is a great thing.

I haven't tried this out yet but I also would love to see Swift-like optional binding (if let...) While it's great if the C# compiler + intellisense could figure it out I prefer having different vars to differentiate nullability/non- nullability.</comment>


Fishbed vs. Falcon: Why the ancient MiG-21's F-16 kill is no fluke - <AUTHOR> https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/fishbed-vs-falcon-why-the-ancient-mig-21-f-16-kill-is-no-fluke/story/324025.html <comment><USER2> I don't have a dog in this fight but there's this [https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/no-proof-india- sho...](https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/no-proof-india-shot-down- pakistan-f-16/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Then there's this - [https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/its- mig-21-versus-...](https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/its- mig-21-versus-the-f-16-over-kashmir/) \- that says:

> "But denials notwithstanding, the evidence seems increasingly compelling > against Pakistan's denial."</comment></comment>


Where it went wrong for Jerry Yang - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12597041 <comment><USER2> Yahoo is a classic 1990s land-grab story: go public, use the inflated stock to grab as much territory as possible. In that game, they out-executed everyone else (Lycos, Infoseek, Excite ...) Keep in mind Viaweb was one of their minor land-grabs!

Inevitably, this process destroys the soul of the company. The people who sold them companies mostly didn't stick around (pg!) because they realized there was no soul.

It is very hard to repair such companies (I never say impossible, but very hard!). The comparison is _not_ Apple, because Apple was never built that way. Even in its darkest hour, it had a soul. To give a more relevant contrast, I believe Sun can be repaired, but alas, the longer management fiddles, the more difficult the task becomes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say things went wrong _with_ the choice of Semel to Hollywood-mediaize the company, not with his departure. Yahoo lost its soul while Google didn't.

<comment><USER4> Yahoo had already gone bad before bringing in Semel. I think it started during the dot com craze. They had no focus or direction. They were basically becoming like AOL. In fact, that's most likely the primary reason they picked up Semel in the first place. The decision had already been made to be everything for everyone and he was supposed to be the leader to help get them there. Do you remember when they were also an ISP and had a lame magazine? When the crash came they were ditching services and divisions left and right and have really never focused on anything since.

<comment><USER3> You're probably right that it was a symptom not a cause.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yahoo's failure is simple: they didn't stick to their knitting. I was a long- time user of Y mail and liked some of their other stuff (finance.yahoo...) but quit in frustration recently, the third time their search button failed to find emails I could see plainly in the Inbox.

Find something you're good at, do it better than anyone else, and keep doing it until it doesn't work anymore. Yahoo failed to do any of these things -- they've thrashed around for years, and don't bother to hire competent people to do the few things they were once pioneers at. Very sad.

</comment><comment><USER6> Spinless leader. He should have fired half of the middle-managers right away, and some dead woods in his exec team, and reward well who is left.

<comment><USER7> Or he could have a product that people want to use. The problem with Yahoo is not middle management, it's that they are irrelevant. (Flickr is nice, though.)

<comment><USER8> The most popular website in the world is irrelevant? So what's relevant then - reddit?

<comment><USER7> Popularity is what you need in high school. Yahoo needs some money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yahoo is doomed.</comment>


RebelMouse: Your social front page - <AUTHOR> https://www.rebelmouse.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you thoughts about this new social media platform?</comment>


Show HN: Built a free app for you to become your own financial advisor - <AUTHOR> http://finimize.com/app <comment><USER2> Neat concept but the news is just noise for the markets.

<comment><USER3> For some strategies, contextual information is helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> enjoying it!</comment>


The Statistical Crisis in Science: The Cult of 'P' [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://lib.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG01/002/304/385/RUG01-002304385_2016_0001_AC.pdf <comment><USER2> Interesting article! It seems like they were very careful about using simple, approachable language, which seems huge in helping people loosen their kung-fu grip on p-values.

One of their sections, "P-values are not posterior probabilities", reminded me of an interesting blog post by Daniel Lakens about the opposite, "The relation between p-values and the probability H0 is true is not weak enough to ban p-values":

[http://daniellakens.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-relation- betwee...](http://daniellakens.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-relation-between-p- values-and.html)</comment>


Microsoft could owe billions in another antitrust battle (EU Browser Choice) - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/17/technology/microsoft-eu-antitrust/

<comment><USER2> Wow, that 'choice screen' requirement is ridiculously lame. Why not just start forcing Microsoft to show a pop-up when the OS boots letting the user know that they could be running a Mac, or Linux? It seems like the EU never gets tired of trying to stick it to Microsoft. I hope they continue to defy them on this.

<comment><USER3> what could they possibly hope to gain by defying the EU?

they can't just ignore the law in a country they are operating in, especially when it's the world's biggest economy, which could just seize the assets owed without issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Likely the selection dialog was bootstrapped into new Windows Activation, whereas the Service Pack upgraded existing IE components; which are present on the system regardless of which program is registered to handle hyper links.

Overall, I am wondering why the EU is picking on HTTP/HTML support alone and not requiring Microsoft to offer choices on alternate desktop shells, file systems, etc...

<comment><USER3> you'd find it pretty difficult to demonstrate that by abusing their monopoly in the desktop shell market they caused harm in another; it was pretty easy to demonstrate for browsers.

<comment><USER4> There are alternate shells available (and were in the past as well, like GEM) and it seems that Microsoft's Windows domination with its default shell is both demonstrable and a direct result of their bundling the shell with the "OS" (there was a time the two were separate, back in Windows 3.1 and earlier days). Heck, when they bundled a TCP/IP stack in Windows 95 it pretty much spelled the end for Trumpet Winsock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does something like this happen? How can Microsoft not be on top of this?

There really was nothing for them to gain by removing this dialog so I don't think it was done with profit in mind. Their own browser is now a pretty compliant browser so it doesn't slow down web adoption.

I can't really believe it was dropped by accident as all jokes aside, very few companies test their software as thoroughly as Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER6> And yet, nobody complains when cars come bundled with tires and steering wheels.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could be argued that MSFT's "evil empire" thought that they could get away with this as they're locked in brutal combat with Google.

But watching MSFT fragment themselves endlessly over the last two-decades, I Think this is all about "focus".

Every successful entrepreneur talks about "focus" and not being pulled in a million directions, mastering your domain and relentlessly pursuing it.

