'Chernobyl' on HBO and Potential Risks of Real Ukraine Nuclear Plants - <AUTHOR> https://www.rt.com/news/459661-ukraine-chernobyl-nuclear-blackout/ <comment><USER2> Believing RT to say anything truthful about anything Ukrainian would be rather naive.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally get the concerns about RT, but even a liar can tell the truth sometimes. From the content of the article itself, it seems pretty realistic to my mind.

<comment><USER2> It's possible that they are correct, but seeing what Russian media claims about Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict I would not bet on it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Generations - How old are Millenials now? - <AUTHOR> https://andai.tv/generations/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Today I was wondering how old my generation is again, so I looked it up.

I noticed you have to click each article on Wikipedia to find out what the year and age range is for each generation... so I made this!

It updates the age based on current year and it's done client side in a single html file so you can save it with Ctrl+S :)

<comment><USER2> Your age ranges should go 0-7, 7-23, 23-39... instead of 0-7, 8-23, 24-39...

While 2012 was 8 years ago, not everyone born in 2012 has turned 8 yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, good point. That column was originally labeled "... turn X this year."</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla soliciting supplier quotes for Model Y crossover, production March 1, 2020 - <AUTHOR> http://teslaweekly.com/rumor-tesla-sending-out-drawing-and-specs-to-solicit-quotes-for-model-y-crossover/ <comment><USER3> I used to be super gung-ho about Tesla. I've preordered the X and the 3. Never pulled the trigger on the X, and probably gonna give back my 3 reservation too.

I love the way the car drives. The driver experience is amazing, with the way it just goes where you want and autopilot just driving it on the freeway for me. If it was just me, I would get one.

But the interiors are awful. They let me test drive an X for a day, trying to convince to act on my reservation. Right after that test drive, instead of the X, we got a Honda Odyssey.

Sure it uses gas, but my family is _way_ more comfortable in the van, and I saved $100,000. After driving the X, my first thought was, this car costs $140,000, but it feels like $30,000 on the inside. The seats were barely adjustable. There was nothing for the kids, no climate controls in the back for my wife. The back row was tight and uncomfortable for my mother in law.

I hope one day Tesla does an all electric van. But I suspect I'll get that from Honda or Toyota before they ever get around to it.

<comment><USER4> You're okay with ugly exterior though?

<comment><USER5> Why care about the exterior? You don't see it when you're driving.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, the older Odysseys were really damn ugly. Newer ones are slightly better, but not amazing.

Of course, interior wins over exterior every time, but I do admit to some confusion as to why anyone bought the old ones.

<comment><USER3> I didn't even think about the exterior when I bought it. It's for my family, so all I worried about were features that will make my family comfortable while giving me a good driving experience.

I suspect that's why all those old vans were bought too -- you don't get a van for its styling. :)

<comment><USER6> That's true, you certainly don't. Honestly, it's true of any car - <USER2> something looked like a PT Cruiser (to pick a stereotype) but did what I wanted far better than anything else, I probably would have gotten despite the exterior. Though that is absurdly hard to imagine, so it's hard to be sure what would happen.

In any case, I think exterior certainly comes into play at a subconscious level after looking at a bunch of different models for a month... and if two vehicles are otherwise very similar, I might opt for a slightly nicer exterior over, say, 3-level vs 2-level heated seats, or rain-sensing wipers. (On that note, I've never found a rain-sensing wiper system that I liked...)

For context, though, I'm in Vancouver, and as a city we're rather snobby about car appearances.

<comment><USER3> > I've never found a rain-sensing wiper system that I liked...

Me neither, they're always too aggressive. I end up doing by hand, which would be super hard on Model 3 from what I hear.

> For context, though, I'm in Vancouver, and as a city we're rather snobby > about car appearances.

I grew up in Southern California. I doubt you will find a place more snobby about their cars. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So is this where the founders all get to come in and contemplate, compare, and contrast their expensive luxury toys? And then move on to another thread on HN and wax philosophical about economic inequality?

<comment><USER8> HN is now (fortunately? unfortunately?) large enough that multiple groups of people with different consumer identities coexist under the same forum. I'd guess that startup founders are a minority by user count.

As a founder of a startup, I don't own a Tesla (nor do I wax philosophical about economic inequality often), but there are plenty of articles and comment threads that I find valuable. It's also healthy to keep abreast of a broad understanding of what people find interesting. It just so happens that Teslas are at an intersection of featureset and price that interests a lot of people here and I find that valuable for HN content.

Also, a model 3 is something like $40k-50k (realistically) which is probably above the range for a ramen profitable founder but certain well within range of most of the middle class to upper-middle class such that I wouldn't consider it an expensive luxury toy.

<comment><USER9> "a model 3 is something like $40k-50k (realistically)"

The currently "available" versions start at $44K, and features (seriously, paying $1k for 'non-black' paint?) can easily push that to over $60K.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how much of Tesla's problems are because of Musk's ADD: You have SpaceX, The Boaring Company, Solar City, Tesla Betteries, multiple electric car lines, and now a truck and semi, HyperLoop, OpenAI, and probably a dozen more projects we don't yet know about. Any one of these would be incredibly hard for any uber genius and time on any one of these is time away from something else. To what degree can you do it all and helicopter in to run the company?

<comment><USER4> There is no doubt one company would succeed better if he gave it his full attention.

But this is a great example of the Pareto principle 80/20 rule. With his last 2% of effort he could engineer the next Tesla car. Or he could get maybe half as far as one of these geniuses on a new vision alone. If this is anywhere close to being true you can have 7-8 companies with very minimal sacrifice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The Model Y or whatever the hell will have relatively low technical and > production risk as a result.

So I take it that the Model 3 manufacturing line issues are now solved?

</comment><comment><USER12> It will reach volume production before the model 3 by that calendar.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hopefully the interior of this model does not look like s* too.

<comment><USER14> This common comment is funny to me because I _like_ Tesla's design sensibilities for their interiors. I'll be the first to say the fit, finish, and materials could all be better, but what they are doing visually is clean and minimal, which I really like.

All that said, they hired Anders Bell away from Volvo a while ago specifically to help with interior quality. This may be the first project that really has his mark on it.

<comment><USER15> It's clean but feels like a Hyundai and that is in the best case scenario, which works for the model 3 especially if they can bring it's price down even more but for the model s it's a bit shameful.

<comment><USER16> Have you been inside an actual model 3? Or are you basing your comment on pics?

I got ours a couple of weeks ago and it's definitely not like a Hyundai. The interior is very clean, modern, far superior to any other car I've been in. My first thoughts when I got in was— the BMW 3 series is dead. My second thought was, they better refresh the Model S interior to match this asap because the Model S looks dated compared to it.

<comment><USER14> Aside from the better look, it seems like the build quality has made significant advancements too, yeah? (I've yet to sit in a Model 3.) The Model S squeaks and rattles like a 1980s Oldsmobile!

<comment><USER16> We also have an older build Model S. Though I didn't experience any squeaks with the S, the Model 3 does seem much more solid and very well built.

Here's a pretty good review comparing the S with the 3: [http://teslaweekly.com/my-initial-impressions-on-the- model-3...](http://teslaweekly.com/my-initial-impressions-on-the-model-3/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My wife and I are in the market for an EV, but the thing is, even the Model 3 is a bit big for a car to drive around the city and all the tiny cars I've looked at have rubbish batteries.

If Tesla did a small, two-seater city car, with an okay trunk and a decent battery I'd probably buy it.

<comment><USER18> I don't think anyone is planning on selling that car anytime soon, so you're out of luck. The Smart brand is going all electric in the US, but the battery will probably be too small for what you want. No one else is planning a 2-seater, except for very high-end cars.

<comment><USER17> There are cars being sold outside the US as well. Several big brand car manufacturers try to make that car.

They're just not good. Yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Model S is aging well (they really hit it out of the park with the styling back in 2012). But rather than see Tesla introduce a new model, I think it's time for the next generation of the S.

<comment><USER18> The "facelift" S is your new generation of the S.

<comment><USER19> Car makers typically alternate between "all new" and "facelift". In Tesla's case, the facelift was the minor styling change they did a few years ago, which most noticeably got rid of the fake grill opening. So they've done their facelift - time to change the sheet metal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yipee. I can't wait to buy one.

</comment><comment><USER15> So after Musk's juvenile model line is complete where do they go on from there?

Model C A/4 and R?

<comment><USER21> Models B, A, C, K. So they can bring the S 3 X Y B A C K.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's an interesting strategy for sure. Instead of solving the problems facing the current lineup just add another car and a whole new set of problems.

<comment><USER17> Actually, no. This is how stuff happens in the grown-up world where companies can't just drop everything because one product has problems.

Sure, Elon Musk likes to sail close to the wind, but if this were any other car manufacturer, nobody would bat an eyelid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I can't wait till this comes out. We're currently stuck between a 3, S and X. I have two 3's on order but the 3 isn't going to be big enough for my wife who schleps kids around all day (SAHM & very active homeschooler). The X is too expensive, it's more expensive than a decked out Cadillac Escalade (her current but aging ride). The S is nice but not as easy to get in and out of if you have a child in a car seat. A crossover would presumably ride a little higher than an S and be roughly as spacious inside as an X, and hopefully will be more minimalist inside and lower performance like the 3 bringing the price down.</comment>


Introducing Search Ads - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/app-store/search-ads/ <comment><USER2> i bet the ads will be more relevant than the search results we normally get from the app store. Too bad they didn't try to just make the app store search better for users and not worry so much about promoted app ranking.

