Natural Language Processing with Python - <AUTHOR> http://www.nltk.org/book

<comment><USER2> Here is a good blog about NLTK: <http://streamhacker.com/>

The blogger is also the author of the book "Python Text Processing with NLTK 2.0 Cookbook"

</comment><comment><USER3> great book! Don't wanna spam, but made a project www.whatrapperareyou.com by programming along the lines of Chapter 6 on Naive Bayesian Classifiers.

Chapter 6: <http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/book/ch06.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI, there's an offshoot page that describes a list of projects (ongoing and suggested) that can be undertaken with the natural language toolkit: <http://ourproject.org/moin/projects/nltk/ProjectIdeas>

</comment><comment><USER4> I usually use my own NLP code that I have written over 12+ years in Lisp, Java, and Ruby. That said, I have used NLTK on a few projects (some personal, some for a data mining customer) and the "everything included" (including useful data sources) aspect of NLTK is a real time saver. I recommend it, especially so if you mostly work in Python.

</comment><comment><USER5> NLTK is great for _learning_ NLP, but Python is much too slow for scalable deep NLP (by which I mean tagging and parsing, as opposed to TF-IDF etc). Also parallelization can become a problem because of the GIL. It's a real shame they chose Python actually, because otherwise it's a superbly structured, documented, and maintained project.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, I think Python was an excellent choice; what other platform would you suggest? IMO being "superbly structured, documented and maintained" is not a magical property acquired by luck, but rather connected to the platform of choice.

Btw for performance, whenever pure Python is indeed "much too slow" (profile?), there's the option of C extension modules. The NumPy or SciPy libraries are good examples: used in hardcore numerical computing aka the epitome of I-NEED-IT-TO-RUN-FAST!, but still Python.

And not to nitpick ;) but GIL only affects multi-threading; other modes of "parallelization" are reasonably straightforward and some even built-in ( _import multiprocessing_ ).

<comment><USER7> Yes, that is how you make fast libraries in Python. But, nltk isn't written using C extension modules. All of this NLP is done in pure python. You could rewrite what needs to be fast with C extensions, but then what's the point of using nltk in the first place?

Nltk was never intended to be a way to do production-grade natural language processing. It's primary objective has been to teach users natural language processing with clear, well-commented code and documentation. If this isn't your situation, please use something else.

<comment><USER8> What's the point? That half of your code base has already been written for you. Rewriting performance critical parts is a lot of work, and not having to rewrite a corpus reader, tree transformations, or evaluation procedure is an advantage; aside from being an excellent prototype platform. With Cython you can seamlessly combine Python code such as that from NLTK with your own optimized code. This was indeed never the intention of NLTK, but I have found the general idea of combining arbitrary Python code with optimized Cython code to work very well. The end result is a much less bloated code base in comparison to something like Java or C++.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's an awesome book and project. I found about it in Mining the Social Web (another fantastic book)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm glad to see this NLP book available online for free. Some great knowledge in there.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone know if there is a distributed framework to run NLTK?

</comment><comment><USER12> Good book for an intro to NLP. NLTK is a cool library but when is it gonna get Python3 compatible??</comment>


Show HN: rsync on iphone/ipad - <AUTHOR> http://acrosync.com/

<comment><USER2> a "first and only rsync client on ios" claim on your page doesn't hold water as rsync has been in repos since the earliest days of apt/dpkg being ported to ios. 2008?

the amount of ways apple scuttled basic file features in ios is really something. from limiting files to a sandbox only avilable to a particular app to not compiling nfs or cifs into the kernel, to inventing new app-specific file-streaming things using undocumented UDP protocols..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. I changed it to "the first and only rsync client in the App Store".

As an ios developer I completely agree with you. I was only interested in making rsync work on iphone/ipad for everyone but because of many ios limitations I had to spent much much more time coding the viewer.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a tool or app to gamify the switch from Chrome to Firefox? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> To avoid issues of implicit EULA acceptance, maybe a 'helpful' "what browser should I use" that always spits out Firefox as the answer?</comment>


Puzzle HN: Can you please help us mathematically solve a puzzle? - <AUTHOR>

I encountered a very simple puzzle that has very interesting ramifications. The puzzle consists of a set of cubes grouped in 3s or 2s that are linked together in a staggered fashion with elastic. We are meant to collapse these cubes into a 3 by 3 larger cube.
Here are a few pictures: http://imgur.com/a/nxA4Y
Now we know the brute-force way to do it, but I'm wondering if there's a mathematical solution to this problem that can predict the exact sequence of folds required. Is there some way for us to derive this?
---
There are 12 nodes in total and here are the pairings of these cubes:
(3,3,), (3,3), (3,2), (2,2), (2,3), (3,3), (3,2), (2,3), (3,3), (3,2), (2,2), (2,3) <comment><USER2> [http://www.mathematische- basteleien.de/snakecube.htm](http://www.mathematische- basteleien.de/snakecube.htm)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11622068/snake-cube- puzzl...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11622068/snake-cube-puzzle- correctness)

<comment><USER3> brilliant!

<comment><USER4> Nice. I don't know why I thought the two were related...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clickable: [http://imgur.com/a/nxA4Y](http://imgur.com/a/nxA4Y)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a quick wiki search "The puzzle was created by Franz Owen Armbruster, also known as Frank Armbruster and published by Parker Brothers in 1967. Over 12 million puzzles were sold. The puzzle is isomorphic to numerous older puzzles, among them the Katzenjammer puzzle,[3][4] patented[5] by Frederick A. Schossow in 1900, and The Great Tantalizer (circa 1940, and the most popular name prior to Instant Insanity). The puzzles use a subset of the 30 cubes devised by Percy Alexander MacMahon, but it is not known if the puzzle creators knew of MacMahon's cubes."

I have a puzzle that does indeed have 12 different possible shapes and fits together in a rectangle. You have connected the ends together as if it will be folded like oragami. Why?

</comment><comment><USER6> The green blocks have 14 possible locations. If you start at both the left and right end and look how those structures can fit, it simplifies the problem significantly.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is very similar to a math puzzle I have. there are 12 solutions, but it appears you have them linked in a chain. This is a famous problem.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://i.imgur.com/Uf86hRz.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Uf86hRz.jpg)</comment>


Cal Flyn: the terrible truths in my family history - <AUTHOR> http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/cal-flyn-the-terrible-truths-in-my-family-history/news-story/7785e4d89d6cd479139be969a88f4047 <comment><USER2> This is a part of our history that Australia has never properly accepted or dealt with. It's unfinished business for all of us.

