Stripe launches beta in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/01/payments-startups-stripe-launches-limited-beta-for-uk-payments-with-euros-on-the-way/ <comment><USER3> Does anyone know why the link has changed from TNW (<http://thenextweb.com/uk/2013/03/01/stripe-uk-europe-launch/>) to TechCrunch?

It's not really important, just curious if this is some kind of mod preference for TC? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question - I was the original submitter and didn't change it, so must have been one of the mod's. I preferred TNW's version as there is more context in it.

Also TNW had the story first - Mike Butcher was late on stage after Patrick's announcement because he was furiously writing up the story for TC :)

<comment><USER3> The plot thickens....

It seems to make more sense to post the TC article and let them "battle it out" with votes. With no justification what's been done here certainly does seem odd and, frankly, smacks of some kind of ulterior motive...

<comment><USER4> ... That TC pays YC for promoting articles? Wouldn't be surprising given the ycombinator-centric posts. But it's also possible that mods think readers give more credence to TC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Have been waiting a long time for this :)

When announcing it onstage Patrick said anyone interested in participating in the beta should email him:

      patrick [at] stripe [dot] com

I hope he's ready for the email deluge !

<comment><USER5> Ready :-)

<comment><USER6> Any idea on a timeframe for full UK launch?

Stripe is a service I'd love to use, however I'm not yet at a stage(small revenues) where it would be worth bothering you to be part of the 'closed beta'.

<comment><USER5> Feel free to email! That way you'll definitely get invited when we launch fully.

With regard to timeframes -- it really depends on what we discover during the beta. There are no major, obvious blockers right now, though.

<comment><USER7> Will launches in new countries start happening faster after the first one? I have no idea which part of the process is the major blocker for this kind of service, but I would imagine that if it's laws, then every extra country will take a lot of extra work.

I ask this as an Israeli that would love to have a good service, but seeing as we're a tiny country I doubt we're high up on the list :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm starting to hate Stripe threads because all it becomes is people complaining it's not available in their country.

And of course people complaining about people complaining about it not being available in their country.

<comment><USER9> What you see as complaining maybe Stripe sees as valuable feedback that they can use in their business strategy. Imagine if there were 0 "complaints" - couldn't that be interpreted as a meaningful signal that interest in Stripe outside of the US is low?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, you're right. Though I can see how it'd be kinda annoying for others, we definitely find it really useful to hear about the things people wish Stripe did differently.

<comment><USER8> You guys are doing a fantastic job. Keep it up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Article 49 of the Treaty on the functioning of the EU (the freedom of establishment principle) allows entrepreneurs to set up a company in any EU country."

[http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/starting- business/setti...](http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/starting- business/setting-up/index_en.htm)

Also, "Any business legally established in an EU country may open a secondary establishment (office, agency, branch or subsidiary) in another EU country."

[http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/expanding- business/open...](http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/expanding- business/opening-branch/index_en.htm)

Now, someone should set up a web service which makes it easy for EU citizens to incorporate in the UK.

<comment><USER11> _Now, someone should set up a web service which makes it easy for EU citizens to incorporate in the UK._

Dozens already [http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/toolsToHelp/formationAgents...](http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/toolsToHelp/formationAgents.shtml)

<comment><USER12> Or just apply to Companies House directly: <https://ewf.companieshouse.gov.uk//runpage?page=welcome> \- There's almost nothing to it.

I did it a couple of years ago and it literally took 15 minutes of my time and cost £15.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Today is a watershed moment for UK developers. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that. In a few years, we will look back on our lives before this day and wonder

a) Why the hell we put up with all that crap for so long. b) Why didn't we build Stripe ourselves.

<comment><USER14> > b) Why didn't we build Stripe ourselves.

In a way, we did. There are a couple of UK developers at Stripe -- and we want more: <https://stripe.com/jobs>.

<comment><USER15> But seriously, why didn't people in other countries do their own Stripe? It's not like the UK is short of talented engineers.

<comment><USER16> Paymill did a very similar service and is available in quite a few countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is one of the best things that's happened to the UK in the payment industry in years.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does it support Verified by Visa or Mastercard SecureCode? Not that I like them much, but they provide some protection for merchants against chargebacks.

<comment><USER19> I would also like to hear about their plans in this area. The current information on the Stripe web site says they don't use 3D Secure:

<https://support.stripe.com/questions/3d-secure>

I think if they're going to be a serious card payment service in Europe, that will need to change reasonably quickly. With the issue of transferring liability for chargebacks, saying "Well, US banks don't do it, and European banks understand that" isn't going to cut it for long with an international client base. After all, US banks don't do a lot of things, which is why we all have to use these Palaeolithic era card schemes to accept payments from US customers in the first place.

<comment><USER20> Absolutely; just to expand on the point - 3D secure is now prevenalant, if you just check for enrolment with 3D Secure - as a vendor you're generally no longer liable to chargebacks (there are a few edge cases around pre-paid and commercial cards). It doesn't matter if the issuing bank is signed up or not.

Paymill already support 3D secure - so I would have to imagine that stripe's 3D secure support can't be far behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was wondering why Paypal were phoning me up a lot recently to see how I was doing and if I needed any help with anything!

We're lucky enough to be on the Beta, can't wait to dig in and start the transition.

</comment><comment><USER22> Really good news. Can't wait to start taking payments by stripe for our "Stripe for Magento" extension, how about that for meta?

</comment><comment><USER23> Awesome news!

Is it possible to use Stripe to handle third party payments? E.g. A site owner (A) creates a website. A user (B) of that site wants to sell a product. (B) creates a product page and accept payments from their own customers (C). Ideally (C) would pay (B) using Stripe, and (A) would receive a percentage of the revenue received from (C).

<comment><USER22> Stripe Connect with collecting fees? - <https://stripe.com/docs/connect/collecting-fees>

<comment><USER24> Damn, that's pretty fantastic. Stripe have been killing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> stripe should launch in India, I'm more than ready to help out with that. The market here, for stripe is huge! A lot of alternatives exist, but all of them frankly su%k!

<comment><USER26> I don't think Stripe have any technical problems launching in India, it's pretty much all about navigating the regulatory hurdles.

They'd quickly get bashed into submission by the Reserve Bank of India guidelines, which is what happened to Paypal. The RBI will force all payment processors to be regulated as banks, or conduct business entirely through banks.

<comment><USER25> no, what happened to paypal was post 26/11 revelation that the splinter cells had used paypal to transfer money.

RBI is just another central bank.

Stripe is way different than Paypal. And yes, paypal is still running, the loss of business is due to the fact that they still haven't worked out the tax technicalities, and their UI has become complex.

EDIT: Just want to add, that right now is the right time to invest in India, because of the market conditions in general, organised retail is picking up, credit/debit card usage is increasing again, mobile payments has been introduced, taxation policy would become unified starting April 1 under GST& other singular taxes, and the economic potential of India.

India is 3rd on Purchasing Power Parity, yet it is only the barely top 10 in terms of GDP, and it all points to a under-saturated market. Really! Entering India, can make stripe into a multi-billion dollar company, if done right

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Out of interest what makes Stripe compelling over other alternatives such as Sagepay?

This seemed to be an already solved problem ([company like sagepay] -> merchant account -> bank account) but there's a lot of fanfair here so I must not be understanding what makes Stripe different.

<comment><USER11> Short version:

* Sane well thought out APIs that let you do stuff very, very quickly and easily

* You don't have have a merchant account - so the time taken to get payments up and running drops from weeks/months to almost nothing

* Attractive fee structure - especially for bootstrapped projects (you don't pay them until you get paid)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Awesome. Here's hoping Denmark/Scandinavia is next.

<comment><USER24> Why can't you use the UK version? With all of the EU being integrated, shouldn't it work across the entire thing?

<comment><USER29> Their statement says "EUR coming soon" so it should be a good sign for Euro countries.

<comment><USER30> A subset of European countries use the euro of which Denmark is not one of that subset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Any plans for Germany?

<comment><USER28> <https://www.paymill.com/> is a German company and offers a Stripe-like service for Germany and a large number of other countries.

<comment><USER32> I was happy to give paymill a try as Stripe was not available in Europe. I even fixed their Java API (The pull request was accepted pretty swiftly)

However they lost me when they introduced a breaking change to the API without notification. We were still in the testing phase, but this is just a big NONO.

Also they did not react to request about getting a new contract because of a changed Bank account.

Happy to use stripe though.

<comment><USER33> You'll love how stripe handles breaking changes. Each time they make a breaking change, they create a new version of the API, and keep all customers pinned on the current one. Then, in the UI I can choose to switch to a new version of the API, and see a list of what's changed. Of the 10 API versions since I started, 2 might have broken something for me, but I can just ignore that until I find time to upgrade.

Stellar stuff!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Australia is pretty much dominated by Paypal. Was excited to get to use Stripe for a new project but got sad when I realized it wasn't available here.

<comment><USER35> Pin [1] just launched last week. It is a similar all-in-one payment solution (no merchant account needed), but homegrown in Australia.

[1] <https://pin.net.au>

<comment><USER36> Why does it have a monthly fee? What are the differences between the US and AUS markets that require Australian users to pay three different fees to use a payment gateway?

<comment><USER37> I was part of the beta and wondered that too. It's almost like they don't expect to cover their internal costs with their (reasonably pricy) cut of each transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> How does Stripe mitigate PCIDSS requirements?

<comment><USER39> The card number never hits the merchant's web server, so currently they do not have to be compliant.

