The Internal Memo That Allowed IBM's Female Employees to Get Married - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/the-internal-memo-that-allowed-ibms-female-employees-to-get-married/272832/

<comment><USER2> > _"When they were computing the orbits of outer planets on the SSEC [IBM's > Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator, which operated between 1948 and > 1952] the machine took up an entire room, including the ceiling, under the > floor and all the walls," she tells Bosker. "My husband has 13 symphonies on > his iPod Mini and they only take up a third of the space. That boggles my > mind. You don't even know what a miracle you're living in."_

My first thought was, "Wow, 13 symphonies take up a third of an entire room?", and then I thought about it and realized it's probably time for more coffee.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, we're all spoiled children nowadays.

The envelope works out, though. iPod Minis were only 4-6 GB, so you're only talking 1300MB-2GB of space used. 100MB per symphony is reasonable for a 30+ minutes of high-bitrate music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Which of our business practices company policies are going to be discriminatory, detrimental, outdated, and headline worthy in 60 years? I realize IBM's policy had its roots in a post war era but even the memo 'temporarily' rescinding the policy reads wrong.

Immigration policies? They're really a governmental issue that has become heavily politicized but they seem to me to be ripe for change.

Intellectual property? Will there be progress made or will we still be arguing about copyright length, patent trolls, and trademark infringement? IP issues don't seem to be in the same category of basic human equality, though at times they reach that point (drug medication?)

Universal healthcare? Work/Life balance?

<comment><USER5> > Which of our business practices company policies are going to be > discriminatory, detrimental, outdated, and headline worthy in 60 years?

If the next 60 years are anything like the last 60 years then holy crap the changes will be huge.

* outdated Offices. There will still be buildings in 60 years but office parks and sprawl in general will be gone.

* detrimental 40+ hour work weeks, screens, sitting, just about any physical job today. I'd like to think with the increase of technology the number of actual hours people work will drop considerably

* discriminatory

\- Requiring someone to physically appear or give any indication of race/gender/age during an interview. I could see this becoming the norm in 60 years where you interview people wearing suits like in a scanner darkly.

\- General acceptance of the gradient between gay and straight.

* headline worthy

"US Presidential candidates Toshiko Abe, Jennifer Summers, Linda Powell Jr and Frank Lancaster to debate the digital constructs of Douglas Adams, Anthony Burgess, Jon Stewart and Mr Rogers. Moderated by George Carlin's head in jar." ... gotta have hope!

<comment><USER6> >>detrimental 40+ hour work weeks, screens, sitting, just about any physical job today. I'd like to think with the increase of technology the number of actual hours people work will drop considerably

This hasn't been the case in the past 60 years. What makes you think it will be the case in the next 60?

<comment><USER5> The trend over the last 100 years has been that as we increase our productivity we increase our wants. More stuff, more work. Bigger houses, more food, more cars, more stuff.

I imagine this will start to flatline, and increasing demand isn't going to be sustainable enough to fully employ even half the workforce. I could be wrong.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_in_working_hours)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "they wanted to hire people who had fought in the war, who were then coming back from World War II and wanted jobs. I think you could understand that, and people did understand that at the time."

So, it was really affirmative action (for veterans)!

<comment><USER8> Affirmative action is not when you _fire someone_ to make way for a privileged class.

We _have_ affirmative action because of these more extreme forms of discrimination.

<comment><USER7> Soldiers and veterans are not privileged. That's why we got the G.I. bill for example.

Edit: it seems like you also mean that firing someone cannot be affirmative action. I disagree.

<comment><USER9> Vietnam-era veterans are privileged from a non-discrimination perspective in private industry.

Veterans and service-disabled veterans are federally (and in some states) given privileges in contracting and some employment (police, civil service, etc.).

As well, NG/Reserve service is legally protected.

<comment><USER10> It's not privilege because it's not undeserved. They paid a price that affected their ability to compete in the workplace when they got back home. It's a form of social compensation.

<comment><USER9> I'm not saying it's deserved or not, but it's a legally protected privileged status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the linked Huff Po article: _"I was doing a lot of programming from home. I would write out the program on paper using Fortran [a programming language], then I would mail it in to key punch operators at NYU, they would punch the cards out and then I would use the cards to run the program._ "

Programming on paper from home, that's incredible.

<comment><USER12> You youngsters dont realize what it was like to have one day turnaround. Yeah, one day to find a syntax error. Mailing in your coding sheets was only marginally slower than sticking them in your out basket and getting them back a day or two later. Even longer if you wanted them verified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's awesome to hear that an 86 year old woman is still programming!

</comment><comment><USER14> I find articles like this absolutely fascinating. And to think this was only ~60 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER15> "the Company's normal policy of non-employment on the regular payroll of married women _unless they are the support of the family_ "

That's a pretty twisted mindset. What in the world was IBM hoping to achieve by such policies? And how had they come into the business of supervising societal roles, instead of making money for their shareholders by hiring the most qualified people for the job?

<comment><USER16> Back then it was the most normal thing in the world, and obviously true to any but the most unnaturally twisted minds that the proper role of a man was to earn a salary sufficient to support the whole family, and the proper role of a woman to be a housewife and mother.

Thus, a woman who worked while married was shirking her duties to her husband and children, and taking away some man's chance to build a family. And that man was probably a war veteran! Support the troops!!!

IBM's shareholder would probably have sold their shared in disgust and boycotted their products if they had openly undermined these norms.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. Let's dig up the hiring practices of the Bank of England from the 1700's and see how outraged we can all get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. So why did they change? And the memo is specific that it's a temporary policy, so how did it become permanent or is it still on the IBM books as a 'temporary' policy of allowing women to marry?

<comment><USER19> Wikipedia says[1], IBM experienced a growth spurt towards the end of the war. If they had any sort of hiring quota to reach, it would make sense to relax eligibility rules.

Additionally, the presidency of the company changed hands from Thomas Watson Sr to Thomas Watson Jr around that time, and he may have been more progressive. He drafted the "company's first equal opportunity policy letter" in 1953.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM#1946.E2.80.93196...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM#1946.E2.80.931960:_Postwar_recovery.2C_rise_of_business_computing.2C_space_exploration.2C_the_Cold_War)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the original interview: "The only advantage you had over a newcomer was that you were prepared to read the manual." So true still today. I am always astonished by how much time some programmers are wasting by not reading manuals and how much of a competitive advantage even basic reading comprehension and willingness to do so is.

</comment><comment><USER21> An interesting thing to me (a non-american looking in) is lines like: _"non employment of married women unless they are the support of their family"_ & "* it was the end of the war and they wanted to hire people who had fought in the war, who were then coming back from World War II and wanted jobs.*"

This is anachronistic in terms of gender roles and whatnot but if you set that aside you see that IBM (and presumably all big employers) saw themselves as having a paternal-like role. Something associated with social democrat policies in the West and a Confucianist mentality in the east. Either way it's probably related to hints or requests by the Nation's Leaders. It's not very "Free Market^," in its modern interpretation.

^Quotes because I don't think Adam Smith, for example, would have had a problem with it.</comment>


Show HN: Dark Sky, reinvented Weather Prediction and Radar Visualization - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jackadam/dark-sky-hyperlocal-weather-prediction-and-visuali

<comment><USER2> This looks totally rad -- the stylistic choices are as cool as the idea is intriguing.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're still experimenting with colors of the radar intensity values. It's turned out to be surprisingly difficult to make a color palette that is both clear and not totally ugly.

Our best results have come from ripping off the color tables of false-color NASA astronomical photographs.</comment></comment>


Deep-Captcha: A Deep Learning Based Captcha Solver for Vulnerability Assessment - <AUTHOR> https://ssrn.com/abstract=3633354 <comment><AUTHOR> I can't find the code yet. If anyone finds it, please link it.

Related:

[https://github.com/lepture/captcha](https://github.com/lepture/captcha)</comment>


Build a Modern Computer from First Principles: Nand to Tetris Part II - <AUTHOR> https://www.coursera.org/learn/nand2tetris2 <comment><USER2> This course seems to be by the authors (and based upon) _The Elements of Computing Systems_ , a truly marvellous introduction to computer architecture that holds the readers' hand as they construct a system from the hardware up. I cannot recommend it enough.

<comment><USER3> My university's assembly course was based on this book. It was fantastic, the most I've learned in any class

</comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Does anyone have a recommendation for an electronics course that starts from the basics, with real hardware, for some who did electronics at highschool, but has forgotten essentially everything but some abstract knowledge. I'd really want to be able to design simple stuff on a breadboard. I know there is a ton of stuff out there, but where to start?