</comment><comment><USER3> This could give the ad tech companies a run for their money.

</comment><comment><USER4> This makes the adblocking extension feature in the iOS browser even funnier. "You can block ads on our device, as long as they are not our ads"</comment>


Sbaker: FlightAware data for AAR 214. Yesterday (safe) vs. today (crash) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/sbaker/status/353611787750494208 <comment><USER2> Amazing that data is available like that, I didn´t know it was possible.

It´s early to know because a number of things may have caused this profile, but initially it seems a quite unstabilized approach. For a plane as heavy as a 777 it´s difficult to loose altitude and speed as fast as a (for example) a MD80. For those who don´t know, the first aproach is a 3 degree normal glide path. The second one is almost double than that. That means maybe more than 1500´ /min of discend. If you are not used flying in such conditions (almost idle engines, steep discend, speed above aproach selection) it´s hard to slow down your descend without smashing your tail with the ground (is what it seems it happened) or overflying the runway due to the excess air speed.

We´ll have to wait for the investigation and all the flight data to know what happened.</comment>


Man Crawls Under His House to Fix the Cable, Finds 45 Rattlesnakes – The Dodo - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedodo.com/in-the-wild/man-finds-45-snakes-under-his-house <comment><USER2> But I bet he didn't find any rats or mice ;)</comment>


Why CardDAV took so long - <AUTHOR> https://blog.fastmail.com/2015/12/01/a-tangled-path-of-workarounds/ <comment><USER2> "Only this one user had problem. But he had pretty bad problems, and I wanted to fix this properly."

That's why I'm a Fastmail customer.

<comment><USER3> I submitted a bug report once and it was fixed the next day, I was invited to try it out on their beta version of the website and it was rolled out on all the servers a couple days later. These guys are truly providing a fantastic service.

<comment><USER4> Similar experience. Fix with inability to respond to some crazy github- generated email addresses rolled out publicly in less than 48 hours. It helps that I was able to tell them "I am pretty sure it's your regex on valid email addresses because I can reproduce it with other emails like $this"

I also recall they fixed an issue where "\--" at the top of an email I was replying to was making the whole thing look like a signature and when I tried to send it was warning me about an empty message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to repost an earlier question I had about FastMail ...

It seems like everyone I read loves using FastMail for personal email/calendar/contacts.

What I haven't found is many Businesses using FastMail for corporate email/calendar/contacts.

Can someone compare FastMail (for business usage) to Office 365 and/or Google Apps?

Original question, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10511000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10511000)

<comment><USER6> We tried using FastMail for our (small) company, but switched after ~8 months because we started running into deliverability issues and countless issues with shared calendars being unshared (or sometimes losing events).

We also couldn't use any of the nice sales tools that integrate with Google Apps (or any of the tools that make managing calendars easier, like [https://claralabs.com/](https://claralabs.com/) or [http://boomerangcalendar.com/](http://boomerangcalendar.com/)). We're now on Google Apps and very happy.

<comment><USER7> I've seen a couple of nice tools integrated with Gmail and its web UI. The ones you mention are like that. However my problem with such tools are that they are not operating on standards. For one I wouldn't want to be locked into Gmail. But more importantly, tools depending on proprietary platforms usually have a short life. For example people loved Mailbox from Dropbox, while I was the one complaining that it only works with Gmail and iCloud. And I was right, Mailbox is dying.

And also these tools get access to all of your email, which is a privacy concern. And in the context of a company, that can mean industrial espionage. Personally I cannot understand how people can trust things like IFTTT, but whatever.

<comment><USER6> 100% agree with you, especially on the privacy concerns. But you have to pick your battles and, when we were looking into these tools, our battle was not the privacy of our company email or calendar.

<comment><USER8> I guess it depends how much of your companies IP is sent around in internal emails...

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that's a good point. Nearly all of our work is open source, so we weren't too concerned about losing IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't even get into the remaining compatible with the existing contacts system. CalDAV was green field, but CardDAV had to integrate with the web, with spam scanning (whitelist/score bonus for known users), with mailing list address book groups, ...

<comment><USER10> The only feature I miss with your CardDAV implementation is contact photos. Everything else works very well so I leave email and calendaring to FastMail but I'm back to self-hosted contacts for now. Really hope this can be added soon.

<comment><USER11> They do work, but only if you upload them via CardDAV - we don't have any UI for them in the web client yet.

<comment><USER10> Interesting, I'll have to try again. When I first used the beta I imported a VCF exported from ownCloud (which I think stored the images as data URIs). I'll try to figure out how to upload them via CardDAV now, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Miserable, this kind of stuff is why I don't run my own mail server any more. Happy Fastmail customer since 2006.

<comment><USER13> It's really hard to run you own mail server. Much harder than a web server. This is bad for freedom on the internet.

[http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/15/email.html](http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/15/email.html)

<comment><USER14> It is not that hard to run your own email server, what is hard is to get your mail into recipients mailboxes. The big players in this market have basically decided to block (at random) all mail that doesn't come out of a known email service.

I have just given up running my own mail server after more than 15 years because of this problem. Five years ago I had no problems, but these last 12 months have made me decide to give up and just pay.

<comment><USER15> It's true it is harder; definitely much harder if you're not a sysadmin by trade. These days to get mail to deliver you not only need to support SMTP, but also TLS, SPF, DKIM, DMARC at a minimum. You also need to make sure that you aren't inadvertently a source for relaying, or non delivery report (NDR) / delivery status notification (DSN) bounce source (vis a vis spam with faked return paths etc).

In short if you don't / won't / can't do the above you are indeed much better paying someone else to do it (preferably at scale with attention to detail like fastmail).

<comment><USER14> I used to do all these things (not that I am a sysadmin by trade, but after 15 years you get to know the job). Even doing all this the big email players (Microsoft in particular, but Yahoo and Google are also guilty) will just ditch your emails without rhyme or reason if it is not coming out of a known email service.

This didn't used to happen, but it looks like they have now outsourced their spam filtering to the email service providers who now act as the gatekeepers to email ecosystem - email from a known service == good, email from business that has been around for more than a decade == spam.

<comment><USER7> The irony is that nowadays most spam I get is from @gmail or @yahoo addresses, so all they've accomplished is lock-in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _In future we plan to have a third separate addressbook for automatically > added email addresses._

I just want to say that this is something I really want. I don't even care if it's exposed over CardDAV, I just want to get automatically-added addresses out of my normal user addressbook. A couple of weeks ago I realized that my addressbook had a bunch of contacts in it I didn't recognize, so I cleared them all out. Today I checked and there's 3 more unwanted contacts.

It actually feels very broken to me that FastMail is automatically adding things to my address book without asking me, and without any obvious way to turn it off. I don't mind it recording this stuff in a separate addressbook to use for spam filtering and for auto-filling during message composing, but it should not be part of my normal addressbook and should not be coming down over CardDAV for my user addressbook.

The reason this is a problem is because I use my FastMail CardDAV addressbook as a shared addressbook for me and my wife (she doesn't use FastMail herself but I do), since we use iCloud for our normal address books but iCloud doesn't have a way to share addressbooks. It occurs to me now that since I'm actually using a Family account (for a single user, so I can have a custom domain without having the more expensive plan), I have a Shared address book available and I should just switch over to that (since I assume nothing ever auto-adds there). But it was still a rude surprise to find a bunch of unknown contacts appearing in my Contacts app on iOS.

<comment><USER17> You can turn this off in Settings -> Preferences -> Auto-save contacts.

<comment><USER16> Good to know, thanks. I'm still looking forward to being able to have auto- saved contacts in a separate addressbook though, as I do like being able to autocomplete addresses when composing messages even if I don't want that address in my contacts list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fastmail is fantastic and their policies and pricing are fantastic as well. Really happy with them, and moreso after this story and the recent DDoS troubles they went through.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Even if we reported a bug to Apple right now, it would still take months at > a minimum before a fix is in the field and on all devices. So we need to get > this working for everyone so we can move CardDAV out of beta.

Basically make a hacky workaround, and leave the situation as is for everyone else.

This is not meant directly as criticism, but one thing I really appreciate about the OpenBSD team is how they refuse to "fix" things by creating bad code as a workaround to other broken code.

They always submit patches upstream, and everyone gets to benefit.

If more people had that attitude towards code quality, we might not be in such a buggy universe as we are now.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've had some deliverability issues with Fastmail, and the search feature is horrible. Other than that, I've been a satisfied customer for over a year now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've actually found the search in the web interface to be very fast and pretty good in terms of finding what I'm looking for with >70k messages.

When I switched from Gmail a few years ago ([https://masnick.org/2013/07/19/fastmail/](https://masnick.org/2013/07/19/fastmail/)), one of the most striking changes was how fast FastMail's interface was compared to Gmail. FastMail did a huge update to their search code just as I switched, and I haven't looked back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can you use multiple domains with fastmail? And do they allow wildcard addresses/forwarders?

It's probably on the website, but I haven't found it yet.

<comment><USER22> Yes and yes. I'm using those features since I migrated my mail there from personally hosting an all forwarding config.

<comment><USER21> Cool, thank you for the response! I'll probably give it a shot for my non- gmail.com emails and see how it goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well done guys!</comment>


Free, Encrypted Calling Finally Comes To The iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/07/free-encrypted-calling-finally-comes-to-the-iphone/

<comment><USER2> I'm glad there's open source software for this. That means there's at least "a chance" that seriou bugs will be stamped out. But I'm not overly optimistic. E.g. OpenSSL bugs existing for years, Apple having "goto fail; goto fail;" problems.

