IKEA or Death-Metal - <AUTHOR> http://ikeaordeath.com/ <comment><USER3> Easy for me as I know black metal (extreme metal in general) quite well, so I got 18/20 (they did put some obscure bands in there). But that _is_ funny how close some names look/sound.

As someone else pointed out, they should've added more Swedish bands (was Marduk there? I don't think so?) so that it would be harder even for Swedes, I guess. But then again, Sweden is better known for death metal and melodic death metal (that must sound funny for non-metalheads!), and those bands tend to have english names, such as At The Gates, In Flames, Dismember or Entombed. Hard to mistake for Ikea brands!

<comment><USER4> I'm a little familiar with IKEA stuff and not at all familiar with the bands, and I got 13/20\. I recognized a couple of IKEA names, so those were easy. Otherwise, I pretty much used the heuristic of, "if this is reasonably pronounceable by the average American, it's probably IKEA". That didn't work great, but it seems to have done better than chance.

<comment><USER5> I had a similar background and strategy and got 14/20\. I call it statistically significant :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate to be THAT guy but I got 19/20 because Norden, whilst being a table, is also a very kvlt black metal band.[1]

I picked up their full length at Wacken 2006 for €3. It was not good.

[1]: [http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Norden/11433](http://www.metal- archives.com/bands/Norden/11433)

<comment><USER7> Being from sweden and a metal fan I got an easy 20/20 but since I said Norden => Ikea I'm obviously less kvlt than thou.

Todays lesson, numbers lie.

<comment> bjelkeman-again Yeah. I screwed up. Only 19/20 and I shop at IKEA occasionally, am Swedish and play metal...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every metalhead on HN right now is debating with themselves on whether or not to remark on the the fact that most of those bands were black metal. Metalheads love genre taxonomy (well, music fans do in general). To 'get it wrong' can stir a whole cauldron of reactions!

<comment><USER9> Interestingly enough,

> IKEA is that friendly shop where you get cheap furniture from the inside of > a giant, unending warehouse. Black metal is the kind of music that sounds > like someone screaming while trapped inside a burning church. They each > possess a fervent fan base. And to tell you the truth, the names of the > furniture in IKEA sound a lot like the names of black metal bands.

In the body text down at the bottom of the front page.

<comment><USER10> Not going to see, seeing IKEA or Death and then reading the description mentioning black metal kinda irked me a little. And in that moment I was _that_ guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fun idea! Too easy for us Swedes though, as the names of almost all of IKEA's furniture are Swedish words.

<comment><USER12> Much too easy as a metal-head as well. My only gripe is that there are a lot of bands in there that aren't death-metal. Every kind of extreme music isn't death-metal people!

<comment><USER13> Yeah I guess, the only problem was that: IKEAorDeathVikingDoomDroneSludgeCelticPaganGoreGrindThrashMetal.com was already taken so they had to shorten it a little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For me, the algorithm was as follows:

        Do I own it? -> IKEA
        Else         -> Death

Seriously, is there anyone who _doesn 't_ have a GRUNDTAL?

<comment><USER15> Fun fact: Grundtal means "cardinal number" in Swedish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "It doesn't matter if you know who Burzum is..."

Yes, because if you would and you are not an ignorant being you wouldn't make free publicity for band run by a neo-nazi. [1, 2]

[1] Varg Vikernes founded the one-man music project Burzum: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes)

[2] "Police in France are questioning Norwegian neo-Nazi Kristian "Varg" Vikernes over a suspected terror plot": [http://www.dw.de/norwegian-extremist- arrest-recalls-breivik-...](http://www.dw.de/norwegian-extremist-arrest- recalls-breivik-case/a-16958962)

<comment><USER17> That's a crazy overreaction, but for the record, I would have had no idea who Burzum was if you didn't just give them free publicity.

<comment><USER16> It's a bit overreacted but the creators know for sure who Burzum is, that's what annoys me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Take out your headphones, or mute them before trying it.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I was surprised to hear so much sound coming out of my earbuds sitting on the desk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _You scored 20 out of 20! Congrats you are... True Kvlt.

Either you work at IKEA or you played drums for Bathory, because your knowledge is at the level of dare we say it, the cloven hooved one himself. That's right, we're talking about Ingvar Kamprad. We're almost afraid to ask you to peep out our agency site. But please do, oh dark master._

And I don't even listen to a quarter as much Black Metal as I do Death or Thrash... yikes. I've only been to Ikea once though, so my strategy was to guess Ikea for every name that I didn't specifically recognize as a metal band. "Norden" almost tripped me up.

<comment> at-fates-hands >> "Norden" almost tripped me up.

It got me. I associated it with "Nordegren" for some strange reason. As in Erin Nordegren, Tiger Wood's now very rich ex-wife.

I landed an 18/20 and I've been a Death Metal fan for a while so I'm not too disappointed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Funny idea. But my colleagues must have been really surprised by the sound of Burzum coming from my laptop, even though it was during a lunch break. Anyway, nice to see so many metalheads here on HN, stay trve! \m/

</comment><comment><USER22> Akercocke's entry is wrong. I choose death, and it says:

>WRONG! IKEA Item...Akercocke is an English progressive blackened death metal band, known for their Satanic and sexual lyrics.

</comment><comment><USER23> I had a really good laugh at some of the furniture descriptions. "Lack is the name of an IKEA side table that isn't lacking in style!"

<comment><USER24> Incidentally, the LACK table has legs with an almost perfect 19" spacing, making it perfect for your home data center:

[http://lackrack.org/](http://lackrack.org/)

<comment><USER23> I really hope I never have to have a LACK table in my home again ;) For what they cost they are a great and functional piece of furniture, but once you have like $100 worth of LACK tables, you should really stop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And people complain about politics stories making it to the HN frontpage..

<comment><USER26> Obligatory mention of the 'Snowden' missing from this list. No matter how tight you assemble it, it still leaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This was easy:

      >You scored 20 out of 20!
      >Congrats you are...
      >True Kvlt.
      >
      >Either you work at IKEA or you played drums for Bathory,
      >because your knowledge is at the level of dare we say it,
      >the cloven hooved one himself. That's right, we're talking
      >about Ingvar Kamprad. We're almost afraid to ask you to
      >peep out our agency site. But please do, oh dark master.
      >
      >We bow to you, Your friends at Gatesman+Dave

Nice.

</comment><comment><USER28> What a hoot. I ended up with 16/20 and I know nothing about Death Metal. Not sure if I'm proud that I know so many pieces of Ikea furniture...

Some of those band pics are downright scary.

</comment><comment><USER29> Not surprisingly, my Swedish coworker got 20/20\. I got 10/20 which given I was basically guessing/coin tossing every time is statistically sound.

Apparently, its so easy because while Ikea names are kind of random, they mean something or are a name for a person/place, etc. Where as unlike most black metal bands here (whose names usually are based on some actual word with a dark meaning), the words for Nordic bands are mostly made up and basically mean nothing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Cargo Kvlt Programming: When an "IKEA or Death-Metal"-style quiz is included in your product unnecessarily.

</comment><comment><USER31> > _You scored 17 out of 20! Congrats you are... True Kvlt._

I don't know anything about black metal, but I build my kitchen with Ikea and spent some time in their stores!

I would have hoped the black metal sound was from the band itself, but alas it was the same sound every time...

</comment><comment><USER32> Nice idea! What really bugs me though is that when you try to use the back button in your browser you lose all progress and have to start again... maybe implement a router component or something! apart from this great job

</comment><comment><USER33> I was surprised not to see "every Swedish metal band's logo for the past 20 years": [http://i.imgur.com/8SSyUkz.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/8SSyUkz.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER34> This map of death metal bands per capita surely helps explain the similarity: [http://i.imgur.com/P5Yfz.png](http://i.imgur.com/P5Yfz.png)

<comment><USER35> There's something really wrong in Africa :P

<comment><USER36> They've already got more than enough death as it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Pirate-of-SV 20/20

I'm from Sweden, born and raised with IKEA furniture.

I can actually name much IKEA furniture when I see it. Half decent party trick.

Also: 'What's up ladies, want to check out my "SULTAN"?'

</comment><comment><USER37> OMG genius idea. Didn't think it would be so hard. You scored 7 out of 20! And i guessed. And I've been going to IKEA quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER38> Not bad, but 'Just Another Ikea Catalog' (look it up on the wayback machine) is still the Ikea-related humor high water mark.

</comment><comment><USER39> Don't know about death metal references, but I just can never calmly pass by a cornucopia of KAKA products in their grocery shop.

</comment><comment><USER40> Would have been cooler to play a sample by each band instead of "Burzum - <USER2> Wisdom" everytime.

</comment><comment><USER41> [http://i.imm.io/1i2eK.jpeg](http://i.imm.io/1i2eK.jpeg)

19/20\. Trve kvlt.

</comment><comment><USER42> Surely there's some overlap.

<comment><USER43> I was thinking the same after getting the first 6 or so right. I ended up with 14/20 right, and I'm not familiar with metal bands, IKEA, or Scandinavian names.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> 19/20, didn't get an American band. Glad to see this here \m/ :)

</comment><comment><USER45> Dear Gatesman+Dave. Don't use Lobster if you're a design agency

<comment><USER46> lobster?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Console: function loadAudio(e){}

Much better.

</comment><comment><USER48> As a regular IKEA customer it is easy: True Kvlt.

</comment><comment><USER49> I scored 13. Sadly, your design sight is down.