<comment><USER4> 6.002.1x "Circuits and Electronics 1: Basic Circuit Analysis" Based on 6.002 MIT Course [https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:MITx+6.002.1x_1+2T...](https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:MITx+6.002.1x_1+2T2016/info) 1 of 3 part series

<comment> bjelkeman-again Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Highly recommend this course. I am a self-taught programmer with experience in building infrastructure backends. But I had not done formal courses like OS, computer architecture, networks etc. I was able to finish part 1 in a couple of months with just 3-4 hours per week, and came out with a deeper understanding of what goes within a computer. It also inspired me to do more formal courses in some areas that I am more interested in. It is also a nice ramp up if you want to do heavier courses while still working full-time because almost everyone can afford 4 hours per week, but following a full, formal course online (e.g, MIT OCW etc.) requires a lot more time and discipline to be able to keep momentum and finish the course in good time.

</comment><comment><USER6> My problem would be that as soon as my computer could play Tetris I wouldn't do anything else...

</comment><comment><USER7> This would be so good if it were available off of Coursera, which is essentially a shake-down for certificate fees at this point. Nand2Tetris is a fantastic course.

Back in its heyday 3 years ago, I did a ton of courses on Coursera. They weren't perfect, of course. There was no higher-level coordination that could lead to covering an entire 4-year degree's worth of material and it was hard to match up courses from different institutions with different prereqs. It was hard to find advanced courses in general and the enforced speed at which content was expected to be completed sucked.

But the automated graders were great. I went through parts of many, many courses before having to abandon them due to work pressures and I finished a few, like the scala course and the fantastic automata course and some stuff from Berkeley before they bailed and moved to edX. It wasn't ideal for adult independent learners, but Coursera used to provide real value, especially for introducing niche topics that wouldn't be available via OCW.

It's a pity they never figured out a business model that would fit what its learners really wanted and just threw up a paywall instead.

<comment><USER8> What paywall are you talking about? Unless I'm missing something, every course I did on Coursera had the option of buying a certificate. But if I didn't want to pay, I could follow and complete the course all the same; I just didn't get the certification in the end. The contents were the same, the exercises were the same, and the knowledge gained was the same.

<comment><USER7> That's how it used to be. How long ago was your last course?

They still let you watch the videos but generally don't let you take the quizzes or submit assignments to the auto-grader anymore.

[http://cyrilandersontraining.com/2017/02/18/coursera-pay- gra...](http://cyrilandersontraining.com/2017/02/18/coursera-pay-graded- assignments/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know if part 2 is a new Coursera offering then? I looked through the FAQ and didn't see any mention of that, only that that part 1 and 2 are stand alone courses.

<comment><USER10> Part 2 didn't exist when I worked through the book and watched the Part 1 lectures a couple years ago, so presumably this is new. The big question is: do they actually take you all the way to Tetris? Surely it is their duty to deliver on the best course title of all time!

The book, btw, is a masterpiece for anyone unfamiliar with the material it covers—particularly for programmers like me who are comfortable with the language layers and up, but to whom the hardware and lower programming layers were a mystery. Getting a simple, but rich enough to be demystifying, understanding of the those layers by actually building them myself was (no exaggeration) a healing experience for me, and made me want to fly to Israel just to hug those guys.

For any programmer who never took courses like this or tinkered at the hardware level, and thus has that alienated feeling of skating on a frozen mystery their whole career, this book is the antidote. It's a classic of economy, given how short it is and how much it covers. Of course it gets through it all by oversimplifying, which you realize the moment you get to a chapter whose topic you already know. But it does get through it all, which is astonishing.

<comment><USER2> " _Skating on a frozen mystery_ " is a wonderful turn of phrase. Is it yours or is it an idiom I haven't (yet) come across?

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't say it's 'mine' but it just popped into my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a very exciting course. I would highly encourage some of us in software who take everything for granted to take this course (incl. part 1).

</comment><comment><USER12> NAND refers to NAND gates right -- does this course start from Hardware?

<comment><USER13> > NAND refers to NAND gates right -- does this course start from Hardware?

NAND does refer to NAND gates. no the course doesn't start from hardware. a (java based) simulator is used to simulate the most fundamental building block.

and then things go from there.

take a look at the following: [http://www.nand2tetris.org/](http://www.nand2tetris.org/) for more information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just finished this course on Coursera; highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it built with discrete logic or an FPGA?

<comment><USER16> I think you start by building the hardware inside a simulator. From the description in the first part of the course, you build things from the gate level using an HDL, working up to designing and building a CPU+RAM, programmable using "Hack" machine language, and an assembler so that you aren't stuck writing opcodes directly.

Part 2 starts from that assembly and goes into developing a higher-level object-oriented language called "Jack", then a compiler and operating system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd like to see a course where they build alternative computers. I.e. not the ones we are using now. I feel we are living too much in a monoculture.

<comment><USER2> What do you mean by "alternative computers"? Analogue computers? Quantum computers? Balanced ternary computers? Binary decimal computers? Non-Von Neumann architecture computers? Harvard architecture computers? Parallel computers? Single instruction set computers?</comment></comment>


Thinking of using regexes for (general) HTML parsing? Read this. - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/1732454

<comment><AUTHOR> Granted, this answer doesn't give useful information, but it _really_ drives home the point.

Can we paraphrase Hofstadter and say that for each HTML parser there's a page that it cannot parse?

<comment><USER2> I prefer to think that if an HTML parser can't parse an HTML page, then I either don't have an HTML parser or I don't have an HTML page. ;D</comment></comment>


Apple's TV strategy is still an embarrassing joke - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2017/06/30/apples-tv-strategy-is-still-an-embarrassing-joke/ <comment><USER2> Yes, because media pundits have a long track record of being right in their criticism of Apple...</comment>


Facebook explains that it is totally not doing racial profiling - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/facebook-explains-that-it-is-totally-not-doing-racial-profiling/ <comment><USER2> Youtube decided based on my music preferences that I must be black, and I must be also stupid and/or very poor and desperate as I was targeted with "get rich fast" ads for the American black population.

Not long after that I installed an ad blocker.</comment>


Revisiting Voyager 2 data, a new finding about Uranus's magnetic environment - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-03-revisiting-decades-old-voyager-scientists-secret.html <comment><USER2> > they zoomed in closer than previous studies, plotting a new datapoint every > 1.92 seconds.

Is the original data stored in analog somehow? Was it transmitted to Earth analog? I'm curious how they get to pick their own sample rate.

<comment><USER3> I would have thought that being built in the 70s, data transmission from the voyagers would still be analog, but apparently not. According to the press kit for the voyager[1] missions, all data was sent digital and there's details on what was sent at what data rate.

So it seems like they must have previously just sampled the data differently. Maybe specifically because they weren't looking for this particular kind of phenomena, so a higher sample rate wasn't seen as necessary?

[1] [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/197700...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19770079866.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Voyager used one of the most beautiful error correcting codes; the Golay codes.

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

Also best 1 page paper ever (<tm> Elwyn Berlekamp):

[https://www.lama.univ- savoie.fr/pagesmembres/hyvernat/Enseig...](https://www.lama.univ- savoie.fr/pagesmembres/hyvernat/Enseignement/1718/info607/TP- Golay/golay_paper.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reporters are having a field day writing headlines: [https://www.google.com/search?q=Uranus&tbm=nws](https://www.google.com/search?q=Uranus&tbm=nws)

I submitted a link from the New York Times a few hours before this one that went "Uranus Ejected a Giant Plasma Bubble During Voyager 2's Visit"</comment>


C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ffconsultancy.com/languages/ray_tracer/comparison.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if things have changed since 2007? (ie, why was this reposted?)

<comment><USER3> Because it's interesting?

"The C++ and OCaml implementations of this ray tracer perform almost identically. However, note that the C++ implementation has been optimised by using pass by reference for structs. In contrast, the OCaml implementation is unoptimised."</comment></comment>


Vim Croquet - <AUTHOR> http://www.drbunsen.org/vim-croquet/ <comment><USER2> Awesome! I'd love to see something like this as a standalone project. "Vim Critic" or "Vim Coach" \- something to say "these are the inefficient things you personally do."

Probably some low-hanging fruit would be "any keystroke in Normal mode that's repeated." Eg, if I'm doing 'jjjj' to move down or even 'wwww' to hop from word to word, I could be searching or using a movement combo like '4j'.

<comment><USER3> Personally, the main reason I moved from vim to emacs is because I don't want to have to _think_ about my editor, I want it to be pure muscle memory. I'm okay with hitting "jjjjk" to go 3 lines down rather than trying to guess that it's exactly 3 down and typing "3j". Emacs-style navigating/editing is great for this kind of error-tolerant navigation/editing. It leaves my brain mostly free to focus on whatever I'm actually coding at the time.