There are only so many great leaders in an organization that can manage these types of "obvious" potential failures, and corporate memory is notoriously terrible as teams and employees turn over.</comment>


Deep learning base image for Docker - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dominiek/deep-base <comment><USER2> This is very cool, and useful.</comment>


How to write to blogger – part 2 and now with actual advices - <AUTHOR> http://blog.insite.io/how-to-write-to-blogger-part-2-and-now-with-actual-advices/

<comment><AUTHOR> How to write so bloggers will listen and get your startup featured? A personal list of tips and things that worked before.</comment>


Google plans to make PCs history  - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/25/google-drive-gdrive-internet <comment><USER2> The GDrive will make PCs history the same way Google Docs made Microsoft Office history.

...catch my drift?

</comment><comment><USER3> Without a PC, how will you access the GDrive? Through a Google neural implant?

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure how this will "make PCs history", unless Google plans to outlaw having your data anywhere else but on their servers. If you don't like the privacy implications of giving Google your data, then don't use the service. Personally, I don't plan to--I want my data on my own machines, and nowhere else.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd bet Google hates articles like this.

If Google does have a GDrive project, I'd bet they don't consider it a means to "make PCs history". I'd bet they probably just want to offer a service that users want to use; therefore increasing use of their other products and selling more ads.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Does it matter that Google can be subpoenaed at any time to hand over all your data to the American government?_

I am not a lawyer, but this seems out of sync - I imagine the process for getting a warrant and a subpoena are different (the latter being easier). Whatever the legal reasoning was for protecting the letters I store in my home should also apply to my e-mails in Google's database, no?

Anyone more knowledgeable care to elucidate?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea how many subpoenas Google gets per day but my guess is that they get a fair bit of them. I also don't know how they respond to them but I'd wager that they comply with vast majority of them. What I'd like to know is how Google deals with out-of-US subpoenas. Do they comply?

I think you could argue that, due to Google File System's (GFS) distributed nature, you could request a subpoena from a local judge in any country in which Google has a data center because Google would have to prove that a chunk of data belonging to someone is not hosted in that country. That's very hard ot disprove since I doubt that Google keeps historical track of their chunks. The way GFS works, a master keeps tracks of chunks but it doesn't keep a history of where each chunk was. So a clever lawyer could try to subpoena anyone's account given that Google has a data center in their country.

For example, Google has a data center in UK. Could US person's account, be subjected to a UK issued subpoena if a lawyer uses the logic I described above? Maybe.. there's no way to prove that a chunk of your data is not hosted in UK.

Distributed systems ("cloud") are a privacy nightmare waiting to happen, and I think that EU privacy commission will tackle this issue at some point. "Cloud" computing seems to be illegal (to a certain degree, in strong-privacy countries like Germany).

More info here: [http://www.jroller.com/MasterMark/entry/google_teh_evil_clou...](http://www.jroller.com/MasterMark/entry/google_teh_evil_cloud_economics)

<comment><USER6> _Distributed systems ("cloud") are a privacy nightmare waiting to happen..._

A lot of technological advances are "nightmares waiting to happen" before the proper legal systems are in place. This is a problem with privacy laws, not with Google's technology.

<comment><AUTHOR> "... before the proper legal systems are in place."

And how long do you think it will take for all the countries in the world to adopt these laws?

For now, I'd consider any tech that can run into issues like I described, a problem, and not the laws. Laws should be considered immovable objects since they're open to interpretation and rely on centuries of case law. Laws have already all but killed P2P... and nothing has changed in the past 8 years that will change that and I'd bet against anything changing them in the next decade as well.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I heard all about how laws killed P2P on the latest episode of Law & Order I torrented.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the most successful (i.e. is making money) P2P company?

<comment><USER6> Skype?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive"</comment>


Show HN: PageDash, Your Personal Web Archive - <AUTHOR> https://www.pagedash.com/ <comment><USER2> Please consider producing archives in WARC format, and either donating captures of public pages to the Internet Archive (and other interested archives), or supporting ways for users to download their own archives in that format for them to donate them themselves and use in systems like Webrecorder.

(Note that a download of just page content and assets isn't enough; WARC stores headers, etc., also.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. Admittedly I bypassed WARC completely as I felt overwhelmed by its technicalities in favor of how I knew the web worked. If I have a better understanding of WARC maybe that can be done, but I make no promises.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted.

WARC tooling is pretty terrible. I hack data and text for a living and working with WARC was extremely difficult compared to the simplicity of what I was trying to do. Something that would have taken me five minutes (extract body text) took me about 60 - 90 minutes because the first few libraries I tried didn't work easily.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's getting downvoted because WARC is actually easy, I think it's because the creator says they can't be bothered to figure out the web archiving standard before asking people to start giving them money for their web archiving product.

The fact that WARC tooling is terrible is the opportunity this person should be leveraging to create value, imo.

<comment><USER5> I will reference this thread when I need an example of minimum viable product catching flak. Putting off WARC makes financial sense.

<comment><USER4> The response wasn't:

"I was planing to support WARC, but felt that it was far too complicated to put off the launch of this MVP. If it's an essential feature to make this product valuable then I will definitely make it a priority."

If it was "I felt overwhelmed...", "...maybe..." and "...no promises".

I appreciate the honesty, but it doesn't inspire confidence and I think the flak is more a reaction to the response regarding WARC than the lack of WARC itself.

<comment><USER6> I feel both your suggested response and the given response amount to the same thing.

I mean, looking at what you said and what they said side by side, and how I read it:

> Admittedly I bypassed WARC completely as I felt overwhelmed by its > technicalities in favor of how I knew the web worked.

> I was planing to support WARC, but felt that it was far too complicated to > put off the launch of this MVP.

Both mention looking at using WARC, and both mention it being complicated. Both say it's not yet available.

> If I have a better understanding of WARC maybe that can be done, but I make > no promises.

> If it's an essential feature to make this product valuable then I will > definitely make it a priority.

Both offer up the potential for supporting WARC. Neither promise its delivery. The former provides a bit more justification as to the condition for its inclusion (technical capabilities), while the later hides this fact.

> I appreciate the honesty,

Honesty was the only difference between the response you hoped for and the response provided.

<comment><USER4> Really??

The tone and focus of the two statements are entirely different and communicate completely different impressions of the creators relationship to the question/criticism.

I mean I don't really want to get pedantic here, but... I will anyways, weird mood I suppose:

My statement implies an understanding of the value of WARC and an intention to implement the feature, but tempered by a desire to understand the needs of the customer before taking on the task.

Their response indicates a lack of understanding of the technology (some of the honesty that I appreciate, fyi) and offers a non-commitment to implementing it, even IF they were able to understand it.

I'll admit my impression is also colored by their other responses, not simply this one in isolation.