It doesn't really matter if you're just having an affair with a married co- worker. Nobody cares. But if you're in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Russia, Ukraine, Gaza, etc., you literally are betting your life on the quality of your encryption. That's not a situation I'd ever want to be in.</comment>


Benchling (YC S12) Is Modernizing Software For Biotech Labs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/20/sv-angel-backed-benchling-is-modernizing-software-for-biotech-labs/

<comment><USER2> Biotech is going to be eaten by software, that's not in question. It's clear that Kleiner lost their first bet on health startups, which means that I'm looking forward to seeing the next batch of startups give it a go.

<comment><USER3> "It's clear that Kleiner lost their first bet on health startups" \- What do you mean by this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No doubt, biotech will be "eaten" by software. But the crowded market of biotech software has many viable open source alternatives. Besides, many tools have been developed or are being developed by established companies.

Yet, I don't see much evidence of growth. Looks like 'play money' for investors.

<comment><USER5> You could have said all these things about Dropbox.

"The crowded market of backup software has many viable open source alternatives. Besides, many tools have been developed or are being developed by established companies."

<comment><USER4> True, but Dropbox started from winning geeky hearts - and there are far more geeks than gainfully employed biologists.

I am open to sharing ideas offline - and rich experiences on why the ones that tried have not succeeded so far.

Good comment anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congrats to Benchling! They're a phenomenal group of guys who are really going to do great things.</comment>


You can now pay up to $60k for a Mac - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2019/12/10/apples-new-60000-mac-costs-more-than-a-tesla/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious if people have insight into the market for this besides "video professionals"?

I can't imagine the economics work for large shops, where I would guess commodity hardware rules 99% of the time.

Scientific computing will be done on large clusters -- and not clusters of $60k office art.

Of course there's the % of the overall market that buys Ferraris and other expensive toys.

Seriously, what does one do with 1.5TB of RAM in a single machine?

[Edit]

I'm not suggesting this doesn't make sense. There's a precedent in e.g., high end loudspeakers of producing a cost-no-object showpiece that people talk about but represents a small % of their overall sales.

Ditto high end cars and small production run 'statement' versions of those cars.

I'm just curious who -- strictly performance-wise -- this computer would serve well.</comment>


How to curb Internet addiction? - <AUTHOR>

Sometimes I feel like my job is akin to being a professional Crack tester. I clearly have an addiction to FB, Twitter, Email, RSS etc but they are all absolutely crucial to my work. Its affecting my productivity bigtime. What can I do? <comment><USER3> I'm a student having a hard time having to study 6+ hours a day on the 8 hour free time I have, trying to enter the university I aim for (I'm Brazilian). When I started this regime, the hardest habit to drop was the internet, of course ;) My solution was radical. I gave myself a fixed (and limited) time frame where I could browse, check on email, update social network profiles, etc. I've been studying programming for a long time also, and there's a proper time frame for that too.

However I acknowledge it may be harder if you're in between: trying to control yourself but having it crucial to your job. As hard as t may be, I could only recommend my own strategy: trying to organize your time properly, and stick to it.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's odd to me that nobody ever makes a connection between social media addiction and more traditional problems with repetitive checking. If the people who checked their Facebook feeds 500 times a day were checking anything more mundane like whether they turned off their ovens or locked their car doors (either of which is more important), it would instantly be recognized as OCD.

This doesn't imply that people who are addicted to social media actually _have_ OCD, rather that social media is a sort of supernormal stimulus for "checkability", in the same class as slot machines and chocolate chip cookies. Regardless, it should suggest the hypothesis that SSRIs, which help eliminate the compulsions of OCD, might also reduce the Internet-based compulsions the negative impact the lives of normal people. Anecdotally, taking SSRIs has helped my Internet addiction immensely, though the usual caveats of n=1 studies apply.

<comment><USER5> As I understand it, people with OCD are checking to subdue an anxiety. They fear that the oven is still on and can't convince themselves otherwise - <USER2> checking it over and over helps.

Repetitive Facebook checking is supposedly more like an addiction - people are chasing the endorphin rush that comes with finding a new message (or winning at the table) rather than trying to chase away anxiety.

<comment><USER6> From people I've observed, I would say that at least half are attempting to subdue the anxiety that they are somehow missing out on something that is going on. As if they couldn't be the 10th person to accept a party invite, or couldn't bear to not be the first to know that somebody is pregnant or getting married or breaking up, or whatever. I think the OCD comparison is accurate. Not for everyone, but for a substantial subset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/>

<comment><USER8> Here is the accompanying Mac app: <http://pomodoro.ugolandini.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This tool could be helpful if you are on OS X: <http://visitsteve.com/work/selfcontrol/>

Page also contains links to other useful apps. I really like Spirited Away.

After rereading the post, maybe not applicable if the sites are crucial to get work done.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the LeechBlock firefox plugin.

<comment><USER11> I use this, and only allow HN and Google Reader during my lunch break. It works pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was addicted to news feeds so I used a filter to block myself ( Procon Latte, a firefox plugin). I am clean for more than a month now.

For increasing productivity, use pomodoro or similiar simple/simpler techniques. Its all about creating a habit.

</comment><comment><USER13> how about using something like <http://www.slifeweb.com/> I am quite curious to hear about whether these tools help or not and maybe ways of using it that I haven't thought of.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using www.rescuetime.com it is absolutely amazing but its not helping... maybe even making it worse. the stats are addictive</comment></comment>


YouTube Is Still Hosting Graphic Images of Bestiality - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/youtube-is-still-hosting-graphic-images-of-bestiality <comment><USER2> Hopefully not any female presenting nipples though.</comment>


Containership.io Shuts Down - <AUTHOR> https://docs.containership.io/en/articles/3354688-containership-shutdown <comment><USER2> Blog post: [https://blog.containership.io/shutdown/](https://blog.containership.io/shutdown/)

<comment><USER3> > We had to ask ourselves the same questions our customers were asking: "What > makes us different [from Kubernetes] ?"

> We quickly realized our greatest value was not necessarily at the > orchestration layer, but rather it was the intuitive multicloud control > plane we were building (Containership Cloud). Though difficult, we made the > choice to abandon our work on open source containership, and pivot to > delivering customers the same sort of experience using Kubernetes.

[...]

> It has been nearly a year and a half since the Containership Cloud > replatform, and we have failed to monetize Containership Cloud in such a way > that we could build a sustainable business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is incredibly risky to build businesses on top of small time platforms like this.

<comment><USER5> I want to concur with you but... Would you pls elaborate what is meant by _small-time platforms_?

<comment><USER6> Likely something not backed by a corporation with big bags of money.

<comment><USER7> Like Google ;P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At least you get six weeks to move to a different "cloud".

The mean life of cloud services seems be under five years.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is open sourcing the code base possible? Might be interesting to see how it was built and give people a chance to self-host this tooling.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can assume why, but it seems very intense to say that all cloud operations will stop a month from now. Since they weren't making money, I would assume they don't have a ton of users, but still. Just over a month to migrate off? That seems pretty wild.

<comment><USER11> This is also one of the reasons these types of businesses are hard: I don't want to build on a platform that might suddenly set me into fire drill mode where I have to basically stop all work and port to a different technology. Going with a startup is always risky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You can deploy your apps to any existing Kubernetes Cluster or build and manage a new cluster on any cloud with [https://www.cloud66.com/(Disclaimer](https://www.cloud66.com/\(Disclaimer): I work at Cloud 66)

</comment><comment><USER13> I am still not sure why you failed?

What was provided beside a GUI on top of the clouds api?

<comment><USER14> Failing is really the default for startups. A better question would be, why do you think you did not succeed. I'm guessing they simply did not make enough money, which is the norm.

EDIT: if you read the article, they "failed to monetize" so there's your answer. Because they failed to monetize, it's hard to know what they could have done differently to monetize.

<comment><USER13> Right. So I would like to understand why customers did not pay?

<comment><USER15> Plenty of people don't pay me money _all of the time._ Most of them aren't even making a decision to do this, it just never would occur to them to pay me money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> so was the fatal blow in being effectively replaced by kubernetes? or not getting to the admin console as a product fast enough?

<comment><USER17> A complex combination of factors that touch on timing, investment, strategy, people, mistakes, and way too many other factors to fit in a HN comment.</comment></comment>


Futurist Ray Kurzweil Sees a Revolution Fueled by Information Technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/science/03tier.html?ex=1370318400&en=1e7250b53e2ce526&ei=5124&partner=digg&exprod=digg <comment><USER2> Some of his predictions are impressive but others tend to feel quite obvious, particularity with the amount of momentum within those fields already. Sadly, to me, Kurzweil and his works all seem to reek of a man who is just scared to die and attempts to create self fulfilling prophesies to extend his life. He also tends to base many of his predictions off the advancements in technology rather than the human side of A.I. When the number in the amount of transistors chips comes to fruition according to Kurzweil predictions, devices will not magically pass the Turing test. I attempted to read 'The Singularity is Near' and had to stop. Reading and perpetuating his work will inspire and change the worlds path and I would rather it not become self fulfilling.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208114></comment>


How NYC startup Tapad uses Scala and NoSQL to process 25k requests/sec (for now) - <AUTHOR> http://g33ktalk.com/post/10782213265/scala-how-tapad-uses-it-why-they-chose-it-dag

<comment><USER2> The fact that they use Spring to wire their application together is telling that Scala in its current state isn't meeting everyone's wants or needs at the architectural level. If you follow the Scala mailing lists you'll find a lot of anti-Spring sentiment, and I totally agree with them. I've hated Spring since I first saw it years ago. Why use a statically typed language if you're going to throw away type safety for the important task of wiring your application together? Why use a modern and powerful language if you're going to, again for important parts of your application, rely on a horribly slow and gimped XML DSL?