There is talk in the industry that this will be changing actually; as the card number is still vulnerable to javascript that run's in the merchant's web page. So if the merchant is hacked and their website is compromised then CC numbers are vulnerable. So it is likely at least some of the applicable PCI DSS requirements (and auditing of them) will eventually be required.

<comment><USER38> Anyone who takes credit card payments must be PCIDSS compliant. How the payment's taken is irrelevant.

Presumably Stripe reduces this to the level of completing the SAQ A?

<comment><USER40> That's the right way to explain it Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'd like to give a shout out to the guys from Paymill (www.paymill.com) - <USER2> sponsor the HNLondon events and when Patrick from Stripe turned up a few nights ago they were the ones that asked him to get on stage and give a quick talk, despite the obvious overlap of their products.

</comment><comment><USER42> Cool, I hope Switzerland won't be last. 7m people isn't interesting enough for many companies. :(

<comment><USER43> Seeing how Switzerland isn't a member of the EU, I'd say don't get your hopes up anytime soon...

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure if that would be to their detriment. Demand in other EU countries is likely to go down, since it's plausible to incorporate (or incorporate a subsidiary) in the UK to get Stripe now :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is great.. but when is it coming to the UK!?!?

...

Oh.

<comment><USER46> Beat me to the joke!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is great news for UK businesses, welcome to our wonderfully miserably cold shores Stripe.

Although, you know it's much nicer up North outside London. Much nicer.

<comment><USER48> The founders are from Ireland, they know miserable cold shores!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is there a sign up form for beta?

<comment><USER50> I want to know this also? However there is:

<https://stripe.com/global>

You can sign up to get notified about UK launch, you could try that, I have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Finally!!!!!!</comment>


Node.js Frameworks Comparison - <AUTHOR> http://ocdevel.com/blog/nodejs-frameworks-comparison

<comment><USER2> Woa mama! Sorry guys, site-owner here - wasn't prepared for HN. Trying to get it back up. Anyway, the conclusion - in order: Derby, Meteor, SocketStream, Express, Tower. Express was less in the ordered list and more an "if you don't want the full-fledged framework"

<comment><USER3> I'm curious what you thought was lacking for Geddy (I'm a contributor). We'd definitely like some input.

<comment><USER2> I updated the blog to sound less "meh" about Geddy, telling people to give it a whirl - hope I didn't offend. It's been a while since I looked at Geddy, but I remember thinking of it as a direct competitor (and incompatible) to Express, with additional MVC components. I've always taken Express & Connect to be pretty standard at this point, and which have their own universe of middleware modules such as EveryAuth & Passport. The reason I didn't choose Geddy is I'd lose out on these goodies.

Meteor takes a similar, and more extreme approach - you can't use NPM at all, much less Express - which precludes a _lot_ of modules. Quite unattractive to many, but because it takes care of every bit of your app - a complete end-to- end framework - people get over it.

Anyway, Geddy is a seasoned framework which has been around for a while, with titan developers & great architecture - I don't mean to poo-poo it by any means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://ocdevel.com/blog/nodejs- frameworks-comparison)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sites down...</comment>


Ask HN: Is there software for building software? - <AUTHOR> Do applications exist that allow non-programmers to create applications without coding?  That are simple and have a friendly GUI? <comment><USER2> HyperCard was the gold standard for this kind of thing. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard#Applications>

<comment><USER3> Something that I've played with that is obviously inspired by HyperCard is RunRev.com's LiveCode: <http://runrev.com/home/>

<comment><USER4> Something we've all played with which was inspired by HyperCard is the world wide web!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am working on such an app over Google App Engine, iFreeTools Creator : <http://creator.ifreetools.com>

Requires nothing more than a Google/Google-Apps user account to get going.

You can define Entities ( _"table"/"sheets"_ ) and Attributes ( _"columns"/"fields"_ ) to get working with your database app within a few minutes.

Integrates with Google Contacts (import/upload), Google Docs (attach docs to database records), Google Maps (mark and search for records based on geographic location). Google Calendar (export events/tasks-like data) and email integration are coming up later.

The web-app can be mapped to your own domain like <http://app.yourdomain.com> (using Google Apps).

Other features include :

      - Authorization Profiles for fine grain access control up to field level.
      - Custom Views to filter data matching your criteria.
      - Custom Actions for single click edits.
      - Automated Audit of all write operations
      - Bulk Export & Import of data as CSV files.
      - Support for drop-down choices,
          look-up fields (references) and
          image fields (with auto thumbnails for list view)
      ..and more.

Hope you like it. Feedback welcome.

</comment><comment><USER6> The closest thing I've heard of recently would probably be VisualStudio LightSwitch. I've never used it and am pretty skeptical about this sort of thing in general from experience with MDA tools in the past, but it's probably worth a look.

<http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/lightswitch/>

</comment><comment><USER7> COBOL was the earliest effort I know of to allow non-programmers to create applications. Its English-like syntax allowed managers and business analysts to describe what they wanted the computer to do without programmers' help. Or such was the belief/hope circa 1960.

I think the desire to program without programming is somewhat misguided. It's great to avoid churning out boilerplate code, and it's great not to need to remember lots of arcane interfaces, but programming, even in the most WYSIWYG DWIM system, still requires the ability to mentally model how the machine interprets its instructions and to write (click, draw, gesture, vocalize) instructions that solve the right problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> Apple/NeXT used to have enterprise object framework. There's a video of steve jobs building a fairly complex DB app without a single line of code, including joins.

We still have nothing like it.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A> See about 25 minutes in.

</comment><comment><USER9> I believe the nature of software prevents such an application from existing. I would cite the complicated nature of all parser-generators as partial proof.

WYSIWYG HTML generators may be as close as it gets, and that doesn't end up creating much in the way of "code".

</comment><comment><USER10> We're working on a framework we hope to expose to our customers for just this purpose. It'll be made up of modules you can add and a GUI for field/form customisation. A bit like Microsoft Access but web based, is that what you had in mind?

<comment><AUTHOR> Somewhat, but easier to use than Access. I was thinking that after learning the tool, the end-user should be able to create a basic CRUD application with one or more workflows/screens in a few hours, tops.

Do you have any information about your framework? I'm interested to know more.

<comment><USER10> Drop me an e-mail simon [at] atlascs.co.uk and I'll forward you more information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can build Android apps using a drag and drop interface with Google's AppInventor.

</comment><comment><USER12> What kind of applications do you want to be able to build with such a tool?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about basic CRUD applications to start. I think it would be valuable for a business to be able to build a small, basic CRUD application to manage certain processes like QA, or any other basic data-keeping that's needed - in situations where ready-made products just don't fit the bill.

<comment><USER13> Business-oriented databases generally have this kind of feature. I believe both MS Access and FileMaker have drag-and-drop-style form builders allowing a non-programmer to create a purpose-built user interface to query and update the database.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah Access was the closest think I could think of. But for what I'm picturing, that's too complicated - I don't want the end-user to see or think about the database at all. The end-user should basically drop and drag things, then click a button that says "create application" and it spits out your app.

<comment><USER14> The name for the activity you describe is _programming_. Just because you've not typing lines of code doesn't mean you're not programming.

Meanwhile, you need to think about why people like spreadsheets. Yes, they show you all your data on a big stupid sheet and force you to look at it, but that's a feature, not a bug. People don't collect data because pressing buttons is fun. They want to see their data again. Indeed, not being able to relocate their hard-won data is their worst nightmare, so it is reassuring to see it right there and know that you can find it. It's easy to find data in a spreadsheet: Just scroll around until you see it. It's got to be right there on the page: It's a _spreadsheet_. Even a nonprogrammer can navigate a simple spreadsheet.

It's even easy to change the data. You see a number you don't like, you type over it.

If you want something with better organization or navigation than a simple spreadsheet, you'll need, at the very least: Forms to type the data in, and reports to get the data out. But presumably your forms will need carefully- chosen field types, and validation against app-specific criteria, and maybe even record-to-record relations, or why wouldn't you just use a spreadsheet? And the reports will have to be fancier than just a big table, or why wouldn't you just use a spreadsheet? And when you design these forms and records and relations and reports... you'll be programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I would not choose a spreadsheet for this idea is for a cleaner layout. I think a basic form with boxes and labels, where the other data is hidden, would be more user-friendly. A spreadsheet has data all over, and that can be distracting to see and navigate around - for me, anyway. That's my preference.

<comment><USER15> Lots of spreadsheets are eye-bleedingly bad. It doesn't have to be that way. Some principles I use when trying to improve hideous spreadsheets:

1) The main body of the data should fit on one page. In many cases, it can be made to fit, you just need to reorganize some of it and tweak sizes of boxes, use some reasonable abbreviations, etc.

2) Try to keep it to 7 colors (though this rule can be bent a smidgeon by going one shade darker for emphasis without really introducing a totally new color).

3) "Whiting out" (though beige, gray or taupe can be better choices than white) the background boxes can go a long way towards making a spreadsheet less torturous to look at.

4) Going one font size up and adding bolding can be plenty of emphasis. You really don't need anything of size 72 lettering just because it's a title or some such.

(I'm sure you don't personally care. And I'm not trying to change your mind. Maybe I just needed to say it for myself.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know Jason from the TechZing Podcast is making a "Do it yourself" app platform. Might be worth signing up here: <http://appignite.com>

</comment><comment><USER17> Look at <http://dabbledb.com/demo/#play> (which is closed to signups and closing down soon) and it's direct competitors.

