100 years to solve an integral: The history of the Mercator map - <AUTHOR> https://liorsinai.github.io/mathematics/2020/08/27/secant-mercator.html <comment><USER2> > In 1614, John Napier introduced logarithms.

> Napier's main motivation was to find an easier way to do multiplication and > division.

> Next, mathematicians decided to combine these tables. If you wanted to > multiply trigonometric functions, you could find the values in a > trigonometric table and then convert them to logarithms.

Actually, Napier's 1614 _Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio_ contains tables of −10⁷ ln(sin x/10⁷) [0]. Non-trigonometric log tables appeared later.

[0] [https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...](https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/34187/31151005337641.pdf#page=25)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you're right. It has to do with how he derived the approximation formula for the natural logarithm. He needed a function y=sin(x) for his log(y) calculations. But I am not sure when the log(f(x))) tables for the other trigonometric functions came about. As far I understood, initially a single log(y) table sufficed.

<comment><USER2> Well, I suppose Napier presaged the concept of a single source of truth. Aren't other log-trig tables a waste of paper if you can look up log(cos x) under log(sin(90°−x)) and quickly calculate log(tan x) as log(sin x)−log(cos x)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I did a course on cartography a couple of years ago, and one of the better assignments was to find a suitable projection and make a proper map describing a comparison in distances between two points. The projection I used was of course Two-Point Equidistant Projection (the only possible one).

My resulting map is on the last page here: [https://adelie.antarkt.is/aron/l0020b.pdf](https://adelie.antarkt.is/aron/l0020b.pdf)

EDIT: Apparently it was one of my GIS courses, not the cartographic one, which were more color theory and labels.

One bad thing about the projection is that great circles are curved, so my straight lines should have been curved as well.

<comment><USER4> LLA: the optimal hub — at least in summer. (and modulo transpacific routes?)

<comment><USER3> The LLA freight proposal was given by the teacher in the assignment, but I guess there is a real benefit. Isn't Anchorage preferred over Honolulu for most trans-pacific flights?

<comment><USER4> Hej. Sorry, I have no idea.

[https://www.flightradar24.com/](https://www.flightradar24.com/) makes it look like most flights are direct (too far south for ANC, too far north for HNL), but I couldn't quickly find any way to filter out cargo from pax.

PS. Having just seen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hdUKZLQIuQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hdUKZLQIuQ) I have to ask if you all really chew snus? What savages — tobacco is for schnupfen. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOa1cz7O3kU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOa1cz7O3kU)

<comment><USER3> Haha, if you drive EPA you most definitely use snuff, in the mouth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> BTW, is there still no online map that would use some better projection (i.e. anything but [Web-]Mercator)? I mean, there is Google Earth, of course, but it has too much visual effects added, to use it as a go-to tool, as I use OSM or Google Maps. But mercator makes large scale distance and area comparison absolutely unintelligible, and I would rather much prefer to be able to use Kavrayskiy VII/Natural Earth or something like that with OSM. No way it could be _too_ computationally expensive in 2020, right? (I mean, once again, we _do_ have Google Earth.)

<comment><USER6> I don't think there is an area-preserving projection that can work for all the scales online map services are designed for.

If you are creating your own global-extent map at a limited range of scales, most of the OSM tooling for example PostGIS lets you specify a custom projection like [http://shadedrelief.com/ee_proj/](http://shadedrelief.com/ee_proj/)

<comment><USER5> If I'm creating my own map I can kinda draw whatever the fuck I want. I need a web-map (preferably OSM-based) that I can use as a web-map, but with a projection less fucked up than Mercator, of which I can name at least 10 in addition to 2 I already named. Also, web-mercator generally is not a problem on small scales, so there isn't really a problem of alternating between projections depending on scale. (Which is not really necessary too, since other projections are generally more or less ok even on small scale. You can totally use globe view on google maps on city-scale and barely notice any difference at all.)

<comment><USER7> Perhaps it was unintentional but the tone of your comment comes across as over the top hostile in response to someone who was just trying to help you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _If you are looking for directions in a city, what matters most to you is that the roads look correct. This is why the Mercator map is used._

Whoa, wait a second...is this saying that roads which look straight on a map are actually not straight, in the sense that they're not actually following the shortest path between two points?

It's slightly appalling to me to think that people all over the world are building crooked roads so that they appear straight on a Mercator map, and then using Mercator maps so that existing roads continue to look straight.

I guess it probably doesn't make much difference on a local level, where the distances are relatively short, but there's still something a little bit horrifying about it, if I'm understanding all of this correctly.

<comment><USER9> Any physical infrastructure, such as roads, is going to be distorted by local topography, which furthermore may not be entirely consistent from year to year (land can creep forward or hillsides erode somewhat). This deviation will tend to enormously outweigh the errors caused by map projection.

Another note is that legal boundaries tend to be defined on the basis of actual surveyed boundary markers, not on the logical definition of the line. So the US-Canada border, while originally defined as exactly 49°N, the actual border is actually generally about a few hundred feet south of that line. These surveys were generally conducted by people running literal chains in a constant bearing for some distance (maybe several hundred yards at most) and then taking another reading of their position to correct the line. Of note is the Mason-Dixon Line, which was precise enough to note that the errors in their surveying had a systematic error to them--which was realized to be the physical mass of the Appalachian Mountains ever-so-slightly deviating plumb lines from vertical.

Also note that historical boundaries were more often specified as "reference point and bearing" (or along line meridians/parallels, which amounts to the same thing) then "from point A to point B". In this regard, the straight line on a Mercator map is more accurate than the geodesic shortest-distance- between-two-points.

<comment><USER10> Then there's the history of the Tennessee-Kentucky border (and that weird jog in the otherwise straight line). [https://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist- bogan/surveyor.html](https://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist- bogan/surveyor.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author tells the story of typical undergraduate instruction for the integrals of _tan(x)_ and _sec(x)_. I would have thought that such a setting would have included that these were improper integrals, because of the infinities in the functions. i.e. if you evaluate the definite integral for any particular interval, it will give you the right answer except if you've gone through the part where the graph goes up to plus infinity and back through minus infinity.

Can someone more mathematically literate than me shed any light on whether it matters? I guess it's still useful even if the integral is undefined at certain points off the edges of the map.

<comment><AUTHOR> It matters here in the sense that to show the poles, you need to stretch the Mercator map to infinity, because the function sec(x) is undefined at 90 degrees. This is clearly absurd, so map makers get around the problem by cutting the top of the map off, usually around the 85 degrees parallel. I chose not to include this detail in the article.

To slightly misquote the great Richard Feynman, "It turns out that it's possible to sweep the infinities under the rug by a certain crude skill." :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Buckminster Fuller invented a map projection called the Dymaxion [1], imagine peeling an orange peel as one intact piece and placing the North pole at the very center.

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

<comment><USER13> The irregular shape of Dymaxion always bothered me. I much prefer the Cahill–Keyes projection: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill%E2%80%93Keyes_projectio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill%E2%80%93Keyes_projection)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> In modern shipping is this used or do ships just follow the shortest distance between points? Perhaps GPS has made that simple?

<comment><USER15> Even back "in the day" the routes weren't actually following those lines. Here's a neat animation of the routes many ships took (from their logbooks) starting in the 1750's:

[http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2012/04/visualizing- oce...](http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2012/04/visualizing-ocean- shipping.html)</comment></comment>


GMail down - Users are receiving an error with number 502 - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1368469799000&sid=1&iid=2e5e95f2805d63ab43f9a5cab70b585c

<comment><AUTHOR> An update from GMail

        The issue is affecting less than 0.75% of users. The affected users are
        located in India, Middle East and South East Asia. The errors may appear
        sporadic and could go away when the page is refreshed.</comment>


PG&E pleads guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter over Camp fire - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-23/pge-pleads-guilty-to-84-counts-of-manslaughter-over-paradise-fire <comment> java-man CEO and the top management should go to jail. I think this is the only way to fix the problem.

<comment><USER2> Of course they won't.

<comment> java-man of course.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Are They Using Google Apps? - <AUTHOR> http://aretheyusinggoogleapps.com/

<comment><USER2> Other than paranoia reasons, Google Apps has seemed like the best choice for a small startup / business. I don't know how it scales, but at $5 a person, it is pretty nice. When I was last Googling around, I wasn't finding comparable features in things like fastmail.fm, my hosting providers, etc, for such a low price.

</comment><comment><USER3> ycombinator.com

Busted.</comment>


Office Papermaking System That Turns Waste Paper into New Paper - <AUTHOR> http://global.epson.com/newsroom/2015/news_20151201.html <comment><USER2> "...this essential tool is also produced from a limited resource."

Noop. Paper comes from trees. Trees are not a limited resource. They grow again. A well-managed forest will provide forever. Looking at the complexity of this machine, the plastics and metal used, and its probable energy consumption, I doubt it is any more environmentally friendly than new or traditional recycled paper.

I also cannot see this thing recycling forever. It adds chemicals, binders, to the new paper. Subsequent generations will be more and more binder and less and less paper. So the process will need an intake of new paper at one end, and a disposal of used paper waste at the other. And now instead of relatively harmless paper ready for recycling, that waste is toxic sludge of binders and fragrances.

<comment><USER3> I think that line is meant to refer to water rather than wood.