<comment><USER4> I think most experienced vim users will tell you that it _is_ pure muscle memory for them. Also, vim supports jjjjk as well as 3j. Anyway, I just realized I am debating vim vs emacs so I'll stop here.

<comment><USER3> We all know the one true editor is the Chrome console anyway.

<comment><USER5> ewww

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The keyboard heatmap code is nifty enough to justify this being on the front page of HN all by itself, which is not to say the rest is without value -- quite the converse; I hadn't thought of doing this sort of usage analysis with Emacs, but I think that's going to be my next weekend project once I'm done updating weatherline-mode.

</comment><comment><USER7> Judging by the heatmap, it appears the author isn't familiar with Vim's _c_ verb.

It works just like _d_ , except it puts you in insert mode after you've completed your command.

For example, to replace the text within a set of quotation marks with _You don 't like Vim?_, move your cursor on or within those quotation marks and use:

        ci"You don't like Vim?<esc>

To replace the text up to (but not including) the next exclamation point with _I would never drink orange juice_ , use:

        ct!I would never drink orange juice<esc>

EDIT: Gah. He explicitly mentioned his use of _cib_. I'll leave this here in case it helps anyone.

<comment><USER8> Judging from his discussion of cib in the Data Acquisition section, it seems like he's familiar with it.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps familiar, but not ingrained in his muscle memory to used instead of d<motion>i.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, I'll often do that as well, but just looking at the keys misses that there's a pause between the d<motion> and the i. I don't like sitting in insert mode, so if I don't know what I'm going to replace a thing with, I'd rather delete it, then insert something else after I've figured it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Even if not related to it and my get some downvoted for saying this. Something that strike me in this post is how cooler haskell code looks vs python.

<comment><USER11> The nice thing with Haskell is that it can be extremely compact. The problem with Haskell is that it can be extremely compact.

<comment><USER12> map (format "The %s thing with Haskell is that it can be extremely compact") ["nice thing", "problem"]

(disclaimer: that probably isn't actual Haskell syntax.)

<comment><USER13>
        mapM_ (printf "The %s thing with Haskell is that it can be extremely compact\n")
              ["nice thing", "problem"]

This works. :)

Alternatively, you could do this:

        forM_ ["nice thing", "problem"] $
              printf "The %s thing with Haskell is that it can be extremely compact\n"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Using a language that eschews state to try and process the state in a modal editor tickles me.

<comment><USER8> To elaborate on the other reply, Haskell actually takes a very in-depth and principled approach to managing state. State is necessary for many applications, so rather than eschew it entirely, the idea is to isolate it and make it as explicit as possible. Frequently in complex stateful applications this is done by use of the State monad, with lenses to handle mutation of that state. There's a lot of theory behind it, but in practice it ends up being pretty similar in difficulty level to managing state in more popular languages, just a hell of a lot safer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looking at the heat map, what does surprise me is how he never uses Escape or ^[. How does he managed to move out of Insert mode? My [ key is starting to wear out due to such heavy use..

<comment><USER6> I don't use vim, but from the parsing example he gives in the post, I'm guessing he uses C-c:

        `Mihere's some text^Cyyp$bimore ^C0~A.^C:w^M:q

[…]

> The lexer correctly determined that I started in normal mode by navigating > to a specific buffer using the `M mark, then typed _here 's some text_ in > insert mode, then[…]

<comment><USER15> Wow. I never knew about that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is very cool. Can anyone point me in the general direction of how to implement this on my machine? I understand logging keystrokes in Vim, but I'm not sure how to use the source code given for the lexer, or that given for the Makefile.

</comment><comment><USER8> ggvG$"zy can be replaced with ggVG"zy

Visual line mode is often very convenient.

Also, kana's text-object-entire plugin may come in handy here (many of her text-object plugins are very useful).

<comment><USER17> Or

        :%yz

<comment><USER8> Good call! But you'll need a space:

        :%y z

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This guy should definitely start using caps lock as control.

<comment><USER8> If you read more closely, he mentions that he uses a Kinesis Advantage where his control key is quite convenient. The heatmap is just plotted on a standard keyboard.

<comment><USER19> [http://www.drbunsen.org/an-affray-with-rsi/](http://www.drbunsen.org/an- affray-with-rsi/)

his end key is escape. on his keyboard i think it translates to being on a thumb

</comment></comment></comment><comment> a-b Bay area folks, please join Vim meetups [http://www.meetup.com/vim- ed/](http://www.meetup.com/vim-ed/)

</comment><comment><USER20> This needs to be a standalone tool. Is it on github somewhere? Or do I have to copy/paste from the article?

</comment><comment><USER21> Awesome stuff!!!!</comment>


Is Twitter becoming THE reference for the content web? - <AUTHOR>

Few weeks back, Twitter announced that the tweet button is present on 3 million websites now. Even looking around, almost every piece of new content (esp textual content), whether it is a WSJ article, blog post by an unknown guy or a local newspaper item, gets tweeted about almost as soon as it is published.<p>If almost all (or a lot of) of the web's content is getting referenced on Twitter, then can Twitter become the most authoritative source for finding relevant information? On any and all topics? <comment><USER2> Twitter is good creating awareness, but not the best at driving traffic, right now Stumbleupon is if you have a credible account, engaging content, and a little bit of luck. Many blog posts receive thousands of views from that site daily.</comment>


Ask HN: Which book would you read to grow your consulting business? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd start with Philip Morgan's work on Positioning:

[https://philipmorganconsulting.com/the-positioning-manual- fo...](https://philipmorganconsulting.com/the-positioning-manual-for- technical-firms/)

I'd also consume anything from Jonathan Stark:

[https://jonathanstark.com/hbin](https://jonathanstark.com/hbin)

</comment><comment><USER4> The Trusted Advisor

</comment><comment><USER5> Positioning by Al Ries</comment>


1475 Migrant Children Placed in Homes by the U.S. Gov Went Missing Last Year - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/5256734/government-missing-migrant-children/ <comment><USER2> "An AP investigation found in 2016 that more than two dozen unaccompanied children had been sent to homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay. At the time, many adult sponsors didn't undergo thorough background checks, government officials rarely visited homes and in some cases had no idea that sponsors had taken in several unrelated children, a possible sign of human trafficking."</comment>


Deep Dive into Intel Management Engine Disablement - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/deep-dive-into-intel-me-disablement/ <comment><USER2> Current discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15510428](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15510428).</comment>


"Free" as in "we own your IP" - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-17/free-as-in-we-own-your-ip.html

<comment><USER2> _" The average person reads at 250 words per minute, and slower than that when reading and comprehending on-screen text. This was part of a 6082 word agreement, which would take at least 24 minutes to read."_

Is any court going to take seriously the assertion that clicking on "I agree" underneath a 6082 word agreement really establishes a binding contract to transfer intellectual property? Doesn't a contract require a "meeting of the minds"[1], i.e., _intent by both parties_ to enter into the contract? In this case, it would seem that the person who agrees to the TOS will have been tricked into accepting an unusual condition that's not generally part of such agreements. (If a delivery person asked you to sign to indicate receipt of a package, but buried in the fine print was a clause saying that you were transferring the title to your car to FedEx, would that be a valid contract?)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_minds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_minds)

<comment><USER3> The term you're looking for is "contracts of adhesion," and yes, courts do acknowledge the potential for unfair treatment there. (That isn't to say that they'd strike this particular clause — just that they do recognize and account for the power inequality inherent in this kind of contract.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I understand what the fuss is all about. The language is included to avoid a situation where a user suggests an idea (that may or may not have already been planned / considered / in development), and then wants to get paid when the feature is eventually released. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

<comment><USER5> He has a problem with the _transfer_ of IP. He quotes a ToS clause from another company with grants a _perpetual free license_ to your idea, which he has no problem with.

With the "transfer-style" clause you could submit an idea, an then be sued if you use your own idea yourself. That indeed seems strange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> FYI, it looks like it's Datadog.

[https://github.com/DataDog/dd- agent/blob/master/packaging/da...](https://github.com/DataDog/dd- agent/blob/master/packaging/datadog-agent/win32/install_files/license.txt)

<comment><USER7> With line anchor: [https://github.com/DataDog/dd- agent/blob/master/packaging/da...](https://github.com/DataDog/dd- agent/blob/master/packaging/datadog- agent/win32/install_files/license.txt#L53).

<comment><USER8> Permalink in case they change it: [https://github.com/DataDog/dd- agent/blob/f911dd8955dd13aae1d...](https://github.com/DataDog/dd- agent/blob/f911dd8955dd13aae1da2a08a961d6a177eaa76d/packaging/datadog- agent/win32/install_files/license.txt#L53)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there any resources for startups looking for a set of sane, standard T&Cs without forking out for a lawyer?