(It's almost surprising that The Australian – our only national paper, published by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia – published this. They tend to have good indigenous coverage, but an excerpt of a book on the frontier wars? Wow.)

</comment><comment><USER3> People are not guilty of their parents crimes/behaviour. If you meet someone that has a parent that committed a hideous crime then we do not blame the children.

This also works the other way, if your parent is national hero that does not reflect on the children either. You should not take the credit for a parents good work.

Obviously it can be difficult for immediate children to take such a dispassionate attitude to parents actions but as more generations go by it should become easier.

<comment><USER4> Not only that, but everyone, bar pacifist peoples who could only survive if isolated, committed atrocities of one kind or another. Some peoples kept better records of their deeds, others not, or things get lost to time.

That's not to say one can't acknowledge that bad things happened in one's lineage (history), but to think one's lineage is worse than another is oversimplifying things or a case of selection bias, among other things.

<comment><USER5> > everyone, bar pacifist peoples who could only survive if isolated, committed > atrocities of one kind or another

That doesn't sound right. What makes you say that every family committed atrocities?

<comment><USER6> Because we all have a common ancestor that lived not that long ago[0]

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve)

<comment><USER5> That's a nonsensical argument. My parent comment referred to "peoples" in the plural. Your argument is that there is only one people, which is a contraction. The whole point of the discussion is to compare different peoples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Feeling guilt over multigenerational sins is kind of silly.

War and conflict is a messy business.

<comment><USER8> Exterminating a people for their land isn't war, and the blood isn't washed off when the kids get it.

<comment><USER9> At what point does the blood wash off? Are the Britons entitled to reparations for the viking raids? Should Mongolia make right Khan's conquests? Should Germany get back the land that was taken from them through the Treaty of Versailles? Or does this eternal sin only apply when whites did something to non-whites?

<comment><USER10> Descendants of Vikings and Mongolians do not current hold title over the land they have historically conquered.

The allies gave West Germany back to Germans in 1949.

The Soviets lost East Germany back to the Germans in 1990.

Whites being given back their land after losing the war did happen only recently.

South Americans had their land returned by Spanish and Portguese forcefully.

Japan had it's country returned. China had Hong Kong returned.

New Zealand Maori's received financial reparations.

So are you suggesting only everyone else get their land back, and indigenous australian's, well.. water under the bridge kind of thing?

<comment><USER9> Germany lost a significant amount of territory that has not been given back.[0] East Germany (and the whole of rest of Eastern Europe) to this day is much poorer than western parts thanks to half a century of Soviet occupation. I never hear anyone make demands for restitution regarding that bit of very recent history. Any way, the argument I was making was that at some point the blood clearly does wash off, and where you draw the line is arbitrary. Why should a white Australian feel guilty for the Frontier Wars but a German shouldn't feel guilty for the holocaust?

[0] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Ge...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Germanborders.svg/2000px- Germanborders.svg.png)

<comment><USER10> It was as recent as 1960 the government was stealing children from their families. Even now, they are behind on every metric, life expectancy, education, employment, homelessness. Everyday, the only indigenous I see are homeless on the side of the street begging.

I wasn't even born here, and I feel guilty.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Review of Backbone.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.decipherinc.com/n/blog/development-and-engineering-team/2011/04/backbone-api-and-events-models

<comment><USER2> This is the sharpest review of Backbone.js I've seen. A number of points raised by the author Kevin gives the feeling that he has a supernatural insight into why tradeoffs were made. Reading this review over, each point seems obvious, but that's how a good review should be. And these points were certainly not obvious during the planning for Backbone.

The conventions that served DocumentCloud well are conventions that work for many other web apps. I'd recommend reading this review multiple times if you're considering Backbone for your app. It hits on the biggest pain points that Backbone addresses and where you might need to find alternatives or where your own conventions may fit in.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I'm glad to hear I was on target.</comment></comment>


Scientists Demonstrate Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans - the-mitr https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-demonstrate-direct-brain-to-brain-communication-in-humans/ <comment><AUTHOR> Kinda boring to be honest.

The signal they are sending is very rudimentary (2 bits). And the communication is only one directional.

This is more of a tech-demo than any sort of break through. The article even discusses other teams that are trying for 3000 or more bits.

The sad thing is, this technology is probably _slower_ than connecting an implant to the nerves in your finger, and much more cumbersome. If the technology can only transmit 2 bits, this really is next to useless.

</comment><comment><USER2> > That magnetic pulse caused a flash of light (a phosphene) in the receiver's > visual field as a cue to turn the block.

Is that brain-to-brain really? It sounds more like ocular nerve stimulation derived from the EEG of the sender and it doesn't seem very far removed from having the sender push a button that turns on a light bulb in front of the receiver.

</comment><comment><USER3> At least this isn't being reported from Sparta, TN (aka Limetown)</comment>


I'll Tell You What is Causing Pain for Almost Everyone in the Western World - <AUTHOR> http://chrishugh.blogspot.com/2010/09/article-improve-your-posture-and-reduce.html <comment><USER3> I feel posture just aggravates existing muscular problems. Its good to understand the mechanisms that cause and perpetuate these problems.

There's the muscle sheaths that have stiffened by the lack of use of the full range of motion and the constant deposition of collagen, which literally glues the sheath to itself. This tight sheath can impair blood flow to a muscle, especially when the muscle is contracted for a long time. The contracting muscle presses out against a tight sheath. Blood takes the path of least resistance.

That lack of healthy blood flow can cause the sarcomeres, the contractile unit of muscle, to get stuck in their contracted position. This is how a muscle gets tight and actually shorter.

When a muscle gets very stiff, a trigger point can develop. A trigger point is just an area where many sarcomeres are tight. We certainly notice trigger points, but the muscle gradually hardens for a while before a trigger point develops.

The hard muscles are shorter and thicker and this makes manipulating the sheath to break up the collagen much harder. But if the muscle is softened first, it can be done.

Massage is how you soften the muscle and get the sarcomeres in it functioning again. Massage pushes depleted blood out and then new blood is pulled in from the capillaries.

But there's still one other factor and that is the way muscles communicate with each other to accomplish work. When one muscle is engaged, other muscles receive nerve signals to help. And if there is a trigger point in one muscle, other muscles are engaged via the nerves.

When trying to sit for a long time, tight muscles may be pulling you in one direction, requiring other muscles to have to work constantly to keep you upright. This is why maintaining a natural posture can be difficult. It ought to be something you don't have to struggle to do.

So you may have a tense muscles but it may be another muscle that is the root cause. All of the muscles need to considered and massaged in a systematic way.

<comment><USER4> Bingo!