<comment><USER4> That's even worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My first thought was to question the energy efficiency of this kind of system. However, it's interesting from the angle of secure document destruction: the system is essentially a high security shredder with a side effect of spitting out "new" paper.

<comment><USER6> The NSA has apparently been pulping its paper waste for a while: [https://www.nsa.gov/about/commitment/nsa_goes_green/nsa_recy...](https://www.nsa.gov/about/commitment/nsa_goes_green/nsa_recycles.shtml)

<comment><USER7> The biggest and oldest ones I've ever seen first hand were the "Document Disintegration Systems" shredders at Teufelsberg!

[http://dasalte.ccc.de/teufelsberg/teufelsberg.html](http://dasalte.ccc.de/teufelsberg/teufelsberg.html)

[http://dasalte.ccc.de/teufelsberg/teufelsberg- Pages/Image25....](http://dasalte.ccc.de/teufelsberg/teufelsberg- Pages/Image25.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's an impressive achievement. But how many offices use substantial amounts of paper entirely internally any more?

The big problem with paper recycling is that the fibers get shorter on each pass, resulting in weaker paper. Going closed-cycle on paper is going to make that problem worse. It's not like aluminum, where you can go round and round forever without deterioration. Now if the system can take junk mail as a feedstock, it will be more useful.

<comment><USER9> Tons of profitable companies still run on a lot of paper. I worked at an insurance company where the head of the most profitable division (earth quake) that actively discouraged the Idea of moving huge insurance contracts to digital. Anecdotal, but I assume this is not unique.

<comment><USER10> Definitely not just anecdotal. I think people on HN might be flabbergasted by how many businesses in industries worth billions still largely operate with paper.

<comment><USER11> Problem with staying ahead of the curve is that you cannot see how huge the curve is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems very useful for schools, who both need lots of paper (still even now) and who need it only for a short time.

Schools have the space and resources for such a machine, and they could potentially save lots of money and paper that otherwise goes into the trash at home. It all depends on the costs of the system.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ahh, the cycle of bureaucracy[0].

[0]: [https://i.imgur.com/tIFidJt.gif](https://i.imgur.com/tIFidJt.gif)

<comment><USER14> Great!

BTW., when linking to GIFs at imgur, please append 'v' to the file extension, i.e. [https://i.imgur.com/tIFidJt.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/tIFidJt.gifv) \- .gifv are _much_ smaller and also play back smoother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Knowing Epson, the catch is probably along the lines of "requires consumable cartridges that cost as much as the machine itself".

I'm only half-joking.

<comment><USER7> You're less than half joking! Epson says it can print colored and scented paper.

Remember the "iSmell Personal Scent Synthesizer" from DigiScents? "The device contained a cartridge with 128 "primary odors" which could be mixed to replicate natural and man-made odors. DigiScents had indexed thousands of common odors, which could be coded, digitized, and embedded into web pages or email." [1]

"We expect to have low-end and high-end iSmell hardware," Smith agrees. "The low end may retail for under $200. The smell cartridges - even at the high end - will probably cost under $50." With moderate use, he guesses, they should last a few months." [2]

DigiScents claimed they were going to make money [3] by following the Epson printer model, selling the device for cheap, while making money on the cartridges. I imagine that the cookie scent would get used up a lot faster than the poopie scent, then you have to replace the whole monolithic cartridge of 128 odors.

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

[2] [https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/digiscent_pr.ht...](https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/digiscent_pr.html)

[3] [http://www.startupover.com/en/20-million-burning-smell- like-...](http://www.startupover.com/en/20-million-burning-smell-like-just- ask-digiscents/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Without water, even assuming people don't mix in colored papers, won't the recycled papers get darker and darker? Maybe the fibers are so small that it just throws away the dark ones.

<comment><USER17> It doesn't say _without chemicals_. That's what I read into it.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, it prominently mentions binders.

 _A variety of different binders can be added to the fiberized material to increase the binding strength or whiteness of the paper or to add color, fragrance, flame resistance, or other properties needed for a given application._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's hard to imagine that this machine could be cheaper to own and operate than just buying new paper. If it's not then it's just a show-off item for Epson that nobody will actually use.

However, if it is cheaper, that might be a game changer! Maybe it does it by eliminating the collection and sorting costs from traditional recycling.

<comment><USER20> I think the point is that it combines both supplying new paper and disposing old paper. In particular, companies generally won't use "traditional recycling" for destroying confidential documents, instead opting for services provided by a contractor (which will be more expensive).

Most tech companies won't have a need for this, but there are lots of industries that might, depending on the actual cost of the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This machine is not going to help the most common use of paper in the offices these days as the monitor stands and height elevators for the tables.</comment>


Honeybees use their wings for water surface locomotion - <AUTHOR> https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/11/12/1908857116 <comment><AUTHOR> 5 movies: [https://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2019/11/12/1908857116.DCS...](https://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2019/11/12/1908857116.DCSupplemental)</comment>


Ask HN: Who's going to PyCon? - <AUTHOR>

It's in Atlanta this year, Feb. 17-25. http://us.pycon.org/2010/about/<p>Thought this might be a good opp. to do room-sharing if any other HN'ers are going solo. <comment><USER2> I am and I can't wait.

see also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1076401>

<comment><AUTHOR> Great. And thanks for the link (should have searched for that).</comment></comment>


Proof that you're never over the hill: Col. Sanders - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders#Later_career

<comment><AUTHOR> Colonel Sanders was 65 when he began to push his franchise business seriously and enjoyed the resulting success.</comment>


How Single Women Are Changing Society - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/how-single-women-are-changing-society <comment><USER2> To give another perspective, let's examine some of the negatives associated with single motherhood:

[http://www.photius.com/feminocracy/facts_on_fatherless_kids....](http://www.photius.com/feminocracy/facts_on_fatherless_kids.html)

As someone who grew up in a single mother home, with many friends in the same boat, anecdotally I can say that it is not preferable in any way.

Hypothesizing an evolutionary basis for this, I would say that high investment dual parenting has been the most effective method of raising successful and productive children. Societies which embraced this as the norm have flourished - others, not so much. For more on this topic, see J.D. Unwin: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Unwin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Unwin)

<comment><USER3> > As someone who grew up in a single mother home, with many friends in the > same boat, anecdotally I can say that it is not preferable in any way.

I've never been there. But from my outside perspective, I would think that it might be preferable to abuse, though maybe not preferable to almost anything else.

> I would say that high investment dual parenting has been the most effective > method of raising successful and productive children.

I think that "high investment" is an important note. Even in dual parenting situations, the temptation is to want parenting to be low-investment. (I'm a parent; I definitely struggled with that.)

<comment><USER4> > But from my outside perspective, I would think that it might be preferable > to abuse, though maybe not preferable to almost anything else.

We think that step-parents are more likely to sexually abuse, or to physically abuse or to murder their step children than biological parents.

[https://www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/information-...](https://www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/information- service/research-briefing-people-who-abuse-children1.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Yet a household with a biological parent and a step-parent is considered a "nuclear family" just as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why does the article only focus on single women? For every single women, there exists a single man.

Is it because it is seen as socially acceptable for men to lead single lives while not so much for women?

Edit: My questions sounds kinda rhetorical. I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER7> I think because it's more likely women will become single mothers than men becoming single fathers.

<comment><USER8> For every single mother there is a single father.

<comment><USER7> > In 2006, 12.9 million families in the US were headed by a single parent, 80% > of which were headed by a female.

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

<comment><USER9> Fathers who don't live in the same household as their kids are still fathers...

<comment><USER10> But that is not what "single parent" means.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, didn't know that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title is "How Single Women Are Changing Society"... Where is the question answered? Oh, I see, here:

> Their impact on politics could in theory be tremendous.

</comment><comment><USER10> This analysis seems awfully shallow. What about their economic situations? I remember reading a lot of pieces cheering the rise of the female breadwinner, but many of those cases involved the man simply losing his job and the woman keeping the same, lower-paying one she had before. Are we just painting a happy and progressive veneer on the same sort of economic decline? It's curious that this is not even mentioned as a factor when they talk about living situations.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's not voiced by the author, but the article makes a case for communal raising of children, which doesn't sound like a bad solution.

<comment><USER12> "Communal" being in this case "government".

"the democrats should be beating down their door, promising to wash their cars, watch their kids"

<comment><USER7> Not necessarily. it may be an arrangement that springs up locally.

<comment><USER13> When I was much younger my parents belonged to a "play group", where parents would take turns baby sitting each others children. Simple printed cards were "paid" each visit and could be redeemed upon other visits. It worked out pretty well and we kids all got to play together. One astonishing outcome: I'm still good friends with someone I met before I have any conscious memory. Kind of cool, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> the author is mistaken: single womanhood is not necessarily where female empowerment, or america, is headed. quite the opposite actually. women in scandinavia have been actively decoupling child-bearing from marriage for decades now, and the results are somewhat counterintuitive: marriage rates have been _increasing_ , and at an _earlier_ age[1], because scandinavian women have less concern about balancing career with bearing offspring given all the social and governmental support they now receive.

scandinavia has been a leading indicator of almost every social trend (and concomitant government policy) in north america: relaxation of gender roles, women in the workforce, women in politics, decline of marriage, increase in co-habitation, social services for women, etc. every other indicator is as expected: scandinavia's female workforce participation is higher, women in government is higher, etc.

however there is one cautionary indicator that is lagging in scandinavia, and that has to do with women in leadership roles in business. one possible explanation is that scandinavian businesses, especially global ones, are privy to the international market. thus while scandinavia may comprise the most liberal countries in the world, their business leaders are competing against foreign businesses, some from developing countries, that are hungry and could give a f* about gender politics.