One of the reasons I think people still use Spring is that XML configuration files don't require recompilation. I think that to address the Scala developers or community need to make it incredibly easy for you to run Scala scripts as part of your application. This will then allow people to use Scala like a dynamic language and allow them to deploy Scala configuration without needing to recompile.

Also, I think work needs to be done in the community to document accepted design patterns one can employ to wire together your application in Scala in a way that solves all of the use cases Spring configuration is currently used for. This, combined with making it easier to run dynamic Scala, and people will never feel the need to turn to Spring again and the world will be a better place.

<comment><USER3> You make some very good points here. Although we started from scratch with Scala, we decided to use Spring for several reasons. I mention one in the talk - we initially adopted Scala for the language and syntax itself, and it made sense at the time to mitigate some technical risks by sticking to a well-known and familiar architecture / wiring / configuration model.

As we have become more familiar with the language, FP and the Scala idioms, we have definitely become less comfortable with our Spring "legacy". Initially, we felt that @BeanProperty annotations and setter injection saved us some boiler plate, but now most will shudder with having uninitialized vars. Constructor injection is somewhat better, but the XML DSL of Spring is still ridiculously verbose. Luckily, this doesn't bother us much in the day-to-day work, we spend most of our writing idiomatic Scala.

As our platform and the entire Scala ecosystem and libraries have evolved, the Spring and JEE "legacy" has become much less prevalent in our system than it was originally. We use a pimped version of Spring JDBC, Spring contexts for wiring, a Servlet container, but that's about it. In fact, we could probably easily rewrite the whole Spring config in Scala and drop most of the Spring deps.

I couldn't agree more with you in that the us in the Scala community really should come up with an accepted way of handling configuration and wiring. Having worked with more than a few Scala libraries, I can definitely attest that the plethora of configuration styles used can be a pain to manage (and dependencies -> configgy-nologgy, anyone?).

We regularly talk about this topic in the NYC Scala community, but we haven't come up anything good yet. Personally, I strongly believe that dependency injection is the way to go and that singletons and factories (which are fairly common in Scala libs) are evil. Most long-time Java devs will agree that we've been down that road before (gotta love JNDI)... That being said, we did not adopt Scala to fight for status quo, so we'll keep an open mind.

Dag

<comment><USER4> Have you looked at graph databases and how would you compare them to your with Citrusleaf document store?

A similar-sized ad network, CPX Interactive is running ad requests on InfiniGraph: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88HCKQ73nFU&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88HCKQ73nFU&feature=related)

Seems like graphing engine would give you a lot of native search / lookup functionality for free.

<comment><USER3> We don't need to do any advanced querying or search during the real-time bidding request process - it's just raw lookup based on "cookie ids" (we're not always using cookies). Simplicity of operations, horizontal scaleability and consistent, predictable performance are the key characteristics required.

Other parts of the system have very different requirements and yes, we are considering graph oriented databases for our cross-device analytics product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great stuff there, but you didn't ask about the most interesting stuff: how they determine what to bid on an ad! Of course, I'm biased as a machine learning guy :)

Having the transcript is a really nice touch. It's much faster to read than listen. I hope you can keep that up, though I realise transcription takes a lot of time.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you should come talk to us? :)

<comment><USER5> I've exchanged a few emails with Toby about this topic. He knows what we do, but he's very cagey about revealing details of what you do. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great content, and I love the length — I get overwhelmed when I see a half hour or hour long tech video. I literally have to schedule time for those... 7 minutes is the perfect depth into most topics.

</comment><comment><USER7> Scala scene is heating up in NYC, Tumblr seems to be the biggest in the area, some of the other startups like FourSquare and ideeli are using it also. Word is some of bloomberg.com is on it also

<comment><USER8> Tumblr is using scala? Any idea for what? I know ideeli was using jruby. Did they start using scala as well?

<comment><USER7> Tumblr is doing their new backend services in scala, they are starting to ramp up hiring, they want to do a lot of stuff like twitter so your seeing them do a lot of hbase also. Ideeli told me they were considering using it for backend services. Obviously I was interviewing lately so I got to hear all the recent gossip ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _insert boilerplate request for skimmable, searchable transcript or slides to accompany video_

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure - in case it's more convenient, you can get a transcript of the entire interview here: [http://g33ktalk.com/post/10782097232/dag-tapad-interview- tra...](http://g33ktalk.com/post/10782097232/dag-tapad-interview-transcript)

<comment><USER9> Awesome, thank you!

Reading it again, my comment while intended to be flippant just came out as churlish - apologies for that, and thanks for sharing this information!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good content, well edited.

</comment><comment><USER11> 7 minutes is the perfect length. Even though I have no idea what the fuck these nerds are talking about.</comment>


A Thousand Kilobots Self-Assemble Into Complex Shapes - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/a-thousand-kilobots-self-assemble#.U-z5g-u8uSU.hackernews <comment><USER2> I think it's fantastic that on the eve of the Ferguson, Missouri disaster future leaders are developing autonomous robot swarming technology‽

But hey, even though I'm pessimistic, the video is quite illustrative.</comment>


To Invent the Future, You Must Understand the Past (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/why-silicon-valley-will-continue-to-rule-c0cbb441e22f#.8thpg4yly <comment><USER2> I would question the above statement under the following premises:

      -Disruption is about taking a different path than the
       historic "proven" one... example future based on the past
       bad product: motorcycle front suspension fork, disruption
       improved product: telelever suspension (or similar in
       approach Mcpherson suspension)
      -Based on the past Genetic Algorithms could lead to local
       maximum; alternative option is always to let some non
       top-fit elements to prevent or minimize this situation.
      -History provides context and therefore bounds... counter
       example of not taking history leads to more successful
       results [0][1]

      [0] http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp
      [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig

Edit: I would also suggest a "Confirmation bias" on the Article; from Wikipedia:

> _The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in > a way that confirms one 's preconceptions._

With that said that would lead us to the already existing question of

if correlation doesn't imply causation what does?

Edit2: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11211583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11211583) which seems to state (a priori) the opposite idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> > I think I can answer those questions.

Actually, I don't think you can - you're too close to the subject to be objective about it. Maybe in 100 years.

Counterpoint: 20 years ago Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing village. Nothing about fishing explains my motherboard or phone. It was central planning not organic growth.

Nexus, like the cities represented by them have always existed as a socioeconomic force. This is true as far as we know further than written history can tell us e.g. Hattusa [1]. And no one can explain them or create them from scratch outside the fact that some last longer than others.

A visit to Amsterdam reveals the lasting power of the Tulip as both a symbol and an economic force over centuries [2]. What physical form will SV take in the future is more interesting than any postulating by the author - who as a historian - should know better.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattusa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattusa) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania)

<comment><USER4> More and more I'm fascinated by this 'ocean' of forces, waves, pressure points and voids that make something like shenzen pop and become a gravity center. Until it's not. And the pole will shift somewhere else. I don't know if there's a name for this, if it's just plain history. Or system theory.. but I'd love to read more about it.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World- systems_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-systems_theory) is one subdiscipline studied by a group of (mostly Marxist) historians/political theorists, which might be relevant to your interest here.

<comment><USER4> Pretty cool. Reminds me that I was told about a French history scholar that tried to spread a more 'fluid dynamic' view on history. I cannot recall his name for my life which makes me even sadder.

<comment><USER6> I don't suppose it would have been one of the _Annales_ historians, would it? There are far too many participants to hazard a guess, but the notable leaders of the different generations of _Annales_ historians would be Febvre, Braudel, Ladurie, and Chartier.

<comment><USER4> It may be one of the latest generations, but no name clicks. All I remember is a term he coined that was close to fluid dynamics or derivative history (fields and waves, flows, you get the idea).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't buy it. Look at Facebook. It was completely tasteless; they made it big by showing up with the right dumb idea at the right time. The article talks about Zuck studying the past in 2014. That was a long time after he'd made his billions.

(Edit: This article is really about the question, "Why did Silicon Valley happen in the first place, and why has it remained at the epicenter of the global tech economy for so long?". I think that's an interesting topic, I just disagree with the claim in the introduction.)

</comment><comment><USER8> I hope AIs inherit the earth from us soon so the world can have well-read beings again.

</comment><comment> amar-singh Hi,

Perfectly said "To invent the future, You must understand the past". We can relate it to analytics. Every company needs to analyse tehir performance in all marketing campaigns also with customer feedback to come up with new and best strategies to make their product itself a brand.

<comment><USER9> True. But rarely do they analyze their way to innovation ...

Analysis leads to improvement. Improvement is not necessarily innovation.

<comment><USER10> It's more about the evolution of ideas. Can we say that an automobile is an innovation or is it just an improved carriage? So, probably, analyzing what works and how it can be improved can lead to drastic changes in concept.</comment></comment></comment>


Why women are leaving the tech industry in droves - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gardner-women-in-tech-20141207-story.html

<comment><USER2> I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I'm pushing 30, and I'm only just starting to realize how insanely _weird_ this is.