</comment><comment><USER18> It is very easy to build a form and some views in Lotus Notes.

The result is armies of people not qualified to write programs starting creating Notes "crapplications". Now everyone hates Notes.

</comment><comment><USER19> Glom looks promising too: <http://www.glom.org/></comment>


Enquire: Everything you wanted to know about your C compiler and machine - <AUTHOR> https://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/enquire.html <comment><USER2> I wrote C compilers for several large companies in the 80's and 90's. Everyone in a compiler group had something like this if for no other reason than to demonstrate why "bugs" weren't bugs but "features". My code -- very different than this -- works to this day, but only because I keep it up-to-date with the C standard. Over the years, it's been very useful, especially when moving from one platform to another.

Most code really doesn't need this much detail -- "sizeof" is your friend -- You can start with something like this:

      sizes.c

      #include <stdio.h>

      int isBigEndian() {
        int x = 1;
        return(*(char *)&x != 1);
      }

      int main() {
        printf("This is a %s endian machine\n", isBigEndian() ? "big" : "little");
        printf("char: %lu\n", sizeof(char));
        printf("short: %lu\n", sizeof(short));
        printf("int: %lu\n", sizeof(int));
        printf("long: %lu\n", sizeof(long));
        printf("long long: %lu\n", sizeof(long long));
        printf("float: %lu\n", sizeof(float));
        printf("double: %lu\n", sizeof(double));
        printf("long double: %lu\n", sizeof(long double));
      }

compile as: cc -std=c17 sizes.c

...and add whatever else you need as you go along. A version of my compiler information code is in my forthcoming book.

<comment><USER3> Is there a link to your upcoming book?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks pretty old. Any idea how current it still is?

A couple if years ago when 64 bit computing got common I made my own much more limited test to see what it changes

[https://usrmisc.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/integer-sizes- in-c-...](https://usrmisc.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/integer-sizes-in-c- on-32-bit-and-64-bit-linux/)

The tool in this article does not even test `long long` which probably means that it has not been updated for 20 years.

<comment><USER5>
        #define COPYRIGHT(c) 1993-9 Steven Pemberton, CWI. All rights reserved.

<comment><USER4> The question was not about the copyright year, I saw that. But about what language/machine features have changed/been added and are incorrectly/not at all covered by this test code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Perl's Configure that is run to build Perl in the first place has to figure out a lot of the same things. You can get all of it from the installed perl as well:

perl -e 'use Config qw(config_sh);print config_sh()'| less

Not as nicely formatted for sure, and lots of perl specific stuff you may not need. But piping that command above and grepping for 'size', for example, works well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Enquire was used in gcc. [https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Contributors.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Contributors.html) says:

Steven Pemberton for his contribution of _enquire_ which allowed GCC to determine various properties of the floating point unit and generate _float.h_ in older versions of GCC.

"I wrote this originally for a piece of software (ABC, above) that had to run on any hardware, and require no particular knowledge from the person installing it. One day Richard Stallman passed by, and mentioned that they needed such a program for GCC. So I rewrote it and donated it. It produces the file _float.h_ for the GCC compiler. The version here is a slightly more up to date version."

[https://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/](https://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/)

<comment><USER7> And I hadn't heard of ABC, but it looks very similar to Python, grammatically at least, was apparently a major influence on it, and indeed van Rossum had worked on the ABC team.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_\(programming_language\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's by Steven Pemberton, one of the first internet users in Europe, co- designer of HTML, CSS, XHTML, XForms, RDFa, and several other Web technologies ([https://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/](https://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/)).

</comment><comment><USER9>
      sh enquire.c

Wow. That's clever. (See the source.)

<comment><USER10> Although it makes me wonder if its extension shouldn't be ".sh", sinc e this polyglot-metaprogra. is really intended to be run as a shell script.

<comment><USER11> No, it shouldn't. sh do not look at extension of file, gcc does. It can bring some issues like the need of explicitly stating source's language for gcc in the command line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems to be from 2003 minimum.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20030223030531/http://homepages.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20030223030531/http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/enquire.html)

Maybe older?

<comment><USER5> Version history would indicate that first versions are from mid-80s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another way:

      echo | cc -dM -E -

<comment><USER13> That's not portable. It only works on Unix systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What an intriguing piece of software. I wonder how much work it would be to bring it up to date for current compilers.

<comment><USER15> It works on my compiler, but it's a bit confused about how virtual memory works on modern systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A note on the values this program produces: most are _implementation-defined_ (and some are generated in ways the exercise undefined behavior, it seems). Please, please, please don't rely on them being the same everywhere. If you're curious about your own machine, that's great, but don't be the person who hardcodes integer sizes or relies on chars being unsigned.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anybody can list the values for XCode C compiler?

<comment><USER15> Here's what I get with Apple LLVM version 10.0.1 (clang-1001.0.43.3) for x86_64-apple-darwin18.5.0:

      Produced by enquire version 5.1a, CWI, Amsterdam
         http://www.cwi.nl/~steven/enquire.html
      Compiler claims to be ANSI C level 1

      Compiler names are at least 64 chars long
      Preprocessor names are at least 64 long

      SIZES
      char = 8 bits, signed
      short=16 int=32 long=64 float=32 double=64 bits
      long double=128 bits
      char*=64 bits BEWARE! larger than int!
      int* =64 bits BEWARE! larger than int!
      func*=64 bits BEWARE! larger than int!
      Type size_t is unsigned long
      Type wchar_t is signed int

      ALIGNMENTS
      char=1 short=2 int=4 long=8
      float=4 double=8
      long double=16
      char*=8 int*=8 func*=8

      CHARACTER ORDER
      short: BA
      int:   DCBA
      long:  HGFEDCBA

      PROPERTIES OF POINTERS
      Char and int pointer formats seem identical
      Char and function pointer formats seem identical
      Strings are shared
      Type ptrdiff_t is signed long
      Dereferencing NULL causes a trap

      PROPERTIES OF INTEGRAL TYPES
      Overflow of a short does not generate a trap
      Maximum short = 32767 (= 2**15-1)
      Minimum short = -32768
      Overflow of an int does not generate a trap
      Maximum int = 2147483647 (= 2**31-1)
      Minimum int = -2147483648
      Overflow of a long does not generate a trap
      Maximum long = 9223372036854775807 (= 2**63-1)
      Minimum long = -9223372036854775808
      Maximum unsigned short = 65535
      Maximum unsigned int = 4294967295
      Maximum unsigned long = 18446744073709551615

      PROMOTIONS
      unsigned short promotes to signed int
      long+unsigned gives signed long

      PROPERTIES OF FLOAT
      Base = 2
      Significant base digits = 24 (= at least 6 decimal digits)
      Arithmetic rounds towards nearest
         Tie breaking rounds to even
      Smallest x such that 1.0-base**x != 1.0 = -24
      Smallest x such that 1.0-x != 1.0 = 2.98023259e-08
      Smallest x such that 1.0+base**x != 1.0 = -23
      Smallest x such that 1.0+x != 1.0 = 5.96046519e-08
      (Above number + 1.0) - 1.0 = 1.19209290e-07
      Number of bits used for exponent = 8
      Minimum normalised exponent = -126
      Minimum normalised positive number = 1.17549435e-38
      The smallest numbers are not kept normalised
      Smallest unnormalised positive number = 1.40129846e-45
      Maximum exponent = 128
      Maximum number = 3.40282347e+38
      Overflow doesn't seem to generate a trap
      There is an 'infinite' value
      Divide by zero doesn't generate a trap
      Arithmetic uses a hidden bit
      It looks like single length IEEE format

      PROPERTIES OF DOUBLE
      Base = 2
      Significant base digits = 53 (= at least 15 decimal digits)
      Arithmetic rounds towards nearest
         Tie breaking rounds to even
      Smallest x such that 1.0-base**x != 1.0 = -53
      Smallest x such that 1.0-x != 1.0 = 5.5511151231257839e-17
      Smallest x such that 1.0+base**x != 1.0 = -52
      Smallest x such that 1.0+x != 1.0 = 1.1102230246251568e-16
      (Above number + 1.0) - 1.0 = 2.2204460492503131e-16
      Number of bits used for exponent = 11
      Minimum normalised exponent = -1022
      Minimum normalised positive number = 2.2250738585072014e-308
      The smallest numbers are not kept normalised
      Smallest unnormalised positive number = 4.9406564584124654e-324
      Maximum exponent = 1024
      Maximum number = 1.7976931348623157e+308
      Overflow doesn't seem to generate a trap
      There is an 'infinite' value
      Divide by zero doesn't generate a trap
      Arithmetic uses a hidden bit
      It looks like double length IEEE format

      PROPERTIES OF LONG DOUBLE
      Base = 2
      Significant base digits = 64 (= at least 18 decimal digits)
      Arithmetic rounds towards nearest
         Tie breaking rounds to even
      Smallest x such that 1.0-base**x != 1.0 = -64
      Smallest x such that 1.0-x != 1.0 = 2.71050543121376108531e-20
      Smallest x such that 1.0+base**x != 1.0 = -63
      Smallest x such that 1.0+x != 1.0 = 5.42101086242752217063e-20
      (Above number + 1.0) - 1.0 = 1.08420217248550443401e-19
      Number of bits used for exponent = 15
      Minimum normalised exponent = -16382
      Minimum normalised positive number = 3.36210314311209350626e-4932
      The smallest numbers are not kept normalised
      Smallest unnormalised positive number = 3.64519953188247460253e-4951
      Maximum exponent = 16384
      Maximum number = 1.18973149535723176502e+4932
      Overflow doesn't seem to generate a trap
      There is an 'infinite' value
      Divide by zero doesn't generate a trap
      Only 79 of the 128 bits of a long double are actually used
      It doesn't look like IEEE format

      Float expressions are evaluated in float precision
      Double expressions are evaluated in double precision
      Long double expressions are evaluated in long double precision
      Memory mallocatable ~= 138 Tbytes

<comment><USER17> > Only 79 of the 128 bits of a long double are actually used

that one is notable

<comment><USER18> It's also incorrect.