<comment><USER10> You can freely copy pretty much anyone's as legal documents are not covered by copyright.

However, the problem there is that doing so may result you not having the protection you believe that the documents offer you. The false sense of security is now worse than just not having documents as you probably won't do anything to fix it and won't be aware of the risk.

We've put our legal docs online: [https://github.com/microcosm- cc/legal](https://github.com/microcosm-cc/legal)

Copy them if you want.

They are for discussion forums, a community CMS service. Broadly they consider a site admin to be the owner of a database/collective work and has database rights, that an individual owns their content but grants a right to the site admin to include that content in the database/collective work into the future. They allow the end user to request deletion of their profile (but acknowledges the data that forms part of the collaborative work will remain). And they dissolve the platform of any liability arising from the content. They place some obligations on the site admin to reactively moderate and handle reported/flagged content within some reasonable (24-48 hours) amount of time, and includes a policy of automatic escalation and content removal (from public view) for flagged content that isn't handled by a site admin. It allows for monetisation via charging for services or referral fees.

<comment><USER11> > You can freely copy pretty much anyone's as legal documents are not covered > by copyright.

Can you really? Any reference?

Personal answer: No, copying TOS for your own website infringes their lawyer's copyright. "Documents written by a lawyer are protected by copyright as much as the work of any other writer"[1]

In the next season: Can we patent a particular way of protecting your website's legal rights ;) ? That would be great fun. We should patent the cease-and-desist letters, unfortunately there is far too much prior art on those...

[1] [http://www2.mnbar.org/benchandbar/2007/apr07/drafting.htm](http://www2.mnbar.org/benchandbar/2007/apr07/drafting.htm)

<comment><USER10> Ah, you are correct for the US: [https://chillingeffects.org/copyright/faq.cgi#QID757](https://chillingeffects.org/copyright/faq.cgi#QID757)

You can indeed use our documents though and I'll add a licence to the repo to make that clear (after speaking to the lawyers involved first to ensure the licence I choose is the right one).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I don't read the phrase "By clicking you agree..." am I still agreeing when I click?

<comment><USER13> It's an interesting situation. It could be assumed that everyone sees that, and then perhaps not require proof that the person saw that statement. However if you apply that same logic it could easily be assumed people aren't actually reading the Terms, and so how could that be allowed to be binding? It is technically possible to have a time-check to see how long someone has spent on a Terms of Service page (if any at all), so there couldn't be the excuse that it is impossible otherwise. I suppose it would come down to a judge deciding who should be allotted more protection, and hopefully for the benefit of society. I imagine there must already be case law that says one way or another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just have two semesters of law at accountancy school , but I would recommend it to everyone.

Similar paragraph is pretty much every where, including GMail in less strong form.

<comment><USER15> The _transfer_ of IP Rights? From what I've seen it isn't everywhere - I've checked many performance monitoring agreements, and agreements of other software. Many performance monitoring companies require you give them a license to your ideas. But a few go further than that - and want to transfer the IP rights as well. Why go that extra step? Very successful monitoring companies haven't needed this.

Ultimately, our lawyers said "no" to this clause.

<comment><USER14> This is from gmail license:

When you upload ... you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use ... modify, create derivative work. The rights you grant ... are for... improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services ....

<comment><USER16> That's very different. I license Google to use my idea, it is still my idea. I can still do whatever else I want with it.

If I transfer it then it belongs to Google now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What I don't like about PHP - b-man http://www.bitstorm.org/edwin/en/php/

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as getnumberoffiles vs. getNumberOfFiles, unfortunately, it doesn't really matter, at least for the near future, because methods and functions (and classes) are case-insensitive anyway :(</comment>


How do you treat a dog with OCD? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170627-how-do-you-treat-a-dog-with-ocd <comment><USER2> A dog is a dog, a human is a human.

It really pains me when I see friends and family treating dogs like humans and trying to apply or mirror their own disorders on to their pets.

A caption from the article reads:

> Many labradors with CCD compulsively carry objects in their mouth.

Its a f __ __n Labrador, a gun dog. It was bred to carry objects in its mouth.

If your dog is misbehaving, it is probably because its anxious, caused by you being a bad owner (most of the time).

I had a border collie when I was younger, I loved that dog and made sure it was cared for. A friend who had another Collie never gave it the full attention it deserved. This resulted it in wreaking havoc in their family home.

They took it to "doggy school" along with all the housewives who couldn't control their pugs or designer dogs.

The more they tried to treat the dog as a human, the worse its behaviour got. I looked after it several times and after good long walks and a couple of slaps to the nose for bad behaviour, he was a great dog to look after.

Seriously, some people need to stop self diagnosing. Especially the faux OCD sufferers who complain about how they iike a "tidy bathroom or work desk".

OCD is a debilitating illness, we trivialize it with all these fake mental diagnoses people pick up after reading an article on psychology.com

To those who are thinking of getting a dog please think carefully:

\- Make sure you have the time and love to give it

\- Make sure you can be firm but not cruel to it

\- Make sure you can afford it

\- Make sure you try adopting or rehoming before going for a puppy

<comment><USER3> Border collies can be especially intense. Would recommend to a potential adopter to very strongly consider _not_ getting a border collie. Only if you are sure it is right for you, and that you are right for it, _then_ go for it.

<comment><USER4> If you get a border collie get a few sheep too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We took our family dog to a vet in London when it seemed unwell, the vet told us that our dog was depressed and recommended a prescription of expensive canine antidepressants.

Skeptical of this diagnosis, we took the dog to rural vet closer to home. This vet quickly diagnosed a physical ailment (anal gland compaction) and treated the dog - who was very happy by the time we got home.

<comment><USER6> Anal gland issues are very common. If you ever see your dog dragging his but you should have a vet do an exam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My Greyhound/Lab cross was diagnosed with OCD and treated with medications (too long ago to recall what we used), exercise, and lots of redirection training.

The diagnosis came after we had to have all his claws removed due to fungal infections. He would chew on his paws whenever he was left alone. Despite having 3 cats and another dog in the house, as soon as there were no more humans he would get anxious and OCD.

The meds helped to reduce, but the true treatment was redirection of his compulsions.

<comment><USER7> When you say "the true treatment was redirection of his compulsions", do you mean that a regimen of redirection eliminated compulsions, or that the compulsive behavior is replaced by a different behavior that isn't harmful?

<comment><USER6> replaced with different behavior. It never cured him, only broke him out of the cycle temporarily.

The key was being able to redirect his energy away from himself. Once I was able to spot the cycle and "break" him out of it, usually with a sharp sound, I could then redirect him to something else, his favorite toy, or to chase me around the couch.

It was the breaking of the cycle that seemed the most effective.

It did take a few months of medication before redirection could work. His issue was likely a combination of genetics and poor upbringing.

We got him at age 2....and was his fifth (and final) home. As you could imagine he never got over his separation anxiety even 13 years later.

Excuse me while I go and remove whatever just got in my eye ;)</comment></comment></comment>


NetBSD on the Nvidia  Jetson TK1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_on_the_nvidia_jetson

<comment><USER2> I love these ARM based systems that are available today - so much fun in such a small package.

I only wish they'd come with more RAM, or at least some way to upgrade the RAM .. I'm pretty spoiled with the 32gigs of RAM I've become accustomed to in my workstations, alas.

Anyone know of a multi-core ARM-based system with decent performance and 8 - 16gigs of RAM possibility? I'd love to have such a machine to hack with ..

<comment> david-given Until ARM64 becomes mainstream, unlikely --- ARMs are 32 bit devices and are limited to 4GB total. I don't know what the NetBSD userspace layout is but the largest process is probably going to be 2GB or 3GB.

(FWIW, I was looking at the writeup and thinking: finally, an ARM dev board with a decent amount of memory!)

<comment><USER3> The ARM architecture supports LPAE with up to 40 bits. So the memory cap is at 1024 GB. But I never came across a device utilizing LPAE.

Since there are also ways to get around the 4GB per process cap on 32Bit systems I never understood the craze for 64 bit systems. Most of the time 64 bit makes things slower (e.g. that is why the x32 linux abi exists) and leads to more power consumption.

<comment><USER4> PAE/LPAE are a really awful hack, and you are still resticted to 4GB per process, unless you do app specific PAE/LPAE custom allocators (also a terrible hack).

a real 64 bit processor with a real 64bit memory space is a much better solution all around.

<comment><USER3> How is PAE a "really awful hack"? As soon as your processor has a MMU there is neither any "hack" involved nor do you pay any performance penalty.