[1][http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/Marriages_and_births_in_Sweden)

</comment><comment><USER15> Children from single-parent families are more likely to have problems in future with education, income, criminality... In other words if you correct for single parents, differences between races disappear.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would postulate that any arrangement where the parents, regardless of number, can be happy and productive is an arrangement that results in a happy and productive child.

Instead of studying the various methods and deciding which one is best as though it would make a single difference to the people at large (as if there are people planning their lives by the statistical "best life", whom we should probably ship to Area 51 since they are clearly not human) how about we just agree to all mind our own damn business and let people live how they want to live, with a spouse of the sex and color they prefer, or none at all, with 6 children or with none, and just get on with our lives?</comment>


D3 Is Not a Data Visualization Library - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Elijah_Meeks/d3-is-not-a-data-visualization-library-67ba549e8520 <comment><USER2> Very neat way to break down an API. Was not aware that I could focus on just one part of d3 as suggested here.</comment>


Ask HN: Programming Curriculum for Non-Geeks? - <AUTHOR>

My sister works in HR.  Yes, evil HR.  However, the programmer types actually get along with her because she actually tries to get to know them (apparently, this is unusual in her field).
Anyway, I'm trying to come up with a basic study plan for her so that she can get familiarized with the skillsets that programmers use.  The purpose is for her to be able to evaluate people better and get beyond the simple checklist of skills.
Can anyone suggest some things that she can read  up on to help with this?  I believe some type of primer document in programming and/or design would be best.  I don't think she needs to get into heavy coding in order to achieve this goal. <comment><USER2> Anyway you cut it, she's probably going to have to pick up some basics coding skills to become familiarized with the skillsets of a programmer. Might want to look at the following books:

The Pragmatic Programmer The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

And oh yeah,Dilbert & The Tao of Programming for philosophical contemplation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I think I'll give her the books you recommend as a starter. She'll probably dig the more conceptual stuff first.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hm, I've introduced Ruby programming to a couple of non-programmers and thought the book "Learn To Program" by Chris Pine was good. It doesn't assume much and starts from the beginning. It's very hands-on, ie, not much theory, but if there's someone available to answer the inevitable questions I thought it worked pretty well (50% success rate).

Good luck! I love teaching if the person is genuinely motivated, it's really rewarding and you end up feeling you understand the subject better yourself just from having to explain it.</comment>


A high frequency, market-making cryptocurrency trading platform in Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/michaelgrosner/tribeca <comment><USER2> Had to write my own in Scala/Akka (I use FIX protocol where possible). However, opensourcing these things is always educational.

<comment><USER3> Last I checked (a few years ago) no exchanges except the defunct bitfloor supported FIX, has this changed?

<comment><USER2> GDAX (ex-Coinbase), Gemini, OKCoin etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love the idea. Do any exchanges have fee structures that allow for profitable market-making? This always seemed like a big problem in the cryptocurrency markets to me.

<comment><USER4> Yup, GDAX and Gemini have a maker pays 0% fees structure. They both however only allow you to trade BTC and ETH.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone used this for Stockfighter.io yet?</comment>


Masquerade Acquired by Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://msqrd.me/joining-facebook.html <comment><USER2> This strikes me as a response to Snapchat's recent success with fun video filters. If you look at the App Store rankings, they've clearly boosted Snapchat's ranking past Instagram and Facebook recently, as they're totally viral and people seem to be using them nonstop whenever I'm on.

Congrats to the MSQRD team!

</comment><comment><USER3> How long has this app been live? It seems like I only saw it for the first time a week or two ago...

<comment><USER4> It launched back in December. I was lucky to see it as soon as it launched because I follow one of its main developers for years because he always made great extensions for Adobe Air and I definitely loved the app as soon as I tried it, so congratulations to the team :) (and with the new office they were streaming from the other day)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's more of an acquihire than an acquisition, I guess.

Hats off for building such an amazing app.

<comment><USER5> Also acquiring their IP which is pretty big I think.</comment></comment>


Yii 2 - Public Preview Available - <AUTHOR> http://www.yiiframework.com/news/71/yii-2-public-preview-available/

<comment><USER2> I have no evidence to back this up, but I suspect more and more developers are moving to Symfony2 due to the glacial pace of Yii development.

Yii v1.1 was released in January 2010. In the following 3.5 years, there have been many changes in the world of web development - namespacing and traits in PHP, AWS-style hosting going mainstream, JavaScript MVC frameworks - and Yii neither takes advantage of them, nor makes it easy for you to take advantage of them.

It's a shame, but unless they have some revolutionary idea, Yii is probably dead in the water.

<comment><USER3> Don't they still have speed going for them? Last I read, Yii was often considered the fastest and least cluttered of the PHP frameworks? also, on a personal note, I use it and I like it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What interesting things do you write in your journal? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
	I'm 22 and only recently I started keeping a journal. I believe it's a great way to preserve my memories and improve my English. Apart from writing just about the daily happenings and thoughts, I've also started writing about the mistakes I made, the reasons behind some of my decisions, any good quote I came across etc. I believe that these will be very valuable when I read them some 20 years or so from now.
Many of you also keep journals, So my question is: what kind of interesting things do you write in your journal?
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> In my private journal, I write my ideas that could form into companies and rate them in terms of revenue / costs. I also write up postmortems for every project I work on that fails.

In my public journal, I write something I think is interesting or I write something that I wish I had read some years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use my blog as my journal. I use it as a way to remembering all the good things that I do and sharing the mistakes that I have made.</comment>


What to do about NFS and SIGBUS - <AUTHOR> https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/03/18/nfs/ <comment><USER2> Back in the 90s, before package managers for Linux/BSD and when disk drives were fairly pricey, it was common to have say, a network of commercial *nix workstations with nfs mounted binaries for stuff like gcc, latex, emacs, X utilities, etc.

This was typically done by a network of symlinks. As best I can remember, you'd have /opt/local exported from the server, with all the open source goodies. It was arranged something like

/opt/local/emacs-19.1.7/bin/emacs

/opt/local/emacs-19.1.8/bin/emacs

/opt/local/emacs -> /opt/local/emacs-19.1.7

<....>

All the clients would have a local /usr/local with another symlink, /usr/local/bin/emacs pointing at /opt/local/emacs/bin/emacs

When you upgraded from 19.1.7 to 19.1.8, you'd just move the symlink on the server. You'd then wait a week or two, and garbage collect the old version (after rsh'ing around to the clients to make sure none had the old version open, if your users were lucky).

The local network of symlinks into /opt/local was maintained by something like cfengine, which ran at install and nightly to update configs (eg, for newly supported stuff, or new binaries in new versions of existing software).

If you screwed this up, and replaced a binary out from under a user, they were rather unhappy..

<comment><USER3> There was actually a tool for managing such symlink trees, "depot" from CMU:

[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~help/unix_linux/software_collections...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~help/unix_linux/software_collections/local_depot.html)

<comment><USER4> Interesting - I wonder if that inspired GNU Stow (similar tool I often see used for managing dotfiles)

<comment><USER3> The CMU depot was presented at LISA '93:

[http://static.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/li...](http://static.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/lisa93/full_papers/wong.pdf)

Stow apparently started development in 1996 and was initially named depot:

[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/stow.git/tree/doc/ChangeLog...](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/stow.git/tree/doc/ChangeLog.OLD)

So probably?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a developer and operator of a distributed file system, and specifically one that might have caused Rachel some pain, I kind of agree with her. If you can run with local code and data, do so. Even if you think you can't, think again. Only run from data on the servers if you have no choice, e.g. if the dataset is too large to copy or you need simultaneous access (better be read-only by that point) from multiple clients. Not only will you be happier, but so will the people who have to operate that distributed filesystem in the face of many users all abusing the hell out of every operation in the POSIX/VFS API.

</comment><comment><USER6> Rachel's advice, "Kick NFS to the curb", is good. My last startup, blekko (2007-now), managed to have no NFS usage, ever. Didn't miss it. Peak of 50 devs, 1500 servers, no NFS.

Even before that, in a supercomputing context (2002-), when writing MPI "wrapper" software that would be used on end-user clusters with all kinds of unfortunate network setups, I avoided a lot of trouble by copying the executable to the local node before running it.

This isn't a new issue. And the traditional solutions work.

<comment><USER7> I've found that even for unix-unix, samba is just more reliable with more reasonable error behaviour.

<comment><USER8> To me samba has just too much magic, especially when mixing unix, OSX and windows clients.

<comment><USER9> magic is just technology we don't understand. I use cifs over nfs as well.

<comment><USER8> With excel locking, os x trashes, etc.? What good configuration guide would you suggest for a mixed Linux, OS X and Windows environment with MS Office?

This magic only solves have the problems

        fruit:resource = xattr
        fruit:metadata = netatalk
        fruit:locking = none
        fruit:encoding = private
        delete veto files = yes
        veto files = /.snapshot/.windows/.mac/.TemporaryItems/.DS_Store

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> rsync, ln -s, mv -T always worked for me -- NFS always presents so many problems, I almost never deploy it anymore given copies of everything are so cheap via various cloud storage solutions.