Taking them together, the impression is that while they're willing to take money and start allowing you rely on them for archived data... they aren't going to guarantee they'll be around unless they make enough money to make it worth it for them to even both.

Again, honesty I really do appreciate, though I can't agree with the approach.

You may say that's what everyone would do, but I disagree, I think great products come from a focus on customer value and a willingness to do the hard- work to provide that value. I believe my statement communicates that far more than theirs.

<comment><USER7> You guys are fucking awful.

<comment><USER4> Yep, can't disagree with that right now... still just trying to help. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Founder here, happy to field questions and feedback!

Right now PageDash is quite a simple product, but hopefully with sufficient traction we can continue to implement things like full-text search, tagging support, link sharing, as well as mobile support. Your support is absolutely crucial to making PageDash come alive even more in the future.

This is my first product, thank you for being nice :)

<comment><USER8> Would it be possible to add auto-archiving to the extension?

On the $9/mo plan, I'd probably still not hit 100GB/mo of uploads.

My main reason for wanting this feature is that I could use the full text search (when it's available) to search every webpage I've visited. I find myself more and more frequently unable to find things I know existed at one point. I've been thinking of building my own solution where I just archive every page I visit on the fly then build a personal search for pages I've previously visited.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, I actually know someone else who wants this feature.

I feel like most of the sites out there are "junk", i.e. things that are not worth saving. So just save the gems. But that's me.

My feelings aside, technically this would be rather hard to do as it stands because saving a page is quite costly, i.e. mainly: 1) data retrieval, 2) data upload will cause you to not be able to use the internet seamlessly as PageDash will stall things. For some reason, even though the assets are already in the browser, PageDash as an extension cannot retrieve it directly. Also the extension right now over-mines, i.e. retrieves way more than what is actually needed to render the page, just because there's a lot of dead CSS/JS/images links out there, and I haven't figured out a way to make it more efficient.

However, if all you care about is the HTML (which is essentially what full- text searches search), then this is technically possible, but the result won't be pretty. But auto-save is technically and realistically possible if you only care about the HTML.

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome does support keyboard shortcuts, though. Go to chrome://extensions/, look for "Keyboard shortcuts" at the bottom right, and configure away for a quick save :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why must everything be a cloud service? I use ScrapBook ([http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/](http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/)) to save web pages locally.

<comment><USER10> Because without a cloud service you can't get people to pay $3-$9/month for something like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like the idea of this and other, similar products/services. I haven't used any of them since they don't seem to be exactly what I want.

What I really want is auto tagging and classification + semantic search. I don't even really want to have to save the page. I want this functionality on my browsing history.

Maybe some increased functionality for saving specific types of pages. If I save a recipe, I want the service to recognize that it's a recipe and put it in my 'cookbook'. With a consistent format, if possible. If I save a blog post, tag the topic, technology and language used.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really want auto-tagging via ML classification as well, it's one of the things I wanted other than one-click save when I started the project. That's a really nice to have at the moment and can only be achieved once PageDash matures more. Right now the closest antidote I can offer for your use is to configure a keyboard shortcut to do the extension saving via chrome://extensions > Keyboard shortcuts (bottom) for quick saving.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I realized after I posted that this is a good first step to that goal; a way to gather a bunch of user search and tagging. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The previous web archive launched on HN is already dead [0]. Many of the comments from that discussion also apply here. Good luck and I hope you'll manage to stay online!

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14644441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14644441)

<comment><USER5> Open-source, self-hosted alternative(s) discussed within days of the above:

Wallabag: a self-hostable application for saving web pages | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14686882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14686882) (2017Jul:166points,53comments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What are the advantages of this over something like pinboard.in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unless you are on Pinboard's archiving plan, Pinboard mostly manages just your bookmarks. PageDash doesn't claim to be a bookmark manager, but it really can be one. Bookmark the page, along with the content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Signed up - saved my first page - and viewed my dash within 5 mins. Good stuff. Now, all you need is not to go out of business (or open source before you do). Seriously though, good luck on the business side.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. You're right, hopefully business side holds up. I'll keep it up as long as someone is paying me :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should point out that PageDash also tries to handle saving nested pages and iframes, I'm not sure it's something that other archivers try to do.

Also Web Components (custom elements, shadow DOM) support is definitely do- able and something for the pipeline. It's not something even the Internet Archive is capable of right now. Wayback Machine's youtube.com archive is blank.

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks interesting. Why would I use PageDash over something like Evernote or Pocket?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. PageDash aims to preserve the page in the original format and render it just as you saw it. Right now, Evernote does quite a bad job at rendering, I've used it a lot. Pocket on the other hand specializes at stripping out the HTML and leaving just the content in a reader-mode fashion, though I've not tried their premium offering that also archives.

PageDash archives from the front-end, while many archivers tend to archive by sending a link to the backend which then queries the website remotely, so you might not be archiving what you saw exactly, which admittedly in many cases doesn't matter. The upside of this technicality is that you can save content that you see only when you are logged in!

<comment><USER15> Sounds like PageDash is not really for me then, but I can definitely see why some others might want to use it. Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Michael, what is your use case? I do plan to include a reader mode in PageDash to view pages in a clean layout. It is possible because PageDash has all the raw data available for each page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anything FOSS in this sphere? I'm slowly going towards building my solution to automatically archive my Firefox bookmarks locally, but a bit too slowly.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's plenty.

Here's a pretty comprehensive list that someone else made: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14647119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14647119)

Here's another FOSS that I found: [https://github.com/pirate/bookmark- archiver](https://github.com/pirate/bookmark-archiver)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Have you considered saving files (such as fonts and JS libs) loaded through major CDNs centrally just once instead of storing it again each time a page is saved?

Maybe you already have plans for this, but it would be smart to implement a system that checks whether files are already present on your server so you don't waste any of your user's quota and the server's disk space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment! That would be ideal and it has crossed my mind but I have given little thought on how to do de-duplication right (premature optimization from a maker's perspective). Right now each page and its assets sit within it's own "bucket". But yes page assets and all these dependencies can really add up fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Excellent work. I can now close all those browser tabs I've had open in the background for weeks, just so I don't lose the page.

<comment><USER19> wouldn't OneTab extension be a better solution. I see PageDash as a personal Internet Archive/Wayback Machine

<comment><USER18> Possibly yes for the problem as I described it. But really what I want is to mark pages that I thought were interesting and _might_ want to see again at some point in my life. Maybe that will be in two years. My approach of leaving a load of tabs open for a few weeks catches many of the cases of pages I want to re-read, but is obviously not feasible for years.