The long double type on x86 systems is the x87 80-bit floating point number. This type is non-IEEE 754 semantics; in particular, it makes the leading bit before the decimal explicit rather than implicit. The storage semantics are, well, weird. If you use XSAVE/FXSAVE to save x87 FPU state, then the floating point registers take up 16 bytes of space. If you use the FSAVE instruction, each register instead takes up 10 bytes of space. Similarly, the FLD/FSTP also use 10 bytes of space.

The i386 ABI states that long double is 108 bits with 32-bit alignment, while x86-64 uses 128 bits with 128-bit alignment. I suspect the reason for these sizes is to ensure that the size is a multiple of alignment, as well as guaranteeing the correct layout of saving the floating point stack to a long double stack[8]; array via (F)XSAVE in the x86-64 case.

<comment><USER2> Somewhat surprisingly, clang 10's long double on a mac is implemented with 64 mantissa digits (bits) (LDBL_MANT_DIG = 64) so the information as presented is correct for clang on a MacBook Pro 2017 with a 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7.

So, is this a bug? Well, perhaps, but not in enquire.c. Experimental usage shows that only 10 bytes (79 bits) are actually used. This is clearly implemented as an x87 80-bit floating point number.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Autopilot: Workload Autoscaling at Google - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3342195.3387524?download=true <comment><USER2> Joyent (SmartOS/Triton) has promoted something like this they called the "Autopilot pattern". However it's more comprehensive than scaling because it also includes other operations like startup and recovery (similar to Kubernetes operators but not for Kubernetes).

[http://autopilotpattern.io/](http://autopilotpattern.io/) [https://www.joyent.com/blog/dbaas-simplicity-no-lock- in](https://www.joyent.com/blog/dbaas-simplicity-no-lock-in)

</comment><comment><USER3> terrible name. Microsoft has had something called Autopilot for a decade now. see: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/autopil...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/autopilot-automatic-data-center-management/)

This leads me to believe that, given it's roughly in the same space, either this team is not aware of things that a major competitors are doing in the space or they know and just don't care.

<comment><USER4> Have you considered the possibility that internally Google's Autopilot was available even before Microsoft's paper?

<comment><USER3> It's possible but I highly doubt it. We're talking 10+ years (2007) since Microsoft made it public via the research paper.

<comment><USER5> Autopilot is the name of the vertical scaling system inside Google used for borg. It's been there as long as I have, which is 2012.

I imagine the team that named it didn't need to read a research paper from MSFT to understand the benefits of dynamically scaling machine resources to match load.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Globtrottr.com – travel maps about the journey, not the destination - <AUTHOR> https://globtrottr.com <comment><USER2> Well, it looks really nice indeed!

Do you have any plan to make data entry less tedious?

An automatic email importer maybe?

Since I'm an avid traveler for 15 years or so, I have a lot of emails from my different plane and train bookings.

I would love to get all these travel bookings imported into a map of all my travels without having to type all of them by hand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ! Yes, ultimately I'd like to make it as simple as can be and have the users just forward their emails and build the map automatically (like TripIt or Wipolo do)</comment></comment>


Show HN: WatchOwl (www.watchowl.io) - <AUTHOR> https://www.watchowl.io <comment><USER2> Is it so hard to not mess with the scrollbar? Just stop doing it, your site is unusable.</comment>


How Numba and Cython speed up Python code - <AUTHOR> https://rushter.com/blog/numba-cython-python-optimization/ <comment><USER2> I like Cython, but I'm always surprised at how willing programmers seem to be to use the cython syntax. In so many cases I look at the optimized program and think to myself, "I would understand that better if was just written in C."

<comment><USER3> I agree, my vastly preferred option now is Python code and C code with cffi to glue them together. I find that much preferable to Cython which is basically a third language altogether (and IMO not an especially nice one, although that is a bit of a value judgement).

<comment><USER4> The huge advantage with cython compared to C is that it is trivial to call python libraries and get the same behaviour as you would in python.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nim is a language that mimicks python syntax but compiles down to c. Really cool and easily gives you 'fast code'. If you are into this kind of stuff I would recommend you take a look.

[https://nim-lang.org/](https://nim-lang.org/)

<comment><USER6> How's the standard library in nim? What's the 3rd party package ecosystem like? If I have questions will I be able to find a good answer on Google? How about jobs?

There's a handful of languages out there you could consider "faster python". I just use cython though.

<comment><USER5> Python is awesome don't get me wrong.

I have limited knowledge about it, but mainly it isn't version 1.0 yet so the std lib stills changes and has some quirks/missing pieces or pieces that are not quite aligned yet.

The package system is Nimble, seems easy enough, fetches packages from github given a version, though I'm not sure how secure that is.

Not sure about Google as its relatively new, but in general the Nim forum is pretty active. I have asked around there a few times and got answers even from the language creators themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just use julia instead!

<comment><USER8> Julia lacks ecosystem outside of academic stuff.

<comment><USER9> It's quite complete for anything numerical/machine learning/statistical at this point, with almost 2000 packages. This is in addition to the very comprehensive standard library, which includes everything you get in Numpy/Scipy. Of course, outside of numerics, you're pretty much out of luck, which is not the case for Python.

It also has multiple dispatch like Common Lisp, as well as gradual typing. All functions are multimethods, actually. This is an enormous abstraction advantage over Python. It's much easier to do complicated things without pulling your hair out in comparison to Python.

I use it a fair amount in my job as a data scientist. It's also what I reach for if I need to write some custom algorithm myself that needs to be high performance, rather than doing it in C.

<comment><USER8> Does it have a tooling for deployment? Is there a good way to deploy a machine learning model in production?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I haven't used it, but nuitka ([http://nuitka.net/](http://nuitka.net/)) translates python (2.6, 2.7, 3.3 to 3.7) to C and compiles that. It claims to be highly compliant and performant without any extra pragmas.

How does is compare to the two technologies in the article?

</comment><comment><USER11> They usually cannot improve carefully optimized numpy operations, nor GPU operations. The use cases are thus limited.

<comment><USER12> IIRC, this is false regarding NumPy. The fundamental problem NumPy has is that it only vectorizes 1 operation for each pass through the data (or occasionally 2-3, like dot product). It can't do arbitrarily hybrid operations (like idk, maybe a[i] * b[i] / (|a[i]| + |b[i]|)) in one pass through your data. This is an inherent limitation in NumPy, and the lack of it is inherent in Numba. So you very much _can_ expect speedups in some cases -- it just depends on what operations you are performing and how big your data is.

<comment><USER13> You're right, apart from np.einsum() and numexpr which is a separate package (albeit less drastic to use than Numba, because with numexpr you don't write your own loops).

<comment><USER12> I meant "occasionally 2-3, like dot product" to include stuff like einsum. FWIW I found einsum was actually slower than tensordot last time I tried, so you may want to use that instead if this is still the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> is cython compatible with all python code or is it only a subset of libraries that you can use?

<comment><USER15> It depends. This is the only deviation I've ever found: [https://github.com/cython/cython/issues/1936](https://github.com/cython/cython/issues/1936) ; that is, Cython will execute __prepare__ in Python 2; but __prepare__ doesn't exist in Python 2, so the normal interpreter (CPython) won't execute it. This can lead to deviations; in my case, the code crashes if run under Cython, and executes fine under CPython.

The Cython maintainers disagree with me that this is a bug, so, if you're under Python 2, I would say it is "very nearly" compatible. If you're in a recent version 3, AFAICT, it just makes Python code faster.</comment></comment>


Xcode 7.3.1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/go/?id=xcode-7.3.1-rn <comment><USER2> Usually I've received Xcode updates as regular updates from App Store, but this time around I'm seeing nothing (I've got 7.3 installed already). IIRC I think I've downloaded Xcode releases through the developer program before, but if this now has changed does it mean I need to install it as a regular App Store package to receive updates etc automatically from now on?

<comment><USER2> Weird stuff. On my laptop (which is about as identically set up as I've managed) the Xcode update arrived as expected automatically.</comment></comment>


Darpa Plans a Major Remake of U.S. Electronics - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/darpas-planning-a-major-remake-of-us-electronics-pay-attention.html <comment><USER2> From the article: "It's pretty rare to go to GitHub, find high-quality hardware blocks that are available, and have the verification tools and everything you would need to trust that, even though that block has been altered by many different designers, it is in a state that is useable for your design."

And so they are giving money to the likes of Intel, Nvidia, Synopsis, Xilinx? The reason why there is very little open source hardware is because it isn't in those company's interests.

I won't hold my breath, I think this is just government appropriations and a lot of self-congratulating kick-off conferences that won't amount to anything useful. We're more likely to get open hardware the same way it always has started -- from the community, not from corporations. They will only adopt it when they have no other choice.