</comment><comment><USER50> Knowing nothing about either, I got 11.

</comment><comment><USER51> is it because Death metal bands take swedish names?

</comment><comment><USER52> Oh wait, I can plug a project here!

[http://www.deathmetal.org/](http://www.deathmetal.org/)

The net's oldest and longest-running metal site.

<comment><USER20> The zine archive is excellent, thanks. I may have a few to contribute after I spend some time digging through my files.

This site is somehow affiliated with ANUS? It doesn't seem to bear their characteristic writing style or ideological bent.</comment></comment>


Notes on the Errors of Tex (1989) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb10-4/tb26knut.pdf <comment><USER2> "The process of implementation constantly led me to unanticipated questions and to new insights about how the original specifications could be improved."

The thought that even Don Knuth has those "gee, didn't think of that" moments makes me feel better.</comment>


Ask HN: Beyond CRUD and ETL – How to Grow Professionally? - <AUTHOR> I have near 10 years of experience by now. I have worked on ETL , Data migration , CRUD applications.  I am well familiar with data warehousing and BI concepts and have worked on many projects involving both.  Since last 3 years I have been working with Big Data applications on Hadoop platform mostly writing code in Java and using abstract language/platform such as Pig, Spark , RedShift , Hive.
I am tired of ETL , data cleaning , slicing and dicing projects now.
From business standpoint I have good knowledge of healthcare , insurance, advertising and little bit of finance.
I want to contribute to something big and grow professionally.  I work as manager for a mid size company in bay area.  I want to join next company as Director or higher level.
What are things I should learn to grow professionally ?
What are things I should keep tab on beyond technical knowledge for getting higher roles as Director or VP ?   How do I cultivate the change ? <comment><USER2> I think if you want a Director or better kind of position in the technical side of any organization, what you need probably isn't necessarily more technical "depth", but a demonstrated track record of delivering value by proactively applying both technical and organizational/managerial skills to solve business problems (or capitalize on business opportunities; two sides of the same thing), preferably problems or opportunities that you identified for your organization. (You'll probably _also_ gain knowledge, at a high level at least, of all the technical areas involved in that solution in the course of doing that, and you can dive into those more deeply if they are interesting to you, but they aren't the things that are likely to be most critical at getting the positions you seem to be looking for the industries you are interested in.)

And, of course, the people skills to sell an organization on both your past track record of doing that and your ability to do the same in their organization.

</comment><comment><USER3> You say you want to get to a director level or higher. Given the industries you listed no technical skill is going to put you in the Director or Exec seats at a larger organization. If you were talking SMB then yes, technical skills could assist you to getting that next level, but even then it is more about people skills, planning skills, budget management and most of all how to affect revenue.

What I would say is that people are finally waking up and realizing the data we collect is where the gold is at, not in selling a widget for $5.99. The data tells us what to sell, when to sell it, what to price it etc. So everything you know is driving business today, especially in insurance, finance and advertising. So don't run from what you know, change your focus into leading others to do the "tasks" of what it takes and switch your brain to architecting solutions that make companies more money. Don't be a manager of people, be a thought leader, an inventor that can turn an idea into action and quickly.

As for what to do to grow. Seriously, if you don't know a lot about accounting, learn the basics of how a company runs accounting. Learn how what you are involved in might affect revenue and how you can personally help affect revenue with your team. Stop just taking orders to create this next ETL or report, and invest some extra time to figure out how you can invent a solution (doesn't have to be fancy) that can help senior execs or help the company make more money. That is how you can move up, even if it isn't in your current organization you will be able to say, I thought of, designed and implemented X that brought the company Y more revenue through Z means. Or I created X report that allowed the senior team to see data in a way that they weren't prior and it has lead to Y changes etc. As a last thought, go spend time with sales teams, they will complain a lot about things they need and aren't getting. Help them get some of those done and they will love you and brag about it. They will also then want to see you move up to help them more.

<comment><USER4> >The data tells us what to sell, when to sell it, what to price it etc.

Does it actually? I believe this is conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley, hence the billion analytics startups, but where is the actual paydirt? How do we know that data analytics produces anything other than cool graphs?

<comment><USER3> Well a few points below, but probably the most important one is you are right, a pretty graph is useless without context and a person to put it into perspective, which is why doing the analysis and then selling the perspective of how it impacts the business is critical and can help advance a career.

But for example, Wal-Mart. They use the data in near real-time to make a huge amount of decisions, among them is pricing, what is selling, where it is selling best and with a little work they know the price sensitivity for a product in each market allowing them to maximize revenue. I think there are some Wal-Mart devs on here that know far better than I do, if they can comment.

Or another, Ford. I was on a team that built analytics for them that drove their supply chain decisions in near real time based upon a huge number of inputs and it saved them massive amounts of money by reducing supply chain inventory.

Insurance analysis is done via collected and publicly sourced data to determine risk profiles, rates and a host of things. So yes, the data is driving what policies to sell, when its best to sell it and how much they should charge to maximize revenue. In addition market analysis tells them which policies to offer where.

A number of the big box hardware type stores use analytics to determine where to move product and and what time of year to move it to maximize product revenue.

This can go on and on. Silicon Valley is isn't really where I would look for valid references to how this works in the real world, because I think to your point their view is sometimes skewed towards producing the analysis but not converting that into action. But enterprises use data everyday, and are getting better at it to make these decisions. So when you can show a company how to use data they already collect to make a better decision or maximize revenue you can absolutely make an impact and help your own career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is intended as no way offensive, but your written English isn't great (I'm thinking it isn't your first language?). The first step to getting an executive position would be to improve in that area.

The second thing about being a Director or VP is that it's all about team building, not technical skills. Technical skills are a baseline, but a good executive is an expert at attracting, hiring and retaining good talent. So that is another area where you'd need to prove yourself out (you didn't mention anything about hiring or recruiting).

<comment><AUTHOR> That is correct. English is not my first language.

Just curious, since you found out from my writing style what particular sentence stood out as odd to you.

Do you know any resources to assimilate to American English in verbal and written cases ?

<comment><USER6> Briefly

        near -> nearly

        well familiar - delete the 'well'

        Since last 3 years -> For the last three years.

        I work as manager -> I work as a manager *or* I am a manager *or* I have worked as a manager.

        What are things -> What are the things

Beyond that there's some minor style issues. The misuse of 'since' is common among German and Dutch speakers so that would be my guess of your native language. I don't think any if this is a blocker for a director position but get yourself a good partner / secretary.

<comment><USER7> "Well familiar" isn't too strange a construct, though removing the well does certainly improve things here.

<comment><USER8> "quite familiar" seems more natural to me. Also, the odd comma spacing immediately jumps out at me.

<comment><USER7> Certainly "quite familiar" is more common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You are a manager but you didn't state anything in your story about the people you hired and developed, the projects you led or rescued, or how you contributed to your peers, managers and companies success. Do that.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't think you'll get a role as Director or VP simply on technical knowledge.

This is what the Harvard Business Review has to say (pretty light on actionable advice though):

[https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-new-path-to-the-c- suite](https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-new-path-to-the-c-suite)

Another article:

[http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Career-management- The-...](http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Career-management-The-path-to- CIO)

I guess an MBA could be of help, but it's useless unless you already have connections and all the other requirements in place.

[http://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/6-must-have- ski...](http://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/6-must-have-skills-for- aspiring-cios/d/d-id/1103925)?

A recurring piece of advice is having been a consultant.

The other is building your relationship-building prowess.:

"Strong project management skills are critical to running a successful IT shop. But if you're hoping to climb that corporate ladder, it's important to know how to build relationships up, down, and sideways. In fact, according to a recent poll from SearchCIO, conducted of 875 senior and mid-level IT executives, CIOs who earn the highest salaries make building relationships with top executives more of a priority than managing IT projects.

"Being a CIO requires an ability to develop relationships in all directions-- with your boss, outward with one's peers, with other C-level executives, heads of business units and relationships downwards as well,"

<comment><USER11> This is a recurring theme in that article

 _she 's only ever written one program in anger and that was "functionally a brilliant success but performance-wise it was lousy_

Once you have a reputation as "technical" you will _never_ be promoted to senior ranks, esp. not in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lots of IT shops nowadays are struggling to contain a BIG MESS while still providing new features that the business needs. So the skills that are most useful at director level and above, are how to cope with the BIG MESS and how to extricate the business from the BIG MESS. Most likely this involves lots of compromises and the usual techniques of managing in the midst of chaos by evolving bit by bit to get closer to some overall architectural vision.

As far as the technology goes, there are many ways to have an IT infrastructure without a BIG MESS. So technology does not help you here. What matters most is deciding on an architectural vision and leading the whole company towards that "better place". If you believe in silver bullets, then you will fail.

If you read Peopleware and it made sense to you, then you are probably on the right track. There is a huge literature on management techniques to guide you. Pick a path that you can walk and just do it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Stream processing is pretty cool. Instead of doing batch jobs try to set up something real time using Spark.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, stream processing is awesome. I will look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14>
      "I am tired of ETL , data cleaning , slicing and dicing projects now."

My instinct says that one has to love what one does (the dirty bits especially) for one to evolve naturally into the next greater phase of one's career.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just remember this the hire up you go the more it's about sales. so with that in mind. You need to network with people that can hire a director and impress the shit out of them. Then, when they are looking for one... your the guy.

</comment><comment><USER16> Work on a product, instead of doing one-off projects for other companies.