And really I want to be able to search my history with queries like (contains foo, not bar, was marked sometime in 2014 or 2015). And see my history in chronological order. The problem with my browser's history is that it is polluted with the pages I never want to see again, like last week's weather forecast.

I'm sure that there's something that does this already, maybe it is Evernote. But PageDash's guarantee of preserving the historical state seems novel and worthwhile.

<comment><USER20> I'm sure Evernote could do this.

I've been using two different kinds of apps for this:

\- Offline-reading apps for stuff I want to read \- (Tech) support ticket apps for stuff I (might) want to do

I'm currently using Pocket for the first kind. Before that I was using Instapaper.

For the second kind I'm using GitLab but I've still got a lot of old content in FogBugz that's not yet migrated. Neither saves or indexes the contents of links tho so I manually include text about what it is I wanted to do or sometimes just specific text I'd expect future-me to use to find the stuff.

The main reason I use GitLab for stuff related to something I might want to do is that I use it for all of my other 'project' content too so it's nice to have everything of that nature in one place.

<comment><USER18> I just tried Evernote. I had a bunch of tabs open in Chrome. I installed both PashDash and Evernote extensions, then click their respective toolbar buttons. Here's what ensued.

PashDash: The page was saved. I went to app.pagedash.com and could see it at the top of my history.

Evernote: The extension popped up a dialog asking whether I wanted to clip an Article, Small Article, Bookmark. I didn't know the difference so just clicked Save. I got a dialog telling me I needed to reload the page. So I did and clicked the button again. That worked but took much longer than PageDash then showed another dialog saying "No Result" in large print and "Clipped to First Notebook" in small print. Ugghh. I visited the Evernote website and got a massive popup asking me if my email was still the one that I'd registered four minutes earlier. I clicked through and was redirected to a massive long URL. I could see my clipped article there, but its unclear if this massive URL is the one I should bookmark.

It looks like PashDash is simpler and faster than Evernote. I like simple and fast.

Unfortunately it looks like I'll run out of my monthly storage allowance on PashDash very quickly. And I can't see any search function in PashDash.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Search is high on my priority list next (already started looking into it)! And I really meant the free quota to be more of a try-PageDash thing, so I'd really appreciate the support via a paid subscription, because ultimately that would keep me going. Please do let me know via support@pagedash if you feel the pricing is a bit steep, I can open up an even lighter plan. But I know that not being able to search is a deal- breaker, so stay tuned for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> After signing in, my initial reaction is that I wish I didn't have to use a browser extension to save a page.

It would be handy if I could just enter a URL and have it saved, a la Pinboard or Instapaper.

That said, this worked very well on my first try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment! Maybe I will make that possible in the future, but for now the advantage of this is that you can save logged-in content, i.e. content that you see when you're logged in. Passing the URL to backend prevents that as the backend is not authenticated, or even worse blocked.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Alright folks, it's 3am where I am at the moment, gonna hit the sack. I'll address more questions and concerns tomorrow. Thank you for all your feedback!

</comment><comment><USER22> So this works until your cloud site dies. No thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a few ways I can go mitigating this.

1) One of them is to provide PageDash with API access to your s3/gcp bucket so that it syncs your pages out to your bucket.

2) Providing an open-source viewer to view files saved within your bucket. It's just like serving a website, really, no more processing needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This will be great for archiving the past :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Which media files are stored? I assume images yes, videos no?

<comment><AUTHOR> Images yes, but videos not yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very interesting idea

</comment><comment><USER26> Awesome stuff!</comment>


Windows 10 Privilege Escalation via Dolby's DAX2_API Service - <AUTHOR> http://x42.obscurechannel.com/?p=263 <comment><USER2> "System" is the highest privilege, like "root" on Linux.

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily in Windows 10 Enterprise, there can be some limits to what "System" can access, with a feature designed to protect credentials from exploited drivers:

 _With Windows 10 and Device Guard, credentials are stored encrypted using Hyper-V, an approach known as "virtualization-assisted security." Credential Guard blocks access "even when an untrusted program has full administrative access to your environment,"_

 _Drivers can 't get into the Local Security Authority of Windows 10_

[https://redmondmag.com/articles/2015/10/28/windows-10-creden...](https://redmondmag.com/articles/2015/10/28/windows-10-credential- guard.aspx)

<comment><USER4> So, System still has full access to ring 0, but some bits of the OS are moved into the hypervisor "ring -1"?

<comment><USER5> It seems a bit more inception-like than your numerics betray... The driver ring 0 is now a deeper dream than hypervisor ring 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So it's not even a vulnerability in the service's code, but in its metadata (file permissions).

Neat!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ships with Lenovo Thinkpads running windows 10 by default, possibly windows 8.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can imagine it would be possible to reverse engineer the service interfaces of DolbyDAX2API.exe ("exported functions"), write a wrapper which embeds the original executable and forwards the service requests to the original implemententation. The wrapper could contain malicious code and intercept the service calls. This could be even done generically. Maybe something like this exists already anyway. This way nobody would notice that something is wrong - functionality wise. Perfect eavesdropping on Windows services.

<comment><USER8> I was thinking this was where the article was going, but the solution ended up being a lot simpler. It leaves traces and notifies the user, though...

I suppose yet another way would be to make a copy of the executable before the overwrite, then restore it after gaining a stable SYSTEM shell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this "Dolby DAX2" a standard component? There's no trace of it on my stock Windows 10 Surface Book.

<comment><USER10> its value added BS. Dolby tries very hard to be Creative 2.0 by pushing patented crap into standards (hdmi, bluray) to position itself as essential for hi def audio = collect patent tax.

<comment><USER4> The ubiquity of DTS in the PC and hifi market is probably scaring the crap out of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really an argument about whether or not proprietary systems are inherently more secure. I run Arch on my main system, and when a vulnerability is disclosed, it's often patched within hours. Windows is littered with bugs, vulnerabilities, and security holes. Older versions have been left to rot, leaving thousands of systems vulnerable.

Of course, it could be argued that the weakest link in the chain is the user, but with a vulnerability like this one, I don't see how that applies.

<comment><USER12> In this case the "user" is the system manufacturer who developed an exploitable application, in this case, Lenovo.

Lenovo could sell a Linux PC with a similar application that communicated with a daemon running as root which binary was saved in /bin with 0777 permissions.

There is nothing special about Windows that makes this vulnerability possible.

The end user mistake here was buying Lenovo.

<comment><USER13> For things like this SELinux really comes in handy.</comment></comment></comment>


Los Angeles to install subway body scanners - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/0277303b776445c5948a2be33de5af8e/LA-to-become-first-in-US-to-install-subway-body-scanners <comment><USER2> Here in China in every city, you "have to" scan your luggage when entering the subway. Why I say "have to" is because it is not strictly enforced, and many people just push by in a hurry, making the whole system kinda moot.