And if your app really needs more than 4GB of memory it might be sensible to fork() anyways since unix processes are dirt cheap. It also plays well with modern multicore architectures since it forces you to parallelize your problem.

The single most important performance issue we have today is really memory bandwidth and access time. If you carry 64 bit pointers around all the time you need roughly 30% percent more memory which is wasted on precious cache. So you have to either live with even more cache misses or you have to increase the cache size. And since cache is one of the major power and chip area consumer in todays processors increasing the cache is expensive in many ways.

<comment><USER5> A performance penalty and kernel memory management complexity comes from peripherals and kernel's inability to directly address all memory and resulting need for bounce buffers. Liked it was with ISA dma 16mb limitation and Linux in the bad old days.

<comment><USER6> You don't need PAE/LPAE to get to the situation where the kernel can't directly address all physical memory. That point is reached at ~900 MB, after which you need to compile the kernel with HIGHMEM support.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Git Is Freaking - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/git-is-freaking-awesome-3d8f8052d9b2 <comment><USER2> I don't have the authority to do so, but could someone change the title of this to "Git Is Freaking Awesome", so that it matches the article?</comment>


LevelUp is Down to Half Its Former Headcount, and Needs to Raise Money Fast - <AUTHOR> http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2013/04/02/levelup-is-down-to-half-its-former-headcount-and-needs-to-raise-money-fast/ <comment><USER2> This to me was an example of too many pivots. First a FourSquare clone, then a Groupon clone, now a Square clone. Seth seems like an interesting guy, but it's hard to feel the company doesn't have the right focus, always hopping to the next thing without perfecting the last one.

I remember I went to a bar that actually had LevelUp when it first launched in Philadelphia, and no one there had any idea what it was. Finally they got the manager on the phone and he had a vague recollection of talking to some rep about signing up. That just showed me how the marketing/education aspect was completely missing, despite their slow thorough rollout.

<comment><USER3> LevelUp has commented in the past how store employees were driving sales (and everyone gets/got $5 credit to try.) So it seems LU has been burning $5 of VC money to inflate revenues, but guests didn't repeat.

I guess the lesson is: no matter how much you raise, it's never enough if you keep firing in different directions.

<comment><USER4> I became concerned for LevelUp when I saw this graphic in a recent marketing email: <http://i.imgur.com/QC0PEDk.png>

Here's to hoping it all ends well for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interchange zero was such a weird move. They were losing money on every transaction and they decided to get to scale by losing even more money on even more transactions!

When SCVNGR pivoted from daily deals to this it seems they forgot to pick up a business model on the way.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know much about the startup, but I was definitely rooting for the founder Seth after his father died in a skiing accident last year on Mt Washington (with Seth present). Tough year for sure, hoping things work out for him and everyone else at LevelUp.

[http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/04/05/adventurer- prieb...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/04/05/adventurer-priebatsch- dies-fall-during-hike/w7xqgv7wvwgSoRwXHPZOMP/story.html)

<comment><USER7> Man I had no idea about his Dad.

My condolences!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They should integrate bitcoin, I stopped using levelup after a little while, but I would like to pay with bitcoin everywhere where levelup is accepted.

Just my 2 cents :)

<comment><USER9> This isn't a good idea.

1 - Merchants don't take Bitcoin. LevelUp would have to convert BTC to USD for the merchant, and swallow any exchange rate fluctuations that may have occurred in the meantime (the value of BTC is, after all, far from stable). Even highly stable currencies are not completely free to exchange due to minor fluctuations in value over time. This is a money-losing proposition for LevelUp. This is part of why if you're spending GBP with your USD credit card the fees start piling up.

2 - Who would use it? Bitcoin has basically no presence outside of the tech community - and even there it's a _tiny corner_ of the tech community (it's also the corner that thinks it's larger than it actually is). It would be nonsensical to invest that much effort doing such a niche thing in a product that is intended to be mass-market.

3 - Opportunity cost. LevelUp is in a do-or-die situation, there is no way they should do this over the thousands of other things they can do to save their company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems at least some on here know a bit about the company, and seem impressed by the concept at least. I know next to nothing about them, so let me give you the view of the proverbial "Joe Sixpack". Summary: I know of only one vendor that uses it, and LevelUp has to overcome my objections to using it right there at the point-of-sale.

There's one restaurant that my wife and I go to that has the POS thingy. We live in Redmond, not exactly a town full of tech-averse folk. So problem #1 is: is it worth the trouble of signing up, dealing with one more daily email newsletter (because I forgot to uncheck the box), and having to get my phone out and find the app every time we eat there? Answer: a resounding "no".

Problem #2: you have to sell me at the point-of-sale, because I frankly don't care enough to go look it up. What does LevelUp do, other than having a glowing thing that wants to have something to do with my phone? I have no idea, probably something to do with paying for my meal. If that's the only answer I can come with at the time of sale, I refer you to Problem #1.

Problem #3: I know of only one vendor in tech-savvy Redmond, WA that uses it. Why even bother to dirty my inbox and the app screen of my phone?

Problem #4: how's the user experience? Does it suck? Do rainbows and unicorns sprout from my phone when I use it? I have no idea. What I do know is that whipping out my credit card is quick and easy, and everyone involved in the transaction knows how to go through the motions. LevelUp competes against a known quantity, and that known quantity is actually pretty good.

From reading the comments, I gather that there's some kind of rewards system. Hmm, first I knew of it (see POS sales problem). Not exactly a positive for me, as I'm growing tired of loyalty cards and variations thereof.

So that's the view of a guy who knows almost nothing about LevelUp. Too much to fiddle with, and no perceived value for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> TBH I only ever use LevelUp when I think I might shop at a place a few times and get a few bucks of credit from LevelUp's investors. Never once have I used LevelUp because it's a more convenient form of payment. If I want to pay for something, I flip open my wallet and pull a credit card out because it's right out in front. With LevelUp, I need to look through multiple pages worth of app icons to find my payment options. No thanks. Yeah, a user could organize their apps, but why would they do so for your benefit. They will just use a credit card or cash because it's the path of least resistance. The truth is that this will only ever change once we reach the point that I only carry around a cell phone and never carry around a wallet. As long as the wallet is in my back pocket, I have a path of least resistance that will beat my phone every time and that is really unlikely to change until cell phones never fail. i.e. phones will need days worth of battery life, be water proof or at least water resistant and everything in my wallet can exist on my phone, including government issued identification.

If you want to make payment apps gain widespread adoption then campaign to get governments to let my put my ID on my phone, until then I will carry around a wallet and a credit card will be sitting there right next to the ID.

</comment><comment><USER12> LevelUp has their devices in dozens of merchants in my area (Brookline MA), and as an experiment, I tried using it in as many of them as I could.

So far I have been unable to pay using LevelUp _even once_. The cashier doesn't know how to use it, or it doesn't have a signal, or it's not turned on, or someone's put a sticker over the camera, or ...

I'd say I've tried 20 or 30 times and had zero successes.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've got to say the 'facebook deployment strategy' for LevelUp is really solid. I was at a conference in Boston and near campuses all the employees at restaurants I went to knew what it was and had people using it. The problem is people are used to thinking of this as an online payments problem, instead of a ubiquitous solution -- the average region will have isolated stores with no adoption, but there are pockets where the solution works really well and has widespread usage. Density is really important to the consumer value proposition, as are having the right demographics in your early regions. From what I saw in Boston they got it right. It will be interesting to see how that plays out with expansion through channel sales with Heartland. I think LevelUp is different enough from Square that there is room in the market for both of them. Also, Seth is a really great guy who's easy to root for. A lot of the problems that got mentioned in this thread are being solved for instance reducing hardware fees reduces the chances of a retailer pulling the platform.

</comment><comment><USER14> At SXSW Interactive this year, LevelUp was pushing big for its mobile app payment technology.

I'm curious about the market for payments with mobile apps - to me it seems similar to QR Codes, where pundits get excited over the possibilities, but users just aren't interested. I'm guessing this is different outside the US, where credit and debit cards are extremely popular.

<comment><USER15> Yea, they did a killer job at SXSW this year getting in front of a lot of people and making real transactions. The hardware is great, but getting stuff into vendors is hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've used LevelUp a few times when it seemed novel to me, but that's about it. Just last week I got an email from them offering me a $2 credit to a frozen yogurt shop near my office, and I figured I'll stop in for a froyo for next- to-nothing. I get there and they don't even have the scanner on the counter anymore. Oops.

Honestly I think Square, with their auto-tab functionality, is the only mobile payment system I find myself consistently using as it is the only option that _reduces_ the amount of work I do. Google Wallet, LevelUp, and friends require that I hold up the line to dig out my phone, unlock it, open an app, and present it to some reader. That's _more_ work than just pulling out my wallet and giving them a card out of it.