<comment><USER17> That's what we (company I work for) have done. 95%+ work we do is on our core product. Made work much more meaningful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How to grow professionally? I have no clue. I made some observations of my own.

If you work at a company, you would expect the hierarchy to notice your ambition and guide you to next level. In practice this does not happen or happens to only few people for variety of reasons. The company does not produce enough market value, there are too many skilled people with ambition, there are no networking opportunities, you were not noticeable that nobody took you under their wing, you are too odd to fit in, the industry is too young etc. One could only prepare self to look good, talk the talk and wait for an opportunity to arise. When I see so many managers ass-kissing their bosses, I believe they are doing the same, preparing for receiving. I once noticed an ambitious director making a spectacle while taking pictures of his boss when the boss was speaking to an audience. I really have no clue if these social engineering techniques work, but I notice so many people do it.

If you are perceived technically strong, the hierarchy does not see you as leadership materiel. I witnessed this event that changed my perspective about over stressing my technical abilities. A bunch of people, almost all of them out of touch with technology sat down and the conversation started like this with someone saying -

"I know this large company which takes this amazingly smart technical people and made them managers and directors and they are facing difficulty, in our awesome org we should never do that".

A bunch of other people around agree and they give their own experiences of horror stories. Such things gain wider acceptance because these meetings have less representation from someone who still see themselves as technically competent and current. I was in such a meeting and asked the group, if leadership is a skill that people are born with and what should technically strong people do for their career advancement? The answers were more ridiculous. Technical skill is seen as something you only need to have up to a limit and any more than that is not useful to the company. There is a ceiling if you are technically smart.

The environment is self selecting what is needed for their business to strive. I found it smart to adapt sometimes but then I see a lot of these young people in silicon valley do amazing things and give themselves great titles. We both know that skills are transferrable between companies but titles may not be. I have more respect for these young people who create their own reality and make everybody believe theirs. Now Zuckerberg is still a CEO and they are still teaching people in MBA the skills to be a CEO or CIO or whatever it is and the magazines writing about the rules to be a CEO or CTO or CIO.

</comment><comment><USER19> off topic. I am a step behind the OP. I am trying to get into the role that the OP describes he is in for the last 3 years. What would be some ways to move into big data and BI other than quitting my current job that doesn't deal much with Big data. Is the solution to this to contribute to Open Source?

</comment><comment><USER20> how about learning something related to DevOps?

<comment><AUTHOR> DevOps is cool but I find it too bothersome at times.

I personally like product design , development and system engineering aspects.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any updates on Boosted Board? My favorite YC company has gone MIA - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> They went belly-up last month, and most employees are gone. Seems they didn't declare bankruptcy yet [1], which means customers with open orders or repairs will have to wait until a new owner or liquidator is nominated.

Coincidentally, Sanjay just posted this note with more details [2].

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/14/21175343/boosted-board- sa...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/14/21175343/boosted-board-sale- crowdsource-reddit-repairs-fix-manual)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22895877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22895877)</comment>


Netherlands is world number two in agricultural exports - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/09/netherlands-is-world-number-two-in-agricultural-exports-by-using-greenhouses-and-new-technology.html <comment><AUTHOR> The article doesn't mention that they also use almost no pesticides, due to controlled environment. They do use natural predators for most common bugs.</comment>


Behind the Design: Meet the New Surface Go - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/surface/2018/07/10/behind-the-design-meet-the-new-surface-go/ <comment><USER2> It looks very nice and appears to have great quality, but I'm not sure why a 10 inch device is better than a regular 13 or 15 inch laptop? What's the use case for it?</comment>


What It Means To Have $50 - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/08/18/tweet-of-the-month/

<comment><USER2> And if you have multiple $50s, you can have food and other things too!</comment>


Interstellar Object Oamuamua gets an unexpected speed boost - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/our-solar-system-s-first-known-interstellar-object-gets-unexpected-speed-boost <comment><USER2> The title misspells the name of the object. It's "ʻOumuamua". The first letter is the Hawaiian ʻokina. The article itself also incorrectly uses a prime character to represent the ʻokina.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER3> "And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything in threes."

</comment><comment><USER4> So evidence of being a comet, or cleverly disguised starship?</comment>


Show HN: ES7 Decorator library adds types checking, memoization, and more to JS - mako-taco https://github.com/mako-taco/DecorateThis

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct me if I'm wrong, but the necessity for decorators seem to have risen from the ES6 class syntax.

If we were doing classes/functions the old imperative style, we could have simply wrapped the RHS in a standard function that does what the decorator does.

      Animal.prototype.speedup = typeCheckDecorator("number", "number", function(x) {
        this.speed += x;
        return this.speed;
      });

I get that the class syntax makes things easier for people coming from other languages. And maybe makes static analysis easier. But still not sure if it was really needed.

<comment> mako-taco Static analysis is one of the end goals of this project; the other is generating documentation.

Decorators are definitely NOT needed for achieving the current functionality.

<comment><USER2> A beautiful and elegant thing about JavaScript is that decorators are not needed for the current functionality, as you say.

That being said, some people feel very strongly that languages are better tools when they are less elegant, when they are collections of specialized tools that communicate very specific intentions to readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can someone recommend a simple and easy-to-approach tutorial into ES7 decorators? I have used decorators successfully in my previous Python projects, and I'm eager to start using them in JS. Unfortunately, I haven't yet come across a good guide till now.

<comment><USER4> Take a look at [http://babeljs.io](http://babeljs.io)

You can enable experimental es7 features: [https://babeljs.io/docs/usage/experimental/](https://babeljs.io/docs/usage/experimental/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting - I wonder whether TypeScript could compile down to this when ES7 is accepted and live in browsers. As it is, I do prefer the syntax of TypeScript.

<comment><USER6> This does runtime checking. Flow and Typescript do static type checking. Which, as long as the systems are sound, means you don't need a runtime component.

<comment><USER7> TypeScript isn't sound, and does rely on runtime checking for a small amount of stuff. I don't know about Flow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to argue for type decorations, like in most C like languages, but then changed my mind.

When programming in a high level language like JavaScript, you should not think about types. Thinking about types will only limit your creativity and problem solving. Instead, you should focus on the logic abstraction.

Also you shouldn't lock yourself into classifications. Instead, just check the input and throw an error if it doesn't fit.

<comment><USER9> >Also you shouldn't lock yourself into classifications. Instead, just check the input and throw an error if it doesn't fit.

I really don't see the gain here - instead of delegating the typechecks to a tool, the compiler you clutter your code with them. You still have to think about the types, functions/methods (public ones) start with at one, two or more ifs and you even have a hit on runtime perfomance.

<comment><USER8> By helping out the compiler you can get better performance. But I like to think that current JavaScript engines or future ones are quite smart and can optimize beyond that.

Lets say you are writing software for a cargo company ... The code has well defined classes. The company now wants to expend by including buss goods. But in the code, the terminals and containers will only accept trucks ... It would be better if the terminal code checked if the good fitted etc.

Thinking about Buss vs Truck is much better then thinking about Array vs Object, but you shouldn't let classifications limit the solutions either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is something similar to this possible with ES6 proxies? It'd be nice to use a lot of these features outside classes, but since proxies are far harder to polyfill (indeed, I don't think anyone's some it yet) I've only seen then done with decorators within classes.

<comment><USER4> No these aren't the same as proxies. ES7 has class decorators that can only be used on class methods.

<comment><USER10> I know they're not the same, but I'd love to be able to use some of the thins I can use with decorators, but on plain objects.

<comment><USER11> You can also use them on class declarations themselves and object literals - [https://github.com/wycats/javascript-decorators#object- liter...](https://github.com/wycats/javascript-decorators#object-literal- method-declaration)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo ES/JS continues to get more and more pythonic. Unless you really need a certain library (which is a really good reason), it is getting harder to pick Python over Node for new projects.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks! I can now retire most of my ugly home cooked precondition checking.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there a typo on the Currying example?

let addToFiveAndThree = addFive(3);

Should be:

let addToFiveAndThree = addToFive(3);

I belive.

<comment> mako-taco Fixed, thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems like dynamic programming languages end up implementing decorators. To specify types it would be better to specify them in the parameters instead of adding a few lines.

<comment><USER15> I don't think programming languages implement decorators in order to facilitate type checking. They implement decorators because they are a nice generic way to reuse code in many functions / classes.

Now, once you have support for decorators, they can obviously be reused for type checking, but the linked repository also contains a few more decorators such as a memoization decorator.

I think those that add type checking decorators do so because it is a convenient way to add a some common code to multiple functions. The alternative for those that add decorators is to manually add a set of type checks in the beginning of each function.

Of course, if the language supported type checking they would simply use that, but if not, this is a simple way to save some lines of code.

<comment><USER2>
      > I don't think programming languages implement decorators in order to facilitate
      > type checking. They implement decorators because they are a nice generic way to
      > reuse code in many functions / classes.

Well, in JavaScript, it's particularly easy to write decorators as plain old JavaScript functions. Lots of libraries provide implementations that provide memoization or parameter checking on both functions and methods.

So in the short term, decorators serve only to work around the fact that ES-6 classes actually make this more difficult than ES-5 idioms.

But in the long term, a decorator can be extended to deal with static analysis, while functions provid eno such capability, so we'd be back to having "magic comments," or inventing a new kind of pragma.