</comment><comment><USER11> NFS has plenty of good uses. Maildir works fine, sharing large datasets works fine, sharing static assets works fine, it's widely supported. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just stop putting the baby in boiling water.

NFS is a way to share files, not provide a reliable application platform. There are lots of options you can enable to make it more stable, but it simply isn't designed as an application platform, so it's all going to be hacks.

And keep in mind that NFS is not secure. Supposedly it can be secured, but I have never seen this in a production environment. Running an application over it is just a bad idea from a security standpoint. Home directories over it are a terrible idea from both a security and stability standpoint.

Finally, don't try to change a file and expect stability. If you need a new version of a file with some change to it, make a new file and use that new file path.

<comment><USER12> Except CIFS proves it is possible to have a network file protocol that isn't quite such hot garbage

<comment><USER11> I'm not saying there aren't good network filesystems, I'm just saying that while NFS is hot garbage, it is totally useful hot garbage when used in the right way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My favorite NFS story: many many years ago (mid 90s) I was part of the staff for a physics department's IT group. At the time, affordable Alpha workstations had just started appearing on the market, while most users still relied on "semi-dumb" X Terminals/thin clients. Everything was attached to our 10Base2 network, capable of a BLAZING 10Mb/s.

We started seeing weird whole-display freezes on bunches of the X Terminals one day. It took a while to correlate that these happened at the same time one of the newly-installed Alphas in a far-off office was doing a lot of file I/O over NFS - saturating the entire coax segment and freezing the displays...

IIRC the "upgrade to 100BaseT" project got scooted WAY up on the priority list right after that. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Previous post for context: [https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/03/15/core/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/03/15/core/)</comment>


Apple's product design philosophy is getting diluted - <AUTHOR> http://nextbigwhat.com/forum/discussion/1677/apples-product-design-philosophy-is-getting-diluted#Item_3 <comment><USER2> > Apple has transitioned from a small company with a narrow focus to a really > big company with a much broader focus... Amazon, it seems, is more true to > their brand.

Exactly. Amazon has always been regarded as a focused webhosting/video streaming/grocery/general store/digital device company. It's not like they started out as a bookstore or something.

</comment><comment><USER3> Before the iPad and iPad mini, they had the iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, iPod Touch, and then the iPhone that could do everything that the iPod Touch does. Guess what? They all still exist today.

<comment><AUTHOR> So they have a recent history of starting with an iconic product and then diversifying product offerings from there. I guess that does give their customers greater choice (which is not always a good thing) but it also complicates their production process. Since they're used to doing this, the iPad mini as a diversification of the iPad is easy for them to digest. I still get the feeling they're confusing their customers and complicating their jobs. Signs of a big company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Holy wow this is dumb.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wrong.

I much prefer the mini form factor. Different things for different folks as long as they sell. And the mini has sold quite well.

Now if you want to talk about sales cannibalization...

<comment><AUTHOR> Just because you can sell a product in large numbers doesn't mean you should make it! I'm looking at this in terms of how it effects their brand's image in the long run. If they stuck with a simpler product suite, I think that would be in better conformance with their brand.

<comment><USER5> Guess we just have to agree to disagree</comment></comment></comment>


Super Productivity – To-do list and time tracker for programmers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/johannesjo/super-productivity <comment><USER2> Nice, I'm always on the lookout for a new todo app</comment>


Classic Unix/Linux editor Vim gets first update in years - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/vim-update-classic-unix-linux-editor-gets-first-update-in-years/ <comment><USER2> First _major_ release.. You won't believe feature number 4!

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks neovim! ;)</comment>


Explosions in Chelyabinsk; Meteorite Suspected - <AUTHOR> http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2013/02/14/what-is-happening-in-chelyabinsk/

<comment><USER2> I'm so happy that most Russian drivers have dashcams. That was seriously cool to see.

<comment><USER3> The thing I can't believe is that they keep driving _toward_ the meteor, even when it looks like it's headed right for them. I have to say my immediate response would probably be to slam on the brakes.

<comment><USER4> Curiosity

<comment><USER3> I'm sure that's it. There are also people who follow tornadoes for fun. I'm just saying I'm not one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The explosion is clearly audible in this video at 25 seconds in. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA>

<comment><USER6> Most likely a sonic shock wave, not an explosion. Even if the meteor broke up, that's very unlikely to be the source of the sound. It's more likely like a sonic boom you're hearing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event>

<comment><USER7> Except this was a much, much, much, much smaller object(s) ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "me·te·or [mee-tee-er, -awr]

noun

1\. Astronomy

        a. a meteoroid that has entered the earth's atmosphere."</comment>


Red|blue: Solving the 2015 FLARE on RE Contest – Challenge #1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.redblue.team/2015/10/solving-2015-flare-on-re-contest.html <comment><USER2> very interesting write-up. is there a way to subscribe to future posts of this sorts?</comment>


TwtApps For Sale; $500K Gets You 11-App Suite - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/09/twtapps-for-sale-500k-gets-you.php

<comment><USER2> _values Twtapps at $500,000, based on his estimation of how much it would take for anyone to develop as many apps with as much traction_

Sorry, but $500k is a joke, those apps are trivial.

If I had that kind of money to drop on such a thing I'd much rather spend $50k on copying the apps (doable by one developer in under 6 months) and the remainder on marketing or _more_ apps.

Moreover, if he thinks his little toybox is worth half a million, then why on earth doesn't he just monetize it himself...

<comment><USER3> It doesn't matter if $500k is a joke or even a real figure that they hope to achieve. By using $500k as an anchor, $100k doesn't seem like such a crazy prize yet.. it is for what's being offered. It's a common persuasion/sales technique. Make a reallllly crazy offer and then the merely "slightly crazy" offers can actually seem erroneously realistic. (No, this doesn't work for everything ;-))

<comment><USER2> You mean like this: <http://is.gd/2SEvr> ? (thanks jacquesm)

I'm not so sure about that strategy, and even $100k is a joke for a bunch of semi-polished twitter apps without any monetization perspective beyond shotgun advertising.

I could see this stuff going somewhere in the $10k ballpark - but still have no idea why anyone would want to buy that bag of mediocrity, except perhaps for eliminating a potential would-be competitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most twitter apps are getting maybe a $1/rpm, and that's if you can sell the space. CPM rates are below .25/cpm for the stuff listed on BuySellAds.

I tried to make a run at Twitter advertising (<http://thebranchnetwork.net/>) and found that most advertisers have little interest in general twitter advertising. Most marketers are beginning to realize that the best way to use twitter is to participate in the conversation.

500k seems very high for this, 50k would be more reasonable. Unfortunately for software developers everywhere you can't put a value on development time since its just a sunk cost.

<comment><USER5> > "...most advertisers have little interest in general twitter advertising. > Most marketers are beginning to realize that the best way to use twitter is > to participate in the conversation."

Anecdotal eveidence bears this out for me, too, which I think is awesome. We don't need more advertisements; we need more authenticity.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hope he gets a sale, but 500k seems a little too much. He hasn't monetized his apps, and there doesn't seem to be a clear cut way to monetize such apps.

<comment><USER6> Two comparables to consider:

I know this is a tech. startup, but for 500k I could theoretically buy a brick and mortar business that makes me 50-100k per year. Given the risk of monetizing twtApps, I would probably opt to do that.

Also, SGN was buying up small fb app companies for 1-1.5MM about 1.5 years ago. Each was seeing 200-500k in revenues. And probably most of that was profit.

Using this comparable, to justify the 500k valuation, twtApps would need to be seeing 66 - 166k in revenues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=802865>

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I was half tempted to say "Dupe", but since I posted the original, felt like it would be a toolish thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Twollow also put itself for sale this week on Sitepoint, but then quickly took itself off the market. Twollow was claiming 8k of monthly revenue and was asking much less than TwtApps.</comment>


Why Rust's Zero Cost Abstractions Are Perfect for Embedded Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t99L3JHhLc0 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey! This is a talk I gave at RustConf 2018. You can find the slides here: [https://ferrous-systems.github.io/rustconf-james-2018](https://ferrous- systems.github.io/rustconf-james-2018)

Happy to answer any questions about the talk, or embedded systems in Rust in general.</comment>


Tell HN: How 2 devs got 1 million monthly actives with no social/viral tools - <AUTHOR> KeepSafe lets you take control of who sees what on your phone. Privacy is our main feature so we're an inherently non-social service. 12 months ago, we started at 0, today we have more than a million daily active users.
This is how we did it: * Start with something the user cares about.
Instead of solving a big thing like "Privacy", we decided to start close to a specific user problem: keeping pictures private on the phone. By reducing it, we quickly realized that this was a crowded space with tons of apps that simply hide pictures. Bad, because of competition but a good indicator for what users care about.
* Throw out features The fewer things your app can do, the more you can focus on making the user flows for the remaining features simple and easy to understand.
* Focus on retention Growth is nice but we want users to come back. We were slow to build new features but always fast to release bug fixes and improvements to the core experience. In our case it was improving the speed for adding pictures to KeepSafe and the user flows for doing it. If you continuously improve, your userbase will notice and keep using your app.
* Speak a language your users understand We have a large userbase in the US and other English speaking countries. But we invested in translating the app from the get-go. The smartphone penetration in countries like South Korea is really high and we see lots of users from Europe too. It's easy and it's fast if you use services like MyGengo.
* Ask your users for their opinion When someone started to be a frequent user we simply asked them to rate us in the Android market. It has helped our ranking.
What is your experience and insights on growing your app?
KeepSafe has a fun and ambitious roadmap. If you want to join a mobile startup and have huge impact, take a look http://www.getkeepsafe.com/about.php#jobs <comment><USER2> Your site (<http://www.getkeepsafe.com/>) should link to download links so that I can download your app straight off the bat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rock solid point :) It's in there now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thx for sharing, great numbers. Some questions: \- Via which channel did you communicate with your early users / get feedback? \- Did you collect your user's email addresses from the beginning, upon installing the app - or at a later time?