Excellent point... "Stand-up straight" as advice is simply too simple.

Still, I think your good advice from Trigger Point therapy should be supplemented with some information from the Alexander technique.

You see, original article begin correctly in saying that "bones don't get tired, muscle get tired". _If_ someone could stand or sit without muscular tension, they _could_ avoid getting or aggravating trigger points.

BUT....

It's just that at point of being in distress, people just don't know how to do that. And there really isn't an easy instruction set that will tell most people how to do that because... trigger points and habitual misalignment causes people's sense of their bodily position itself to be distorted. Specifically, when your muscle is habitually shorted, it "feels" to the person like that muscle where it should be. So a person who say is told to "straighten their back" will do by tensing another muscle to fight _against_ their habitually shortened muscle. And so in practice, as you observe, "posture doesn't help".

Still solution to people's misuse of themselves _also_ has include something like a "hands-on retraining" of the body so the muscles and nerve learn together what "upright" actually means.

I'd link to Wikipedia on the Alexander technique but the article has gotten so crufty it's an embarrassment... Still, retraining of "use of the self" is an important compliment to any massage.

<comment><USER3> I think a lot of the problems are caused by shoes, chairs and toilets. We more fully exercised our range of motion every day before all of these things that made our lives easier and stiffer.

<comment><USER4> Yes, these things "cause" plenty of problems. But not by themselves - <USER2> unconscious adaptation to them is part of the mix as well. The pace of modern life also comes in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would have been about 20x as useful with pictures or videos to illustrate what the author is talking about.

<comment><USER6> Conditioning Research just posted about posture [http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2010/09/posture.htm...](http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2010/09/posture.html)

It shows a couple of videos and mentions the Gokhale Method <http://www.egwellness.com/gokhale-method> and Ageless Spine by Kathleen Porter <http://www.agelessspine.com/book.htm> also links to previous posts with further discussion like the Asian squat, and images/videos

You might find it useful

[edited to add] These direct links from CR should be more relevant [http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/posture- fun...](http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/posture-functional- training-and-b-squat.html) [http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/posture- age...](http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/posture-ageless- spine.html) [http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/esther- gokh...](http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/esther-gokhale.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Muscles Get Tired, Bones Don't._

This is simply incorrect, as are most of the conclusions that follow from it. Basically, many muscles can trade off individual contractile fibers to remain under tension all day without perceived tiredness.

You are not a stack of blocks and you can hurt yourself by pretending that you are. Your body includes tensile as well as compressive structures and the whole thing is tied together with a control system. You are not meant to stand up without reflex muscle contraction! (You also aren't meant to sit or stand in one position for very long, but that's a longer discussion).

I trained as an Alexander Technique Teacher, but for the technically inclined I'd recommend reading Moshe Feldenkrais's _Awareness Through Movement_ as an antidote to this way of thinking. See _Understanding Balance_ by Tristan Roberts for more detailed information about postural reflexes.

</comment><comment><USER8> The trouble with advice like this:

      Stick your butt out [...] Stick out your chest
      and fill up your lungs. Now tuck in your chin [...]

is that people interpret it to mean they should apply force to correct their habitual posture, which is like trying to bend something rigid back into place: it compounds the problem. Of course it's hard and often painful to do this, so we almost never keep it up (barring some sort of military regimen), which is probably a good thing.

What's really needed are ways to undo the rigidity. No doubt there are a variety of these. The most effective I've found is the Alexander Technique, an early 20th century form of bodywork that remains modestly widespread, i.e. it's not that popular but you can find teachers in most major cities. It's a curious, very gentle and non-invasive practice that is somewhat counterintuitive but in the hands of a good teacher (I tried three, only one of whom was good) delivers lasting results. I recommend it to anyone who likes to explore this kind of thing.

<comment><USER9> I highly recommend finding an Alexander teacher as well. I took Alexander classes through my university (it is common among musicians) with John Henes - a great Alexander teacher in Evanston, IL if you're in Chicagoland.

One day in class I particularly remember, prof Henes brought a balance board (one of those round boards on a ball) and asked us to balance on it. He then pointed out that the way we naturally tried to balance was to force the board down in reaction to movements. He taught us to instead balance our bodies, and if we were truly balanced, the board would be too when we stood on it.

<comment><USER8> Yes, the Alexander Technique is by far best known among musicians and actors, so much so that for many years it was thought of as an acting practice. (Of course Alexander himself was an actor and developed his technique while figuring out why he had lost his voice.) I think this is because these professions have a lot to do with how body and consciousness work together, and this is the area in which AT is very practical. To some people that might sound like gobbledygook, but when your profession depends on it you quickly go with what's practical.

The teacher I like best (who's in the San Diego area) told me that her dream was to get more athletes to realize how much they could get out of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where is the science? Show me some studies and experiments. This qualitative BS is worse than useless.

<comment><USER11> A study has shown that slouching may actually be better than sitting up straight.

[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article65231...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article652318.ece)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those interested, there's a book on this topic that is excellent and provides 8 postures improvements (complete with pictures) that will help keep pain away. [http://www.amazon.com/Steps-Pain-Free-Back-Solutions- Shoulde...](http://www.amazon.com/Steps-Pain-Free-Back-Solutions- Shoulder/dp/0979303605) \- there's also an Authors@Google talk by the author on Youtube (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yYJ4hEYudE>) if you want a taste before buying the book.

</comment><comment><USER13> A third option is leaning back in your chair. I find that I never get tired of sitting in this position.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, but you have to curve your neck forward, which seems to cause it to bear the weight of your head on a curved portion of the spine rather than a stacked one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article is not specific enough. I highly recommend finding an Alexander Technique instructor in your area. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_technique>

A good book I've read on the Alexander Technique is _How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live_ by Missy Vineyard. <http://www.amazon.com/How-You-Stand- Move-Live/dp/1600940064>

</comment><comment><USER16> Doctor here. Best things you can do are, in order: work out 4 to 5 times a week, eat real food (not to much, mostly plants), and get a standing desk. If you like massage, have at it. Brazilians, well, I don't know. The only Brazilian I know well is an art dealer who advocates Coca Cola as tanning lotion and has a 30' snake skin on the wall.

</comment><comment><USER17> A trick my mom taught me to find a neutral posture: Stand normally. Stick your arms straight out at your sides, palms facing straight up. Bring your arms down slowly, letting them rotate naturally.

</comment><comment><USER18> Taking up lifting as a hobby, especially squatting, has done wonders for my posture (although it is by no means perfect)

<comment><USER19> Yes, I am also quite free of back pains since taking up weight lifting. I do get sore occasionally, but that usually does not hurt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The Masai, most Brazilians, gymnasts (but only when they're actually doing exercises) and anyone who carries rocks on their heads for a living, have an upright posture."