So, I'd say that the motivation is to lay the groundwork for things involving static analysis or manipulation of programs. Like type checking, or even manipulation of the AST.</comment></comment></comment>


CEO Gurbaskh Chahal Fired by RadiumOne Board - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/04/27/exclusive-ceo-gurbaskh-chahal-fired-by-radiumone-board/

<comment><USER2> I hate mobbings as much as anyone, but I have to say, this is one lousy character the tech scene could do without. His self-defence post earlier today, including gems like:

> _The situation that resulted in my legal case began when I discovered that > my girlfriend was having unprotected sex for money with other people._

( [http://recode.net/2014/04/27/gurbaskh-chahal-says-he- didnt-d...](http://recode.net/2014/04/27/gurbaskh-chahal-says-he-didnt-do-it- i-didnt-hit-her-117-times/) )

...really drove home the point that this guy shows no guilt or remorse for anything and was still, until today, thinking he could get away with it.

Some people are worth using the court of public opinion to attack. People like Tom Preston-Werner or Brendan Eich, imho, didn't deserve the level of attack they got, particularly considering the case was not so clear in their cases (lack of reliable data in Tom's case, distance from the guilty event in Brendan's). But this guy deserved it and I'm glad he got it in the end.

It would have been a terrible misallocation of outrage if Tom and Brendan lost their jobs for their actions, but this guy didn't.

Good riddance.

<comment><USER3> From the article cited above:

> In perhaps the most problematic part of the post, he also claimed he lost > his temper because his girlfriend, Juliet Kakish, was "having unprotected > sex for money with other people." (Presumably, there are PR people who > objected to this she's-loose-and-it-made-me-real-angry meme, because calling > a woman a whore while saying you abhor violence against women is a rather > large disconnect.)

The author is assuming that the "sex for money" part is what set him off. How does she know it was not the "unprotected sex...with other people" part that set him off, due to the risk of disease?

<comment><USER4> The problematic part of "having unprotected sex for money with other people" is that the bully is blaming the victim for his behavior. This is typical "rationale" behind most sexual and physical assaults on women, that "she had it coming, therefore you can see why I did what I did." It's barbaric and disgusting, and underscores why this monster needs to be removed from a position of power immediately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't strike anyone, regardless of their gender. That shit is serious legal business. Things kids did while fighting on the school yard become felony charges as adults. You can't use physical violence against anyone. The government has a monopoly on the use of violence.

<comment><USER6> > Don't strike anyone, regardless of their gender. That shit is serious legal > business. Things kids did while fighting on the school yard become felony > charges as adults.

Unless you have money. Because then you get away with it. Like this asshole did (cleared of 45 felony counts because video footage evidence was ruled inadmissible in court, continues to breathe the free air).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And this thread is now deleted/blocked/banned/hidden. (not by me, I am not part of ycombinator/HN org).

edit: It seems to be back now. It probably scrolled of instead of being flagged/buried. So I was wrong, sorry.

<comment><USER2> Hey dang, what's happening here?

<comment><USER8> The story is being flagged by users as well as a relatively mild moderation penalty. The penalty makes it go slightly further down the front page; most of the action is by the user flags (edit: which have now buried the story altogether).

This story is a good example—almost a litmus test—of what pg called "shallowly interesting" [1] and what davidw called "articles that get you riled up, but really don't lead to any productive or interesting discussions" [2]. I'm as shocked by the story as anyone, but it's essentially celebrity gossip (for some sort of "celebrity"), and that is off topic for Hacker News. This person is of little importance to this community (how many of us had heard of him before? surely very few), nor do the threads reveal insight into underlying phenomena. They're mostly about what a horrible person he is. So in terms of HN moderation practices, this doesn't seem like a borderline call.

This is not to deny the obvious importance of the story to the people—most importantly the victim—affected by it.

1\. [http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7495446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7495446)

<comment><USER9> I think the underlying phenomena is pretty interesting and evident here. Part of the reason why this has blown up, besides the alleged abuse and his eventual guilty plea of course, is an entrepreneur who is drunk on his own Kool-Aid. How else could you explain his ill-informed decision to rant about this, in public, without even a proofreader, even though he's retained the services of high profile PR firms? This is an entrepreneur whose prominence and success was accelerated by the current dynamic in the tech industry, and his rise would be quite admired by most HNers here, especially at his young age, and he's apparently thought that makes him immune to the laws of public outreach and image.

Besides this being a good lesson of how being an asshole is not the ideal way to success...it's also a good example of the machinations of our justice system. Wonder why the rich seem to have better outcomes than the poor? This guy's legal team did great wonders for him. If only his PR team was a bit better, he may be still CEO (deservedly or not).

<comment><USER8> I didn't say there weren't interesting underlying phenomena, only that the HN threads don't reveal insight into them—and if I may, I think your attempt here, though well-intentioned, mostly reinforces that. Every sentence strikes me as projecting way beyond the available information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why doesn't this guy just release the video? He can write as many words as he wants, but no one is going to believe that the police report was "overblown and grossly exaggerated" until they see the video.

</comment><comment><USER9> Besides the obvious lesson of: don't commit domestic violence...It's almost karma-like in how Chahal's need to puff his own image up blew up in his face.

Back in 2007, his Wikipedia bio was flagged for being not-notable : ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gurbaksh_Chahal#Not_very_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gurbaksh_Chahal#Not_very_encyclopedic)). But he apparently had hired a PR firm to manage his page, and 7 years later, it became a convenient place to list the charges against him: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gurbaksh_Chahal#Article_ab...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gurbaksh_Chahal#Article_about_this_Wikipedia_article)

Being a CEO of a top 10 online advertising firm would normally not be enough for a non-interested Wiki user to create a page for him. And since he only pled to misdemeanors, that may not have been enough for someone to create a page out of spite. Nice to see his attempted circumvention of Wiki rules backfire on him.

Of course, he didn't do himself any favors by proclaiming his innocence (despite the existence of the video tape) and making no apology whatsoever.

<comment><USER11> Why would anyone want a Wikipedia page about him? There was one about my card game (deleted and reinstated several times) at one time and it was a nightmare.

Someone who got kicked out of his university for supplying alcohol to a 17-year-old girl (nothing else stuck to him, so I won't speculate) created a page in which he lists about 50 Wikipedia accounts (half of which have zero contributions and therefore, effectively, don't exist) that he alleges to be my sock puppets.

That place is a fucking nightmare. The best use of your PR resources is to have your WP bio taken down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not to disagree with the decision, but it comes too late (August 2013?) from the actual event to feel like a direct consequence.

This reads too much like "bad publicity" related firing, way after the court cases have run their course.

What's the point of having a justice system, when the court of public opinion extends its hands beyond it & overrules it?

<comment><USER5> The justice system convicted him very recently. Nothing overruled him, he was fired because of the conviction.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, the justice system convicted him of a misdemeanor, hardly enough cause to fire most founder/CEOs. This was a (justified) decision by the RadiumOne board to move on, and heavily motivated by the court of public opinion (due to RadiumOne's impending IPO).

<comment><USER5> > the justice system convicted him of a misdemeanor, hardly enough cause to > fire most founder/CEOs

I think you may be under the impression that a misdemeanor is not a big deal. A misdemeanor is a serious criminal charge. It is not as life altering as a felony, but it's not a joke. You seem to be taking it as a civil citation or something. A misdemeanor isn't somewhere between a parking ticket and a real crime, it is a real crime.

<comment><USER2> Indeed: ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misdemeanor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misdemeanor) )

> _In the United States, the federal government generally considers a crime > punishable with incarceration for one year or less to be a misdemeanor. All > other crimes are considered felonies. Many states also employ this > distinction._</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rails Migration Memory Therapy - <AUTHOR> http://codeclimber.blogspot.com/2009/05/curse-you-rake-dbmigrate.html

<comment><USER2> I know this isn't very Ruby or rails specific, but if you are doing big changes to your db on big datasets and you don't use transactions, you deserve whatever comes your way.

Realize you've fucked up? A quick _ROLLBACK TRANSACTION_ and you are safely back where you started. This is so freaking simple, I can't believe people aren't using it.

<comment><USER3> This. Model.transaction do ... end is not that hard.

Also, in Rails 2.3 you can do .find_each, which will iterate over each record in 1000-chunk batches.</comment></comment>


My Clojure Toolchain: Vim - <AUTHOR> http://blog.venanti.us/clojure-vim/ <comment><USER2> I've been looking for something explaining how to work with Fireplace as I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Thanks for the information!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad it was useful! One of the things I've heard consistently from folks looking to use Vim with Clojure was that they weren't sure how to use Fireplace.</comment></comment>


Why You'll Actually Miss Newspapers - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/10-reasons-youll-actually-miss-newspapers-2009-7

<comment><USER2> Yes, things like kindling and wrapping fish.

 _Very_ high-brow humor :/

Plus... they won't even give you a list but require you to click through them.

Methinks that Businessinsider.com wants to go the way of newspapers.</comment>


A Basic Git Workflow for Smaller Projects - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@peterjussi/a-basic-git-workflow-for-smaller-projects-d8694d50297d <comment><USER2> I like this workflow. When I'm ready to merge a feature branch into master, I generally do it this way to simplify the history on master:

      git switch master
      git merge --squash feature
      git commit -m <feature description>

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, the main difference there would be that the changes get combined into one squash commit rather than a merge commit. Mostly an aesthetic choice, so I could definitely see both as viable.