<comment><USER4> At the very beginning we got feedback from the comments on the Android Market but we were always very open with our support email address (it's in our store description), so we could talk with our users directly.

Right now, users register with their email the first time they open the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being on the App store / Android market is a social/viral marketing tool.

Getting positive reviews and more downloads creates a viral effect as you get more prominence in the market.

But I'm just being pedantic. Congrats on the growth.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure if I agree on that. when we think about viral we think about one existing user is inviting another one. This is not the case just because you are on the store if your app does not add more value to the user then they invite a friend. Facebook is one of these examples. Your Facebook is better when your friends are in there. For this reason you invite them. An app that you use to hide some of your pictures is not getting any better just because your friends are using it.

Still good reviews and a good placement in the market makes finding and trusting you easier for the user. But if you don't get up in the ranks or search results there is nothing that gets you anywhere. Where as if you have a viral loop in your app, you can still grow even if you don't rank in the store.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Just like dropbox gets more useful when your friends are using it. This is possibly why a google social network doesn't seem to work: all your contacts are already in gmail, there's no added benefit, no viral effect when they add a 'social' network like facebook is. If I want to talk to someone, I'll just gchat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like your philosophy. It turns out giving people something to care about is a pretty good strategy :) Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER8> I noticed that the app is free. And the upgrade doesnt unlock any core functionality. Would love to know how well has the monetization strategy worked so far? And if you plan to change it?

congrats on the success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the app is free. As you can see we have on the android market a gold version.

We started with the gold version to see how many people are willing to pay for the app even if they can get it for free. The only difference is a new icon and a pin screen that says Gold. We advertise the app clear in the app store as "Buy this app if you love KeepSafe and want to give the developers money".

We will be adding additional features to the app over time that will then also be premium. The typical freemium business model.

<comment><USER9> Are users loving and giving developers enough money to keep them, the devs, satisfied?

<comment><AUTHOR> As I remember there is an interesting information out there from Evernote. they can tell a little more about that at scale. Apparently 20% of all Evernote subscribers have never hit the paywall, meaning getting to the point where there are limitations in the product. Those 20% signed up because they use the app a lot and love it. They feel that it's worth the money even without limitations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, another reason why app name is important: Hide pictures with KeepSafe instead of KeepSafe.

Btw, why the name of the iOS app is "Hide Pictures and Photos with KeepSafe", but the Android version is just "Hide pictures with KeepSafe"?

In my iPhone, when I search "hide photo" I can't find your app, so the keyword "Photos" is therefore useless?

<comment><USER4> That's interesting! It shows up for me for that search (that's why we included it). Are you also using the US app store?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For completeness:

In Android if you prefix a directory name with a dot, its content will not appear on Galleries and other common apps (some will let you choose to do so in settings). You can also create a .nomedia empty file in a directory to hide it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hey Guys, great work there. Congratulations! I noticed that your logo does not link to your index page / home. Might not be that important, but I spent at least 2-3 additional clicks while looking through your appealing web pages.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for this. I'm launching an app soon, and these ideas really help, as well as the comments.

</comment><comment><USER13> How did you find the problem to solve?

<comment><USER4> The particular picture problem? I used to work as a PM and constantly took pictures of whiteboards and would show them to co-workers later. When I would swipe through these, there would always be pictures from my private life. I needed more control over this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amen brother!

</comment><comment><USER15> In what timeframe did you get to those numbers?

Can you share a graph...would be interesting to see the growth velocity curve.

<comment><USER4> It took us about 10 months to get there. I don't have a graph handy but it was pretty linear from month 4 onwards. Before that, we had an accelerating curve because we started at 0 and slowly improved our ratings as more users started liking us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What about marketing? How did you get your users?

I mean I got that you have a great product and keep improving it and people will stay - but you have to get your users from somewhere.

Was it all just people who found the app organically in the app store? No PR or marketing of any kind?

<comment><AUTHOR> The growth come all from organic search traffic in the android market. We haben't done any PR. We got picked up from some android blogs, but this will only give you a little extra traffic for a certain amount of time.

We believe that search is a valid model for a utility app where people actually have a need/problem and can describe it in a search term. Multi language takes a big part to the success of a search strategy. We also translated the app store description to all possible languages, even if we don't have the app available in these languages. The user will then get the english version as default.

For games and social apps growth has to come from within the app as search wont work.

<comment><USER16> Wow. Well done.

Android developers take note of this answer. Particularly the part about targeting search results in non-English languages!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much do freelancing product managers charge for their services? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on a startup on the side of my main job for quite some time. I'm quite happy with my main job. But 2-3 times a month, without fail, I get cold-calls/e-mails from people seeking a developer for a project.
I don't want to freelance on projects anymore.
However, it made me wonder. Are there freelancing Product Managers? Surely, there must be? Couldn't I just have them handle all the interfacing with the customer, file tickets, and I do them. Problem with the output? File more tickets. I do them. Rinse, repeat. Meet on occasion to hash things out.
Has anyone had experience with such an arrangement?
It'd basically be delegating myself to commodity labor, but seems like lately there is enough market that I could charge my hourly, a product manager could charge their hourly, and the customer would still be happy cause they would finally have someone to do their project, which in this market, is seemingly difficult to find developers for. And I'm not talking about pie-in-the-sky take-a-cut-of-the-revenue people. I'm talking people who are willing to lay out hard cash upfront.
I should note, I'm in the U.S. and have googled some on this question, but it seems estimates vary wildly, and outside of structured companies I don't see this arrangement very often . <comment><USER2> There are freelance product managers (check out oDesk and Elance), but it will take a lot of effort in getting the quality guy as there is a low signal-to- noise ration. Also, it must be understood that product managers need to be a core part of the team and freelancer might not fit into that.

If the skills demanded are fairly common (Wordpress development or basic level php knowledge) then it is not hard to get quality guys at low prices. I have myself done a few product management tasks in these sites for about $25-30/hr - mostly running marketing campaigns, taking care of product launches and building websites.

In summary, I would say you can get a decent product manager freelancer for $30-40/hr if you are not building a complex product and not require a lot of learning curve to understand the product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I assume the manager would need to charge something similar (hourly rate) to what you charge even though you may be doing the more highly skilled work. Pay based on skill might be more important for more traditional employment scenarios as opposed to freelancing because of the nature of freelancing (making a living from relatively uncertain circumstances.) A manager may even have to charge more (percentage) assuming the number of hours going into the management comes out to be far less that of the coding.

Perhaps the best way to do this, especially if you would need to meet with this person, would be to make some sort of arrangement with a local dev shop which does client work.</comment>


Strategies and Tactics to Close the Deal - <AUTHOR> http://life-longlearner.com/close-the-deal/

<comment><USER2> Nice list. Also could provide some limited exclusivity for a short time period. Or discounted pricing for early adopters.</comment>


My voice is my passport - <AUTHOR> http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/my-voice-is-my-passport/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed <comment><AUTHOR> BTW: His main point is, "the best part is that clearly someone at the vast institution that is my bank—someone in a position of some authority no less—is a nerd."

His main point is _not_ that it will be fast/secure/good.

<comment><USER2> Yeah... I was hoping there were going to be some comments about how other people loved the movie Sneakers.[1] Sigh.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_XRqJV2zdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_XRqJV2zdk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fingerprint, iris, and voice are _identifiers_ not authenticators. Their perceived security comes from their perceived scarcity and difficulty in emulating their presence, barriers that are being removed as technology gets better. In the future the device will know who you are identified as by detecting these markers but you'll still need to prove you are who you are presenting yourself to be.

<comment><USER4> Fingerprints are still a better authenticator than a 4 digit passcode in practice. Nothing is infallible, it just needs to be good enough. Biometric security things can be very good at preventing 99% of the problems with 1% of the effort.

<comment><USER5> Biometrics is horrendous as a single point of identification in security systems.

Fingerprints and a password, sure, but fingerprints only is the worst idea possible.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Yes, fingerprints can be faked. But it is _much_ harder to fake a fingerprint than to discover a passcode of a casual user by just watching them type it.

I'm absolutely sure that a much smaller percentage of fingerprint protected phones are accessed by unauthorized persons than passcode or password protected phones.

<comment><USER5> Actually it's not, if you have the physical device you more or less already cracked the fingerprint scanner.

You could also be compromised by your glass in a bar, a handshake, the door handle of your car or your house.

Passwords can be changed but you can't change a finger so this sums up why fingerprints are shit.