Somebody would give a shot at explaining why (most) Brazilians were singled- out in this example?

<comment><USER21> Apparently we carry rocks on our heads for a living?

<comment><USER22> All that capoeira and streetfighting too. Must be hard to do with a pile of rocks on your head.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This excellent book explains many of the same ideas.

[http://www.amazon.com/Steps-Pain-Free-Back-Solutions- Shoulde...](http://www.amazon.com/Steps-Pain-Free-Back-Solutions- Shoulder/dp/0979303605)

</comment><comment><USER24> what about aeron chairs? They "suspend" me in a good position, whereas other chairs cause soreness if I sit for long periods of time.

What I've noticed from years of "sitting jobs", is that you need to keep the hips, lower back firing/moving. Exercise balls helps a lot. I love siting on exercise balls, as they keep the hips, lower back engage. While sitting on my ball and working, I can rotate my hips in any direction, keeping my muscles stretched/firing. Even those "sitting discs" work well: [http://www.amazon.com/FitBALL-Seating- Disc-12-Green/dp/B0011...](http://www.amazon.com/FitBALL-Seating- Disc-12-Green/dp/B0011YWOSK)

</comment><comment><USER25> I thought this article would be about internet explorer 6.</comment>


Prytek Leads $7.5M Round for Cyber Defense Platform Orchestra - <AUTHOR> https://prytek.com/prytek-leads-7-5-million-round-for-cyber-defense-platform-orchestra/ <comment><AUTHOR> Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity company Orchestra Group, has raised $7.5 million in the first funding round led by Prytek. Startup is targeting the defensive cybersecurity market, which grows dramatically, as Covid-19 crisis measures increase remote work solutions and companies' cybersecurity needs.</comment>


Virtual snake simulation with three.js - <AUTHOR> http://mrdoob.neocities.org/022/ <comment><USER2> thenormal, is this your project? If so, it qualifies for a "Show HN:" in the headline.</comment>


Time Warner Cable says there's no consumer demand for gigabit internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/4036128/time-warner-cable-no-consumer-demand-for-fiber-gigabit-internet

<comment><USER2> I am happy to see that Time Warner Cable knows what people want. Other people that knew what people wanted:

\- Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office (1876): "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."

\- H.M. Warner, Warner Bros. (1927): "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk"

\- Ken Olson, President & Founder of Digital Equipment Corp (1977): "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home"

\- Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft (2012): "Surface is the tablet people want"

Source: <http://www.rinkworks.com/said/predictions.shtml></comment>


Levchin Launches New Payments Startup, Affirm - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130226/exclusive-paypal-co-founder-levchin-launches-new-payments-startup-affirm/ <comment><USER2> Most of the replies here are a great example of a filter bubble. Living in San Francisco or New York you just assume everyone has a credit card.

Not so.

A quarter of US households are unbanked or underbanked and primarily rely upon cash for payments.

That's why Walmart introduced shop online and pay in person. Only 15% of Walmart's in-store customers pay via card, from surveys they found that two- thirds of their online customers would prefer to pay in cash.

<comment><USER3> That's actually quite interesting. It reminds me that Japan as a whole has very low credit card penetration as well, and the primary mode of transaction is cash, even for items costing hundreds of dollars (or tens of thousands of yen, to be precise). Use of 10,000 yen bills (~$100) is routine.

People still have latent mistrust for handing over credit card information online. Virtually all courier services have a "pay upon arrival" option which allows you to pay for the cost of the item + the shipping when you receive the item. The courier then pays the retailer for the item cost.

edit: It may also have to do with the fact that the financial services industry there is even more sales driven and more scammy than its U.S. counterpart, and hence the public has a mistrust for all financial "products" that are anything other than super conservative.

<comment><USER4> What sort of credit card penetration do other parts of the world such as Western Europe/Eastern Europe/Middle East/SE Asian Countries/Australia... other places.

Where do you get the information that you wrote about? I'd be very interested to read into it further. Anybody know any relevant works off the top of your head that you could share?

<comment><USER3> _Where do you get the information that you wrote about? I'd be very interested to read into it further. Anybody know any relevant works off the top of your head that you could share?_

Unfortunately this is from anecdotal experience. I was living and working in Japan for some time so I saw first hand what services are offered and how people behave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks interesting. I guess they're going through all of this trouble in "digital credit checking" because they don't assume everyone has a credit card?

There's probably a market for a very low friction payment system for high margin goods (e.g. virtual goods, or subscriptions), similar to just doing net terms, for individuals, online. Something where as long as you can guarantee an individual only has one account, you're willing to extend a certain amount of credit per user (not per transaction).

<comment><USER6> Even assuming everyone has a credit card, entering a credit card on a mobile phone is enough friction to cause the potential consumer to postpone or never make the purchase. It seems like Affirm would solve that problem.

<comment><USER5> I'd rather just put my amex into my iphone once (oh, wait, done already) and let Apple handle it. It would probably work IFF Apple and Android/Google both have a relatively compatible solution (from the merchant perspective).

<comment><USER7> What do you mean by "put my Amex into my phone once...and let apple handle it"? Is this a component of Passbook or something?

<comment><USER5> I mean in iTunes, and just buy stuff via iTunes. There are obviously many serious problems with that. (Apple's policies, 30% cut, etc.)

In practice what I do is just buy things from Amazon, whether it is on my phone or laptop, so the critical thing is being logged in to amazon.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <https://www.affirm.com/u/>

> Sign up with Facebook to buy online securely.

Really? The only signup option is via Facebook? Noooo thank you.

<comment><USER9> The entire point is that Affirm looks at data from your social network(s) to establish an alternative metric for credibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish somebody "solve" the problem of payments for people NOT in USA. That is something that seriously require solution.

<comment><USER11> This will eventually be solved by a bunch of people building solutions in different countries and one firm sweeping through and buying up the startups

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Levchin has money in most of the major payments startups so it's interesting to see him launch his own venture. I like the idea but the current site/demo doesn't really feel like the right execution. I suppose I should get to know it before making a decision.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have my reservations about the viability of a Klarna type approach in the US - where there is a high level of credit card penetration among the US customers. Since Affirm will require customers to choose that as a payment option, over other funding sources - Paypal, CC and others, there has to be a compelling reason for a customer to choose Affirm. And atleast in the US, where we are card-entrenched, and everyday we make it easier for customers to use their plastic - it's a tough value proposition for Affirm.