The tech industry is, pretty much by definition, at the forefront of _modern_. It's an industry that thrives over the entire world. In pretty much every other measure of diversity and equality most mature tech companies do quite well. For so many people technology skills are a great equalizing force. Why is it then that over the entire industry, over the entire world, women are underrepresented? It's a little embarrassing.

More importantly - how do we fix it?

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: This is a personal theory, and while there's some research that says similar things, I'm not a cultural anthropologist. Grain of salt.

I think it has to do with the youth of tech as an industry. I'm 25, and I still very well remember the days when if you wanted to work on a computer, a screwdriver was required. They were heavy, too! Heavy enough that a ~3rd grader would have serious trouble carting them around, especially up the stairs.

You can fit all the computing power you need into a messenger bag today, but that wasn't always the case.

The women entering/leaving the tech industry today are still almost unanimously of the age where they were deterred not by the constraints of programming and computer knowledge, but of the more traditionally male- oriented tasks like screwing pieces of metal together and lifting heavy stuff. 2 decades ago, it was less cool for girls to get dirty with that kind of thing.

Of course there are the same kind of systemic problems that plague the culture as a whole, but I think the problem was exacerbated by the fact that hardware free, strictly knowledge based computer work is only now becoming the norm.

Hardware is becoming less stigmatized for women (albeit slower than programming), and it's also becoming less necessary, so my hope is that things only improve from here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I assume harassment would not happen in the open source world since you can use an alias to hide yourself, however, why is the portion of female contributors so low? Tech blog writers, people don't read blogs because it is written by a man, why is there so much less programming blogger that are female? I felt the discrimination that is happening is the result, but not the cause of female leaving the industry

<comment><USER5> You don't have many female programming bloggers because you don't have many female programmers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dear god are these comments awful.

Wonder why there aren't women in tech? The stuff in this comments section probably has something to do with it,

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Irony Alert: Ms Gardner was the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, a site which has 90% male contributors and has had ongoing problems with the harassment of women contributors.

<comment><USER7> Because she failed to single-handedly reverse the trend in the context of wikipedia, she loses the right to express an opinion about how bad it is?

<comment><AUTHOR> She wasn't single handed. She had the huge resources and budget of Wikipedia available to her. She had the power to guide a team in the inner organization, and many thousands of people beyond. She had access to a huge PR platform.

She did nothing substantive when she had the chance to take action, so why should we take anything she says now seriously?

<comment><USER8> Because speaking the truth and being capable of changing it are different things?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Micro.blog - <AUTHOR> https://micro.blog/ <comment><USER4> Lots of negativity here, as is unfortunately typical at HN far too often these days. Especially given that this project is what HN is supposed to be about - done by a lone hacker with help from volunteers, trying to create a different and hopefully better social media. Sure, it may or may not work, it has all sorts of pros and cons, but I'd vote for being open-minded and constructive rather than cynical from the get go.

For what it's worth, I played with it literally a couple of days ago. I found the set up very easy, the themes limited but decent, the functionality around creating posts and pages very fast and clean. It also has cross-posting to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Medium built-in. I also found that $5/mo is perfectly acceptable - many blogs charge more. I absolutely loved that you could enable a GitHub Pages integration, de facto backing up your website for free.

On the con side, there are things you can't customize (eg their default footer that says to follow the user, or their archive page), search is only present in some themes and also can't be customized, and there is very limited information about the project overall. The lack of ability to add an option for email subscription also is a significant issue in my opinion.

I was investigating the project from a blogging point of view and concluded it is trying to be Twitter first and foremost so not a good fit. Still, it was a pleasure to discover something new, interesting, and reasonably clean and functional.

<comment><USER5> I think it's a neat idea and seems to be what blogger was way back in the day.

$5/month is completely unreasonable as a github pages account is free and Dropbox/OneDrive is $8/month.

This would be a really neat oss project. And I'm sure some people will find this useful, but seems like not the solution to social media problems.

The only way I would think this is good is if it donates $4.95/month to some sort of simple 99% charity that builds water or gives cows.

<comment><USER6> You reckon you could build and run this as a service for $0.05 a user per month? Whilst perhaps scraping profit? Care to share some of your own products, I'm keen to see how sustainable your business models are.

<comment><USER7> Sustainability and viability are not linked.

<comment><USER8> Of course they are. There's no viable project or service that is not sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Today's social networks are broken. Hate and harassment are too common. Fake > news spreads unchecked.

How will micro.blog be different? Apps start small and friendly, but if you invite everyone in you'll have the same issues unless you have a technology or policy strategy that differs from the current social networks.

Would love to see this succeed, but need more details before I buy in.

<comment><USER10> There's very little information on the site at all, about any aspects of the service, and yet they want you to pay to use it.

Nothing about how it works, who runs it, privacy policy, where the data is stored... nothing.

<comment><USER11> How much does it cost?

<comment><USER12> It's free if you just want to reserve a username and add an RSS feed from your own website - which can be either full articles (which will appear in Micro.Blog as a title & link), or short 280 char posts. You can reply to posts with a free account too.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-

EDIT: Probably easier if for the other plans I just post the site's own info:

New Microblog — $5/month

We'll create and host a microblog for you at username.micro.blog or your own domain name. Includes cross-posting, pages, themes, and publishing from the web, iOS, and Mac.

New Blog + Microcast — $10/month

All the features of a hosted microblog plus audio hosting. Upload MP3s via the web or use the companion iPhone app Wavelength to record and edit your own microcast. We'll create a podcast feed for your site.

Enable Cross-posting — $2/month

Already have your own microblog? Add Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, and Facebook cross-posting via Micro.blog. Works with any RSS feed.

Give Micro.blog

Invite someone to Micro.blog or pay for their first year of blog hosting.

<comment><USER13> That seems very expensive for what is a very simple site with very low costs. Why not $5/year?

<comment><USER14> The developer is trying to make it a financially viable project with what is, presumably, a pretty small customer base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area This is really interesting as a tech project, but I do think this is going to be hard to make money from. App.net tried almost exactly the same thing, to the same audience (the twitter/fb diaspora), and as you can see from the comments below most developers are not going to pay good money to broadcast their thoughts, which they rightly see as worth very little.

There is a two sided market for microblogs like twitter:

* Broadcasters - An org or a prominent person who wishes to broadcast to a group of followers * Consumers - people who want to read the latest about x (where x is a hobby, a professional interest, a person, or a group of people)

Making money from consumer blogs is incredibly hard, unless you're free and infested with ads, which has its own downsides. I don't think you'd be able to build a sustainable business from that.

However those who do find it a useful medium for broadcasting to followers and actually use it professionally would be willing to pay (far more than $5 a month), if the service was tailored to their needs and had better curation controls etc, giving users control over their own feed and followers. This kind of service can forgo ads but it needs to find a market that wants to buy a broadcasting service, not attempt to market to normal consumers, who simply won't pay any amount for a blogging service. There are plenty of people using twitter to broadcast and research (for example journalists, businesses, ) - those are the people to target.

<comment><USER15> That would all be true if the main goal was to maximize the income through growth, which as far as I understand it, it isn't.

<comment> grey-area We desperately need alternative social networks, but there's a certain minimum income required to host them I just don't think you'd reach with consumers. App.net tried almost exactly the same thing in 2012:

[https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/app-dot-net-its- not...](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/app-dot-net-its-not-twitter)

I agree with the author that ads and nazis are the problem, but you need a viable business to compete with free (ad driven). Selling microblog hosting to consumers is not that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > There's a better way: a network of independent microblogs. Short posts like > tweets but on your own web site that you control.

I have this. I have a website and domain that I control and that I can post anything to I like. Could be long posts too.

If independent, why need a fee not a protocol?

> Includes a free 10-day trial. Cross-posting to Twitter, a custom domain > name, themes, pages, an iOS app, Mac app, and more. Just $5/month. (You can > also use Micro.blog for free with an existing blog.)

There's Mastodon. There's also email. I like email for social networking too.

$5 is also the cost of my hosting my own site, VPN, Wiki, and anything I'd care to add. My app is Firefox.

As a, at this point not very but potentially still a potential user, I'm concerned in particular that there is no Terms of Service on registration, none at all. While XX.X% of people may click through a ToS, there simply isn't one there and you propose hosting, or linking, or providing a social identity, or receiving funds, not clear, with no contract of service?

<comment><USER17> On fee front, using Micro.blog is free if you host your own site. As the help document mentions ([http://help.micro.blog/2018/pricing/](http://help.micro.blog/2018/pricing/)), you can add your feeds from your external blogs and only use social aspect of Micro.blog.

I guess, though not right on front there, the ToS ([http://help.micro.blog/2018/tos/](http://help.micro.blog/2018/tos/)) and Privacy policies ([http://help.micro.blog/2018/privacy- policy/](http://help.micro.blog/2018/privacy-policy/)) are clearly drafted.

<comment><USER16> The ToS and Privacy Policies links you posted are nowhere to be seen on the front page, registration page, or indeed any page that is clickable on visiting the link.

Where's the about page? Whois just has tucows REDACTED FOR PRIVACY. Could you also link to an About page via HN instead of clearly posting on your own website?

<comment><USER12> _> Whois just has tucows REDACTED FOR PRIVACY._

That's the same for every domain right now. You can thank the GDPR for that, it wiped out Whois globally and doesn't provide an option for you to say "actually I _do_ want my details published in Whois". ICANN is currently suing Tucows about it:

[https://www.tucows.com/blog/2018/05/28/tucows-statement- on-i...](https://www.tucows.com/blog/2018/05/28/tucows-statement-on-icann- legal-action/)

<comment><USER16> I can blame that the of an about page for there being a lack of an about page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > There's a better way: a network of independent microblogs. Short posts like > tweets but on your own web site that you control.