<comment><USER4> Look at the procedure required to create a fake finger: [http://istouchidhackedyet.com](http://istouchidhackedyet.com)

Most importantly, it requires a perfect finger print image. Random smears from your phone screen or a glass won't work.

The process is so complicated that only a very small percentage of the population is able to do it; anyone can peek over your shoulder when you unlock your phone (which most people will do dozens or hundreds or hundreds of times per day).

Last, remember that you only have limited attempts with your fake finger; in the demonstration video they only show unlocking a freshly trained phone in a controlled setting, they don't actually unlock a phone "in the wild".

<comment><USER5> The process is very easy, I did it multiple times in high school for a project.

Legally, scanners are only allowed to save a certain amount of key points in your fingerprint, not the whole fingerprint.

False-positives are thus likely as are fingerprint collisions (like hash collisions).

And you still can't modify your finger once it has been hacked a SINGLE time.

<comment><USER4> Clearly we seem to have a different idea of what constitutes "easy".

I'm not claiming that biometric authentication is a good idea against a targeted attack.

But I do think that they offer adequate protection against opportunistic attacks. It prevents random thieves from accessing my data, and it's convenient enough that people actually use it. It will significantly increase security on average.

If someone is targeting you specifically, neither a fingerprint nor a (usually short) passcode is adequate protection.

<comment><USER5> But I can change de passcode and even use a longer passphrase if I feel the need to have a higher security standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mac OS 9 had a voice login option. In my experience, it did not work very well because my voice when I first woke up in the morning was very different from my voice later on during the day, such that my Mac did not recognize my early morning voice when I tried to log in.

e: and yes, I believe the default phrase for the voice login option was "my voice is my passport."

<comment><USER7> _and yes, I believe the default phrase for the voice login option was "my voice is my passport."_

It was actually "my voice is my _password_ " not "passport."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is one problem with this approach.

I have a pretty severe cold today. My voice is unrecognizable. But I can still remember a password.

<comment><USER9> I've used voice authentication with Nuance's SDK before and having a cold or gaining weight does not affect the verification process. It is based on acoustioc signatures in your voice and not necessarily a precise recreation of the original recording. This isn't a problem with this approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sneakers - one of the best computer movies when I was a kid. I used to watch it over and over again. Good times. Must go find it somewhere. That movie probably had an impact on actually getting into the business later on.

<comment><USER11> I loved this movie and I still watch it a few times a month as I am working on other things. Sometimes listening to movies provides me more focus than random music from my playlists.

<comment><USER12> I'm the same way - for me, "Bladerunner", "Barbarella" and "Flash Gordon" are on auto-repeat as my background noise for serious coding sessions. For some reason these 3 movies just work so well in that sense ..

/off-topic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure biometric identification is such a great idea... with fingerprint id, it could make the bad guys have an incentive to chop fingers... Also, a fingerprint can be acquired in other ways and then replicated sintetically.

In the same fashion, voice identification doesn't seem to be so secure, since it could also be recorded... and if it were commonly used, there would probably be enough incentive to build on top of current text-to-speech and speech synthetizers, to emulate a voice, given enough sample data.

<comment><USER14> Also, what are the chances that someone can have a similar pitch/tone/voice as the password holder? I bet someone with enough incentive could find another like it.

ie. Google Glass fiasco where you could say, 'OK Google, porn,' behind people who are wearing Google Glass.

<comment><USER15> A couple nights ago, I said "OK Google" and activated the prompt on my _girlfriend 's_ phone, across the room. Voices don't even have to be similar.

<comment><USER16> Google Now doesn't care who says "OK, Google"; it'll (intentionally, I assume) allow anyone to say it.

Actual voice identification works in a similar way to how apps like Shazam do: they build a "fingerprint" of your voice. This is why it still works if you have a cold, or for some reason the pitch of your voice changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Of course, just like your fingerprints, your voice is your username and not your password.

<comment><USER18> Hyperbole. Clearly, it's not a username. Touch ID has improved security for most users, precisely because it works more like a password than a username. (We all know it's not as secure as a real password.)

<comment><USER19> It's just a really long, complex, and hard to copy username. In many cases, that is much better than a username/password combination. But it's still just something you are/have and not something you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also in Uplink [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoIBS1ffyLc#t=94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoIBS1ffyLc#t=94)

</comment><comment><USER20> This reminds me of a PhoneLosers Podcast where he pulls the exact sneakers scheme to get into a Bell Canada account.

[http://www.phonelosers.org/2008/05/pla-radio- episode-17-voic...](http://www.phonelosers.org/2008/05/pla-radio- episode-17-voice-authentication/)

That was in 2008.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hmm. This the same biometric login routine used by USAA for their mobile apps. Curious to know who actually built it, is it being used under license or is it delivered as a service. Anyone have info?

<comment><USER22> It is the same routine, because he is describing the USAA iPhone mobile app :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know of a way to log into Linux with voice authentication? That could be better than typing my password all the time.

<comment> ryan-c I don't know of one, but using PAM to add auth methods is actually pretty easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Verify me.</comment>


How Cuts in Basic Subway Upkeep Can Make NYC Commutes Miserable - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/nyregion/system-failure-new-york-subway-maintenance-misery.html?mabReward=CTM3&recid=0y1C7Vbd7V6qb02UQ5zYHiw4x64&recp=3&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine <comment><USER2> Other major cities around the world are moving to automated light rail. Singapore and Kula Lumpar both have fully automated trains, London has several of their lines automated with plans on slowly replacing rolling stock to eventually go driver-less on more of its above ground lines.

American cities are so far behind. D.C. is probably one of the best metros, but NYC and Chicago, while having quite extensive systems for very large cities, have no budget to expand or move them into the future.

For cities that large, these systems have to be maintained. They cannot afford to cut train lines, unless they want to end up with grueling traffic like you have in LA.

<comment><USER3> While automation sounds elegant, it has nothing to do with the problems or solutions here. The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture that does not value long term problem solving, instead preferring quick fixes and short term band aids.

Many modern subway systems have similarly huge networks with far higher traffic than NYC but manage to maintain low failure rates and CLEAN tracks simply because they value and prioritize maintenance and quality of service. Some are private, some are public.

It truly baffles me why NYC and actually the SF BART both fail so utterly to even attempt to provide quality service.

<comment><USER4> I live in Europe and to me it seems that its a general American mentality of everybody having a car, dislike of mass transit in any form (except planes) and as a result mass transit is meh and makes people even more miserable.

<comment><USER5>
      I live in Europe and to me it seems that its a general American mentality of everybody having a car

New York is different. Car ownership is extremely low and the subway is a vital part of the city's transportation infrastructure.

The problem seems more attitude wise. We want great infrastrure while paying low taxes. This contradiction, of course, isn't really solvable as can be seen in the generally pretty rotten state of infrastructure in the US.

<comment><USER6> I think one of the core issues is the very heavy unionisation of the staff, much more extreme than anywhere else.

Apparently union labor rates are 3-5x more expensive in transit than Europe. Considering how labor heavy it is to do repair work on old subway lines it means you need an insane budget to do any more work. And guess what, as soon as the budget gets raised the union notice and want a larger slice.

So many examples of this. Another is the way NY subway cars have 3 staff minimum. Whereas London, Paris, Berlin have one. Assume they make 3x the money and you need 3x more than other cities and you have a 10x cost increase in operational labor costs. Plus the complexity of ensuring you always have 3 people there with no sickness etc, as if you lose one you can't run the train at all.

It's really insane and will take a mayor with serious backbone to fight.

<comment><USER7> Unions are far more widespread and far stronger in Europe than they are anywhere in the US. By your logic, then, transit maintenance in Europe should cost unbelievable amounts of money.

(there are plenty of well-documented reasons why NYC comes up short on money for its transit system, and "unions are the devil" is an insufficient explanation for them)

<comment><USER8> American unions are different. People from Germany have come to visit me in Maryland and remarked on road construction sites and how many guys that are just standing around. Here, you'll have multiple guys just standing directing traffic. In Germany, they put up some cones and a signal light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The technology on the NYC subway is so old that they have to pay through the nose for replacement parts. I also assume that you have a hard time finding people willing to work at a place where they learn few transferable skills, because nobody else uses century old stuff. Especially if the pay is so-so and you don't guarantee a job for life.

Yet upgrading the system to modern signals and interlockings is even more expensive, especially since maintenance is extremely hard when the system has to run 24/7.

<comment><USER10> Signals are expensive? That kind of blows my mind. A chaveut dj LED light that responds to dmx commands can be had for a few bucks

<comment><USER9> Signals are expensive because of their safety guarantees (and because of lack of competition). That LED light you can buy for a few bucks doesn't guarantee eight nines of uptime if you keep to the maintenance schedule. You also can sue the manufacturer if a train runs a red because the LED broke. Signals and other trackside equipment make up a large part of the costs of building rail.

<comment><USER11> The legacy parts manufactured half a century ago have eight nines of uptime?

<comment><USER9> Relays are pretty reliable if you exchange them regularly enough. Just because the stuff is old it doesn't mean that you can't build machines with enough redundancy to make them very dependable. It's not so clear that complex software solutions as in modern interlockings are more dependable than the comparably simple electromechanical solutions of yore. Cheaper, yes, more capable, sure, but more reliable?

<comment><USER11> > Just because the stuff is old it doesn't mean that you can't build machines > with enough redundancy to make them very dependable.