<comment><USER3> Once IBM constructed a personal computer. But, instead of patenting everything about it, they decided to open the architecture, so that extension cards and entire clones could be made.

In a few years, IBM PC and its clones ate the market, and the resulting architecture kept eating it for like 20 years, pushing away both dedicated game machines, microcontrollers, and ultra-powerful servers. Only the advent of the smartphone slowed it down.

I'd like to notice that this was not a grassroots community effort; this was a shrewd business strategy ("it's better to own 10% of a $1B market than 90% of a $20M market"), and for-profit companies, working for the the benefit of themselves and their customers.

Not that community efforts are futile; they gave us [a long list of great things follows]. But the power of market forces, if harnessed right, should not be under-estimated.

<comment><USER4> _…so that extension cards and entire clones could be made._

IBM had no intention of allowing clones. They relied on their proprietary BIOS to give them control of the product even though they were licensing an OS from another party. This failed when the clean room reimplementations of IBM's BIOS withstood IBM's legal challenges and clones were born. IBM attempted to regain control of the platform by creating their own OS, OS/2, but ultimately failed and was driven from the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really exciting. I've thought about building a datapath on an FPGA that uses partial reconfiguration to synthesize new hardware blocks based on the math being doing at a particular instant, and it sounds like DARPA wants to do that on steroids. Server CPUs coupled with FPGAs are already being used for a lot of interesting things and I think it makes a lot of sense to integrate together even tighter. I'm also really happy to hear that they're funding new EDA software that is actually smart. The best we have right now is some whitelist based rule checking for schematics and layout. I want full simulation, a perfect, proven parts library with symbols, footprints, 3D models, non-ideal SPICE models, and a thermal model for every part in existence, smart rule checking that looks not only for things like unconnected nets, but logic level mismatches and clock edges that are too fast.

Little pieces of this exist already, but in my opinion, software for creating hardware is way behind software for creating software.

</comment><comment><USER6> Quite interesting is the bit about hiring the "former lead of GNU Radio" who had experienced pain in getting closed/proprietary hardware things to be useful. I wonder if this will lead to more open platforms. If for no other reason, that bit makes the article worth reading.

<comment><USER7> > Quite interesting is the bit about hiring the "former lead of GNU Radio" who > had experienced pain in getting closed/proprietary hardware things to be > useful. I wonder if this will lead to more open platforms. If for no other > reason, that bit makes the article worth reading.

This makes me more worried, not less.

The reason why you couldn't repurpose those things targeted at "specific technologies" is that they were _engineered for purpose_.

You don't want a general "radio decoder". You want a 4G modem. You don't wan't a wideband ADC--you want low power for battery usage so you want to narrow the bandwidth as much as possible. You are willing to give up generality in order to get a couple more dB in order to increase your range by another couple miles, etc.

The problem is that it is so expensive to do your own chip that everybody tries to shoehorn their solution into something that exists in volume but really isn't quite right simply to avoid that expense.

If you want to fix electronics, find a way to make VLSI fabrication cost $500 and have a 5 day turnaround.

<comment><USER8> _You don 't want a general "radio decoder". You want a 4G modem._

That's consumer products. DoD wants generality even if it costs more.

The electronics industry ignores what DoD wants because DoD won't buy a million parts a month. That's been going on for a long time. It really upset some USAF generals in the 1980s; they were used to driving the industry, not following it. It's gotten worse since, because the center of the electronics industry has moved to Asia.

This project is a niche thing for military short-run production. That's fine. There may be commercial spinoffs. But it's aimed at DoD's needs.

<comment><USER9> Why does DoD want generality?

<comment><USER10> It's cheaper for contractors to slap together a bunch of COTS stuff and get good functionality for a "low price" versus building the perfect system from all-in-one designs. The manufacturers aren't going to make military spec all- in-one components because the military isn't buying that much compared to the commercial market so the manufacturers aren't going to invest the time and money into something that isn't going to sell volume. Even if they would make these parts, they are going to cost a lot more than what it would cost to design a slightly more complex, less integrated system. Everyone is better off with more general parts. More components in a system also allow the designer to swap portions out for newer designs as time goes on where as an all-in-one design is going to require a lot of NRE to update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the same project that didn't give any funding to Clifford Wolf (of YOSYS fame) so they could give it to ADI, TI, Xilinx, Cadence and Synopsys, etc.

I expect nothing to come of this. With the fox watching the hen house, there will be no change.

<comment><USER11> [https://twitter.com/ico_TC/status/1012766234784366593?s=01](https://twitter.com/ico_TC/status/1012766234784366593?s=01)

For reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Originally known as ARPA, Advanced Research Projects Agency, the agency helped create the internet: _In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. The objective was to develop communication protocols which would allow networked computers to communicate transparently across multiple, linked packet networks. This was called the Internetting project and the system of networks which emerged from the research was known as the "Internet." The system of protocols which was developed over the course of this research effort became known as the TCP /IP Protocol Suite, after the two initial protocols developed: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP)._ Source: www.internetsociety.org

The motivations for this new initiative could be numerous, including a step back toward the ARPA days, a way to outdo the Chinese in defense applications, and/or a way to make a political claim for the next election.

I'd be curious to hear what more informed people think the motivation might be. Regardless, it seems to be a positive step towards electronics innovation.

<comment><USER13> One would expect the competition between the US and China to get ferocious over the next 20 years. The US hasn't had a serious direct competitor across the board (military + economic + political) in 70 years. My personal opinion as an American, is that the US has gotten lackadaisical about its formerly overwhelming superpower position, its focus, and the need to compete at a high level. That isn't surprising of course, one would almost expect that to always occur, and China has come on extremely fast. Hopefully China's rapid rise forces a reawakening of an older can-do spirit, across all spheres of US life (perhaps most especially in regards to the invaluable contributions a better functioning government can bring, as in the past). If not, then China will de facto rule Asia and half of Europe.

<comment><USER14> That assumes the competition is inevitable. Hopefully, China can become a democracy, set free its people, and then the competition will be no more ferocious than the U.S.'s with Europe, Japan, India, Brazil, or any other democracy. The 'competition' is a massive waste of money and possibly of blood that benefits very few people at the expense of billions of others. Compare the competition to the relationships among democracies; what is gained by it?

<comment><USER15> China is 6000 years old and it had never been anything even remotely resembling a democracy. It's going to remain a bureaucratic autocracy just as it always has been. And that's fine, it's worked very well for the Han.

<comment><USER16> Just a reminder that Taiwan, a country deeply steeped in traditional Chinese culture, is a functioning multi-party democracy.

Perhaps Mainland China is too big, or too poor, to become a stable democracy at this time, but Chinese culture should not by itself be a reason for China to remain a "bureaucratic autocracy".

<comment><USER17> And that's why the PRC (= Mainland) is trying everything it can to take over Taiwan, and subvert / destroy this democracy. After all the Chinese Communist Party's convenient narrative that justifies it's 'eternal' rule is just this, that the Chinese people neither want, nor need multi-party democracy.

(See also: Iran vs Saudi-Arabia. The former -- despite all the imperfections of its current mode of government -- is a living proof that Muslims don't need the iron fist of a hereditory ruling family.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is DARPA investing in general purpose open source technology? I'd expect the U.S. military to seek competitive advantages, but this tech could be used by China, Russia, and Iran as easily as by the U.S. Perhaps this tech suits the U.S.'s needs better than the needs of its competitors?

DARPA has funded general purpose open source tech previously, but for the reasons above I haven't understood why. I'm glad to have the technology, I just don't grasp their motives.

<comment><USER18> Just because it's under the military doesn't mean it's only for military purposes. They want civilian technology to advance so that they can then leverage it, while also building businesses within the US to strength it economically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honest question: How is this not basically a subsidy for the electronics sector? The news I'm hearing from the US all the time is how China, for example, is subsidizing it's production sector and that that creates unfair market competition. From Harvard Business Review, for example: "[...] its overarching policy of aggressively subsidizing targeted industries in order to dominate global markets" and "Government subsidies to produce technologically advanced products and undercut foreign manufacturers have buttressed China's trade prowess" [1]

The same can be said for the other technologies that were first financed by the government and then taken over by the private sector [2]

[1] [https://hbr.org/2013/04/how-chinese-subsidies- changed](https://hbr.org/2013/04/how-chinese-subsidies-changed)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUHrYJW-6MI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUHrYJW-6MI)

<comment><USER20> It is. If we can't stop China from subsidizing their tech we should subsidize our own.

<comment><USER21> The United States does plenty of subsidizing, through the "Pentagon System".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSJjlaggbK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSJjlaggbK0)

[http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/PentagonSystem_Cho...](http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/PentagonSystem_Chom.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you're interested in open source hardware, you might find the WOSET workshop interesting. It is a new workshop on open source EDA, related to this DARPA project. See [http://scale.engin.brown.edu/woset/](http://scale.engin.brown.edu/woset/)

</comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting but how does that square with the desire to keep China and others from getting their hands on our designs when the bulk of our manufacturing is done overseas?

<comment><USER24> > The Chisel team showed that two to three student designers can do full > system-on-chip designs by abstraction and automation.

> One of the things we're trading off is the ultimate efficiency of the > design. If 1 percent of area matters because you're making millions of > parts, then this level of abstraction may not be the right one for you. In > our case, we're not as cost-driven. So, if we give away 10 percent of the > area but maximize the capabilities of the smaller design team, that's the > kind of tradeoff that would work for the Defense Department, but it also > might work for startups and other smaller players like universities.