During the rush hour (supposed to be the most "dangerous" time) the steady press of people just flows in, completely ignoring the scanners. Poor scrawny security guy whose job is to make sure everybody scans their stuff just stands aside, pretending to control it. Another thing is that the scanner staff shift starts around 7:30 am, while the subway opens at 5:30 so you can bring whatever in without anybody checking it.

It's common knowledge here that the scanners company Nuctech belongs to ex- prime secretary's Hu Jintao's son, and the scanners are sold for 10-20x price compared to the competition (8m RMB ~ $1.17 million per one). Nuctech has been involved in numerous international fraud scandals. Yet they are everywhere: subway, airports, train and bus stations. Shanghai subway has over 400 stations, with many stations having multiple entrances (e.g. Xujiahui has 27 exits with 12 scanners), so the total price of the scanners is well over $3-4 billion just for this.

Needless to say, this security theater doesn't improve the actual security a bit. I guess it has some positive impact by keeping people with ridiculous luggage like a box of live hens or 25 woks on a string out of the subway, but during the rush hour, the queue can easily stretch for 5-10 minutes (the create artificial "choke" points to force people to scan, barely wide enough for 2 people).

That being said, full body scanners seem to be a good compromise compared to this.

<comment><AUTHOR> luggage does not get cancer from an unknown device with no medical testing dumping xrays into its skin. You might.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The screening process is voluntary, Wiggins said, but customers who choose not to be screened won't be able to ride on the subway.</comment>


Zuckerberg says breaking up Facebook "isn't going to help" - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/11/zuckerberg-responds-to-hughes/ <comment><USER2> That implies that he acknowledges the problem, which is more than he's said previously. Whatever the 'solution', it won't come from inside FB.

</comment><comment><USER3> It'll help me feel better</comment>


Halbach Arrays II - <AUTHOR> https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=halbach-arrays-2 <comment><AUTHOR> Related Video:

"Visualizing the Magnetic Field of Halbach Arrays"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KLzU178d1E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KLzU178d1E)</comment>


High and dry: ballooning over the Atacama Desert - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/72a48b2a-9227-11e6-a72e-b428cb934b78 <comment><USER2> Does anyone have a link to avoid the paywall?

<comment><USER3> Awful things paywalls.

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4_QIjk...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4_QIjkf3hwwJ:https://www.ft.com/content/72a48b2a-9227-11e6-a72e-b428cb934b78+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</comment></comment>


There is no soft or hard Brexit - <AUTHOR> http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2017/06/15/there-is-no-soft-or-hard-brexit/ <comment><USER2> As a dual UK/Italy citizenship-holder, I should be largely indifferent to Brexit or even mildly in favour, as I stand to lose nothing (assuming Italy stays in the EU) and might even stand to gain if the UK gains some exotic advantage for it's citizens further afield.

However, on a deep and personal level, it horrifies me and I wish this spectre would go away. Reading pro-Brexit pundits' dumb "have our cake and eat it" arguments annoys me deeply, particularly when they misrepresent the will of the British people so drastically ("endorsed by 86% of voters") in an attempt to imply that the overwhelming majority are in favour of this madness.</comment>


Live Tweeting Physical Pentest - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/HydeNS33k/status/885896958962958337 <comment><USER2> So every physical pen tester I know is a woman. Coincidence? Maybe....</comment>


CMU Creates Language2Pose Model That Generates Animations from Text - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/syncedreview/cmu-creates-language2pose-model-that-generates-animations-from-text-5a08b5f71e97 <comment><USER2> Looks like this is where the code will be posted soon: [https://github.com/chahuja/language2pose](https://github.com/chahuja/language2pose)</comment>


At Comcast, you're not just a valued customer--you're an indentured servant - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologizer.com/2014/07/14/cancel-comcast/

<comment><USER2> Recorded for quality assurance.</comment>


Top 13 Best Laptop for Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://technicalustad.com/best-laptop-for-machine-learning/ <comment><USER2> I heap scorn upon your lack of thinkpads, the X1E/P1 and the P52 and p72 are very capable machines with nicer keyboards and arguably better build quality, they pack decent GPUs and all have 4x lane thunderbolt 3 for full eGPU support should you want more power</comment>


The Most Popular Drug in America Is an Antipsychotic - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/most-popular-drug-america-antipsychotic-and-no-one-really-knows-how-it-works <comment><USER2> I'm an MD who specializes in Psychiatry. Although much of this article is somewhere between a little and a lot inaccurate, the basic premise that an absurdly expensive antipsychotic is the most popular drug is alarming. It is a useful and effective medication with a clear role for a relatively small subset of the population. Why it is being prescribed so widely is a question worth asking.

<comment><USER3> If you read the article carefully, and/or click through, you'll find it's only #1 in dollar sales, it's still on patent until April or so.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ativan/lorazepam is still #1 in terms of prescriptions.

<comment><USER4> On a per prescription basis acetaminophen plus hydrocodone is the top selling drug.

<comment><USER5> I tried my google-fu at this. what is your source?

<comment><USER6> Here, most units sold:

[http://www.drugs.com/stats/top100/units](http://www.drugs.com/stats/top100/units)

acetaminophen/hydrocodone is #2

budesonide is #1 which is used to treat asthma (in puffers I believe).

I spent some time scraping medication information and learned that pharmacies in the US mine massive amounts of data about pharmaceutical purchases and there are a few billion dollar companies that collect/sell this data. Customer information is "anonymized" of course at the pharmacy level. You can find the sales of the top 100 drugs drugs pretty easily online, but there are thousands of drugs and the data-mining companies charge you to see sales of the smaller ones (from my experience).

<comment><USER4> You are correct! Budesonide is available as a generic inhalable steroid for asthma.

As for Rx data, IMS is king. They pay pharmacies, wholesalers, etc to report all of their sales. It's used heavily by pharma companies. I've seen some of the data and it goes all the way down to individual Rxs by doctor. Incredible stuff.

<comment><USER7> down to the HCP is only allowed in the US. most markets protect HCPs from pressure by the industry, you can only get clustered Rx data there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few months ago I succumbed to a particularly drawn-out case of the hiccups. Two nights in, sleepless from constant hiccuping, I made it to the ER. The cause was heartburn, triggered by an earlier night of celebratory drinking, irritating my esophagus. The irritation was close enough to my diaphragm to stimulate it.