Either I don't get it, or their service is not what they advertise. After reading that line, I would expect a somewhat federated blogging platform where you can set up your own server, and it joins the 'network of independent microblogs'. But I can't find any instructions on how to do that?!?

So I am wondering if 'on your own web site' rather means something like you can buy a custom domain for your profile page on that service?

<comment><USER12> _> where you can set up your own server, and it joins the 'network of independent microblogs'_

It's a bit like that. You can configure the official Mac or iOS Micro.Blog app to post microposts to your own Wordpress-API compatible website if you want. You can submit the RSS feed from your website to your Micro.Blog account and have that feed into the Micro.Blog timeline - and if you do that, it's actually free to be a member.

It's difficult to explain all that and intimidating to non-programmers (there's a lot of non-technical users on Micro.Blog), so I think they focus on the Micro.Blog hosting & official apps as the easiest way to get started. There's a lot of Micro.Blog users for whom self-hosted-Wordpress/Jekyll is more hassle than they want, and they'd rather pay $5/mth to have that hassle go away.

You might be interested in reading about IndieWeb [1]. Behind the scenes Micro.Blog uses the W3 Micropub [2] specification and other IndieWeb standards for posting microposts and federating Webmentions across websites, if that's something you're interested in.

[1] [https://indieweb.org/](https://indieweb.org/) [2] [https://www.w3.org/TR/micropub/](https://www.w3.org/TR/micropub/)

<comment><USER18> Okay, that sounds like we need a micropub enabled blog software now :-)

In general, I am a huge fan of this business model (federated + strong commercial players). It just seems that the federated part looks a bit weak at the moment. I think changing that should be a priority for micro.blog as I believe much of the negativity here at HN comes from the not so clear difference from the traditional services.

So far I have found this [1] which doesn't look very mature ('Early alpha'), but hey, it's a start.

Thanks for clarifying the situation.

[https://github.com/andjosh/webpage-micropub-to- github](https://github.com/andjosh/webpage-micropub-to-github)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> FYI: After you set up a profile it lets you customize your footer with arbitrary HTML/CSS/JS. It's definitely not secure.

See: [http://xss.micro.blog](http://xss.micro.blog)

<comment><USER20> Is that really a problem? XSS attacks usually involve letting site's visitors add arbitrary html/js. The account owner being able to is more of a feature.

<comment><USER21> XSS attacks aren't the only thing to be worried about. As noted above, you could buy subdomain like "support.micro.blog" and trivially phish people's micro.blog credentials, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why not Federation (diaspora, friendica, hubzilla) or Fediverse (mastodon, pleroma)? This seems like an rss feed subscription rather than social network attempt.

Personally I love diaspora as it's designed around discoverability - <USER2> tags, people define themselves with tags etc.

While Fediverse, activity pub etc. are great they are full of holes when it comes to discovery an actual social content. Comments are difficult and non native and navigating tags is nigh on impossible.

<comment><USER23> Playing devil's advocate: why not centralisation? Or - better IMHO - <USER3> federation?

<comment><USER24> Twitter and Facebook have shown that giving some huge corporation arbitrary power over a social network is not a good idea. Centralization creates network effects, which make it so that the owners can basically do whatever they want without losing users.

Federation largely avoids this problem. If the owner of my Mastodon instance starts doing stuff I don't like, I can switch to a different one or start my own and still interact with all the same people. (Hell, if the _developers_ start doing stuff I don't like, I can even fork it or switch to an alternative program like Pleroma that uses the same protocol.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Registration error. Email address must not include a "+" character.

Why not? "+" is valid in email addresses.

<comment><USER26> They want to spam you later (or sell your address to spammers) and have you not know where they got the address.

<comment><USER27> More likely, they just googled "e-mail vaildation regex" and copied the first/smallest result from StackOverflow. Happens all the time.

<comment><USER28> not sure that's this. if you just grabbed the first one, you wouldn't necessarily know that it explicitly doesn't work with the "+". Explicitly calling out the "+" issues indicates the person likely knows what they're doing.

<comment><USER27> Uh, you're right. My eyes missed the fact that this calls out the "+" character explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I dont understand this.

>Short posts like tweets but on your own web site that you control.

Is it not like having your own website, does micro blog link all websites and display the contents on their website?

>Today's social networks are broken. Ads are everywhere. Hate and harassment are too common. Fake news spreads unchecked.

Micro blog doesn't seem to be solving this problem

</comment><comment><USER30> I actually find it a problem (for myself at least but there probably are many people who feel the same) that we only seem to have Medium-like big-article blogging and Twitter-like SMS-y single-sentence microblogging platforms. I really want a hybrid, something in between, something for short posts but without twitterish post length limits, with markdown and media embedding support, letting you to edit your posts whenever you want and leveraging a HN- like first-class comments feature (instead of a Twitter-like response model). Google+ was the most close to this of what I've seen so far.

<comment><USER31> Micro.blog is exactly just this sort of hybrid solution. If you start typing a short status update you can publish it as such. Once you go past the 280ish character limit, micro.blog gives you a new field to give the post a title (if you want).

I use my personal website running WordPress a lot like this hybrid model as well. I can do all the things you mentioned and have separate feeds for all of the related post types (articles, status updates, photos, embedded media, etc.) Micro.blog also allow me to pipe my RSS feed into it so that I can interact with people there and any comments people make within micro.blog come back to my original post where I can see and reply to them.

<comment><USER30> Cool! I'll take a look! Given the screenshot I thought it's just yet another Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b IMHO, one of the biggest issue with social media is with the "micro" story. Tweets'140 characters limit encouraged people to post more because they didn't have to think much about what they had to say. Re-tweets was just a convenient way of copy pasting.

I don't see any of it disappear with micro.blog.

Why not making macro.blog which forces you to write at least 300 words?

<comment><USER32> The short format also encouraged better structuring of arguments and discouraged long, hard to process paragraphs. Together with threading it's often using to fairly significant success.

I don't think a person who can't be bothered to structure their writing for twitter would do much better on a blog. There is a significant difference in legibility, but it's not a clear win; I know both people who process well- written Twitter threads better than the usual article, and people who have struggle with its visual layout.

In the end, I don't think a sweeping dismissal of the format is justified. The website's problems stem far more from excessively bad moderation, not the character limit.

<comment><USER33> > The short format also encouraged better structuring of arguments

Did it? I feel like it rather encouraged going for the shortest available arguments. Which tend to be the ones low on data, and high on emotion - it's much easier to pack an emotional appeal in a few words.

<comment><USER32> > Did it?

Yes. People such as Alexandra Erin or Flavia Dzodan regularly provide well- informed, structured and readable threads, to say nothing of all the scientists active on Twitter. Shitposting accounts are only a part, large but rather boring, of the wider Twitter ecosystem.

> I feel like it rather encouraged going for the shortest available arguments. > Which tend to be the ones low on data,

This is presumptuous. There is nothing stopping you from providing data and sources on Twitter. Threading exists and works (well, worked, they kinda broke it recently) fine.

> and high on emotion

This is not a bad thing. For non-trivial arguments, the emotional side is very important. But, also, "high on emotion" is not a universal thing about Twitter threads, nor is it absent in other mediums. The best one could say about, say, certain tech reddit-alikes, is that the emotion represented in them is largely repressed and masked.

<comment><USER33> > Yes. People such as Alexandra Erin or Flavia Dzodan regularly provide well- > informed, structured and readable threads, to say nothing of all the > scientists active on Twitter.

Your claim that I disputed was that Twitter _encourages_ such content. I'm not saying that it doesn't have any good stuff - but you need to compare it to other, more verbose mediums to make a claim that the brevity that Twitter rules impose actually result in more such content being published, and that its quality is better. The first thing that comes to my mind in this context is Usenet, and I don't think Twitter compares favorably to that.

> This is presumptuous. There is nothing stopping you from providing data and > sources on Twitter.

This is observational. And of course there's nothing stopping you from it. But the medium is not _optimized_ for it, and that discourages it in practice. Again, I'm not claiming that Twitter doesn't have data and sources - only that it has less than more verbose mediums.

<comment><USER32> The, in my opinion false, assumption you seem to be making the entire time, is that the encouragement is consistent for both forms — that it works the same for all people, both content creators and consumers. But there's plenty of people who excel at expression on either long or short form forms.

So I am _not_ claiming that articles or Usenet posts were universally bad — but a claim that they are somehow "better" than Twitter would be just as false. Especially in the case of Usenet. I mean, I don't know how rosy glasses you're wearing, but I do remember what it was like, and while not exactly 4Chan, it was often getting there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Today's social networks are broken. Ads are everywhere. Hate and harassment > are too common. Fake news spreads unchecked.

This is a downside of "social" part of "social media". To avoid this you have to impose regulations and it will break the "social" part, making it a regular media. The perfect solution is yet to be found.

<comment><USER35> Is there some sort of mechanism or architecture that would facilitate more organic, non-hateful communication? It seems most platforms are geared toward dropping you into an echo chamber, which is probably closely tied to user retention. Is there a way to change those alignments, so that retention is high but without an echo chamber? Or is that just baked into human nature?