I can do the same with 1-dollar modern parts.

<comment><USER9> That's exactly what the companies building these things do. It's not the material that's expensive, it's all the paperwork necessary to prove that it actually provides the guarantees that it does.

<comment><USER11> The context was you saying "they have to pay through the nose for replacement parts" and exabrial's downvoted reply, to which you replied "That LED light you can buy for a few bucks doesn't guarantee eight nines of uptime if you keep to the maintenance schedule". I don't know anything about this stuff, but your arguments have not been coherent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ring-fenced yearly upkeep budget + years of sustained funding for improvements = great subway system.

London Underground in the 1980s was like NYC Subway now - but after sustained 15-20 years of funding it improved immensely (while passenger levels more than doubled, if not tripled).

Of course this could not last - with the current Conservative government Underground is getting less and less money, so starting to defer upgrades... Politicians are incapable of learning.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't help. The MTA's problem is decidedly not money. The MTA's spending on subway is about double per passenger as Transport for London spends on the underground.[1] Having a ring fenced budget wouldn't do any good as it gets eaten away by inefficiency and waste.

What the MTA needs to do is:

1) Disband the union

2) Cut service overnight to increase maintenance times

3) Double fares (Tube fares are 15-100% higher depending on distance; using exchange rates from a few years ago, minimum Tube fare was like $5 versus $2.75 for the NY subway)

[1] [http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors- budget-2017-18.pdf](http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf) (page 10) versus [http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Bu...](http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Bu..). (page II-A). Just look at the Underground versus the subway + the Staten Island Railroad.

<comment><USER13> > 2) Cut service overnight to increase maintenance times

Absolutely not! Overnight service is an _essential_ element of the NYC subway system. It's what makes the subway go from being a convenience to being a utility. Knowing that I can absolutely rely on subway, or at least a shuttle bus, at any time of the night, is a completely different experience than living in a city where I have to plan might night around the train. Even if it very slow at night, I know it will be there. Like a road.

Besides, I doubt that shutting down all 400 miles of the network will significantly improve maintenance efficiency. They already severely cut back service to a few trains an hour, and they coordinate with maintenance crews pretty well, and crawl past them at 5mph. And the system is big enough so that they can shut down parts of it.

I think the only time the city completely shut down service was during 9/11, but they had partial service again a few hours later, to areas that did not pass through the neighborhood.

But I can tell you that proposing we shut down all service after a certain hour is as ludicrous as saying we should close most of our bridges after a certain hour. The subway is not an add-on for NYC like in it is in most cities, it is an essential feature.

<comment><USER14> The subway shuts down in nearly all the major cities with much better and often times more expansive systems than NYC, Tokyo in particular stands out. People against shutting down the subway usually argue against it because they just want to be able to go out drinking at night and not have to pay for a Lyft or Taxi back home.

Theres a few things that NYC could do that would easily alleviate this:

1\. Run a night owl bus service that replaces all or most lines like Philly. Don't know why this isn't more common. Theres less traffic at night, so the people relying on the subway for work will not be inconvenienced significantly.

2\. Have overnight service Friday and Saturday for the party crowd. Apparently there are systems in Europe that do this.

<comment><USER15> > The subway shuts down in nearly all the major cities with much better and > often times more expansive systems than NYC, Tokyo in particular stands out. > People against shutting down the subway usually argue against it because > they just want to be able to go out drinking at night and not have to pay > for a Lyft or Taxi back home.

Or, you know, people who actually have to travel those hours for work or other reasons. NYC is a 24-hour city in a way that cities like London are not.

> 1\. Run a night owl bus service that replaces all or most lines like Philly. > Don't know why this isn't more common.

Bus service, even with optimal traffic, is _way_ slower than subway service.

> Have overnight service Friday and Saturday for the party crowd. Apparently > there are systems in Europe that do this.

Yeah, London just introduced this. It's pretty terrible compared to what we have in NYC. I wouldn't trade it for what NYC has now.

<comment><USER8> > NYC is a 24-hour city in a way that cities like London are not.

I highly doubt that's true.

<comment><USER15> > I highly doubt that's true.

Having lived in New York for a decade and also spent time in London, there's absolutely no comparison. Heck, even just looking at the nightlife: pubs in London shut down before midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. That's completely unheard-of in most of NYC, even bars in the relatively residential areas.

NYC also tends to have other businesses open earlier and close later than London (or most of Europe). In order for that to happen, it's necessary to have people who work the early/late/graveyard shifts, and those people are incredibly dependent on overnight service.

It's unfortunate that you're mixing in overnight service with the rest of the points you make, because you're correct about the rest - the fares are a little too low right now, and rampant corruption at the TWU wastes what little money they do have.

<comment><USER14> So you admit that you want to go out drinking and this is the only reason you want the trains to run all night? Bars, izakayas, and clubs in Tokyo also stay open extremely late like in NYC and yet the city doesn't grind to a halt when the subway system closes.

<comment><USER15> > So you admit that you want to go out drinking and this is the only reason > you want the trains to run all night?

I guess that's a way you could interpret my comment, if you read only the first paragraph and ignore the sentence that literally comes next.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For MTA: labor expenses are higher than revenue, there is no easy way out.

<comment><USER17> How are they paying for everything?

<comment><USER2> It's important to note that no train system in the world is covered by fairs. They are always subsidized by the state. In most cities, fairs make up 20% ~ 30% of costs (tolls are about the same for toll roads).

Cities with expensive transit typically have mandates that x% of costs must be paid by fairs. In Wellington, NZ and Chicago, US, this is 50%, leading to some pretty high fares or low service.

Just having transit makes revenue though, in taxes from the increased commerce. Access to transport is also the single largest factor in escaping poverty. It's difficult to measure those numbers in revenue though.

But transport always must be subsidized by the State, going back to the roads of Rome.

<comment><USER18> Kind of why I wish public transit was just made free..

Once the rail lines are paid for, the cost per passenger is very low. Hence, we should maximize value by making it free.

<comment><USER19> Now I'm wondering what a Freemium transit system would look like.

<comment><USER20> Easy: sell seats to commuters who want to get work done (currently seats are allocated to those who board closest to the beginning of the line).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Do not that this is a problem nationwide with rail transit. Both heavy and light rail variants suffer the same issue, deferred upkeep. Throw in the elevated expense in deploying such solutions and the money just vanishes. While NYC has issues specific to it many cities slight their bus travelers to support rail lines to the point of changing bus routes to be less advantageous. LA lost nearly four bus riders for every new rail rider because they cut routes to pay for the train.

when it comes to deferred maintenance, if you were to look into the 2015 DOT reports there is nearly a hundred billion dollar backlog on rail maintenance. This is on top of the tens of billions spent building it and building new rail.

the estimates to bring just DC's Metro system back up to maintenance date is over twenty billion.

Just remember in the US most transit rail lines are for the purpose of politicians to cut ribbons.

<comment><USER22> But roads are faring so much better? Or water infrastructure (Flint)? Or electricity infrastructure (PR)?

Our western society seems to find ways of fund investments but when it comes to maintenance there is a void. Why the US is particularly bad at this and what needs to change across the board is the question. The current course is not sustainable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I always wondered what would happen if you just remove the trains and the track and just let people cycle through the tunnels.

<comment> Joe-Z That sounds awesome. Maybe paint some landscapes on the walls and have nice lighting in there too. Underground bike lanes for the win!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why does such a troubled metro still run 24/7? Most of the best-performing metros in the world (HK, SG, Tokyo) close at midnight.

<comment><USER12> Because the city itself is 24/7?

<comment><USER25> Yeah but at night there's significantly less traffic, so it's ok to stop the trains and rely solely on the bus network because it has enough capacity to handle night traffic.

Where I live is an example of that: during weekdays the light rail closes IIRC between midnight and 6, they only keep it running on weekends because of all the people going out at night (the metro always runs but that's fully automated). Just because the bus system isn't enough to handle a city's peak load, it's usually fine for handling the load on periods where the load is the smallest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Dude. Not moving a "sick passenger" off the train is the biggest issue of NYC subway commute.

<comment><USER27> It really isn't. It _is_ an issue, sure, but decrepit signals have far more of an effect every single day.

<comment><USER26> No, this is the issue. A sick passenger on union sq on N Q R in a rush hour means for twenty minutes trains are stopped. A sick passenger on the L, means trains are stopped in both directions. It takes hours for the train service to get back to normal. This happens nearly daily. If we still had Gothamist, we would have still had daily articles about what caused the delay.

<comment><USER27> No, it is _an_ issue. In any case, a new signal system would allow the subway to recover from a sick passenger much quicker, and allow it to run many more trains per hour than it currently does, which would cover many sins. The decrepit signals are a far bigger issue, and a far more solvable one (how do you solve sick passengers?)

<comment><USER26> > and a far more solvable one (how do you solve sick passengers?)

You _move them off the train_ ( 2 minutes ) and let the train continue moving.

Improving signal system won't fix delays. The article is about what about makes commute terrible. MTAs customer does not give a flying f!ck about _why there are the delays_. MTA customer wants to have no delays. MTA's solution? Contractless payments! New L cars with folding seats!