One dose of thorazine, given by the ER doctor, and the hiccoughs subsided. Thorazine dampens the vagus nerve. This was the intended effect. Less intended was my complete lack of motivation to do anything outside the confines of my apartment for the rest of the weekend. (I also took great interest in my neighbourhood parks, for once.)

<comment><USER9> Fascinating... and makes me wonder whether anyone has experienced hiccups as a side-effect of amphetamines or other dopamine agonists.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I have. Also, nictotine oral sprays are known to cause them as well, quite consistently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to work in a pharmacological research lab, and while I'm frequently discomfited by the misalignment between commercial incentives and social good in the pharmacology industry, this statement isn't quite fair:

> Everyone has heard of "mission creep." In the pharmaceutical world, approval > creep means getting the FDA to approve a drug for one thing and pushing a > lot of other drug approvals through on the coattails of the first one.

This is more accurately referred to as "drug repurposing," and it's hardly the unalloyed evil that it's characterized as here. It's true that drug companies love to repurpose existing FDA-approved drugs, both because it saves them money and because it typically permits them to patent the compound again in a new context, but there are nonetheless real benefits to the public at large when a drug whose side effects are comparatively well-characterized over the long term is put into service to treat a different malady.

<comment><USER12> The real problem isn't drug repurposing, but off-label promotion. If you want to take a drug through FDA approval for another set of indications, that's fine and dandy. What isn't cool is actively promoting the use of a drug without market approval - having reps drop subtle hints, funding third-party publication, paying doctors to speak at conferences about their off-label prescribing and so on.

Eli Lilly, Pfizer and AstraZeneca have collectively paid out more than $2.5bn in settlements over the off-label promotion of atypical antipsychotics. The drugs that they unlawfully promoted are now being used widely for the treatment of a variety of conditions for which there is little evidence of efficacy. Lilly were marketing Zyprexa for the treatment of dementia, in spite of having extensive unpublished research showing that it was ineffective.

Atypical antipsychotics are being used by far too many psychiatrists as a catch-all where other lines of treatment have failed - OCD, autism, PTSD, ADHD, anorexia, substance abuse, you name it. In most cases the evidence of efficacy is slim-to-none. That's not medicine, it's quackery. Frankly, I'd be happier if they were prescribing placebo; Nobody has ever died from the side effects of sugar pills.

<comment><USER13> But turning an off-label use into an on-label one to promote it has its own nasty consequences, even if the drug is proven to work for the new indication (or whatever).

Consider Lucentis vs Avastin. Ophthalmologists were using Avastin off-label for wet AMD. Genentech was making a huge multifaceted effort to discourage off-label use because they had sunk a bunch of effort/$ into the order-of- magnitude-more-expensive Lucentis for not much of an improvement. Similar situation and different ending with Lumigan (glaucoma/ocular hypertension eyedrops) vs Latisse (eyelash enhancer), where Latisse's patent (afaik) was thrown out because Allergan was trying to patent a known major side effect of Lumigan.

I'm not a fan of misleading promotions of off-label uses either, but I wish there was a middle ground still banning that that didn't also involve more patents and protection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It was a shock for me to have worked in the US for a few years, and slowly realize that I was in the distinct minority in my circle of friends in not taking any medications consistently (I'm in my thirties). Made me think of Brave New World.

<comment><USER15> I'm Dutch, but I grew up with many Americans around me. It always shocked to see the huge amount of pill-bottles in the bathrooms of my American friends, and how much part of daily life these things were.

Anti-bacterial wipes for everything, pills at the smallest sign of illness (even just the sniffles), copious use of sleeping aids, and so on.

In my upbringing (which was kind of 'typically' Dutch), we took medication as a last resort. Even painkillers were not something you took unless your headache was unusually bad.

I have no doubt that this is also changing in Holland, especially when it comes to prescription drugs for psychological issues, but in general it seems a bit healthier to me to allow the body to take care of itself when it can, rather than stuffing it with foreign bodies that often have all kinds of adverse side-effects.

This state of affairs often makes me think about how malleable societies really are, for both good and bad, and how much variation there is even within 'Western-European' nations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The standardized United States Product Insert says Abilify's method of action is "unknown" but it likely "balances" brain's neurotransmitters."

The whole neurotransmitter imbalance hypothesis is itself not proven for Abilify or any other anti-depression drug (like SSRIs). At best, it is a guess since there is no way to measure levels of neurotransmitters in live subjects. At worst it is a lie. Regardless, the method of action is irrelevant if medicines work, but considering the efficacy of such drugs (not very good) and their frequency of prescription (very high) it's not surprising that the medical industry would work so hard to push an unproven theory as fact simply to sell more drugs.

<comment><USER17> Not only is it not proven for <insert drug here>, it's not even a useful hypothesis in the scientific sense. No one has ever proposed a useful model of the "chemical balance" that is hypothesized to be "imbalanced", so the whole theory is a non-sequitur. It is proposed because the more accurate explanation of "this is a powerful drug that introduces long-term changes to the structure of your brain. A few cherry-picked studies funded by pharmaceutical companies seem to show that there might be some short term amelioration of your symptoms. We have no idea how it works, but that's not surprising, as we have no idea why you have your disorder, or what it is other than a particular constellation of symptoms. We won't find out in the near future, because there's really no money being invested in finding out the ultimate causes for mental illness or in studying the long term effects of these treatments." doesn't get you invited to the really nice pharma-sponsored conferences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The title is misleading. Abilify is being prescribed for people who are already on SSRI's for depression because the combination helps accelerate recovery and not because these people need traditional anti-psychotic medicine. With this headline you give people a reason to be hesitant before asking for help.

<comment><USER19> Nevermind the fact that alcohol and coffee are way more popular drugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The insinuation of headlines like this is that antipsychotics are inherently hardcore drugs for people with severe, possibly dangerous mental illness. This delegitimizes depression by suggesting it is not or cannot be a serious mental illness; furthermore, it stigmatizes people who suffer from psychosis by suggesting that their symptom is beyond the pale of what a normal person might suffer.

That is: Antipsychotics are for people who experience psychosis, and people who experience psychosis are crazy lunatics, so it's absurd that so many normal people are being prescribed antipsychotics.

<comment><USER21> This point is sort of irrelevant to the article.

Read this, perhaps instead.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1518694/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1518694/)

The issue is not that they are portrayed as too "hardcore", but rather in general things like depression are over-simplified and dumbed down to stoke consumer demand for narcotic remedies.

(Trivializing the subject is not a good thing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have heard that people in post-acute care (think nursing homes) frequently end up taking Seroquel because it appears on their hospital discharge paperwork, despite never having any diagnosis of psychosis.