<comment><USER36> The only way to maybe prevent some of the echo chamber is to have no smart suggestions. Just show things as they occur. Don't say, "Oh, you're a leftist. You'll love this SJW diatribe". Same thing for the right. Same thing for pretty much every combination. As soon as the technology brings automated curation, or even curation in general, you've laid the ground works for an echo chamber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> More info here, mentions RSS, JSON, decentralisation and an open API: [http://help.micro.blog/2015/why-i-created- this/](http://help.micro.blog/2015/why-i-created-this/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I was very pleased to see how easy and quickly I could set up an account and attach the feed from my actual site. (I note that this is all free, which is nice).

I find the $5 fee for someone to set up their own site to be perhaps reasonable on the face of it, but I fear that this won't work. I think those who care about decentralization and the decline of walled gardens are also technologically literate enough to know that they could host their own microblog for $5/month _and_ have complete control. On the other hand, people who don't care probably wouldn't want to pay $5/month.

I would be very happy if it turns out that there are a large number of people willing to pay, and if RSS-based models flourished. Overall, I like the idea, it was easy to jump in, and good luck.

<comment><USER38> If microblog people are reading this, I have a few other comments. I'd like to emphasize that it's a very clean UI and experience.

1\. I wish it were more obvious that I could check out a variety of microblogs at micro.blog/discover --- giving essentially a twitter feed. I somehow missed this entirely on my first go-through, initial setup, and checking of the site.

2\. I associated the RSS feed to my own site to microblog. And I expected these posts to show up on davidlowryduda.micro.blog. They don't, it turns out --- those posts are just the ones I made on microblog. They do appear on micro.blog/davidlowryduda. This behavior surprised me.

3\. While looking at micro.blog/discover, I replied to a comment. After clicking, poof, the UI didn't give me any sort of feedback that I'd affected the world. I think it should both be more gratifying to reply (if this is a functionality that microblog is encouraging) and that it should be more visually obvious that there are replies to a micropost. Right now, I only see that there does or doesn't exist a "conversation" link --- I wish it were more obviously distinguished.

<comment><USER39> Regarding point 3 - I've wondered if there is a bit of a delay because micro.blog content can be hosted in a variety of places - a Wordpress blog, a static site, a GitHub page, or micro.blog itself. I think it is relying on webmentions to circulate through the internet to create these conversations. I agree with you concern, but I suspect it is more of a technical challenge because of the way hosting can be de-centralized. @hooper

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A common thread I see in the discussion is how the details should be a bit more prominent on the home page/registration page than it is currently. I think the information, though not linked clearly, is available under the detailed help section - [http://help.micro.blog/](http://help.micro.blog/).

I look at micro.blog as a blogging platform with a social layer -- if you already have a blog or a site, you can get involved only in the social aspect of the platform.

</comment><comment><USER40> I read that this is federated, but how do I download the software to run my own server? I looked at the FAQ and help and found nothing about it.

<comment><USER31> It's "federated" in that it runs on simple web standards and protocols. You can use almost any CMS or platform out there and pipe your RSS,ATOM,JSON, or other feeds into it. If your site supports the Webmention protocol, then any comments made by other micro.blog users will come back to your original post where you can choose to display them (or not). [https://indieweb.org/Micro.blog](https://indieweb.org/Micro.blog) may give you some additional ideas/help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why not just run GNU Social and set your maximum character count nice and high?

</comment><comment><USER42> Well, I know I want something like this, so I applaud the efforts! I've been thinking about keeping my Facebook account in order to maintain contacts and event notifications, but stop all posting of original content and instead just link to blog entries. It will be important to have a good place to blog, but I'm leaning toward self-hosting a static blog.

<comment><USER43> I hope more people do this. By having everyone post content on their own domains, it drastically increases SEO for them instead of piling it on to FB and other platforms. These social platforms are nothing more than SEO aggregators, they are essentially stealing profit from people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Neat thing. Question: Why not have it publically open and free, but pay to post? Or at least have some of it open, like a limit number of post visible or something like that - for free. Because right now, as a visitor, I'm far from sure I want to use this at all, I know too little about what it's like to actually use it.

<comment><USER31> You can view their discover timeline (as well as some others) at [https://micro.blog/discover](https://micro.blog/discover) to get an idea of the posts and community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> While this looks interesting the website doesn't really say much about about what it is or what it provides...

</comment><comment><USER46> Hm, re: "ads are everywhere" \- is it just me, or are two of the three sample posts in the screenshot content-based ads?

First for the novel Cibola Burn, and third for the app Halide.. the middle post seemingly is a reply to an ad of some book series as well :) Or "influencer" paid content != ads?

</comment><comment><USER47> Maybe you should have a look at the Microblog extension over XMPP [https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0277.html](https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0277.html).

It allows you to publish Blog articles on your XMPP accounts and let your contacts receive and comment them :) It has been successfully implemented in clients such as [https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/) or [https://salut-a- toi.org/](https://salut-a-toi.org/).

On Movim we also generate static pages and Atom feeds out of it (for example [https://firstname.lastname@example.com](https://firstname.lastname@example.com)).

</comment><comment><USER48> Maybe its just me but it seems like a love child of Diaspora and StatusNet (formally Laconica) that you have to pay for.

Oddly enough, the pay element is the only really attractive element right now. At least that way I know I know I will not have advertisements all over the place. Still $5 dollars seems steep. For that I could just host my own microblog theme on WordPress and make my own community.

<comment><USER49> You don't even need to make your own community. The $5/month is for hosting; if you host your blog yourself (they recommend WordPress), then it's free.

And given the broad sentiment expressed in these comments, they could do a MUCH better job communicating this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I might pay the $5/month to a host a blog there, but I'm unwilling to require people who just want to comment on my blog to pay $5/month as well (or set up their own blog). There should be a way to add a response to a blog entry for free, without setting anything up. Maybe blog owner should have to approve them or something?

</comment><comment><USER51> If you're interested in Manton Reece's thinking and work on Micro.blog over time, he frequently talks about it on the the Core Intuition podcast he co- hosts with Daniel Jalkut: [https://coreint.org](https://coreint.org)

</comment><comment><USER52> So where's the code? Or is "on your own web site that you control" fake news too?

</comment><comment><USER53> No download link? If it's as-a-service, how can I control it?

</comment><comment><USER54> This is something that bothers a lot of us for many years. But the solution is not another young idea, which will grow into another walled garden.

We need an easy to deploy open protocol based service. Like XMPP, with easy service discovery. And an open source, fantastic app to go along with it.

<comment><USER55> As far as I know, there are a few of these already in existence.

IMO, the two main challenges are subscribing to content and discovering new content, the icing on the cake is interaction.

Atom/RSS already "fixed" the issue of subscribing to a blog.

Board like HN and reddit have now "fixed" the issue of discovery (to an extent).

Disqus, reddit, HN all provide interaction methods - the key would be reducing them to one feed so you could comment to all formats and reply seamlessly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> it would be interesting to learn how it works and does what it does before i register. It says nothing about it on the homepage apart from a general idea which is good, but how is it implemented???

</comment><comment><USER57> So it like twitter mixed with Google circles (from G+)?

<comment><USER58> No, it's more like rss based twitter. Any blog can become micro.blog compatible, and technically anyone could build a competitor to micro.blog that allows users to register their feeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Did anyone said distributed ?

</comment><comment><USER60> Funny that people see success as "replacing twitter" but even with a few users it's more profitable than Twitter! :D

</comment><comment><USER61> So what we're going to do is give you a space on the internet. some sort of space that's all your own. ispace? ownspace? mespace? how about myspace.....

<comment><USER56> or geocities? xD</comment></comment>


Last Week on My Mac: Deceived by the Finder - <AUTHOR> https://eclecticlight.co/2020/03/08/last-week-on-my-mac-deceived-by-the-finder/ <comment><USER2> Third-party apps are sandboxed on macOS. You have to explicitly grant them access to the file system.

Finder is not lying at all. The permissions it shows in "Get Info" are the user/group permissions; not app permissions.

Maybe Apple could enhance the UX somehow to better what's going on, but I wouldn't go as far as to say Finder is lying.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly the same thing as happens on Windows, the real permissions are far too complex to convey in a simple dialog.

It's just more sour grapes about SIP. Tough luck, it's there to stay, if you don't like it, turn it off.

<comment><USER4> You can see this with Linux as well. For example, with ext# file systems, extended attributes allow you to make files append-only, copy-on-write, or give files project and version numbers. It also lets you decide which files are or are not compressed if the file system is set to be compressed. Other attributes determine what happens to a file when you delete it (nothing, zeroing the sectors, etc)

The chattr/lsattr commands are used for accessing them.

The only time I've seen these come up are for secure locations that set log files to append-only. But I'm sure there are people out there that swear by extended attributes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But Finder _isn't_ lying here: it shows the ability to read or write the file, but from Finder's perspective. Just because you can do that doesn't mean any old app on your machine can by default. This is literally the manifestation of Apple plugging holes in the UNIX permissions model. You can complain all you want about "protected" directories being stupid, but arguing that Finder should show you whether an arbitrary app can access a file is just inane.

<comment><USER6> Finder isn't some third-party tool released before this kernel change. Why should it not know about those plugged holes?

<comment><USER5> How should it present this information?

<comment><USER7> How about: _not_ from Finder's point of view? There is no such thing as Finder's point of view. It _must_ show info from the currently logged in user's point of view.

<comment><USER8> From the user's point of view, the file is readable and writable by any app if full disk access is granted, and the user is able to grant full disk access if they so chooses (assuming an admin account here). So the file is indeed readable and writable from the user's point of view. The presentation is accurate. You can argue about whether requiring full disk access is warranted, but you're arguing the wrong thing.