Presumably, one of their unspoken goals is to more easily enable advanced/secure chips to be designed and made in the USA for the military and kept confidential.

<comment><USER25> None of what you quoted mentions IC/chip fabrication. It is definitely a problem DARPA/DoD is concerned about, but this project is not addressing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Another reminder what a failure capitalism is. I'm so tired of hearing "markets are the best way to distribute resources" when we always see failures like this. Capitalism can't produce "big leaps" in innovation. Never could. We were so blind.

<comment><USER27> Just to check: Did you type this on a system whose entire hardware and software stack was built within some non-capitalist society, which you are claiming is superior to capitalism?

If "capitalism has failed", as you claim, don't you think it's rather ironic that ALL the world's most advanced technology comes from capitalist societies then? Shouldn't there be at least ONE modern computer system that was built entirely without capitalism?

Open source counts as capitalist technology as well, since the vast majority of its contributors live within mostly capitalistic societies as a whole (and I'm not really aware of Soviet open source software).

Chinese technology, perhaps the greatest upcoming contender to the USA's technological dominance, is also deeply capitalist throughout its inception (though elements of state control are deeply interwoven, the Chinese government wisely realized the benefits of capitalism and managed to use it to great success).

Capitalism is certainly deeply flawed, but regulated capitalism still seems to be the best system we have so far. Constantly saying "Capitalism has failed!" is utterly useless if you cannot propose a new system in its place that does better. (Hint: Most systems that people popularly propose have been tried time and time again.)

<comment><USER28> Certainly fair overall, but of course quite a lot of the technology we're using to have this conversation spun off from the Apollo program[1] originally...

1: [https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2018/index.html](https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2018/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Photonics will replace electronics by that time, of hope.</comment>


Math Whiz Trades Without Humans - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-05/math-whiz-trades-without-humans-to-build-a-700-million-fortune <comment><USER2> > XTX -- the name refers to a mathematical formula used in its trading > algorithms

Wow so they do linear regressions?? Incredible.

But in all seriousness, for how long are we going to dress up statistics as some new cool and exciting methods? Are VC's and bosses really this easily fooled?

<comment><USER3> What they actually do: colocated servers next to the exchange collecting $0.0000001 per trade with nanosecond latency.

Create mystique of doing spooky AI to get more capital which they use to hedge even more trades/second, making more money, which they then attribute to AI which gets them even more capital.

<comment><USER4> If you knew anything about HFT, you'd know that speed got arbitraged out more than a decade ago. Everyone is fast now. In order to make money, you need true alpha and predictive ability. It's sad to see you disparage their impressive achievements when what they've done is incredibly difficult to accomplish, especially as such a latecomer. I know because I tried it myself ten years ago when it was even less competitive and couldn't make it work.

<comment><USER5> The real money is probably made by you renting out the server racks close to the exchanges!

<comment><USER6> Lots of exchanges now capture that themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the actual story here? This can't be the first trading firm that doesn't have human traders?

<comment><USER8> The real story is that XTX is primarily a _currency trader_. Unlike stocks, futures or options, currencies aren't tied to a single exchange. If you want to go out and change your dollars to yen, there's not a single venue or even federated system for doing that.

If you go out and build an amazing strategy for, say, index futures, all you have to do is set up an account at the futures exchange. If you make a bunch of money the exchange doesn't care. The exchange isn't your counterparty, so your profits don't come at their expense. They're just happy to execute the volume.

Whereas with currency, most trades are done through over-the-counter "liquidity providers" (LP), traditionally major international banks. If you make too much money, the LPs get pissed off. Since they're acting as your direct counterparty, your profit comes at their expense. Consequently, a great trading system alone isn't worth that much in currency space. If you make too much money, you'll just get banned from all the LPs.

Like many others who tried to break into the space, XTX already had great HFT trading models. But their real innovation become an LP themselves. Rather than beg the major banking franchises to give them a seat at their table, they went out and built their own. That required creating business relationships with upstream sources of order flow, like retail forex brokers.

That customer base gave them the capability to capture market share without worrying about counterparty risk. Combined with their superior HFT models, it gives them a major edge over traditional banks and LPs. They can offer tighter spreads and still make a profit at a price point that their competitors can't.

<comment><USER9> This is much better than the article and should be the top comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> X transpose X inverse, X Transpose Y, it's the best linear unbiased estimator (B.L.U.E. eh hem), and let me tell you whyyy,

Because ...

ah crap it's been to long, did anybody else learn this song in grad school for econometrics (or similar) when studying Gauss Markov theory?

Here's to Professor Jackson at Auburn for this memory I can never quite remember the second line of, and yet I can never quite forget the whole thing...

</comment><comment><USER11> 'Member long term capital management?

I 'member.</comment>


The Rosetta Mission: Landing on a Comet (10min documentary, October 23rd 2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cArihDTnOZg

<comment><AUTHOR> For those capable of understanding both English and German, there is a version where both are left undubbed here: [http://vimeo.com/109821144](http://vimeo.com/109821144)</comment>


Would You Bet $100,000,000 on Your Pet Programming Language? - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/13.html <comment><USER2> Let's get this straight. The poster wants the software running on ARM and a new 20-core Intel chip. The software has to output flash and native GUI (on what platform(s)?), parse RTF and SVG and transfer data over FTP. It has to process gigabytes of data quickly, in limited memory.

I probably wouldn't write such a project using just a single language or set of tools. It sounds like there's a data-processing component, a mobile app, a desktop app and a web interface. I wouldn't pick a language or tool set for any of those components before getting detailed requirements.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the author is trying to clarify how much we _really_ trust certain languages. But the $100M just muddies the issue. $100M, appropriately spent, could get almost any language across the finish line -- as long as you're willing to fork the language itself or add custom lower-level extensions. All the large companies that use high-level languages do this; Google, Yahoo, ITA, everybody.

</comment><comment><USER4> After reading his conditions, I will not bet on ANY programming language.

</comment><comment><USER5> How many $100 million contract projects have there been?

Of the ones that failed, I bet it wasn't because their programming language wasn't up to the task.

<comment><USER6> let's ask the DOD.

<comment><USER7> I'd bet the problem there was with project management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any serious attempt for the prize would have to include DBMS and operating system. This was, in fact, exactly what happened during Viet Nam as TRW responded to the U.S. Army's open ended requirements with GIRLS in 1965.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system>

That effort survives today as IBM's U2 product line and still one of the best prototyping environments ever developed. (I've seen 20 year old "prototypes" written in Pick.)

Problem was, there was no $100,000,000 prize. That kind of money later went to Microsoft for products with (let's just say) a little less inspiration.

Leaving people like you and me to ponder the question on boards like this.</comment>


Nigeria's Tizeti (YC W17) concluded a $3 million Series A funding round - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2018/09/05/tizeti-venture-capital-vc-startup-telecommunications/ <comment><USER2> I would love to see the tech for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a pity that they had to partner with Facebook though. You get free internet, Facebook's internet. I wonder how similar it is to Facebook's Internet For All that they attempted in India.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome. Great work

</comment><comment><USER5> I noticed the site's name has Africa with a K, and I thought nothing of it other than branding, but then I saw one of their recent articles spelled the name of the continent with a K as well. Here is perhaps why:

[http://www.informafrica.com/information/why-do-some- people-s...](http://www.informafrica.com/information/why-do-some-people-spell- africa-with-a-k-afrika-vs-africa/)

(It was apparently originally spelled with a K and it symbolizes a repurposing of the term by Africans themselves)

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct.</comment></comment>


Dial-Up to "Beam Me Up": Jon Radoff Talks Star Trek Timelines, BBS Games - <AUTHOR> http://breakintochat.com/blog/2016/02/02/jon-radoff-creator-of-space-empire-elite-and-final-frontier/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've been wanting to interview Radoff for years. "Space Empire Elite" was the first BBS door game I ever played, back in the early 1990s.

He sees BBS door games as precursors to the "social games" of today, and I totally agree.</comment>


IF Magazine - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/ifmagazine <comment><USER2> I love the archive.org online reader. I was surprised at how well it works on my phone, where I have a bunch of open tabs holding my place in various books.

I wouldn't mind if some of the current sci-fi magazines would let me open to a reading view like this, and then hide the controls: [https://archive.org/stream/1967-12_IF#page/n5/mode/2up](https://archive.org/stream/1967-12_IF#page/n5/mode/2up)

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) The OCR'ed epub versions aren't very good. The stuff that keeps the bitmaps intact (i.e. PDF) are quite readable.

2) If you wanna do a big bulk download for your favorite e-reader, here are the instructions.

[https://blog.archive.org/2012/04/26/downloading-in-bulk- usin...](https://blog.archive.org/2012/04/26/downloading-in-bulk-using-wget/)

<comment><USER4> if the OCR'd versions aren't very good, is it worth it to get them for ereaders? (PDFs on small kindle kinda suck, I don't expect others to be much better)

EDIT: apparently no, the .mobi are quite terrible, but the .txt version is ok. Weird.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, PDF's are generally horrible on small screen e-readers. On a larger color tablet like an iPad, they look pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a decent collection of old magazines (many from archive.org) and have setup a "magazine" server I can access from my phone/tablets. It's an amazing experience.

[http://vaemendis.net/ubooquity/](http://vaemendis.net/ubooquity/)

<comment><USER6> Hey, cool tip about ubooquity - thanks for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the many reasons I have donated to archive.org in the past. Access to magazines that I would never been possible at the convenience of my home. They had tons of computer magazines that I used to read in my childhood that bring back fond memories.