</comment><comment><USER17> LevelUp's problems come (mostly) down to product.

Merchants - Don't know how to use LevelUp. Don't have it displayed. User experience for merchants is wonky and unintuitive to boot.

Customers - Also have a strange, unintuitive user experience. Paying via "QR Code" scares some. Many consumers would much rather pay by handing over their card, as "antiquated" as that may be.

These issues combined mean that paying via LevelUp is slow and annoying.

The pivot to white label makes sense - except for the fact that their sales team seemingly doesn't understand complex enterprise sales. So, success there seem unlikely as well.

Do I like the idea of LevelUp? Yes. Would I ever use LevelUp? No.

</comment><comment><USER18> Mobile payments is such a hard push right now. It might be useful to both merchants and consumers to jump on board but man the technology barrier is the killer in getting anyone comfortable using it. We are toying around the idea of mobile payments at carddrop running some pilots and I admit its disappointing despite the advantages advertised. The only company that could find Okay success is Starbucks through their prepaid mobile card. Even Google wallet seems to be struggling. I've seen LevelUp in couple of stores and I made sure to ask how often people use it to pay and the answer is always almost never.

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember hearing about SCVNGR back in 2010 before the pivot to LevelUp (I think it caught my eye since I'm a Princeton grad). Back then the company really seemed to be touting allowing brands to let people have fun with their friends through various location based things, and it seemed pretty appealing to me especially if I lived in a city like SF, NYC, or Boston.

Seems like with each pivot, they've shifted from the social/fun side to the business/profit side, which parallels the way the startup trend as a whole has moved over the past few years. That kind of followership is a bit eyebrow raising.

</comment><comment><USER20> What service is LevelUp providing? A loyalty club and CRM for only customers that use LevelUp? It seems that shop owners are either town between forcing a major change on customers or just having a LevelUp POS incase a customer wants to use his phone to pay for stuff. For this to be sustainable, shop owners should have incentive to go LevelUp only. Also are the reduced merchant fees contracted?

<comment><USER21> As a consumer, if you use LevelUp at the merchant, you get x dollar credit for every y dollars you spend. For the merchant, you aren't paying any credit card fees on that y amount. For LevelUp, they take a cut from the x dollar credit amount.

I assume that LevelUp must batch credit card transactions in order to make the fees cheap for them, and that probably requires floating a good amount of money on a daily/weekly basis.

I use LevelUp almost everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. A lot of places in downtown Boston take it, and it seems like it's great for both the merchant and the consumer.

<comment><USER16> >I assume that LevelUp must batch credit card transactions in order to make the fees cheap for them,

Interestingly enough it was only this past week that they mentioned they were going to start doing this (at least going off the email I got from them). They sent the message to advise customers that they'll start batching up transactions across a few days' span and then sending a second email when they settle them all at once.

<comment><USER21> I did notice the email saying that I had been charged ~30 dollars for a bunch of purchases I made but I probably deleted the message about the change. I figured they were always doing this, but now it makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It surprises me to read about all these negative experiences people have trying to use level up. I've had only one experience where the machine was broken, and I use it to pay for everything from groceries to bowling. Where I live about 2/3 of businesses I frequent accept level up and they all offer great discounts, so I would be sad to see them go under.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sad, I use it all the time since most of my favorite places use it and they don't support Square Wallet.

</comment><comment><USER24> judging by the response of the tweets from seth himself, maybe this is just a hit piece? if it's sensational, let's let level heads prevail :)

</comment><comment><USER25> it all starts with thinking a green, bizarre little troll could actually build a profitable company that is easily repeatable by anyone with 2 years of university

</comment><comment><USER26> Leading with the words "LevelUp is Down..." is not the smartest choice for a headline.</comment>


Chrome: 50 releases and counting - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.googleblog.com/2016/04/chrome-50-releases-and-counting.html <comment><USER2> Slightly OT: I wish more projects with a rapid release cycle would adopt CalVer (calendar-based versioning, like Ubuntu).

I find they're much easier to parse for humans, and the semantics are just fine for projects such as Chrome and Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER3> > 9.1 Billion: forms and passwords automatically filled each month ...

I simultaneously love and and terrified by chrome's capability to store and sync my passwords to all the websites I log into. It sucks when you use another browser: only by repeatedly typing the password(s) can I train myself to recall it. It's fantastic on all of the devices I use Chrome on. And I'm placing absolutely enormous trust in Google that's probably pretty risky for many reasons.

Yes, I acknowledge that there are other solutions available as plugins and whatnot. It's just too remarkably convenient to keep using the builtin solution.

<comment><USER2> You can actually set a passphrase that's used to encrypt all synchronized items, before they're being sent to Google[1].

[1]: [https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find out interesting that they got the numbers for pages viewed and password forms filled in: I would think that those activities only involve the client side and should not hit the google backend at all. So those stats would have to be gathered by chrome and sent back to google at some point.

(Unless they are approximate numbers)

I'm aware that complaining about this when using Chrome is like complaining about wet feet when you go diving in the ocean, but just out of couriosity: Is there a list of things that chrome keeps statistics about and a way to access those statistics?

<comment><USER2> I'm guessing this is part of the telemetry Chrome gathers. IIRC when you first install Chrome, there's an opt-in (or opt-out) where it asks the user whether sending usage information to Google is okay. Firefox does something similar.

The total on that page is either the number from their telemetry or an approximation based on those numbers and the size of their user base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if Chrome was the first or one of the first desktop apps to do that, but they really brought a breakthrough in continuous updates, and it would be totally worth that even if we wouldn't use Chrome itself anymore. Crazy times when we had to manually update all the time from Firefox 3.whatever to 3.whateverelse to get some minor improvement in functionality plus 10 new things breaking until the next update. I used to keep the last couple of versions of Firefox in my Apps folder just in case.

</comment><comment><USER6> Now, if they'd only enable extensions for android versions... so that ublock/ghostery could work...</comment>


A fast BigInt.js in an evening, compiling C++ to JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/leaningtech/a-fast-bigint-js-in-an-evening-compiling-c-to-javascript-db61ae733512 <comment><USER2> Thanks, I wrote the article, ask away!</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Is Trying to Play You – Again - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2019/03/06/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-privacy/ <comment><USER2> I cannot be the only person who thinks it's hilarious reading articles like this while there's a Facebook share button dangling in my face. I remember an article the EFF published about how these buttons track you. Lo! There's a Facebook share button to the left of the EFF article.

<comment><USER3> The only way this wouldn't happen is if the corporate side of the publication is fully in sync (or in control) with the editorial side. I consider the fact that the point of view put forth by the article was not completely in line with their actions speak to the journalistic independence we'd like to see.

<comment><USER4> That is a fair way of looking at this, but in the present situation, I would consider the decision about whether to include a Facebook share button on one's homepage (or more generally the question which third-party code you allow to run) as a fundamental question of operating a commercial web site. From an economical perspective, you can't blame anyone for doing it, but if you are, don't claim the moral highground either.

<comment><USER5> I might not be up to date, but a few years ago when I dealt more with this I found ways of creating a facebook share button that mimics the functionality of the real thing without adding facebooks javascript to my site. It was some special URL if I am not mistaken.

Not all facebook share buttons might be created equal.

<comment><USER6> This is, and always has been, trivial to do. There's a URL scheme you use to generate a "share this" link to Facebook with the appropriate variable inserted. You can style it however you like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's articles like this that really illustrate how the media twists reality to suit their narrative. Mark's post was about focusing on privacy, which is what the public and the media have been demanding, and now they're accusing him of lying. I also saw an article that use the term "private", instead of "privacy", because obviously "private" is bad and "open" is good.

Anyone who keeps lapping up the media as a source of truth is living in a complete illusion far separated from reality. These companies are bleeding money to new tech and firing their journalists to stay afloat. The media has lost any sense of real journalism in order to suit their narrative and sell subscriptions based on public FUD. Really disturbing to watch.</comment>


Shetland beach cleaner finds message in a bottle from 2600 magazine - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-51586980 <comment><AUTHOR> My favourite part of this is the guy spending his reward from 2600 on restoring a phone box. No doubt a worthy back pager</comment>


Anil Dash Is the New CEO of Fog Creek Software - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/06/anil-dash-is-the-new-ceo-of-fog-creek-software/ <comment><USER3> Wow Stack Overflow has 300 employees!!