<comment><USER7> From the user's point of view the file isn't accessible in any way except through Finder.

If it _had_ read/write permissions as Finder shows it, all apps would be able to, you know, read and write the file.

<comment><USER8> This is just completely wrong, and I don't want to explain Unix permissions vs actual access control again which has shown up more than once in the thread. Plus, you know what, sandboxed apps basically can't read or write anything not created by them without explicit permissions.

The standard flow is app tries to access file/folder, dialog pops up asking if you want to allow access, or if you want to allow full disk access (the full disk access part might be opt in for app developers, but app developers with legit reasons to access certain protected stuff do tend to encourage users to do this).

Your apparent lack of knowledge of this (not pleasant but at least functioning) flow makes me wonder if you're even a macOS user. Maybe just a Linux user who came to score some points?

<comment><USER7> > This is just completely wrong, and I don't want to explain Unix permissions > vs actual access control again which has shown up more than once in the > thread.

If it wrong, then it's bot the job of HN threads to explain this to the user, but of the OS.

> Your apparent lack of knowledge of this (not pleasant but at least > functioning) flow makes me wonder if you're even a macOS user.

Ah. Ad hominem attacks, how nice.

I _am_ a MacOS user. And I'm sick and tired of Catalina giving no _human_ and _humane_ ways of dealing with the mess it creates out of permissions.

Where do you expect a MacOS user to find out whether a random file is accessible to an app?

Especially given how arbitrary these restrictions often are: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22518229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22518229)

<comment><USER8> > Where do you expect a MacOS user to find out whether a random file is > accessible to an app?

As I said: when a dialog pops up.

Btw, that's not an ad hominem attack, it's reasonable doubt about your experience with the subject matter given what you have expressed and left out so far. If you're not even a user then it's apparently pointless to explain further. Anyway, it's still pointless to explain further when you know what you're talking about yet still insist on conflating concepts, but stop pretending it was somehow personal.

<comment><USER7> > As I said: when a dialog pops up.

So, I have to run every potential app on every potential file to see if the dialog pops up? You call that discoverability?

BTW as recently as a three weeks back I ran IntelliJ Rider on a folder that I created (not a system folder) and it started up in read-only mode. No dialogs, nothing.

Catalina randomly decided that a random application didn't have write permissions to user-created folder. Thank god I _am_ a MacOS user, so I figured I should give the app access.

BTW. Is it "Developer Tools" access, "Full Access" or "Full disk access" and what is the difference?

> when you know what you're talking about yet still insist on conflating > concepts

I couldn't give two craps about "conflating concepts". It is the OS that conflates these concepts with poorly thought out permissions system with _hardcoded filenames_ in its kernel, and gives me, the user, zero indication on whether something is accessible, readable, writeable or not. Except for a useless popup dialog which might or might not appear and gives zero indication on what specific permissions are lacking.

But yeah, "the user is at fault and the system behaves correctly". No, it doesn't.

<comment><USER8> > I couldn't give two craps about "conflating concepts".

Good for you. Next time maybe say it upfront when replying to a comment that has demonstrated a clear interest in _not_ conflating the concepts and instead be annoyed about the thing that is actually annoying, not some tangent.

<comment><USER7> So. Once again: what is the way for a MacOS user to see a file's permissions and access?

Finder shows Unix permissions which obviously not enough.

Catalina itself may or may not show a dialog when accessing a random file from a random location by a random app (you never know which file or directory will suddenly be protected from access entirely or inaccessible to an app, and whether Catalina will show a warning when accessing it).

Somehow, your answer is: the user is the problem.

Nope. It's not the user who is for the computer. The computer is for the user. If the central place to display info on a file cannot show correct info on a file, that place has to be fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple really needs to spend a whole release cycle just fixing existing bugs instead of making new features.

Even simple things are faltering, like when logging in, macOS stops registering keypresses in the middle of entering my password. Switching screens around when docking my MacBook Pro. Important features like Time Machine silently corrupting your files.

It's such a shame that macOS just keeps getting more buggy. I've read from multiple (ex) employees that there's no real incentive to fix bugs, since employees seem only to be rewarded when they're working on prestige projects.

What good is investing so much R&D into new hardware like Mac Pro when the operating system is the limiting factor?

<comment><USER10> Organizational inertia cannot allow this switch to fixing issues. That just don't happen at once because now a lot of people work in an environment rewarding them to only new feature development. This can be changed by replacing the whole tech organization motivation culture. Better at once.

<comment><USER11> Snow Leopard happened. High Sierra too, to a lesser extent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm failing to understand the implied outrage here? Permissions have become far more nuanced than traditional UNIX, and can no longer be understood with only chmod literacy.

Apple doesn't go out of its way to educate users about these changes because it's supposed to be as transparent as, say, APFS's file compression and encryption. HN has nothing but scorn usually for these "un-Professional" users that tend not to spend their time doing binary diffs on new point updates of MacOS housekeeping daemons. They do get a lot more actual work done, though.

The article doesn't even try to make any specific point how these changes hurt anybody. Indeed the author mentions that nobody would have noticed if not for people running 'strings' on new binaries.

Millions of people have been running these changes, none of them even noticed, and all were presumably at least a bit safer than before. People at Apple must be feeling like tourists in bizzarroworld seeing people trying to scandalize this.

<comment><USER13> > I'm failing to understand the implied outrage here?

Because it's entirely manufactured. The writer doesn't seem willing to differentiate file permissions from a sandboxed application's permissions to access the file.

Once a sandboxed application is granted permission to access the file system, those file permissions still apply.

For non-sandboxed applications, those permissions still apply.

For non-GUI applications that run in the command line or as daemons, those permissions still apply.

Nothing is inaccurate. There is no lie. File permissions and applications' permissions to escape the sandbox are separate concerns with their own user interfaces (Finder and the Security & Privacy preference pane in System Preferences, respectively).

Therefore, the outrage is manufactured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of the equivalent SELinux issues. Good ideas rushed out and not packaged properly.

<comment><USER15> Ivan Krstić has been trying to push this system for over a decade now. Maybe it just isn't a good idea because over a decade of iteration and it still isn't intuitive or exposed to the user in an understandable manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Finder is not really lying to you. It's just showing the truth from a standard viewpoint. The OS, however, creates another view from the application perspective - one which now imposes additional access rules.

</comment><comment><USER17> The battery of my 2018 MBP can not last even for 18 months before its performance decreases drastically, which is disappointing.

<comment><USER13> What does that have to do with anything?</comment></comment>


Building Urban Scratchoff - <AUTHOR> http://chriswhong.com/local/building-urban-scratchoff/ <comment><USER2> Ahhhh! I killed the digital ocean droplet that was running the tile proxy for urban scratchoff last week. Sorry to those who were interested in using it, I'll try to get it running again this evening.

<comment><USER3> First priority should be to add error handling code; perhaps display a message that the tiles cannot be fetched, try again later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Uh-oh, the app is broken:

        http://tilecache.lolspec.com/tms/1924/14/4822/6161.png Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)

<comment><USER5> I'm running into the same issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a bit reminiscent of the X11 toy "blast". I'm pretty sure having multiple different map versions bound to e.g. the function keys, for use in a "blink comparator" style, would be way more productive.

</comment><comment><USER2> Fixed it. [http://www.urbanscratchoff.com](http://www.urbanscratchoff.com)</comment>


Ask HN: Examples for companies not using Email? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If local law enforcement agencies in the US can be considered companies- there are a large number ghat still have no computers, use no database, and still do everything on paper. As a side note- that is the reason we can't have a national database for unsolved murders, etc.</comment>


Coconut Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://coconut-lang.org/ <comment><USER2> This looks pretty neat. I like the look of the syntax - very clean looking.

Wonder how the performance is?

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone used it yet?</comment>


Why the terrible top ranked books at Amazon? - <AUTHOR> Periodically I search Amazon for new programming related books I may have missed. Lately, I've noticed that books on programming when sorted by relevance have a few terrible choices right near the top. The titles of these texts aren't even grammatical (adjectives used as nouns) and the preview content reveals totally rambling confused ideas about the purported subject. These books have lots of 4 and 5 star reviews buy verified purchasers. How can this be? I've read hundreds of programming books and I can say that these apparently self published books are a total waste of money. This must be happening all over Amazon, very sad. <comment><USER2> Write book is a hard work, even a good post will spend several hours. Maybe the book is ok, but not suit you.

Hope to give you some choices. You can find programing books, which are mentioned by people in stack overflow in this year. Hope you will like this.

[http://toptalkedbooks.com/stackoverflow/2017](http://toptalkedbooks.com/stackoverflow/2017)

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazon is being gamed by some sort of 'bot based authoring process, followed by a listing process, with buyers and good reviews. They will soon figure it out and adapt - then the bots adapt - and so it goes.

<comment><USER4> Is this something you have heard about on the news and/or Internet, or is there some truth behind this (that there are bots gaming the authoring process)? I would like to learn more about it, how its being done, etc.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.fastcompany.com/1810943/unmasking-digital- pirate...](https://www.fastcompany.com/1810943/unmasking-digital-pirate- amazon)</comment></comment></comment>


After Suing NSO Group for Hacking Whatsapp, Facebook Kicks NSO Employees Off - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/10/31/86ed.html <comment><USER2> meh. let me know when facebook goes after who actually used pegasus on whatsapp.</comment>