Subway in NYC runs on electricity. It is not possible to run more trains on most of the lines than already run. MTA got a stupid grant from feds of several hundred million dollars to upgrade one of the L substations. It will add _two_ or maybe _three_ additional trains in the rush hour when trains already come every 3-4 minutes. No improvement in switching infrastructure would fix it. A train stopping for twenty minutes on Bedford St would affect the system for hours because of the idiotic 8th St design.

Oh how about someone having an episode in a tunnel, followed by a dumb-ass passenger pulling emergency brake. In a tunnel. Guess what happens? The conductor has to check _every car before the train moves forward_ even though he or she knows where the emergency brake was pulled. So you now have a sick passenger in a tunnel and entire system again stops. Fun, huh? But sure, through the magic of signal system improvement we will totally address dumb design ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Now they're also talking about stopping the L train for a year or more. And my major issue is, these people who have the time to go out and protest - and the city literally is not allowed to say, "You want this to get fixed? Either convince the rich folks to actually pay their taxes, or be willing to volunteer and do the work we need done down there."

<comment><USER18> > and the city literally is not allowed to say, "You want this to get fixed? > Either convince the rich folks to actually pay their taxes, or be willing to > volunteer..."

That sounds like an excellent campaign poster.

The city is a public institution it shouldn't have opinions. But the politicians who govern it are very much encouraged to do so.

I suggest you try to run on a political platform of taxes and better services. Then you'll see of Americans want that.

<comment><USER26> No need. The current tax bill exposed the positions of American limo liberals quite well - no one wants their "but i already pay taxes in New York so of course I deduct them from my federal tax liability" to go away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant One thing that shocked me when going to the US, that still shocks me now, are those adds: "Injured? Cellino & Barnes".

Apparently, when you're injured in the US, the first thing to do is _not_ go to the hospital, but _call your lawyer_. I'm not sure what to think of it, but it does make me feel uneasy.

<comment><USER29> America's courts unlike the UK routinely award punitive damages. Suing someone for causing you injury in the UK may only net you the cost of your medical bills (which might be negligible) and the cost of missed work.

<comment> loup-vaillant Given the US health care system, I understand why someone might _need_ punitive damages.

<comment><USER30> Needing punitive damages is a contradiction by definition. If you could show injury then they would be normal damages The point of punitive damages is that they're not necessary to compensate the injured party but to send a message that a certain behavior is not acceptable.

For example: "$person was burned by your hot coffee so we're awarding them $smallnumber for medical expenses, lost wages, suffering, etc. and $bignumber in punitive damages because you shouldn't be serving coffee that hot in that manner in the first place"

<comment> loup-vaillant I know what "punitive damages" mean. I was just pointing out that in the US, one might lose one's ability to get health insurance at all because of an injury (many conditions will cause most insurance company to refuse your application).

The possible prejudice for that can range in the _millions_. Even if those aren't punitive, they sure feel like it.

<comment><USER30> >I was just pointing out that in the US, one might lose one's ability to get health insurance at all because of an injury (many conditions will cause most insurance company to refuse your application).

That is no longer true as a result of the ACA.

<comment> loup-vaillant I didn't know about the affordable care act, that's wonderful news! Anyway, I stand corrected, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Andy Byford has his work cut out for him.</comment>


WOFF 2 – Next-generation web font format - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/sergejmueller/cf6b4f2133bcb3e2f64a

<comment><USER2>
       > Of course you can use WOFF2 as a Base64 encoded string:
       >    ...
       >        url('data:font/woff2;base64,...') format('woff2'),
       >        url('data:font/woff;base64,...') format('woff');

Please, pretty please don't Base64 the WOFF and WOFF2 fonts in the same file. That's basically just _inflating_ your font size by a guaranteed 80% or so. A browser supporting WOFF2 is guaranteed to support WOFF!

I'd honestly recommend waiting until WOFF2 support is better before you use them at all unless you have server-side support detection. In a year or so it'll make sense. Now? Not so much. [1]

I do believe you should base64 encode your WOFF fonts and link the others. In fact, I wrote a tool for that (if you are pulling fonts from Google's or some other service). [2]

[1] [http://caniuse.com/#feat=woff2](http://caniuse.com/#feat=woff2)

[2] [https://github.com/mmastrac/webfont- dl](https://github.com/mmastrac/webfont-dl)

<comment><USER3> In a nutshell, this guy explains that the benefit of WOFF2 is that its "compression format offers a 30% average gain over WOFF 1.0", only to go on and demonstrate how to embed both WOFF1 _and_ WOFF2 as _data:_ URLs in the same CSS?

Major facepalm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Think about the correct mime type for WOFF 2.0 files (Google uses > font/woff2. W3C recommends application/font-woff2):

Heh. I'm very annoyed there is no official MIME registry for font/. fonts and archive formats abuse the application/ registry. In decades now this hasn't changed. Pretty annoying. Maybe this will be a needed push?

<comment><USER5> There was a discussion about this on the IETF lists a while ago — in short, there's so much impetus against new top-level types that it's unlikely to ever happen, seemingly, and that the application type was the appropriate place for fonts to go. See the thread starting at [https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/apps-discuss/current/m...](https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/apps-discuss/current/msg03447.html).

It's been the status quo for a long time now — and existing implementations are basically irrelevant (all browsers just sniff and totally ignore any type because of this mess).

<comment><USER4> Fascinating, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So... Silly question, perhaps, but how is it possible that we need to replace WOFF already? Didn't we have TTF and OTF for decodes without needing replacement, and now we need to replace WOFF before it's even used a whole lot? What did the WOFF designers miss?

<comment><USER7> WOFF is simply gzip plus a header. This works well for OTF fonts where the format is already heavily optimised for low size. However TTF files don't compress as well, particularly the 'glyf' table whic contains the outlines and typically accounts for a large percentage of the file size. WOFF 2 adds a preprocessing stage which rewrites the glyf table into a more compact format prior to gzipping.

<comment><USER8> Also, WOFF2 uses brotli instead of deflate.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are good YouTube channels on motivation? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Watching a YouTube channel about motivation sounds like a procrastination tactic, not a solution to low motivation...

</comment><comment><USER3> Two set violin: [https://www.youtube.com/user/twosetviolin](https://www.youtube.com/user/twosetviolin) Because they always urge you to practice.</comment>


Simplifying the private cloud: host your private Dropbox at home in one click - <AUTHOR> https://doc.duple.io/duple-documentation/?ty <comment><USER2> I clicked through to the headline website. "1 click" is blatantly false advertising - reams of dialogue boxes, ssh keys and what not. Unimpressed.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR: Use Syncthing over this unless you have an iPhone and don't want Resilio Sync for some reason.

So I use Syncthing for file sync between devices. Some spelunking in Duple's FAQs shows the following blurb as to why to use Duple (a paid offering) over Syncthing (a FLOSS offering), along with my own point-by-point comments / pseudo rebuttals.

-Syncthing is P2P, so you get the disadvantages along with it e.g. all your devices need to be turned on at the same time. If not, you get a desynchronisation between your devices and create conflict. In Duple's FAQ page it has one reference to offering File Conflict Resolution.

Syncthing does not require all devices to be on at the same time. If a device is offline, when it comes online, it is brought up to speed by the other peers in the cluster. Unless duple has done some serious magic, it will likely require devices to be online to sync as well. According to [https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-if-there- is-a...](https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-if-there-is-a- conflict) , if you edit a file from two different devices at the same time, the one with the older modified date gets renamed to <filename>.sync- conflict-<date>-<time>-<modifiedBy>.<ext> and subsequently synced to all other nodes in the cluster, so you don't lose those changes. For my use case (sync files between home, on the go laptop, and phone, not doing simultaneous edits of the same file), which I would argue is fairly standard, I've never encountered a sync conflict.

-Syncthing is not an app for backup (see this link, section 2.2.17). Duple is; in fact backup is one of our main features.

The linked section states that while Syncthing offers file versions, they encourage the use of dedicated offline backup tools as all changes made to files are propagated across the peers. Duple interprets that as 'not backup' but in its own FAQ under question "Does it do more than file sync?" on [https://doc.duple.io/faq/#technical- faqs](https://doc.duple.io/faq/#technical-faqs) it interprets similar functionality as 'backup' with the qualifier "data at least in 2 places". Syncthing offers similar functionality, it just doesn't try to make claims that it is a suitable replacement for dedicated offline backup software.

-Then, similar to the likes of Nextcloud, Syncthing also includes a complicated installation/setup that isn't aimed at everyone and requires some IT expertise. One of the main points of Duple is to provide an out of the box tool that anyone can use, with super easy set up.

What IT expertise is required to setup Syncthing? You copy a string from one machine and input it into another and vice versa. Then you check a box in a GUI that says 'share this directory with the other device'. Granted, that is not as common / familiar an action as logging into a form, but you're hardly hand editing any config files. However, the Syncthing foundation is working on a UI refresh that IIRC has a start-up wizard aimed at first-time users to guide them through the process of adding device and folder IDs to handshake.

-It is also worth noting that Syncthing is not planning on supporting iOS platforms.

This is Syncthing's second biggest weakness / barrier to fully mainstream adoption among techies, right behind not being able to have untrusted peers who sync data but do not have encryption keys to read it locally. According to [https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#why-is-there-no- io...](https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#why-is-there-no-ios-client), this is fair. Duple's own Android and iOS mobile apps are 'coming soon' and Syncthing offers Android apps today. However, there is an iOS app named fsync which offers(ed?) Syncthing integration.</comment>