<comment><USER14> Affirm saves the user from entering cc info on mobile - a pain for many reasons. Just like PayPal on web.

<comment><USER13> Except that wasn't why Paypal became what it is today. The P2P aspect and sufficiently protecting the customer during early days of e-commerce is why Paypal became so big. Removing the need to enter the full credit card info - was a nice to have - and secondary, once use of Paypal became more ubiquitous.

Infact, Affirm would have to hope that customers will use anything other than credit cards to settle with Affirm - because it will be cost prohibitive for them to do that. They would have to find ways to justify the customer settling via ACH. Too little, too late imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At Spreedly we support 45 + payment gateways and naturally one of those is PayPal. One thing PayPal has pushed really hard in the last 12 months to us as a "partner" is "BillmeLater" So I'm trying to work out what part this is about ease of payment (feels like digital wallets will get there soon too) and how much this is about the fact you don't have to pay for 30 days (PayPal seems enthralled with it) Maybe it's both? Anyway there's always room for more innovation.

</comment><comment><USER16> Promising. Entering credit card information is pain, particularly on touch devices. Is Google Wallet their main competitor?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a very interesting take on what Klarna has done in Europe. Since there is such high friction to completing a transaction on mobile (pulling out your credit card number, entering it on a smartphone keyboard, etc), anything that makes the checkout process easier is going to be very valuable.

</comment><comment><USER18> Facebook as social proof (of creditworthiness !!) ? I somehow don't buy <no pun> it.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't be willing to delete my FB profile and start over for $50. If you tie a purchase to that profile, so I might be able to scam you for $50 _once_ per "real" FB profile sometimes, that's acceptable. What's not acceptable is letting a Russian organization scam you for N x $50 where N is as many random email addresses as they can generate.

Similarly, I'm not going to throw away my iPhone for $50. If there were a way to strongly tie an account to a physical iPhone, with no more than 1 account per iPhone, that solves a lot of problems. Then your only problem is if I make a piece of malware which goes to everyone else's iPhone, opens an account, and then somehow sends me the benefits.

<comment><USER18> _Then your only problem is if I make a piece of malware..._

Yes. Only the little problem of malware spread in the form of software on eternally connected devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Credit cards, Square and now Affirm. Yet another way to spend all your money without really keeping track of where it goes. :-)

But seriously, looks promising. Really hope someone would crack the mobile payments market.

</comment><comment><USER20> looking forward to see how this pans out.</comment>


Intel's Compute Card is a PC that can fit in your wallet - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/intels-compute-card-is-a-pc-that-can-fit-in-your-wallet/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original Intel announcement: [http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute- card/intel-co...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-card/intel- compute-card.html)</comment>


Canvas Gauges - <AUTHOR> https://canvas-gauges.com/ <comment><USER2> These do not appear to be accessible at all. If you use this on your site, I will not be able to read whatever you're trying to tell me, other than by making me look at source. Please don't do that. I know accessibility is hard, and the developers of this were just trying to make something that looks nice and gets the job done. Every time an inaccessible reusable {component, library, toolkit\, framework} is released, the inaccessibility spreads like a cancer to every single downstream project. What this translates to is a web, that for me, is slowly going dark. This sucks, but I don't see any way to fix it other than trying to be some sort of front-line accessibility cop when I see new stuff on HN. But I'm not an expert in all forms of accessibility, and I am already stretched thin trying to build my own accessible apps.

I don't have a good answer here, just a plea to consider accessibility when designing stuff that's meant to be some variety of reusable widget.

<comment><USER3> I'm the defacto accessibility guy at work, and I'm trying to think of a good way to present this type of data in an accessible way, but I'm having trouble. When the gauges are fixed, it would be pretty straight forward, but as the gauges change, I'm not sure of a good way to present that, especially when the gauges are moving quickly.

<comment><USER2> I would probably use an invisible aria-live region coupled with some logic to not spew messages to it too frequently or a minimum change to actually autoread. Could also do something like providing checkboxes only visible to the screen reader to subscribe/unsubscribe from gauge updates. I wonder if any actual web access experts could chime in?

<comment><USER2> This is the actual underlying problem, and don't think I'm not aware of it. Everything is inaccessible by default, and takes special code and knowledge to make it accessible, specialized knowledge that a majority of devs don't have. Heck, I'm swimming in this every day and I wouldn't consider myself an expert/not sure if my idea for making this particular component accessible would even be the right way (tm) though I'm pretty certain it would at least work.

Probably the long term answer is to just cure blindness. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER4> > Everything is inaccessible by default

In the early days of the web, when web pages were mostly text, and people weren't using tables for layout, things were a heck of a lot more accessible by default than they are now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Radial gauges are an example of bad skeuomorphism.

They don't convey any history and more importantly they don't have useful meaning unless you have a measurable first differential (i.e. no step change).

They're useful for literal physical speed, because the movement of the needle helps give a sense of acceleration as well as speed. But if you don't care about acceleration (or more generally the delta of the primary variable) then it's not helpful to have a needle wobble about.

And if that wobble is just artificially added (such as the bouncing thermometer) because it's responding to a step change in a discrete sequence, then it's now removed any sense of reality.

And I've seen even worse of gauges, for example for things which can't even reduce. There's no point having a speedometer type gauge for "percent complete" or other monotonic variable!

Sorry for the rant, you're just responding to a demand. It's a demand I'd rather see met through educating better data visualisation than through prettier gauges.

<comment> white-flame There's a reason that automobiles continue using radial gauges: They're the quickest way to convey a scalar value at a glance. It has little to do with acceleration. If you're going to have a monitoring dashboard, radial gauges make immediate sense.

(The wobble is dumb, though)

<comment><USER6> They take up a lot of real estate on a display and aren't particularly easy to read unless you get up close. If you already know what thresholds are it is far better to display a number and use the color to indicate where that is within the continuum of states.

There are practical uses for steam gauges, but I would argue that monitoring complex IT systems is not one of them.

<comment> white-flame Taking up lots of real estate on a display is kind of the point of high- visibility indicators.

Regarding "aren't particularly easy to read", are you talking about reading numbers on the ticks? That's not the point of those indicators; the point is to be familiar with the low/expected/high ranges of the needle for various situations and be able to see with clarity the current state of expected/unexpected range of an indicator. Which then can be further inspected if necessary to focus in and see an exact number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gauges generally make for a poor UI. Unless you need real time information to help grasp a change in value, please consider another way to showcase information.