It turns out that certain hospital physicians find it a convenient sleep aide for use in the hospital, and the prescription unintentionally follows the patient, sometimes for months or years.

(Source: I sell software to long-term care facilities and their pharmacists.)

<comment><USER3> I have _really_ bad insomnia, due to genetic anxiety and depression (apparently "of a bipolar nature", but only a drug can make me manic), and without a low dose of Seroquel before bed I'd only be getting ~4 hours of sleep a night (and my anxiety would be much worse). It's been pretty much a life saver.

Seroquel is ... interesting in that it hits a histamine receptor harder than anything else; for someone like me, who also suffers from bad allergies, this duel side effect is particularly advantageous.

As far as I know, all atypical anti-psychotics have been black boxed (major league warning) for treating the elderly with dementia, the side effects in them are worse than the benefit.

<comment><USER9> > apparently "of a bipolar nature", but only a drug can make me manic

Insomnia is, in my experience, symptom of _low_ dopamine. You need to exert executive function to intentionally drop trains of thought that are keeping you awake—without enough dopamine to do so, you end up increasingly exhausted but unable to sleep. Vyvanse is the best thing that ever happened to my sleep schedule.

<comment><USER3> There are several kinds of insomnia. In my case, getting to sleep is seldom a problem (and when it is, it's indeed often if not most often that kind of "thinking too much"), waking up too early is the big one. So, besides this being a generic disorder (my uncle the engineer followed the same path as I at the same times in our lives, but he's frankly bipolar with anxiety being of less significance), the effects of Seroquel on dopamine are not much if anything of an issue for me. Then again I'm taking a low dose of it (50-100 mg in one dose before bed, therapeutic dose of it for its formal indications don't go below 300 mg/day).

One thing to emphasize from our disparate experiences is that in this arena there aren't "one size fits all" solutions. There are common symptoms which respond to common solutions, sometimes after a search for a particular drug that works with acceptable side effects, then there are people like me where doctors and myself struggle for years to find a set of drugs that provide the best solution (for now) that control but by no means cure my symptoms (like my uncle, this eventually disabled me).

Getting back to the original basis of this discussion, I'm absolutely sure that Amblify when used as an adjunct for current generation antidepressants works from some people with refractory depression, which I can attest is no fun at all, since mine is only partially alleviated, and I have friends who spent years before they found at minimum partial solutions for their more standard unipolar depression. Is it seriously over-prescribed? Who knows? In my experience, there are enough people out there with refractory depression that it might well not be. And I'd certainly try it before e.g. electroshock therapy, which is one of the alternatives if you're desperate enough.

As a side note, I learned cognitive psychology in the '80s (now cognitive behavioral psychology, [http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood- Therapy/dp/03808...](http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood- Therapy/dp/0380810336/) is the classic and highly recommended layman's introduction), and it's _tremendously_ useful, and in retrospect ended any benefits from talking therapy, but it's pretty clear that like the 3 particular antidepressants I've tried from two generations of them, only a partial solution for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I always find it interesting that these kind of articles points the fingers at Big Pharma and completely forget that there's a key element needed for prescription: Doctors. So, why not blame doctors as well, at least as much as Big Pharma? They share a huge part of responsibility in the situation.

</comment><comment><USER24> > [Thorazine] was an antipsychotic given to mentally ill people, often in > institutions, that was so sedating, it gave rise to the term "Thorazine > shuffle."

I think the term "Thorazine shuffle," refers to the characteristic locked-knee shuffling gait that develops because Thorazine frequently causes tardive dyskinesia as a side effect.

Edit: ignore this, see below; though, the drug does induce discomfort and restlessness in the limbs that prompts patients to pace around.

<comment><USER25> It's _tardive_ dyskinesia, and the term is typically used to denote the facial tics that are a sometimes _permanent_ side effect of older antipsychotics. The "shuffle" is a separate effect, and calling it that is often regarded as pejorative.

<comment><USER26> If you're not mad already a proper dose of Haldol will make you look (and feel) it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does anybody know of natural drugs against depression?

So far I have only found lavender oil, sardines and chocolate to work.

<comment><USER28> Saint John's Wort in conjunction with therapy is one that comes to mind. All antidepressants should be combined with active, regular therapy. Often the cause of depression is not chemical imbalance, but an actual issue in the person's life.

<comment><USER29> > Often the cause of depression is not chemical imbalance, but an actual issue > in the person's life.

Not trying to be contrary, but do you have a source?

<comment><USER30> I met a Swedish nurse who worked in a ward where they treated young people who'd had mental breakdowns. She said the most common cause was a tough life situation. In the short term they would prescribe drugs, but ultimately their treatment was focused on changing that persons life to remove the negativity which spurned the breakdown. Whether it be encouraging them to get a new job or move out of their current living/ relationship situation.

<comment><USER31> OTOH, plenty of people go through tough life situations without suffering mental breakdowns.

I think it's more complicated than a simple either-or proposition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 20 years ago, I dated a pharmacist and she said that two of the most prescribed drugs that she dispensed was ritalin and Prozac. It shocked me back then, so hearing that anti-psychotics are amongst the highest these days is no surprise, unfortunately.</comment>


FBI File on Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://vault.fbi.gov/steve-jobs/steve-jobs-part-01-of-01/view <comment><USER2> If I'm reading this right, it says he was being considered for Presidential appointment in 1991? Would that be by the Bush Administration? Clinton didn't take office until the beginning of 1993, but I suppose its possible he was making potential appointments aware in 1991, still seems early though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Per another post at 9to5mac you are reading it correctly.

[http://9to5mac.com/2012/02/09/steve-jobs-fbi-file-reveals- he...](http://9to5mac.com/2012/02/09/steve-jobs-fbi-file-reveals-he-was-being- considered-for-a-bush-1-1991-white-house-sensitive-position/)</comment></comment>


Demonsaw – Decentralized Sharing Application - <AUTHOR> http://www.demonsaw.com/

<comment><USER2> Did they really have to put their text in an image at the bottom?

<comment><USER3> Demonsaw is based on a variety of network routing, Internet Security, and file sharing principles. The image at the bottom of our website is a nod to our dynamic encryption scheme which derives dynamic AES keys from shared images between users. Check us out at [http://www.demonsaw.com](http://www.demonsaw.com). -Eijah</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What makes a blog great? - <AUTHOR> I will get right to the point: what do you think is the recipe for a great blog? What makes for a great blog? What's your secret?
I'm sure most of the people will say: QUALITY of the blog. But what is quality without exposure. If you have exposure but no QUALITY then you're certainly doomed to fail. There are a lot of examples like this.
So to recap: What do you think makes a great blog, starting small and ending big?
Thanks, Daniel <comment><USER2> Before I got started, I reviewed a bunch of popular blogs. There's basically two ways to build a successful blog - the first is to only produce _extremely_ high quality content. This means writing less frequently and throwing away your pieces that aren't incredibly polished and don't come out just right.