If I wanted to move changes between branches I would probably prefer a squash rather than a regular merge, as that will look cleaner in the history.</comment></comment>


F-35 Engines from United Technologies Called Unreliable by GAO - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-27/f-35-engines-from-united-technologies-called-unreliable-by-gao <comment><USER2> I think the F-35 isn't real, that all the videos of it are CGI, and that all these reports are supposed to convince us that this money has been lost, all while the government is secretly using the entire F-35 budget to build a flock of flying drones, walking and talking robots, and rail guns for the next major war.

I have to believe such contrivances to avoid thinking about how my tax dollars are wasted.

<comment><USER3> The X-47B is pretty damn cool, makes one wonder with the rate of advancement they had why we would need to develop manned craft much longer.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B)

<comment><USER4> The US Navy has said the F-35 is probably that last manned fighter for them. The X-47B is done after the refuel testing so it makes one wonder what is the next test aircraft.

<comment><USER5> No, the USN has said the F-35 will be the last manned "strike" aircraft for them. They are developing the F/Axx to replace the F-18, and this will definitely be manned.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I should have added strike fighter, but the F/Axx is listed as manned or unmanned. I have my doubts about the duality they think they are going to get. On the technical side the F-35 is replacing the F/A-18C while the F/Axx is replacing the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

<comment><USER5> The problem for the USN is that the F-35 isn't coming along fast enough, and the cost will make the airwing even smaller than currently deployed. I think they Navy would love to ditch the F-35, let the Marines suffer with the F-35B, and push on to F/Axx. Of course the really smart thing would be pushing UCLASS hard, but that would conflict with a lot of their ideas about piloted aircraft.

<comment><USER4> At this point, they might as well buy the newer F-18 until they can get a decision. It looks like Boeing needs orders or it will shutdown the line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We could clear out all student debt in the United States and have a handful of change left over...

...or we could build a plane that doesn't fly.

<comment><USER7> The plane flies; but I wonder what we're doing putting humans in an airplane at all at this point. The amount of additional engineering that has to be done to support a human in the cockpit is crazy -- life support systems, multiple redundant flight control systems, etc. All of these have maintenance schedules, checklists and protocols that make them very expensive to operate. By the time this weapons system is operational, it will be obsolete.

I would maybe understand if the goal of this program was to produce a weapons system that was a great leap forward in performance, but the F-35 was never designed to be that. It was supposed to remove the need for 3 or 4 different specialized aircraft by creating a general-purpose platform that can serve in multiple roles. It's essentially a cost-reduction program that basically fails at reducing costs because of the additional overhead some of the requirements brought.

In its current iteration, it doesn't do that, and having a single-engine fighter jet is a colossally stupid idea. In the event of engine failure, the pilot has no choice but to eject because fighters are far less aerodynamically stable than passenger planes, and with no engine power, the plane wouldn't be controllable. You don't have these problems in two-engine fighters -- if one engine goes out, you can still limp back to base and land the plane. So your single engine has to be that much more powerful and reliable, which leads to an engine that is more expensive to buy and that needs to be maintained more often. So they ultimately fail in reducing cost and complexity.

For the roles the F-35 will be appropriate for by the time it's finished, drones will be a much better option. The F-35 is explicitly not an air superiority fighter (a role human pilots are still better suited for, and for which the F-22 is a far superior aircraft), and most of the ground support and reconnaissance roles the F-35 is supposed to play are already handled by drones today.

The program only exists because big defense programs are parceled out to congressional districts, whose representatives are loathe to lose the jobs. I don't think the military even wants it that badly at this point.

<comment><USER8> A human pilot can't be simply disconnected of reprogrammed to turn around and bomb Washington. I think that's a major consideration.

Yes, there are drones that work quite well against countries like Afghanistan but good luck using these against China or Russia. (not that I'd want to see that ever happen)

<comment><USER7> Drones, like any other aircraft, would be used only after air superiority has been established.

That means that by the time we're sending drones in, the enemy doesn't even have sufficient radar capabilities to know what planes are there. Radar sites are one of the first targets in the process of establishing air superiority because they direct anti-aircraft defenses. They wouldn't even know there are drones to hack, just that missiles are raining down from above.

If we haven't established air superiority yet, we just use cruise missiles. But a cruise missile looks a lot like a missile fired from a drone if you're standing on the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's kind of amusing that the one Air Force in the world that has the most means to have different super-specialized planes for every use case has decided to sink a historic amount of money into an all-purpose plane that's not particularly good at one task. You would understand if a place like Panama decided "We can only afford 6 fighter jets and one maintenance team/infrastructure, so let's get F-35s because they'll cover multiple needs", but these are absolutely not the constraints of the United States.

<comment><USER10> We had a specialized plane, the F22- but it cost $150M each and people thought "that's crazy" so they said: let's save money by building a new plane in bulk that can be customized for each branch! So while the costs upfront were/are high, in the end once we start stamping them out in bulk the price per place will be much lower.

And here we are. Intentions were good, execution has been bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This happens over and over again.

Oh no, the Sea Wolf works, but is too expensive at $2B/boat! Let's scrap the working program, use "lessons learned" to build a cheaper attack submarine. Years of delays and cost overruns follow, and we get the inferior Virginia class, at a bargain-basement price of $3B.

Oh no, the F22 works, but is too expensive at $150M/plane! (Would have been less over time, but who's counting?) Let's scrap the working program, use "lessons learned" to build a cheaper fighter. Years of delays and cost overruns follow, no working plane in sight, but if it ever flies, we will get the inferior F35, at a bargain-basement price of $350M/plane.

I can't wait to see what happens when the Ohio-class replacement program starts for real. Also can't wait to see what happens when healthcare is fully nationalized — I'm sure the bureaucracy in charge will be so much sleeker and more efficient than the Pentagon, and special interests so much less influential in Congress. Oh, wait: annual US military spending is about $750B, and healthcare adds up to $3.5T.

</comment><comment><USER12> UAVs are the future. They are more affordable, they can be stealther, they can be smaller, they can stay flying for longer, and they require less ground support.

I can not believe the F-35 hasn't been completely cancelled yet. Every partner of the US doesn't really want these expensive beasts.

<comment><USER13> Not trying to justify the F-35, it's a cluster fuck, but manned aircraft will be around for a while. Unless the operator is local, the communication latency for UAVs makes them unsuitable for some types of combat missions.

<comment><USER14> For some types, not all of them.

Also, 'Unmanned' does not necessarily means "remote-controlled". They can be autonomous.

We are making progress: [http://www.naval-technology.com/news/newsus- navys-x-47b-cond...](http://www.naval-technology.com/news/newsus- navys-x-47b-conducts-first-autonomous-aerial-refuelling-4560861)

This is after carrier landings and takeoffs and formation flying with manned aircraft.

And all that developed at a fraction of what the F-35 program will spend on _engines alone_

<comment><USER10> If you think drones, or autonomous planes will fix what governments spend (and waste) on military projects - you're in for a huge disappointment. If anything, "drone" type weapons have meant an increase in budgets.

While the F-35 budgets looks atrocious now - in a couple decades we'll look back and think "how cheap!".

<comment><USER14> You have a point.

I remember reading a couple of years ago that the thing causing F-35's biggest delays was software, not the hardware. The software for the radar alone is reported to be a few millions of lines of C++ code.

<comment><USER13> [http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/aerospace/aviation/softw...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/aerospace/aviation/software- testing-problems-continue-to-plague-f35-joint-strike-fighter-program)

An article on the topic. The summary, IMO, is that no one acquiring major systems (defense or otherwise) seems to properly understand the costs and risks of software. More money spent up front on their design, development and test framework would have significantly reduced the risks while (naturally) costing more early on, but should reduce costs over the lifetime. They ignore this and spend more after the deadlines have passed as a consequence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> F-35 tries doing so many things and fails in almost all of them. The complexity of engine given the whole STOVL based frame and design is the culprit here. One plane to rule them all is still a bad idea, given the complexity of these machines. There are many lessons for any kind of system design and development in this whole story.

</comment><comment><USER16> I realize "mean time between failures" doesn't mean what I think it means, but holy moley. The engine can only go 25 hours between failures instead of the 120 they're aiming for? That's a pretty big gap in performance and I wouldn't want to be flying one of these things.

"As of late December, engines on the Marine Corps' complex version of the F-35, designed for short takeoffs and vertical landings, flew about 47 hours between failures caused by engine design issues instead of the 90 hours planned for this point, according to GAO officials. Air Force and Navy model engines flew about 25 hours between failures instead of the 120 hours planned."

</comment><comment><USER17> 90 - 120 hours is the _target_ MTBF for a jet engine? _mind blown_ glad I am not in aeronautics.

<comment><USER18> An engine for a military application has _very_ different characteristics from that of a commercial passenger plane. The MTBF for the latter is in the 100k+ hours, with servicing usually performed around 10k.

<comment><USER19> you service an aircraft engine after 416 days of non stop flying?

<comment><USER20> In this case, "servicing" was probably referring to a heavy maintenance check.

There are several different tiers of checks, ranging from short frequent ones, to expensive, time consuming, infrequent ones: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks)

Usually, older aircraft that are being phased out are mothballed shortly before their next heavy maintenance check. And the resale value of used aircraft, especially older ones, is heavily influenced by how soon the next D check is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Starting to think it is time for defense contractors to be disrupted. How many multibillion dollar fuckups of public money have these guys had.

<comment><USER22> What idea do you have?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Let us not forget that the "backup" engine program was cut

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/16/house-votes-to- kill...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/16/house-votes-to- kill-f35-second-engine-program_n_824177.html)

Not looking like such a great idea now ehh?