Consider showing either a single number, or perhaps a bullet graph if targets, averages or historical values are important. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_graph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_graph)

<comment><USER8> I've done quite a bit of reading about digital dashboards, and agree. The first example in "Information Dashboard Design" is filled with gauges - and an explanation of why it's a bad design.

Edward Tufte's books are absolutely amazing, and filled with beautiful visualizations: [https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi](https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi).

Stephen Few has several books on dashboards/charting that are really practical. See [http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php](http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php) for a taste.

<comment><USER9> Why are gauges bad design? Or was it just that the screen was filled with gauges - too much information to be absorbed?

I design power plant control systems and part of that is an HMI using one of wonderware, citect, factory talk, etc.

In general where a number is primarily presented, on the screen where the controls are that will change that number, I try to use a gauge (mostly vertical bar gauges) to show the context for the number. The gauge shows what values are high and low by the scale and I put the low alarm, low trip, high alarm, high trip points on the gauge as yellow and red bands so the operator knows when the value is approaching one of those thresholds. If the alarm or trip is raised the bar colour changes to amber or red if it is alarm/trip so that when the alarm or trip appears in the sequence of event log and they go to the screen where they know what system is displayed it is immediately obvious which variables are over their limits and by how much.

I also usually put a line chart so the operator can see how the variables have changed with time.

I based much of the design on "Alarm Management for Process Control" by Rothenberg and "The High Performance HMI Handbook" by Hollifield and Habibi.

Edit: my vertical bar gauges look pretty similar to the bullet graphs linked by the parent. I generally call the circular car dashboard gauges "wiper gauges" because of the action of the needle I suppose

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks nice, I may use them.

I noticed in the docs you said they are great for desktop, mobile, or (emphasized) "IoT devices with limited resources". These run on the client side which means they won't typically run on IoT devices unless I'm missing something. What does it have to do with IoT?

<comment><USER11> I guess the author is talking about the small codebase, which means every IoT device that has some kind of webinterface has to store and serve less data (library is 10kb gzipped, while a high level chart library like d3 is 77kb). At least in the case where you don't serve libraries from a CDN..

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, that was I meant :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These are totally useless for people relying on assistive technologies, right? Tried VoiceOver and got absolutely nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for contribution. This definitely a good idea which I will take into account for next releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> About all this meta-discussion about gauges: What if an application requires constant real-time updates of a lot of little values? Say, a music sequencer? What if you have bars for things where the resolution matters, and then little gauges where you just need a rough ballpark estimate _that doesn 't take up a lot of screen space_? Yes, you can make an accessible music sequencer, and good headphones and hearing are probably more useful than look at a spectrograph or level meters. But still.

What about games? There should be more accessible games. But there will always be inaccessible ones and that's fine, too. Let them have gauges, too, why not.

These gauges can be used irresponsibly, yeah. You know what that reminds me of? Every other web thing. Imagine every time any program or article relating to images on the web is published discussion of it devolved into how images without alt tags are bad, and that images should just be a bonus on top of an accessible description. I'm exaggerating, but to make a point.

I think these gauges look really neat, and while I can't think of a use for them for myself right now either, well, let's come up with some, or don't. Let's look at the code and iterate on it if we want and post our findings. But all this _" oh, thing X! all the best practices related to X, let me tell you them"_ should be a thing on the side, not the predictable main event.

</comment><comment><USER14> I heard somebody say "it's a dashboard application, not the dashboard of a car" when discussing gauge components.

</comment><comment><USER15> For as long as I have worked in products, I have heard customers request and praise round gauge displays in applications.

I think they are amongst the worst data display widgets you can possibly use. They have terrible visual SNR, since most of the visual representation is just borders, backgrounds and other visual gimmicks.

</comment><comment><USER16> The bounce on that first thermometer-style gauge is just weird, and breaks the illusion. Who ever saw an alcohol or mercury gauge bounce like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is just demo to get a presentation of animation possibilities, it's up to user to define animation behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I made something similar, but a bit more accessible using SVG, that works in ractive (but would be happy to change it to vanilla js or react, if there is a demand) [https://www.npmjs.com/package/ractive- gauge](https://www.npmjs.com/package/ractive-gauge) it can be styled, or the SVG can be swapped out fairly easily.

</comment><comment><USER18> I prefer [http://justgage.com/](http://justgage.com/) less skeuomorphic and more modern looking.

Used by [https://freeboard.io/](https://freeboard.io/) which is a decent dashboard I have forked for some personal IoT stuff.

</comment><comment><USER19> Doesn't work on Ubuntu 12.04's Chromium. (Chromium 37.0.2062.120 (Developer Build 281580) Ubuntu 12.04)

<comment><USER20> Please update (perhaps by switching to getting Chromium from a PPA). Chromium 37 is nearly 2 years old, and is missing many features and many security fixes.</comment></comment>


A Tribute to John Perry Barlow - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2018/02/music-never-stopped <comment><USER2> Barlow and I worked together in 1991 at NeXTWORLD magazine as contributing editors. One day I set up USENET on his NeXT computer at his home on Potrero Hill (on a day when Spalding Gray dropped by for lunch) and later I tipped him off about the new WorldWideWeb a few days after TimBL first posted about the project on comp.sys.next.announce. He said (to Mitch Kapor), it "sounds rather like Project Xanadu emerging from the Matrix almost without design. This could be cool..." [1]

Many people naively tell me that Steve Jobs is their hero. I wish I would meet more who aspire to live like John Perry Barlow. He was good-natured, kind, and lifted everyone up around him (we posted his "Adult Principles" [2] on all the cubicles at NeXTWORLD). He had a noble heart; he made choices in his life that were not comfortable or safe but lived a principled life and found his own way. Above all, he had a sense of the tenuous dignity of man (humankind, if you prefer) and the need to defend ourselves with every means at our disposal, including poetry and theatre. I think the battle may be lost and he may be the last of his kind that I meet.

[1] [http://www.fortuityconsulting.com/images/barlow.gif](http://www.fortuityconsulting.com/images/barlow.gif) [2] [https://www.mail- email@example.com/msg08...](https://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg08034.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing. The "Adult Principles" is worth its own submission here.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Less than 2 weeks ago, over 50 comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16328995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16328995)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I also recommend this Wired tribute to JPB written by his friend Steven Levy: [https://www.wired.com/story/mourning-john-perry-barlow- the-b...](https://www.wired.com/story/mourning-john-perry-barlow-the-bard-of- the-internet/)

</comment><comment><USER5> A bunch of his (lyrical) work is available for free from the Internet Archive:

[https://archive.org/browse.php?collection=GratefulDead&field...](https://archive.org/browse.php?collection=GratefulDead&field=%2Fmetadata%2Fyear)

Here's a performance of the song mentioned in the article:

[https://archive.org/details/gd80-09-29.sbd.hinko.21926.sbeok...](https://archive.org/details/gd80-09-29.sbd.hinko.21926.sbeok.shnf/gd1980-09-29d1t04.shn)

<comment><USER6> 1980 eh? bold choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> paywalled

<comment><USER8> The music never stopped

A tribute to John Perry Barlow

The son of America's frontier—physical, psychedelic and digital—passes

Prospero Feb 18th 2018

by K.N.C.