This is the model that Paul Graham and Derek Sivers follow, for instance. This model requires you to let pretty-good-but-not-excellent blog posts/essays die on the vine, so the signal:noise ratio remains incredibly high.

The other way is to post every single day. I did a little surveying of the landscape, and it seems like going from 4x per week to every single day produces a few massive jumps - more consistent visitors, a faster finding and evolving of your core topics of any given time, and faster evolution in your writing ability.

If you've already got practice in writing, a well-defined theme, and have launched enough projects or writing or marketing materials that you can recognize when you've got a winner on your hands, then the high-quality-only model can work well. For the rest of us, every single day is far more likely to lead to improvement and successes.

<comment><USER3> How do you rate your own writing? What percentage of your posts make the extremely high quality content mark that you attribute to PG and Sivers?

If your aim is to improve as a writer, then over time shouldn't your output reduce to only keep the good stuff and filter out the not-so-good stuff?

<comment><USER2> > How do you rate your own writing?

You can do it objectively or subjectively. Objectively you'd use some metrics or measurements. I do a little of that, but mostly it's a subjective "feel" thing.

> What percentage of your posts make the extremely high quality content mark > that you attribute to PG and Sivers?

I thought about this for a while, and I'm not sure how to answer it... I don't really benchmark myself against Graham or Sivers.

Yeah, I'm not really sure how to answer this. In a good month, I'll write between 1 and 6 pieces where everything comes together at the height of my current ability... but I'm still developing my skill, so even a couple months later I'll see a number of improvements I could make to a pretty good post.

> If your aim is to improve as a writer, then over time shouldn't your output > reduce to only keep the good stuff and filter out the not-so-good stuff?

Easier said than done! I'm not good at predicting what'll be popular yet. For instance, I wrote an analysis of why Walmart failed in Korea that I thought was particularly interesting, but it didn't take off. Then there's been some offhand casual posts I've made that do take off. Go figure, eh?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my opinion: 1) Frequent updates 2) Some nice (but not big) images 3) Using LinkedIn groups as "loudspeakers" - especially if your blog is business- oriented or technical

</comment><comment><USER5> The single most important article ever written on blogging: <http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writebetter/>

</comment><comment><USER6> A: Display useful, entertaining, and enduring insight and expertise.

</comment><comment><USER7> Signal over noise. If you update too often (especially with uninteresting stuff), I'm actually less likely to read, since I don't want it junking up my RSS reader.

</comment><comment><USER8> Probably the "great" blogs are ones which are "art". To me, art is some means to convey something deeply meaningful about our inner world (and that inner world can include personal expertise on some subject), regardless of the medium. I suspect if you do that, people will flock to it (if they can find it).

</comment><comment><USER9> I think writing stuff that makes people either think or change their habits. At least that's my experience with my blog.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additional question: do you use any methods of promotion for your blog (twitter, facebook?, etc) ?

</comment><comment><USER10> If someone would please review ZacharyBurt.com (any one of the 3 most recent entries would be ideal) and tell me how to improve it, that would be very much appreciated..

<comment><USER3> I found the diagram "Diagram illustrating relationship between Users, UX, Product Manager, Engineering" in your latest post very simple and useful. Summarising big ideas from a book makes for a good blog post. The only thing I didn't like was that it got too long. Long posts are good but only if there's more of a narrative. Lists are better when they are short.

Maybe I'm not the right audience, but I see your recent posts are quite abstract and almost academic-sounding. Do you think you can convey your thoughts through stories instead? Perhaps thoughts on emotions may be better explored and expressed through writing which evokes emotion.

<comment><USER10> This is amazing and very useful feedback. Thank you very much. I will work harder to convey my thoughts through stories instead.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rate my Russian Roulette iPhone App - <AUTHOR>

I'd really appreciate it if you guys could critique my Russian Roulette app by checking out this video: http://vimeo.com/3391683 (app store link here: http://tinyurl.com/silverrevolver ) <comment><USER2> Looks great. Seems snappy and responsive. Good sounds. Personally I like to see elements of humor in iPhone apps. So perhaps you could add some sounds for the pull trigger "nothing" and pull trigger "shoot" cases. For example when someone pulls the trigger and nothing happens you could randomly play a "Whew!" or "Well Kiss My Grits" sounds. Then for the "shoot" case play a nastier sound. Also some gun smoke might be nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks good. One suggestion is to maybe add a couple different types of guns.

Clickable link to video: <http://vimeo.com/3391683>

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks good. If you want to increase sales by 500% (and the silliness by 1000%), add fart noises.</comment>


Paradise Papers: Apple's secret tax bolthole revealed - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41889787 <comment><USER2> Apple's Cook: 'We do not stash money on some Caribbean island.". True! They stash it in Jersey, a UK Crown dependency that has a 0% corporate tax rate for foreign companies.</comment>


Digging into the Privacy Sandbox - <AUTHOR> https://web.dev/digging-into-the-privacy-sandbox/ <comment><USER2> We published this post a little earlier than intended so this page will be temporarily redirecting to [https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium- privacy/privacy-sandb...](https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium- privacy/privacy-sandbox)

The new post isn't exactly a big secret (the PR [1] has been publicly viewable for a while now in the GitHub repo) we're just finishing up final reviews

[1] [https://github.com/GoogleChrome/web.dev/pull/2264/files](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/web.dev/pull/2264/files)</comment>


Digital Transformation of Business and Society - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@frankdiana/digital-transformation-of-business-and-society-5d9286e39dbf <comment><AUTHOR> Pivot point of exponential change: a point in history where humanity will change more in the next twenty years than in the previous 300.</comment>


Digital Ocean Load Balancers – Simplifying High Availability - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/load-balancers-simplifying-high-availability/ <comment><USER2> Dup: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13644484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13644484)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is also overview on Digital Ocean community site if you want to get more details about this features [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an- introduc...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction- to-digitalocean-load-balancers)

<comment><USER3> This (established company's blog post) isn't really a 'Show HN' post in the usual sense, you might consider taking that out.

Edit: In fact, cf. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13644484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13644484) which already has a more suitable title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, it's duplicate, I didn't see that post before, Thanks for info</comment></comment></comment>