Oh yeah, we're supposed to forget these things.

<comment><USER24> I was about to point out the same thing. I left shortly before the program got cut. Everyone saw the writing on the wall.

I remember some talk about it being more about politics than saving money. I can't remember what politician it was, but they were one of the big pushers of closing down GE's alternative engine program, which was convenient since they were from Connecticut where Pratt & Whitney is located (If I remember correctly).

Basically they wanted their state to benefit exclusively.

Not to say GE's engine would be in much better shape right now either. I am really not sure what the right decision would have been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Would the F-35 be a good example of The Swamp of Commitment? [0]

* [0] [http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational-Beha...](http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational-Behavior/dp/0385530609)

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there anyone happy with the F35 program who does not have a fiscal/political stake in it?

<comment><USER27> Is there anyone unhappy with the F-35 program who _does_ have a fiscal/political stake in it?

<comment><USER28> I mean, we're all paying for it, so sure.

From what I understand, the F-35 is trying to be a single airframe that functions as both an air superiority fighter and ground support. Designed around things like vertical landing and short takeoff, which are frequently unnecessary and add complexity and design compromises elsewhere. And as far as actually being ground support, it's not an A-10. It's behind schedule and over budget. And there's the debate over what war this plane would be useful in (having a stick to wave at Russia?), because it's certainly not the kind of war we've been seeing recently.

There are a lot of better things we could do with my tax dollars. Like having a slightly less enormous national debt, if nothing else. Or having slightly more solvent social security so I can retire before I croak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> They are already planning on using more advanced adaptive engine technology from the ADVENT program for future F-35 engines, since the program is going to last for quite a long time.

This could be related to campaigning against the current F135 engine.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Versatile_Engine_Tech...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Versatile_Engine_Technology)</comment>


Sony accuses Beyonce of piracy for putting her videos on YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/26/sony-accuses-beyonce.html

<comment><USER2> For putting _her videos_ on YouTube or for putting videos _of her_ on YouTube?

This looks like another marketing flub by Sony, but in all likelihood it is their copyrighted work and not Beyoncé's.

</comment><comment><USER3> The only way to combat automated DMCA of content is to counter-notice ASAP. There's no penalty for corporations to "go nuts" and block everything by default, so guess what they will always do.

<http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf></comment>


Ask HN: How do I backout of an accepted offer - <AUTHOR> I lost my job last month. After interviewing with multiple companies, I received three offers. Unfortunately, I accepted the first offer that came along as I was in full panic mode.<p>The most recent offer I received is very interesting to me and I would like to accept it. I am not sure how to go about backing out of the one that I accepted already. This is little bit harder because I know the dev who interviewed me and he was excited about me joining. <comment><USER2> Honesty is the best policy here:

"When I was interviewing for the job with you, I was also interviewing with other companies. Your offer came in first and the job sounded interesting and the pay was good so I accepted. However, since then one of the other companies I interviewed with has given me an offer for a more interesting/better paying/shorter commute/etc. job and so I've decided to accept that offer. I hope this doesn't negatively impact you and that you can quickly find someone else."

Or something like that. Tells them the honest reason why, doesn't burn your bridge too badly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did you sign any contract with the first company? If not there's nothing to do except apologize for having to rescind the offer and wish them the best.

</comment><comment><USER4> > I am not sure how to go about backing out of the one that I accepted > already.

Almost the same way as you said in this post. Don't mention the panic, do mention that the other offer is personally very interesting to you.

Do this after you have accepted and confirmed the second offer. The earlier you do this the better.

There is of course value in keeping your word once you have accepted something - but for how long would you work at a less interesting position for just that? A few months, a year, 3-5 years? If under a few years, then you aren't actually helping them by accepting and "keeping your word".

</comment><comment><USER5> Just be honest and respectful. Preferably over the phone/audio/video rather than an email. Also, be clear and to the point, so they know you're not just trying to get more money out of them.

(If it's just about the money and they offer, it's a different dilemma).

</comment><comment><USER6> If you haven't signed anything you are under no obligation, if it was in the company's best interest not to refuse you after accepting you they would in a minute. say politely you've changed your mind, at the worst they will offer you some more money.

</comment><comment><USER7> As others have said, if you don't have a contract, you can legally walk away.

Legally.

But there might be another question. To what degree do you consider that you gave your word? And how much is your word worth to you? If you're a "my word is good" kind of person, then "legally" isn't the only consideration. You might see if you can get the company (or your friend) to release you from your acceptance, to whatever degree you feel is needed.

<comment><USER8> It's business. Someone's word is a signature on a contract and the contract contains what a person has given their word to do. There can be outside personal relationships in business that bring other ethical considerations into play but the question does not implicate their existence. To put it another way this is at arm's length and bounded in the formal relationship of job interviewing. There might be long term repercussions and regrets but there is no basis the candidate ought to feel guilt or moral obligation.

<comment><USER7> Depends on your personal code of ethics. Some people care about keeping their word, to the point that it becomes part of their identity. For you to say that they "ought" not to care about that seems a bit presumptuous. You don't, fine. But you have as much grounds to tell others that they shouldn't care about such things as they have to tell you that you _should_.

<comment><USER8> Ethical obligations are between people. Companies are not people. While people in companies may have ethics, the company itself does not. Companies are not ethical agents. They can't give their word. They can't hold a person to their word because a person cannot give their word to a company.

I'm not the person questioning the OP's ethical integrity. And now mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if you live in an at-will employment state (e.g. California), does it even matter if you signed something?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do live in an at-will employment state.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a good tour of the modern JavaScript landscape - <AUTHOR> I have been building websites for brief time now and whenever I need a JS lib, all I do is add it to the main html as a .js file and it just works.
Recently as I am getting more jobs I am starting to notice that this is a little (well.. more than little) cumbersome.
So I started looking at what I can do, so I find Node, and how you can use node to compile your code and then present the result to the user.
The more I read the I became confused, gulp, grunt, webpack, npm and more. The worst thing is, some of the tutorials only show a very basic use-case. Nothing advanced.
For example I wanted to learn ReactJS, while I can get the basics up and running and I understand what's happening, I feel like I cant go any further.
If anyone knows of a good resource I can read/watch/listen and understand how I need to set up my own dev environment when developing front end JS I would really appreciate it. <comment><USER2> I created a video course that addresses the exact problem you're describing and shows you how to build a full multi-page app backed by a database (but it's for Angular rather than React).

[http://www.angularcourse.com](http://www.angularcourse.com)

When I was learning I saw the same thing you're still seeing — most tutorials only explain high-level concepts and when they do show code examples, they are tiny, arbitrary, and unrealistic. So when I quit my job to teach web development, I wanted to make sure I didn't do the same thing as everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having taught myself javascript in the mid-late 1990s and brought down a few servers by simple mistakes (Not always my own) I swore myself off the language and haven't looked back. Now I am looking to jump back in to do some app development and js seems the easiest way currently.

I have looked at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook) JavaScript the good parts 2009.

There seems to be much better handle on JS so I also would be interested in "Best Practice" for modern JavaScript development.

</comment><comment><USER4> Frontend Masters has a lot of content that you may find helpful... [https://frontendmasters.com/](https://frontendmasters.com/)

Egghead.io also has some good courses [https://egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

</comment><comment><USER5> Take a look at [http://www.frontendhandbook.com](http://www.frontendhandbook.com).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really awesome. Thanks very much.

I managed to find this today [http://survivejs.com/webpack_react/introduction/](http://survivejs.com/webpack_react/introduction/)

<comment><USER6> Hi,

I just published a new version of SurviveJS. Feel free to ask anything about the effort. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> most of those are either made in the spirit of unix where one tool does one thing

      - gulp and grunt are for handling multiple js scripts and all your folders of js scripts, makefile stuff

      - ill assume webpack is for minimizing js

      - bower and npm are package managers, while npm is just node modules, bower can do some cool stuff like install jquery or bootstrap into your local public_html folder

      - es6/ecmascript is a standardized featureset of javascript that people are working on. you can use it now, but you have to install babeljs, and use expirimental option in chrome

youtube has great tutorials.

there is yeoman.io and yo that sets up skeletons for the dev environment

there are 'base fiddles' ex 'react base fiddle' that can get you going. there is also bower and docker vm images with skeleton projects. also there is a lot of skeleton projects on github.

(its ez to breakdown a base fiddle and see whats needed to get the dev going)

<comment><USER8> Um, your points about Bower/NPM and Webpack are not really correct.

NPM is the de facto package manager for JavaScript these days. Some points on why NPM is a better choice: [https://gofore.com/ohjelmistokehitys/stop-using- bower/](https://gofore.com/ohjelmistokehitys/stop-using-bower/).

So on to Webpack, Webpack is not only for minifying JS. Webpack can actually be seen as a replacement for Gulp/Grunt. With the use of plugins you can compile Sass or TypeScript or use Babel to transpile your ES6/7 code to ES5 etc..</comment></comment>


Clojure, concurrency and silver bullets - <AUTHOR> http://beust.com/weblog/2010/08/19/clojure-concurrency-and-silver-bullets I'm actually confused after reading both the articles. Thought some discussion at HN may give some clarity. <comment><USER2> Stuart Halloway (part of clojure/core and author of Programming Clojure) has a great response at the bottom of the comments:

 _Clojure's STM API does not include agents, atoms, and refs. Only refs are part of the STM API…_

 _…consider your article title: the reality is that Clojure provides a bunch of different bullets to handle different problems. And this doesn't even take into account Clojure's other concurrency-savvy features: immutable collections, vars, futures, and delays, to name a few._

</comment><comment><USER3> (Concerning the comments) Amazing how subjective people can be about this stuff. I thought the response from Stuart Halloway was well considered and fact based.</comment>


Mr. Rogers vs. the Superheroes - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2018/09/19/mr-rogers-vs-the-superheroes/ <comment><USER2> I've always been fascinated by how some children's book authors are able to bring up story lines which tap into feelings that arise at various ages (i.e death, divorce, etc). I watched Mr Roger's growing up but really had no idea everything seen was a smartly curated way to make children more empathetic and analytical.