HIS rough features resembled the hard Wyoming land from where he came. Sandpaper skin, deep gorges across his forehead and wrinkles alongside the temples like cracked, dry earth. A craggy, stubborn nose. But gentle eyes, narrow as if formed by squinting into the sun over years.

John Perry Barlow, who died on February 7th, was a Grateful Dead lyricist, cyber-pundit, cattle rancher and idealist. He embodied a vanishing America. His lyrics, like his lifestyle, were a world of cowboys, nature and passions. He was a literary heir to Walt Whitman, depicting a rugged American individualism, romanticism and freedom as wide as the Lower 48, with his boots pulled up and his hat worn low. "I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream/ I can tell by the mark he left you were in his dream/ Ah, child of countless trees/ Ah, child of boundless seas/ What you are, what you're meant to be" he wrote in the song "Cassidy" in 1972 with his childhood friend Bob Weir, a guitarist and singer for the Grateful Dead. His words depicted the freedom of the outlaw. Or it was the honour of the farmer in nature? Or it was hints of the Vietnam War laced within the Biblical story of Esau?

To the middle-class suburban teenagers who tuned in, turned on and dropped out, it seemed otherworldly. It was an era where the cowboy was replaced by the long-haired hippie, riding a chopper instead of a steed, dangling a joint rather than a revolver. But it was freedom all the same. The frontier was no longer beyond the horizon, but found by grace of LSD, exploring the wilderness within.

As a student on the East Coast, Mr Barlow dropped acid with Timothy Leary, and introduced the Dead to that professorial father of psychedelia. He resisted the call of Harvard Law School for a jaunt across India in search of a different form of enlightenment. He fell into songwriting like he fell into most things. In the 1970s he took over the family's Wyoming ranch (and took in a rowdy John Kennedy Jr as a cowpoke to straighten him out). To stay in touch with friends in the coastal cities in the 1980s, he plugged a computer into a modem and the modem into a phone line and dialed up the internet. It changed his life. The WELL (for "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link") was a precursor to the World Wide Web, where people could exchange written messages. It offered a new frontier, new freedoms. He didn't coin the term "cyberspace" but used it to anoint the net.

By 1990, groups that hosted online content were getting raided by the feds because of hacking or copyright infringement by their users. The Wild West looked like it was becoming less free. Mr Barlow co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, now a major advocacy group. The rancher and staunch Republican (he helped coordinate Dick Cheney's first congressional run) was now the first internet activist.

As the internet mushroomed Mr Barlow was its prophet, invited around the world to explain the new frontier to the suits. On February 8th 1996 in Davos, Switzerland, he wrote his most famous and controversial canticle: "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". To many youths just logging on, his words were electrifying—a rallying cry to keep the new medium a pristine Eden, an unsoiled frontier free of the wretchedness of "meatspace": governmental and commercial interests. It began:

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather...I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us...Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here."

The media dubbed him "the Thomas Jefferson of Cyberspace". Harvard Law School made him a fellow. FutureBanker, a magazine, named him "One of the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Services" despite his having nothing to do with financial services.

Yet to the more polished wing of the technorati, his declaration was plain looney. They had spent years serving on commissions, testifying before Congress and speaking to boards of directors about the importance of bringing law onto the network so that the internet could become a mainstream medium. And here was Mr Barlow, the barrel-chested space-cowboy dressed in black and trailed by groupies, spouting his poetic, juvenile pap.

Several years later The Economist dubbed it, perhaps unfairly, "a well-meaning stunt that captured the spirit of the time" (see article). In an interview with this newspaper on its 20th anniversary, he stated: "I will stand by much of the document as written." He mused: "Over the decades, it has been continuously fashionable to make a straw man of my declaration, to hoist it up as the sort of woolly-headed hippie nonsense you'd expect from techno-utopians like me...It's hardly the best thing I ever wrote and suffers many flaws, both cosmetic and substantive. But I'll live with it. And die with it, I guess."

He mellowed in later years. A heart attack in 2015 unleashed predictable puns on Twitter riffing on "grateful" and "dead." After being prodded to write his life's story—"Mother American Night" is scheduled to be published in June, co- written with Robert Greenfield—he joked to your correspondent that he suffered from déjà pas vu: memories that he can recall that never actually happened, as far as he and friends could deduce.

His critics could never see past his idealism. His fans, perhaps it can be said, took him seriously not literally. He was a poet of frontiers and of freedom, in whatever form they took. As he wrote in "Cassidy": "Faring thee well now/ Let your life proceed by its own design/ Nothing to tell now/ Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine."</comment></comment>


Super Powers that Wont be So Awesome in Real Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1lulta/super_powers_that_wont_be_so_awesome_in_real_life/

<comment><USER2> Why link to the reddit page instead of the actual item? Actual link: [http://www.bubblews.com/news/1083267-super-powers-that- wont-...](http://www.bubblews.com/news/1083267-super-powers-that-wont-be-so- awesome-in-real-life)</comment>


Russia wants to replace US computer chips with local processors - <AUTHOR> http://en.itar-tass.com/economy/736804 <comment><AUTHOR> I find it interesting that not so long ago we were all discussing back doors Chinese manufacturers might be putting in our systems. Now the world is worried about what we put in our systems that we export.

It seems over time this will create some very interesting market dynamics and all sorts of "secure" clones of various technologies in different parts of the world.

This is the beginning of the real cyber wars.. When technology is so complicated you can only trust things you've built from scratch with your own two hands. And even then you might have created some massive back door that could be taken advantage of without you knowing.

Seems like the basis for a SciFi Movie.. :-)

<comment><USER2> The cynic in me says that they don't want to avoid the US's surveillance so much as they want to insert their own. If it were another European country, I might assume otherwise, but Russia?

<comment><USER3> If the Itar-tass article is right, this makes no sense because the chips are destined for government computers and state-run companies. There are probably easier ways to snoop on those computers.

And why would Russia not be afraid of the NSA, after all they are a prime target.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a vintage calculator collector (one of maybe 30 left in the world) and I think it's interesting that the USSR tried to do this in the 70s with calculators. It didn't work well.