So at a typical benchmark of $500,000 of revenue per employee they should be making atleast $150,000,000 per year in revenue. I have to imagine that they are making much more than that, given that I've seen valuations of $500 million.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/revenue-per-employee-at- apple...](http://www.businessinsider.com/revenue-per-employee-at-apple- facebook-google-others-2016-2)

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are still very lean and well run, I'm a big fan, but the fact that they do data dumps makes me feel much better.

I've seen too many bankruptcy/wind downs of companies, and one thing you can usually bet on is that once that process starts, the data gets locked up and treated the same as any other asset, which is to say, sold to pay debts. Or put another way, once a company gets into trouble, releasing their data often gets taken off the table as an option.

Again as a reminder to startup employee's, the company was founded in 2008 and hasn't really had any talk about going public or selling, so always make sure you get atleast a market salary from any startup you join as your options even at a well run company could take more than a decade to provide you with liquidity.

 __EDIT __I can 't math

<comment><USER4> Is $500,000 a common benchmark? A couple of quick searches seemed to show $100-300K for tech companies with a $1 billion valuation. My current employer has something like 315 employees, and while I'm not privy to their financials or our investors projections, the thought of hitting that kind of revenue target is bonkers to me.

<comment><USER5> Benchmark for the big-5 is about $1M/employee/year in revenue. FB is about $1.2M, GOOG is just over $1M, AAPL is $1.8M, MSFT is $740K, AMZN is $460K (but recall that they have a large warehouse staff and with their 3rd-party sellers, they only recognize revenue off the fees charged to the seller and not off GMV). That's how they can afford to pay $400K+ total comps, and why they're sucking the atmosphere out of the engineering hiring market.

It can vary a lot by industry. A number of recent unicorns are glorified restaurants or retail shops that happen to deliver their product over the web or smartphone. Their revenue/employee numbers are going to be much lower because they don't have any significant proprietary technology to build an economic moat around, and their employees cost less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anil is a kind, thoughtful person and one of the few people in technology who will go out of his way to make time for you and genuinely get to know you without an agenda or need for a value exchange - I really admire that. We spent an afternoon wandering New York the time I met him, and he's truly constantly considering how he can impact the world in a meaningful way.

This is really, really cool, and he's a great fit for the job - along with the talented team over there. Super excited about this, personally.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think of Dash as very respected in media, and I think of Fog Creek as being as the "engineers' company", so was surprised to see him CEO of Fog Creek and Joel CEO of StackOverflow. If anything, I would've thought it'd be vice versa? It's a testament to what a game-changer StackOverflow is in terms of information-design-for-humans that it could be capably headed by someone like Dash as much as Spolsky.

But if Fog Creek Software is tasked with coming up with more products and software-as-services, I would've thought that Spolsky would be more fit for that, even if StackOverflow is the biggest piece of the pie? (I admit to knowing little of how executive structures work though)

<comment><USER8> I think there's something in the idea of putting people in roles where they balance out other people's strengths and weaknesses.

Fog Creek probably doesn't lack for smart engineering people, but might benefit from someone who has a wider view on media and society in general - <USER2> well as enterprise sales, which Spolsky calls out specifically. Tech people and engineers, on the whole, loathe enterprise sales.

Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan at HubSpot spring to mind two guys who you might not ordinarily put together but they've both got a big role, and it's the same kind of deal. Shah is an engineer and a hacker, Halligan is more of an old-school sales guy.

The reason why this is a smart move is the same reason why it is counterintuitive.

<comment><USER9> Fog Creek has always been an extremely well managed company but very quiet. They could use the press and marketing savvy upgrade.

<comment><USER10> Agreed, Fog Creek has been fascinating to watch over the years, back then (and now) they seemed to follow a completely different path to building a software company and the incredible detail they put into developer experience, I used to love watching their YouTube channel when it was about their internal setup/staffing etc.

Was always a dream to build a company like that, one day maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ...as an aside, out of curiosity, does anyone know why the "...and the company goes away." phrase was linked to www.towerrecordsmovie.com specifically and how is that related to Fog Creek ?

<comment><USER12> Tower Records was so wrapped up in selling physical goods (CDs and earlier, LPs) that they were totally blindsided by the rapid change in listener preferences. They didn't react quickly enough, soon enough, as sales fell off a cliff thinking it a temporary correction instead of a fundamental change.

So the lesson is that once a company has "made it" they should diversify so that they aren't dependent on a single income stream.

You should totally watch the film, btw. I used to shop at the Watt Avenue store in Sacramento, and the breadth of titles they carried was amazing. Easily five times the product that a store like Sam Goody would carry, and in niches you'd never see anywhere else. If there were such a thing as Celtic Rap, Tower Records would have carried it.

<comment><USER13> You had me curious so I looked it up. There is in fact at least one Celtic Rap group out there: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manau_(group)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manau_\(group\)).

<comment><USER12> Of course there had to be one. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For Creek Software is interesting and unique in that each product they develop has a CEO!

<comment><USER15> Fog Creek Software, Stack Overflow and Trello are all separate companies.

<comment><USER16> What are the pros and cons of Fog Creek spinning out its successful products into separate companies, rather than the typical model of simply keeping them?

<comment><USER15> Joel's article on the Trello spinoff is instructive: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2014/07/24/trello- inc/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2014/07/24/trello-inc/)

tl;dr - Gave investors the ability to invest solely in Trello instead of all of Fog Creek.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Fog Creek have a diversity report card yet?

</comment><comment><USER18> Anil is a bit difficult even if you accidentally disagree with him on politics, for a capitalist CEO he can be very left wing at times.

</comment><comment><USER19> What is Joel going to do?

<comment><USER20> make snarky comments about how people still cannot seem to read the article before asking a question answered in said article?</comment></comment>


Oregon's Self-Employment Assistance Program: States Supporting Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2011/06/obscure_state_unemployment_pro.html

<comment><USER2> I'm one of the founders mentioned, and others are here as well - please don't hesitate to ask any questions about the program.</comment>


The Top Entrepreneurs of the Last 100 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.focus.com/fyi/other/top-entrepreneurs-last-100-years/

<comment><USER2> I don't knwo if he is the best fit because he was more of an inventor but I would think Tesla would have a place on this list.

<comment><USER3> there are a lot of people that could be on this list but it is hard to argue with the people on it, many came from mediocre upbringings to become brands

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I particularly like the founder of Wal-Mart's quote: There is only one boss. the customer. and he can fire anybody in the company"

</comment><comment><USER5> Where's Ambani at?</comment>


Decentralized Identifiers – DIDs - <AUTHOR> https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-spec/ <comment><USER2> This is really annoying as the technical term for the identifier of a phone number--one of the most prototypical centralized identifiers--is also a "DID": a Direct Inward Dialing (number, but we don't say "number"). So now "in the future, people won't tell each other their DID to let people call them, they will give them their DID" :/.

<comment><USER3> Does anybody care what the W3C think anymore? I was under the impression that the WHATWG was formed due to the browser developers' frustrations with the W3C and they now mostly ignore what W3C says or does. So, what are the chances of this actually catching on?

<comment><USER4> W3C is the coordination point for WebAssembly: [https://www.w3.org/wasm/](https://www.w3.org/wasm/)

Personally, I think WebAssembly is going to massively revolutionize app delivery. In ten years we will have all but forgotten about JavaScript, switching instead to client-side apps that run at near binary-native speeds, written in real languages with complete type systems.

<comment><USER3> Ah, thanks, I didn't know that WebAssembly was a W3C drive. Good to know they still have relevance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is an interesting paper on using DID in combination with ActivityPub [0] presented in the 'Rebooting the Web-of-Trust' [1] event in Fall 2017.

> ActivityPub implementations at the present moment rely on HTTPS as their > transport, which in turn relies on two centralized systems: DNS and SSL > certificate authorities. Is there any way to bring self-sovereignty to the > federated social web?

> Thankfully there is; ActivityPub was written intentionally to be layerable > on any protocol that can support HTTP GET and POST verbs. The Decentralized > Identifiers specification looks to be a good fit for ActivityPub.

[..]

> Here we see an example of Alyssa's profile that is entirely free of > traditional centralized DNS authorities. We were able to look up Alyssa's > object via her DID, but we still have access to all her endpoints, which in > this case are pointing to Tor Hidden Services. No central DNS required!

[0] [https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rebooting-the-web-of- trust...](https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rebooting-the-web-of-trust- fall2017/blob/master/topics-and-advance-readings/activitypub-decentralized- distributed.md#distributed-identity)

[1] [http://www.weboftrust.info/](http://www.weboftrust.info/)

</comment><comment><USER5> There was a talk about this on the Decentralized Web Summit. Unfortunately the (livestreaming) version uploaded to Youtube is (still) borked, but they have reuploaded the videos to the IA directly: [https://archive.org/details/decentralizedwebsummitmedia-2018...](https://archive.org/details/decentralizedwebsummitmedia-2018-hashlounge/DWeb+Hash+Lounge+080118+06.mov) (from 12m00s on).