<comment><USER3> Honestly, I think most of society has a big blind spot on child education.

I would wager most of society reckons child education - whether a book writer, media creator or a school teacher - is a pretty basic and run of the mill sort of job/thing to do.

But more and more I'm seeing that it's a profession and an area that really requires a lot more thought and need for well trained professionals being given space to do their thing just like any other professions.

Unfortunately, I really don't think people give them much respect, and/or funding for that matter.

<comment><USER4> The great problem was the discovery of "pester power": children are particularly susceptible to advertising. That's why children's media tends to have selling toys as a primary objective, unless it's some sort of state- funded low-budget Reithian production.

<comment><USER5> Or if it's books.

<comment><USER6> I doubt that print would be immune from such advertising. Particularly kids books that often contain pictures.

<comment><USER7> Print takes fewer people and less money to produce than a cartoon

<comment><USER6> The incentive to make as much money as possible is still there. These ideas have been common in comic books for a century.

<comment><USER8> It definitely happens, and there are a lot of really bad children's books whose primary purpose is to fit into merchandising empires out there.

But the ratio of quality work to crap is much higher in children's books than in other media. Especially if you stick to children's books that aren't attached to toys or other media. Compare, for example, anything Disney, where the books are often just a long series of nonsequiturs with barely any narrative structure, let alone emotional depth, to anything by Philip Stead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is especially true today. I have seen a critique of Marvels infinity war where (spoilers) Thanos needs to "sacrifice that he loves the most" to gain a special stone.

So he throws his daughter off a cliff, and cries as he does. He "loved" her.

People have pointed out that for an abused child sitting watching with her abuser, this reinforces the idea that the person who is harming her actually loves her ... a repulsive idea and perhaps as damaging as jumping off a roof with a towel.

I guess "with great power comes great responsibility"

PS not being American Mr Rogers is a mystery to me - can anyone recommend a documentary / example ?

<comment><USER10> > People have pointed out that for an abused child sitting watching with her > abuser, this reinforces the idea that the person who is harming her actually > loves her

Maybe. But maybe the story that the abuser doesn't care about the victim isn't actually accurate, even if it is more useful for resolving the problem. I think it's entirely possible that a large class of abuse happens from abusers that do love and care about the victims, but are so screwed up in their own mind that they can't help themselves.

That does lead to the interesting question, does continually asserting to the victim that the abuser doesn't care lead to helping the issue faster than asserting that they might care, but by allowing the situation to continue it harms both the victim and the abuser, and the best way to improve _both_ their lives is to be separated? Not that helping the abuser is the main goal, but if it helps to extricate the victim faster, that's a net win, and just because the abuser is not someone most people would find pity for doesn't mean they don't deserve _some_ help fighting their own demons too.

Not that I think that's _necessarily_ true, but it would be interesting to know whether this is one more case where the common knowledge "best thing to do" is sub-optimal.

<comment><USER11> > I think it's entirely possible that a large class of abuse happens from > abusers that do love and care about the victims, but are so screwed up in > their own mind that they can't help themselves.

In that case, the abuse would be visible in public. If abuser is doing what he/she is doing in private only, then it reasonable to assume that abuser is in control.

<comment><USER12> Not really. A person addicted to food, alcohol, porn, etc. is perfectly capable of keeping these addictions at bay in public, but lose control while in private.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The bit in the article about extending children's attention spans:

> explains that Rogers deliberately lengthened scenes as the theme week > progressed, so that the children would get used to an environment that > extended their attention spans as they became more and more familiar with > the story line.

I wish more content creators would do this. I'm amazed at how many jump-cuts there are in even the most innocent-looking children's programs (e.g. "Peppa Pig" here in the UK).

</comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of Mr.Dressup

</comment><comment><USER15> 'His feelings extended to programming of any kind, including advertising and entertainment watched by very young children. In a speech given at an academic conference at Yale University in 1972, Fred Rogers said, "The impact of television must be considered in the light of the possibility that children are exposed to experiences which may be far beyond what their egos can deal with effectively. Those of us who produce television must assume the responsibility for providing images of trustworthy available adults who will modulate these experiences and attempt to keep them within manageable limits."'

Seems quaint, if not positively prehistoric.

<comment><USER16> Children (by definition) are not fully developed human beings. It should be obvious that care should be taken in their development, and that there should be some burden of responsibility on those creating things specifically targeted at children.

This is backed up by years of data. For instance, fast food ads aimed at children can have lifelong impacts on obesity and consumption habits: [http://www.apa.org/topics/kids- media/food.aspx](http://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food.aspx)</comment></comment>


How to Make a Raspberry Pi VPN Server - <AUTHOR> https://www.electromaker.io/tutorial/blog/raspberry-pi-vpn-server <comment><USER2> The author suggests the following use cases: Mask your IP address, Hide from snooping ISPs, Extra security on public Wi-Fi, Unblock geo-restricted content, Connect to your home network from anywhere

Snooping ISPs, public IP, and geoblocking are not prevented by a VPN server in your home network, which the author does not warn about.

The other two cases work if you make your VPN server accessible from the internet, which the author also does not expand upon or even mentions.

It's a good tutorial but the question about VPN servers is often now how, but where. And this question is not asked.

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

Other than DNS or other traffic filtering, do you gain _anything_ by using a VPN on a Raspberry Pi on your home network?

<comment><USER4> If you use your own VPN to home then you can access everything on your home network without setting up port forwarding, if you have stuff like that. I used to but not these days.

You could also have the PI run a VPN client and connect to a privacy-promising VPN service, effectively 'bouncing' off home.

Not sure if that is even technically possible without pain, or why you wouldn't connect directly to the privacy-promising VPN.

<comment><USER5> This has some possible use for using streaming devices when traveling abroad.

On a recent trip I tried using IPvanish with a FireTV stick and Amazon detected the VPN, most likely from a blacklisted set of IP addresses.

Using your own home IP should hopefully prevent that from happening.

<comment><USER6> _Some_ streaming devices. My IP TV service doesn't work through a VPN back to my home. It acquires location information from GPS (or other location sources), not the IP address. I had wanted to watch something from my home town broadcast channel while visiting family in another state. Turns out that wasn't possible.

<comment><USER7> Wait, someone bothered to put GPS checking? Awful, that's absolutely not required to license a channel, AFAIK only regular IP-based checks are enforced by channel networks to the distributing ISPs.

Was this on a smart phone / tablet or TV/STB? I used a similar thing to let my parents watch TV from my account -- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22052333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22052333)

I'm not sure why an ISP would limit the physical location, and also how would that work if they have users in another state?

I've heard about WISPs putting GPS locks on their CPE devices, but that's pretty useless too, they're setup to connect to one tower only, if you move it, it won't see the tower and won't connect to anything, so ... ??

<comment><USER8> In the U.K. this is done by BT for users of their sport app, so the channels can only be streamed in the U.K. I think this was a requirement of the rights holder (the sports bodies).

<comment><USER7> Yes, sports are a different thing altogether, the rights holders have draconian rules because piracy is so widespread.

Ironically, a TV show that my ISP's content division made, which is free for it's users, was the most downloaded torrent (in Serbia) in the second half of 2019. I did an analysis of the IPs of everyone who downloaded it, a significant percentage (~20%) were from that ISP.

Basically, people risk fines and warning letters by pirating a TV show that is free for them (cable ISP that doesn't sell Internet without TV, any and all TV packages come with a smart phone app and website where you can watch your channels + a free VOD catalog) because the restrictions on device type, bootloader integrity, IP address are so draconian.

The ISP, of course, looses in the end, because it's users were also uploading the TV show to other torrent clients of non-users, which is lost potential revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would never suggest OpenVPN when there is something like Wireguard. I switched to WG few years ago and the performance boost on a old Raspberry Pi v1 was astonishing since it has much lower requirements wrt to the CPU.

<comment><USER10> It's also way easier to setup, and it covers all basic VPN needs for almost all home-VPN use cases.

I remember spending a whole day configuring OpenVPN, lots of packages, certificates, key files, no clue what half of the things I was doing were for. I also didn't particularly like the OpenVPN iOS client. Setting up WireGuard took less than an hour, every step of the process made sense, and it allowed me to remove a whole lot of cruft from my server.

<comment><USER7> I have the opposite experience. Setting up OpenVPN is as easy as:

wget [https://git.io/vpn](https://git.io/vpn) -O vpn.sh

* inspect the file manually for malware etc.*

sudo bash ./vpn.sh

You enter your IP, port, protocol, client name and it generates a .ovpn file that you import into any client and it just works.

If you need to revoke a client or add another one, re-run the script and it will ask you what to do. It can also uninstall itself safely.

I still haven't managed to setup WireGuard.

OpenVPN gets about 40 Mbps for me on the Pi, but my upload is less, so I don't need more. On a VPS, it gets about 90 Mbps.