</comment><comment><USER8> The cover art alone is worth a look.</comment>


Ross Ulbricht to judge: "Please leave me my old age." - <AUTHOR> https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2086668-gov-uscourts-nysd-422824-251-1.html

<comment><USER2> As somebody who knew Ross in college, this is rather heartbreaking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you tell us how he was? I don't think it is heartbreaking only for people who knew him. He did throw a big part (if not all) of his life away :-/ He is scheduled for another trial for attempted murder, so I am afraid he will never get out of jail.</comment></comment>


Web front-end tech breakdown - <AUTHOR> I've been in the mobile application space as an engineer for awhile and wanted to get a little more up to speed on the tools and techniques used today on web front-ends. Specifically, the more rich and interactive web applications.
What designers and developers are pulling off with what I assume is HTML/CSS/JS is blowing my mind compared to when I last played with this stuff. My goal here is a high level discussion so I'd have a head start on where to begin were I to implement some of these effects and animations myself. Some of this might be just getting familiar with the nomenclature used today.
Let's take this site for example: https://www.everest.agency/
- What are some of the concepts they're using to pull off many of the effects here? There are some 3D effects and transitions - is this done through CSS animations primarily? - What tools/frameworks are commonly used today to facilitate development of a front-end such as this? <comment><USER2> If you use developer tools to inspect this website you'll find that it's basically rendered on <canvas></canvas> \- that's how many HTML5/js games are made - you can't really inspect any elements that are drawn inside this, but basically what you see on this webpage, can be a 'video game that looks like a website' \- so the authors were not limited to what's DOM offers and its quirks.</comment>


Startups to Watch: GazeHawk - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/article/digital/10-startups-watch-gazehawk/229848/

<comment><USER2> This is a little off topic, but I can't stand sites that make me click 'next' 10 times just to read their article.. It instinctively makes me not want to read it.

<comment><USER3> Related to your off-topic comment: read the comment on the article site. :)

 _Edit:_ Because it will probably get taken down, it says "Another great startup you should look out for is SlideshowAssassins, it goes and kills authors and webmasters of crappy sites that whore out for ad clicks their articles by spreading them across stupid, pointless, annoying slideshows."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quite a few of these were check-in/advert type applications. I can't make myself even try these things, like foursquare facebook places, etc. I just don't like the idea. Anyone I want to know where I am, knows where I am. Adding lots of ways to sell me stuff after I check-in, or just straight up following me around tracking live for marketing purposes, solidifies my resolve to not use these things.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't say I would absolutely need any of these things, but their uses seem like they would work well in special cases, like some with some big company or something. I suppose there is a market for these things, but overall I'm not sure how necessary they really are...I think I may just not be reading about them detailed enough, nor do I want to cut down on the hard work of these developers, but how necessary is the next step in social TV, or something..

</comment><comment><USER6> So I'm assuming that has to be done in a physical location where user testing is done ? I can't imagine this being a product for home use.

<comment><USER7> Nope, our main advantage is that we can be run in a user's own home. We use ordinary webcams, so if you have a laptop or webcam attached to a desktop we can track you.

<comment><USER6> whats the incentive for people to allow you to track them ? I hope you're not relying on deals

<comment><USER8> They pay testers via PayPal: <https://www.gazehawk.com/tester/signup/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> too many ads...

<comment><USER4> Ad laden page to discuss applications that track you so that they can ultimately send you more ads.</comment></comment>


Apple: Buy the Lightening Dock - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/08/iphone-7-headphones-charging-solution/ <comment><USER2> The mental gymnastics the Apple community is doing right now is hilarious.

[A] : listen to music

[B] : charge my phone

[C] : airBuds

[D] : lightning dock

[E] : 3.5mm port

customer: "I want to do A, but that means I can't do B or vice versa"

apple: "Buy C, that will let you do A and B"

customer: "But what happens when the battery for C dies?"

apple: "Buy D, that will let you do A and B"

customer: "But D has a E that isn't compatible with C"

apple: "Courage."

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is misspelled.</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project, written on Friday and Today - <AUTHOR> http://fasterdev.com

<comment><USER3> I have what feels like a stupid question: Most of the weekend projects I see here on HN look surprisingly polished, this one included. Any quick projects I make just don't have that polished look and feel. Is it just a matter of have enough design experience that you can just make it happen, are you using templates or a library of some sort? Any advice on how to get my projects to look nicer faster would be greatly appreciated!

<comment><AUTHOR> Template from ThemeForest are what I use to add some polish; plenty of people will criticise for using themes, but in my opinion, and coming from someone with _zero_ design skills, they get you in a better place right from the start :)

So, most of my sites are written using Kohana and a couple of themes from ThemeForest - one for the sales side, and one for the admin area itself.

Edit: and really, that's nowhere near to being a stupid question - I only found out about options like TF when a friend told me a few months ago :)

<comment><USER4> Just a question about the theme from ThemeForest - which I didn't know about until now. Looks like you're using this theme:

[http://themeforest.net/item/freemium-saas-wordpress-cms- blog...](http://themeforest.net/item/freemium-saas-wordpress-cms-blog-theme- ii/114695)

$30 is a great deal if the license covers a single commercial app (I assume you need to buy it each time you use it in an app?) but when do you need to pay for the "Extended License" which is $1500?

<comment><USER5> From my cursory reading of the licensing, the key difference is that the Extended License allows you to distribute the theme with your app (the regular license would be limited to a hosted app).

[http://themeforest.net/wiki/support/legal-terms/licensing- te...](http://themeforest.net/wiki/support/legal-terms/licensing-terms/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quote:

"What is FasterDev?

This is the initial release of FasterDev, written by Thomas Buck, a developer originally from London, UK. It was only launched on February 20th 2011, and if you have any questions or comments, please ..."

That doesn't really answer the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, you're right - really need to tighten up the copy :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this tool after seeing a number of beginner Facebook developers complaining about how difficult it is to set up test users. The plan is to keep on adding more helper tasks (e.g. banning users from apps - and I'm open to other ideas!) as time goes on.

Right now, it asks for the Offline Access permission purely because managing access token expiry dates is a low priority - I want to see if anyone will use it first :) Once a few people do, I'll sit down and write the session management properly :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Error? Database_Exception [ 0 ]: [1062] Duplicate entry '' for key 'uniq_email' ( INSERT INTO `users` (`username`, `password`) VALUES ('xxx', 'yyy') )

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn, that's two bugs - one that the production site's showing real errors, and that there's a db bug. I think I've now fixed this - can you try again? :)

Oh, and thanks for letting me know :)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, now working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Your two days worth is looking like a great site! Well done! :) Two points: On the tour page, there are two "tour" headers right under each other, which is strange. I recommend the tour bar in the header section just leaving the tour header in the main section. Secondly, on homepage, under "why do you ask for offline access" typo anyony=>anyone. Also, no-body really reads the lots of text in footers (or anywhere really!) so if you have something important to say (like why you want offline access), somewhere physically closer to the facebook login step would make more sense. And lastly, who did you design? If you did it in just 2 days, that's amazing, well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the typo catch, and point about the header, I'll get started on fixing these :)

 _And lastly, who did you design?_

I cheated and used a couple of templates from ThemeForest :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "For a limited time during this soft launch, we're making our amazing service available for $19.99 per year. This offer won't last forever, so get in early."

This is good, but it would work better if I knew what the price would eventually be and when it would change. Right now, I'm sitting here saying "well, maybe I don't need this right now, but I might in a few weeks. If the price is going to go from $20 to $25, I don't care about getting in now. If the price is going from $20 to $200, I might throw the money at it right now just to lock it in.

Alternatively, at least tell me when the price change will happen.

</comment><comment><USER10> My suggestion for the homepage would be to make the screenshots expandable/zoomable. They're so small I can't really make any detail out apart from a few pieces of bolded text.

Moving on from that, I'd be willing to give this a try but currently I'm getting a MySQL error after trying to login with my Facebook account.

"Database_Exception [ 0 ]: [1062] Duplicate entry '' for key 'uniq_email' ( INSERT INTO `users` (`username`, `password`) VALUES ('<removed for privacy's sake>', '<removed for privacy's sake>') )"

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooh, great suggestion about the screenshots, I'll see what I can do about that with the time I have left today :)

Can you try logging in again? I think that I've fixed that bug now - <USER2> need to generate some more test users to make sure ;)

<comment><USER10> Just tried again and I am able to login now. Will be testing this shortly!

<comment><AUTHOR> Brilliant, and thanks again - I really appreciate having someone that isn't me testing it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks great, especially for a weekend's work. But I think that is a classical example of going too far with the _minimum viable product_ concept.

I would never let you have offline access. I think that quite a few others might not as well. So you might have a great idea but without that feature you might not have a mvp and your trial run will give you misleading data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and you have a good point about offline access; I'm honestly not sure about how big a gamble this is. The thing is, I've noticed that whilst a lot of people who work in IT are completely against the idea (myself included, to be perfectly honest), it seems that there are also lots of people who plainly - for want of a better term - don't give a damn.

My rough plan is to give it a week, and if I don't get even a couple of sign ins by then, spend the weekend sorting out session fun. If you like, I can reply to your comment with an update? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Whatever eases the massive pain and frustration involved in developing things for facebook, is imho a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER13> That's incredibly polished for a weekend project. That said, I'm quite confused by the choice of icons on the right of the "Tour" page. The calendar doesn't scream "Test Users" to me, nor do any of the other icons seem to be tied to what they're meant to be describing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Because it's a weekend project, I basically threw together the icons as a last-minute "text goes here" kinda thing. I'm hoping to sort this out later on this week :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not clear on what this gives me that I can't already do. Is it somehow easier to preview dialogs or create test users?