Would anyone know how they plan to represent Idemix (or U-Prove) keys and proofs, for example for Hyperledger Indy / Sovrin? There doesn't seem to be anything in the w3id.org JSON-LD schemes, and while wading through the mountains of code of Hyperledger Indy I haven't been able to find any interface to DID documents.

<comment><USER6> I don't know in particular how they intend to portray Idemix, but both Hyperleger and Sovrin are heavily involved in the development of the spec, so I'm pretty sure they're thinking of it.

Generally speaking, keys are embedded in a DID document in a standard text format and proofs are published as a signature using one of the published keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > It is also similar to the relationship of the IETF generic URN specification > ([URN]) and a specific URN namespace definition (such as the UUID URN > namespace defined in [RFC4122]). The difference is that a DID method > specification, in addition to defining a specific DID scheme, must also > specify the methods for reading, writing, and revoking DID records on the > network for which it is written.

So let's stick with UUID for now…

<comment><AUTHOR> "Horsepower - The term was adopted in the late 18th century by Scottish engineer James Watt to compare the output of steam engines with the power of draft horses."

So let's stick with horses for now :)

DIDs are different beasts than UUIDs, with different design goals [0]. Is why they need this specification.

Whether the specification is any good, is a topic of discussion, of course..

[0] [https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-spec/#design- goals](https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-spec/#design-goals)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> While I can see the need for DIDs somewhat, I feel like content-addressing documents fits the decentralization paradigm much better when it comes to a lot of types of data.

While it doesn't have all the properties of DIDs, it has the most important ones, and comes with some other nice ones (automatic deduplication).

<comment><USER9> I may be wrong, but are you thinking of DIDs as an ID for an object, like CIDs in IPFS. If so, then you are confusing what DIDs are for. They're created as a method of using some distributed network as a backend for a entity (could be a Human, could be another machine) to store their identifiers on. These entity's can take actions, like signing a doc and uploading it to a blockchain. The DID in this instance is the record of verifying who this entity is, and if they should be trusted to do that action.

Content addressable IDs, or CIDs in IPFS are used to identity a document or object.

So the distinction here is objects (some record of data) vs entities (something that can take actions).

<comment><USER8> For a lot of use-cases cases I don't see a need for a distinction between the two (if you don't have a requirement for mutability, revokation, etc.). Especially in recent developments in the decentralized space, it seems to me that having most data (regardless of object or entity) be immutable and content-addressable, makes reasoning about systems a lot easier, since you don't have to worry about the data you are pointing to changing from under you. Of course, different use-cases have different needs.

> The DID in this instance is the record of verifying who this entity is, and > if they should be trusted to do that action.

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use a CID for that. As long as the content the CID points to contains the record of the entity, and a cryptographic signature, you could do the exact same thing.

<comment><USER9> Except in the DID instance, you can represent a DID using a CID. This is how IPFS creates their implementation called IPID[0]. DID is a schema/protocol for DID and DDO, and its associated content. Its one step higher then a CID.

[0] - [https://github.com/jonnycrunch/ipid](https://github.com/jonnycrunch/ipid)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So... how, exactly, do they propose tying together a human being with a public key, thus creating a DID, without the use of a central registrar?

As far as I can see, in the end it just comes down to users trusting the same set of registrars — which we already have in the form of Certificate Authorities.

<comment><USER11> "So... how, exactly, do they propose tying together a human being with a public key, thus creating a DID, without the use of a central registrar?"

The answer, as you might expect, is with a blockchain.

There was a booth last week at the decentralized web summit for the "BTCR DID Method" which I believe is sponsored by W3C. You can read about it by going here:

[https://decentralizedweb.net/science- fair/](https://decentralizedweb.net/science-fair/)

Here you are:

"The Bitcoin Reference DID method supports DIDs on the public Bitcoin blockchain The Bitcoin Reference DID method (did:btcr) supports DIDs on the public Bitcoin blockchain. The Bitcoin Reference method has minimal design goals: a DID trust anchor based on the Bitcoin blockchain, updates publicly visible and auditable via Bitcoin transactions, and optionally, additional DID Document information referenced in the transaction OP_RETURN data field. No other Personal Identifiable Information (PII) would be placed on the immutable blockchain.

A secondary intent of the BTCR method is to serve as a very conservative, very secure example and some best practices for creating a DID method. The use cases for BTCR are focused on anonymous and pseudo-anonymous identities, web- of-trust style webs of identity, and absolute mimimal personal information disclosure. Other DID methods will likely need to loosen these standards.

Some aspects of the BTCR method will not be practical if inappropriately scaled — for instance, there is a transaction cost to update keys and DDO object, potential UTXO inflation (i.e. one additional unspent output for every BTCR-based identity), and even if segwit isn't used it could cause blockchain bloat. However, identities using the BTCR method can be a strong as Bitcoin itself -- currently securing billions of dollars of digital value."

<comment><USER10> I still don't quite get it.

What would I put in the Bitcoin blockchain in order to create a DID? A public key hash and what else? In other words, what do I want to tie together with a public key, using the Bitcoin blockchain, in order to use it as an identifier?

<comment><USER12> It depends on the DID method. The DID is a string with the following pattern: did:<method>:<method-specific-id>. There's a variety of DID methods with different underlying public ledgers, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The <method-specific-id> depends on the <method>. For instance, there's DID methods that use the underlying wallet address as the id and others use the smart contract deployed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get the motivation for this kind of identifier. I have a project in mind that could make use of the DID format. So I was optimistic to see that thought has been put into it.

But when I read "if _value_ is an object... if _value_ is a string..." (from the specification of publicKey property), I worry. Did the authors choose JSON to take advantage of loose typing as a "feature"? Is it OK for a specification to require this kind of introspection and conditional logic?

</comment><comment><USER14> Went down this rabbit hole a couple months back, like blockchain I'm sure there are a couple use cases, but most identify is inherently centralized as it is formed through relationships.

<comment><USER15> Good point about identity being relationship-based. I've found DID's to be quite effective in providing cryptographically verifiable social proofs that are powered by our relationships. Keybase has an excellent integration of DID's and social proofs. I've verified my Hacker news identity and linked this identity to my Keybase identity, along with my Twitter, FB and github identity. If you know me on one of these platforms, you can cross-reference my identity and see that I've attested to my identity across multiple platforms. When you go to my Keybase profile, you can see I am currently in control of these identities, and I can revoke the keys I've created as provable links between my various profiles. This layering of social proofs is powerful in a variety of ways.</comment></comment>


Llvm-Dev RFC: Efficiency Sanitizer - <AUTHOR> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-April/098355.html <comment><USER2> > We are proposing the name EfficiencySanitizer, or "esan" for short, to refer > to this suite of dynamic instrumentation tools for improving program > efficiency. As we have a number of different tools that share quite a bit of > their implementation we plan to consider them sub-tools under the > EfficiencySanitizer umbrella, rather than adding a whole bunch of separate > instrumentation and runtime library components.

> While these tools are not addressing correctness issues like other > sanitizers, they will be sharing a lot of the existing sanitizer runtime > library support code. Furthermore, users are already familiar with the > sanitizer brand, and it seems better to extend that concept rather than add > some new term.

Is the advertisement value really worth this abuse of "sanitizer"? This is not a sanitizer.

<comment><USER3> They claim that it is sharing a lot of the existing code. Although I'm sure they could name it differently if they wanted to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The existing sanitizers are awesome. Since they are based on runtime instrumentation and not static analysis, essentially all of the problems are real and actionable.

After I used them to find a lot of real bugs, the great advantage of LLVM's modular architecture dawned on me. I had read this chapter before, but it honestly seems a bit bland and general... [http://www.aosabook.org/en/llvm.html](http://www.aosabook.org/en/llvm.html)

But when you see it in action, you know that LLVM is a huge advance over the state of the art. Looking forward to the efficiency sanitizers too.

<comment><USER5> They've also really made emacs a very viable IDE using rtags/irony + cmake. It's a real shame the GNU ecosystem has fallen behind b/c it's really mature, integrated with system tools and also modular (just not _as_ module) - and I'm stuck using it if I want to target embedded =(

<comment><USER6> GCC has AddressSanitizer (including the Linux Kernel AddressSanitizer), ThreadSanitizer, LeakSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer:

[https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-5.3.0/gcc/Debugging- Optio...](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-5.3.0/gcc/Debugging- Options.html#index-fsanitize_003daddress-648)</comment></comment></comment>