<comment><USER10> For things that run on my home server I like to at least have the impression I know what I'm installing and how it is configured, so a magic script like you referred to is not really an option.

I used this guide to configure OpenVPN [1], which you could almost publish as a paperback ;-)

[1] [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- set-...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an- openvpn-server-on-ubuntu-18-04)

<comment><USER7> Well, you could always open the script.

It's magic in that it does everything itself, it's not a black box.

It's only 460 lines with whitespace and comments, including the files it's writing to the filesystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shouldn't this article be called How To Make A Debian VPN Server? I don't see anything particularly raspberry pi specific in the article.

<comment><USER12> This has irritated me for about a decade! Probably unreasonably.

Rasberry Pi was not the first ARM dev board with linux, and most of the "Make your Pi do X!" recipes out there would more reasonably be described as "How to set up your linux server do X", but that's not cool, and had no Pi, so ...

Grrrr mumble mumble, yes I know I'm an old curmudgeon.

<comment><USER13> I think the reason is that is that Pi has brought Linux in the flavour of Debian to the general public, many won't understand the concept or importance of an OS or how it can be portable; It's Raspberry Pi's "Software".

The second and more likely reason is that Raspberry Pi are keywords that help get you in the hands of your target audience, I'm guilty of it on my blog. If you're running a Debian server on x86, you're probably not the target audience for a "simple" VPN tutorial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> curl -L [https://install.pivpn.dev](https://install.pivpn.dev) | bash

fuck fuck fuck no. this whole site should be blacklisted

<comment><USER15> Can you elaborate for a terminal/linux layman?

<comment><USER16> It immediately runs a script from a site in a bash instance. The script could do anything like exploit some zero day like shellshock or other vulnerability. They would prefer the user read the script first. Most people won't read it either way, but if people don't just pipe it to bash other people will feel like it is more secure. If the script is served over http then there are also ways of replacing it by some mechanisms without you knowing as well which can add danger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What kind of speed can one expect? I've got gigabit fiber and really do get > 950Mbps in both directions. Would this throttle me to 200Mbps? I can't imagine I would be getting full-speed connectivity.

<comment><USER18> > Would this throttle me to 200Mbps?

RPi4 is plenty fast for full gigabit VPN performance. Its ethernet interface should also easily reach 950 Mbps. Although it's a different matter whether current VPN software can take full advantage of it. My guess is not.

There's some handicap due to lack of useful crypto HW in RPi4. But if multiple cores are used, it should easily reach 1 Gbit speeds. VideoCore VI could theoretically also be used for crypto acceleration, although I haven't heard anyone doing it — yet.

Edit: Just tried "openssl speed -multi 4 aes-256-cbc" on RPi4.

aes-256 cbc 224787.70k 243743.77k 250572.29k 251253.42k 253684.39k 252919.81k

In other words, 2 Gbit/s CPU based AES-256 performance.

<comment><USER19> >RPi4 is plenty fast for full gigabit VPN performance.

Even if it could do a theoretical gigabit...you'd still be sharing that up & down.

I suspect you could get a good 700ish with a USB 3 gigabit dongle though. I ran a rpi4 as router/fw that way for a couple months (250 internet so never found out where the limits are)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I use a small pc instead of an rpi for tunneling vpn connections:

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/264458765771?ViewItem=&item=2644587...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/264458765771?ViewItem=&item=264458765771)

An i7 4500U with 8GB ram and 128GB SSD costs around $300, but you can get a decent setup for $180

<comment><USER21> Yeah, these micro pcs are really nice, thinking of getting one like that myself. But rpi4 costs an order of magnitude less ($35), it's in a different price class I'd say.

<comment><USER22> Micro PCs also still have higher power requirements. For running costs, you can't beat a small ARM board (like Pi or its clones)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >keep your ISP from snooping

So that someone else's ISP can snoop. It's a tradeoff I guess but just to be clear that someone is able to snoop that traffic, you're just moving from your provider to someone elses provider.

<comment><USER24> By all means then, let's do nothing, because someone else might do something.

That's a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER23> If you find that necessary, feel free to do that, but do it as a conscious choice.

I've worked in datacenters that hosted VPS providers, that had Verizon and Centurylink/L3 as their cross connects. Here's a nice list of Tier1 internet providers, these guys are going to do the bulk of transit for most data centers. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network#List_of_Tier_1_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network#List_of_Tier_1_networks)

There's still going to be direct connect at the various peering points, so in this case, you'll get a direct connect from your provider to say google, but that's already in a TLS connection and google already has your IP address or probably your specific street address as does your VPN provider. So I'm not sure what the point is. You'll get the same thing for amazon and netfilx and facebook but again, all TLS and I don't know that you're gaining much since you've already got a positive ID on you with the tracking these days. If, in fact, they don't have a positive id, They'll have one pretty quickly and perhaps tag you to a VPN IP which they will know is a VPN because the positive tracking has matched you with your CC and your real address as well as all the other people connecting through said VPN from geographically disparate locations. Basically if you sign into a single account over your VPN, then the cats out of the back and if you don't then the cat is PROBABLY out of the bag.

I check out these VPS providers that pop up here and there but there's never a mention of their transit, they are just using whatever the datacenter has, and most of them have the same backbone providers as the last mile. So, while this may be necessary for some people, You'll often see people make this decision thinking it grants the privacy when it doesn't really change that part of their situation.

I think it can be a dangerous part of discussion since it's not clear to most people what's actually happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We are using this at the office. We and our clients often use IP restriction to servers as first line defense, so Pi in the office lets us access office static IP while outside.

This has helped tremendously and is super easy to set up.

Bonus is while traveling we can access services without firewalls from our home country and everyone sees us as "still in the office". This includes clients, government, banks, etc. Additionally while using it we are not detected to be using VPN so far.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm so glad I setup my own vpn as a backup before going to China. NordVPN didn't work there on any WiFi network.

<comment><USER27> It is against their law to use vpn. Hence 1 person "solution" is not a real solution dealing with totalitarian state. But as any individual you should do two. One this. The other one somehow get a political solution if available to you.

<comment><USER28> Or go with something that can do a bunch of different solutions: [https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand](https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand) Streisand sets up a new server running your choice of WireGuard, OpenConnect, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, sslh, Stunnel, or a Tor bridge. It also generates custom instructions for all of these services. At the end of the run you are given an HTML file with instructions that can be shared with friends, family members, and fellow activists.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure this is what they meant by political solution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you open up your home using vpn server, would it be more danger as every server on the net is hacked continuously.

<comment><USER29> If that's the extent of your knowledge about server security, then, yes, this is not for you.

You need to understand firewalls and routing first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> For better performance and more flexibility I'd recommend an ESPRESSObin v7 over a Pi. 3xGbE ports and a dedicated topaz switch offer something much more akin to a true router than the Pi.

[http://espressobin.net/](http://espressobin.net/)

<comment><USER31> Do you know if Debian/Armbian is working on Espressobin? Last time I played with one, I couldn't get Armbian loading and went with Arch instead, following this tutorial:

[https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect-router/#part- two-s...](https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect-router/#part-two-software)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Noob question, but is it possible to run both a VPN server and continue running Pihole on a RPi 4?

<comment><USER33> Yes, definitely!

Pihole is basically just a "pimped" dns server.

So, to rephrase your question: _" is it possible to run both a VPN server and continue running a dns server?"_

<comment><USER10> It works like a charm indeed, I run the WireGuard client on all my devices (laptop, phone, tablet) in on-demand activation mode (VPN activates whenever I leave my home WiFi), and configured them them to use the PiHole server as DNS, so I have ad-blocking on all my devices, all the time. I don't perceive any kind of negative effect on network performance (it helps to have fiber with symmetric up/down speeds for this setup)

<comment><USER34> Is it possible to set it up like this: I want to use mullvad VPN, so my IP/location is obfuscated, but still to have PiHole? So something like I connect my laptop and mobile to my router -> RPi -> mullvad VPN -> internet. If it is, how can I achieve it?

<comment><USER21> With Wireguard you set DNS server IP directly in the config file, it is not negotiable over the connection. So you can edit the config to set it to your pihole's ip. Or remove the DNS line altogether and then it won't touch your DNS settings at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I had a raspberry pi vpn server. serveed traffic over UDP, used port knocking to open it up. blocked everything else, worked pretty good, but damn SD cards kept dying. :-/

<comment><USER36> The Pi is notorious for murdering SD cards, but if you use an "endurance" card, which are often sold for use in dashcams, you should find it lasts a lot longer.

<comment><USER22> If you 'dd' the sd card over to a usb key, and add 'program_usb_boot_mode=1' to the config.txt, you'll get a more robust filesystem and a speed-up bonus as well.

<comment><USER37> This does not yet work on the Pi 4. However you can keep /boot on the SD card and move / to an external USB SSD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The author barely mentions anything about security of the server setup. I would at least run some online security checks for open ports, etc.

</comment><comment><USER39> > On public, unprotected Wi-Fi, a VPN adds a layer of security by masking your > IP address.

Haha, WTF did I just read?

<comment><USER40> To be fair. The claim that it makes you more secure by masking your IP is wrong. But securing you connection in public Wi-Fi networks is probably the main VPN use-case for the average user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Dont follow this. Set up Wireguard on your Pi. The best way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER42> I use a VPN to "go home", regardless of where I am in the world.

There are many uses for VPNs and we have to be careful about why we use them.</comment>