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks really good, nice work.

Btw, typo in point 1 on home page, launced = launched. Also hovering over the feature set links in /public/tour looks like you've left the default title tags on them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic, thanks for the typo catches - now fixed :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Give me one topic and in one month I'll present you a project - <AUTHOR> Please share one topic, idea and I'll do a project out of it. On August 18th I'll post the project here as Show HN! Since I only can do one project I'll take the most ranked one. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'm not the OP, but I love this idea: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20477365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20477365)

There's no need to wait for the whole world to switch to a different email protocol. In fact, it's better if not everyone does so that spammers aren't incentivized to develop countermeasures. The use case is someone wanting to publish a contact email address on his or her web page. Your project involves writing some javascript code to do the proof of work in the sender's browser. You don't even need any cryptological expertise to pull this off. The javascript code can search at random for a token to be attached to the message such that the sha256 sum of the message combined with the token ends with a number of trailing zeros chosen by the receiver. More zeros mean more work.

The rest is just normal webdev stuff that can be as fancy or plain as you want to make it. If you have time left over, a server side filter written in any language you want to check the tokens would be nice.</comment>


Filmmaker from NSA Leaks Case Emerges from Behind the Camera - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/business/media/filmmaker-linked-to-leaks-has-her-own-stories-to-tell.html?hp <comment><USER2> I know the article touches on this point, but I thought it worth saying directly. The fact that this journalist had long been publicly singled out for extra scrutiny under the current programs is a damning indictment of them. Whether she was targeted for political reasons or simply because the dragnet was too wide - neither explanation is compatible with the basic requirements for a functioning democracy.

If the people whose job it is to speak truth to power are being persecuted by the system then we are no better today than we were 50 years ago when the FBI used their surveillance of Martin Luther King to try to intimidate him into silence.

<comment><USER3> There is a not so subtle carrot and stick. A reporter who goes along with those in power can expect access, leaks and perhaps lucrative jobs for their family [1]. But a reporter who embarrasses our leaders will lose the access they need to do their jobs and may be harassed by airport security or even investigated by FBI [2],[3] or have their computer hacked [4]. Powerful incentives to go along with their views.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media- administ...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media- administration-deal-with- conflicts/2013/06/12/e6f98314-ca2e-11e2-8da7-d274bc611a47_story.html)

[2] [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/govt-obtains-wide-ap-phone- re...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/govt-obtains-wide-ap-phone-records- probe)

[3] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/us/politics/white-house- de...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/us/politics/white-house-defends- tracking-fox-reporter.html)

[4] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik- wemple/wp/2013/06/1...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik- wemple/wp/2013/06/14/cbs-news-confirms-multiple-breaches-of-sharyl-attkissons- computer/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone elaborate on the 'encrypted online conversation' they mention in the article?

<comment><USER5> "....Software like that exists. One of the oldest is PGP, e-mail encryption software released in 1991. Others include OTR (for "off the record"), which enables secure instant messaging, and the Internet telephony apps Silent Circle and Redphone.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5880596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5880596)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/14/n...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/14/nsa- proof-encryption-exists-why-doesnt-anyone-use-it/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> More isolated heroes surfacing, coalescing, and encouraging popular outrage and opposition.

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember reading about this filmmaker in a previous NYT article. It bothers me immeasurably that this sort of harassment (is there any other way to describe it?) happens to people simply because they are trying to shed light on things the government would rather keep in the shadows.</comment>


Dick Cheney reveals heart defibrillator was altered to thwart terrorist hacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-19/cheney-reveals-defibrillator-altered-to-thwart-terrorists/5033354

<comment><AUTHOR> Would this have been related to the stuxnet microcontroller hack?

<comment><USER2> [http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/08/defcon-excuse-me-while- i-t...](http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/08/defcon-excuse-me-while-i-turn-off- your-pacemaker/)

Related to that.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Double your customer feedback rate with simple one-click surveys - <AUTHOR> https://www.yesinsights.com <comment><USER2> Will give this a try! Does it embed within a web app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey James, thanks for giving us a shot! Yes, you can embed the survey in a web app. If you have any more questions, please feel free to email me directly: austin at yesinsights.</comment></comment>


The Dawning Age of Mind-Reading Machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,644296,00.html

<comment> onreact-com No need for torture anymore. Just plug the terrorist suspects to the mind reader. How dystopian.</comment>


Nobody Is A Good Speaker When they Start - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yapcna.org/post/17253936133/nobody-is-a-good-speaker-when-they-start

<comment><USER2> brian d foy is something of an unique individual - I've run across him in StackOverflow threads, and inevitably came across his "name style guide":

<http://www252.pair.com/~comdog/style.html></comment>


Fermat's Library – Annotating Academic Papers Every Week - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/fermats-library-annotating-academic-papers-every-week/ <comment><USER2> I kinda want to like Fermat's library - the concept is good - but mostly I hate reading articles on their websites. I would much, much rather just read the raw PDF, and it annoys me they do not link it.

Rendering is slow, buggy, and results in choppy scrolling. The annotations feels out of place UI-wise, but often also content-wise.

<comment><USER3> _> Rendering is... buggy_

Unfortunately, [http://fermatslibrary.com/](http://fermatslibrary.com/) is down at the moment so I can't comment with an informed opinion.

But there are two killer features that most annotation software fail to supply:

1\. print-ability. Physical copies are important.

2\. Accurate rendering (related to 1). There's a pretty high barrier to overcome before someone else's inline notes are more valuable than knowing that I'm looking at exactly what the authors intended for me to look at.

That said, the scientific PDF annotation space is ripe for disruption. IDK how meaningful that market is (directly or indirectly), but someone could definitely step in and own it with something that's even an iota better than current options.

<comment><USER2> > But there are two killer features that most annotation software fail to > supply:

I don't know what kind of annotation software you usually use, but I have yet to annotate a PDF and lose the ability of 1 and/or 2.

As for crowd-annotation services, I can only think of genius and medium. Genius does not preserve original format, but that is obviously unreasonable to expect (they're songs!). Medium is its own format, so rendering is accurate by definition.

<comment><USER4> What programs do you use? Can they make annotations with math typesetting, markup, links and images?

<comment><USER2> Technically, yes. In practice no.

I've mostly dabbled with preview, Adobe reader, Zotero and Mendeley. You can in all do whatever advance shit you'd like in 3rd party software and copy- paste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In 2014 I had an idea, didn't go anywhere though:

"I've been working on a project to implement a feature similar to PDF native 'custom annotations,' but using an external JSON file. The idea is to allow a more hacker-friendly way to add javascript-powered interactivity to a PDF file, and allow a js-based-document-viewer to interact with other elements in a web page. Somewhat like using an external subtitles-file for a video instead of hard-coded subs, allowing you to use things like HTML5 tracks for generating events etc. (manipulating PDFs internal workings is hard work for those who create documents/content, and the JS support is old-fashioned, if I remember rightly).."

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.pdf- js/2...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.pdf- js/24DK2E7I5nc)

I think mostly I liked PDF's precise, fixed control over layout, and wanted to be able to program some js onClick callbacks on top of it in an easy way. Maybe sometime I will revisit the ideas, see if there was something there.

</comment><comment><USER6> This approach could save journalism from the scourge of fake news. The specific issues are:

1) opinions masquerading as news. 2) misinterpretation of facts/data. 3) misrepresenting the facts. 4) cherry picking (not showing full picture, such that the meaning changes). 5) insufficient context / history about the topic.

All these issues with reporting could be mitigated with expert + crowd annotation — esp where the author and the subject (say people mentioned in the news) can come and add more context.

When objective function is speed and clicks, sometimes depth on a topic suffers. This is true whether news is human or machine generated. In that case, continual engagement with the original article, amendments and updates become a very important tool.

If journalism is defined as a search for truth, then news annotation could be the thing that saves it.

HN, thoughts?

<comment><USER7> _journalism from the scourge of fake news._

Journalism isn't suffering from a scourge of fake news.

<comment><USER8> [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146)

You don't need to have an increase in fake news to have an increase in the perception of fake news. Another way to get an increase in the perception of fake news is to change the structural graph through which news propagates. The two most outspoken people I know of on the topic of the problem of fake news both happen to be twitter users (Elon Musk, Donald Trump).

<comment><USER7> I don't really understand how this is a response to what I said.

<comment><USER8> The Science paper I linked was meant to show that the twitter graph has properties which spread fake news through its part of the news propagation graph. The people I referenced were meant to show that people on the graph with such a property are talking about the fake news problem as if it is real. Taken together, my response to you was trying to get at the idea that fake news, even if not a thing from the perspective of one node on overall news propagation graph, can seem very real from another position on the graph.

So basically, I disagree with the claim that fake news doesn't exist, in a subtle way.

<comment><USER7> _I disagree with the claim that fake news doesn 't exist_

I got that bit, it's just not a thing I argued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me a lot of [https://via.hypothes.is/](https://via.hypothes.is/) . Could someone familiar with both explain why to prefer one service over another?

<comment><USER7> The thing you linked seems to be 'annotations generally' whereas Fermat's library is 'curated sequence of academic papers with an annotations feature'

<comment><USER9> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>