As a result of the effort, thousands of American calculators were disassembled and reassembled with Soviet cases and logos but American parts inside, so that Soviet bureaucrats thought they were using calculators made in the USSR. In reality, only a few calculators were made entirely in the USSR, and they were below the quality of American/Japanese/English calculators.

<comment><USER5> Sure but this isn't the USSR anymore. I don't know to what degree the relevant things are different. For one, Russia is nominally capitalist -- their properties are a bit iffy at best though. Compared to the USSR, Russia is considerably more open and free. And that might be just enough for good ideas to flourish and good R&D to happen.

Intellectual freedom and capitalism are more of a gradient than categorical. China is another example of this. They have been successful in some of their R&D efforts despite not being a Western liberal democracy. China has in fact produced their own chips, even if they aren't as good as what Intel and AMD are capable of.

<comment><USER6> The Chinese Loongson processors are MIPS64 architecture and fabricated by STmicro (French company). So one could debate how home grown they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The rule of thumb whenever you hear about a big hairy audacious _government_ project like this in Russia is: assume that someone had figured out how to fleece a bunch of taxpayer's money off that. 99% the project won't go anywhere, but all key people will get paid.

</comment><comment><USER8> So could someone design a "safe" operating system? Such that would distribute the workload on two computers from two manufacturers, so that if either computer was compromised by a different party, they wouldn't get any meaningful result?

<comment><USER9> Others have commented on here before about how that idea is incorporated into flight control systems.

Here's an example with the Boeing 777 that uses separate architectures:

>The aircraft has triple redundant digital autopilot and flight director designed by Rockwell Collins. The BAE Systems (formerly Marconi Avionics) triple digital primary flight computers provide control limits and commands flight envelope protection. Each of the three primary flight computers contains three different and separate set of 32-bit microprocessors, Motorola, Intel and AMD, to manage the functions of fly-by-wire.

\- [http://777boeing.com/boeing-777-cockpit/](http://777boeing.com/boeing-777-cockpit/)

<comment><USER10> If I remember correctly, that doesn't mean all three autopilots are talking to each other discussing what the best course of action is, it just means that when one fails or is shut off by the pilot that the next auto pilot system in line gets control.

If I also remember correctly, subsequent backup auto pilot systems usually only do the basics, so they can't compare and contrast with the first main auto pilot system on a lot of different actions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to win the lottery and ride a unicorn to work!

Seriously though, the costs associated with building modern chips are ridiculous. So much so the much of the future R&D work is being done by consortiums of companies like Sematech, who literally have billions of member company and government dollars invested in development.

</comment><comment><USER12> They should plan for an international market, not only for Russia government agencies... I would definitely buy one.

</comment><comment><USER13> They tried this in the Cold War. Didn't work. Will fail again for same reasons.

</comment><comment><USER14> Also for private European citizens it makes sense to buy hardware that is manufactured entirely in China or Russia. European governments have a long history of ruthlessly harrassing and destroying the lives of innocent citizens:

[http://courses.umass.edu/comm342/taubin.html](http://courses.umass.edu/comm342/taubin.html)

["The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" is worth reading, better than the movie.]

I'm not claiming that things are better in China, but at least Chinese authorities gathering data would rarely matter to a European citizen.

<comment><USER15> Please. Böll wrote about West Germany. But even in the 70s the situation was much, much better than it has ever been in Russia or China in the last century. And this includes both, freedom and social welfare. I can elaborate if needed.

<comment><USER14> I did not claim that the situation was as bad as in Russia or China. In Germany government harassment of "terrorists" and other unwanted elements was bad enough though. Heinrich Böll's treatment is well known.

It is true though that unlike today, Germany did have an actual terrorism problem in the 1970s.

<comment><USER15> Ok, seems we are actually on the same page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am sure still have the designs for those knock off ICL mainframes they copied from the single one they brought back in the 60's :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> Decentralization is never a bad thing.

<comment><USER18> Except for loss of economies of scale. Semiconductor fabs and nuclear reactors are just about tied for the most expensive industrial plants you can build.

<comment><USER19> It is not clear whether Russia is in fact planning to build its own top-notch (28 nm, 16 nm) semiconductor fabs. I assume they won't, at least not at first. Building "your own" ARM processors based on stock IP cores licensed from ARM Holdings and fabricating them on commercially available foundries in Europe or China looks like a reasonable way to escape the US-based Intel and AMD and should not be ridiculously expensive.

<comment><USER20> How would you know the IP cores are not backdored or the fab is not inserting flaws that cause backdoors[1]?

1 - [http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER- CHES.pdf](http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER-CHES.pdf)

<comment><USER19> IP cores are just source, right? With fabs, you at least have some choice.

<comment><USER20> I know almost nothing about this, but:

(1) IP cores can be bought as "binaries with API", not as source. This is cheaper, but much harder to inspect.

(2) I think that "compiling"[1] the source to some fab's process is not completely automatic (they "recompile" or "handcode" some "functions" to optimize power usage or max frequency), so you need to verify the "binary" is faithful to your source, including on the analog level. Then you need to verify the manufactured chip is faithful to the tape out[2] you verified, as a 3d apparatus, not just the xray.

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

2 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape- out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-out)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good luck, Russia, with sending yourself to dinosaurs.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Soviets have a long history of "copying" and locally fabricating clones of many western computer designs down to the chip level. See: [http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_convers...](http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000500644.pdf)</comment>


Show HN: Banana For Scale app made with ARKit - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/tr/app/banana-for-scale/id1294025227?mt=8 <comment><USER2> This is a good idea, however I'm disappointed at the accuracy of ARKIT, I doubt if this will be useful.

As soon as I saw people built ruler demos with ARKIT, I tried it myself. but it is very inaccurate. I was amazed how other people could make it so accurate in the demo video.

I just downloaded two of the ruler apps previously demoed with videos in the summer. They are as horrible as the one I made ...

not sure if I need dual camera phones to achieve accuracy. I'm using iphone 7.

<comment><USER3> You doubt a "Banana for scale" app will be useful due to the inaccuracy of ARKit???

I don't think you understand the use case here...

<comment><USER2> I know it's a meme.

but still, ARKIT is very inaccurate.

I doubt using ARKIT for measurement in general.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Alternatives to Team Viewer? - <AUTHOR> I have several machines around the country that I need to remotely manage. Team Viewer has been unreliable and I'm looking to move our organization away from it.<p>Can anyone recommend a better remote management solution? <comment><USER2> RDP ? Why doesn't anyone use the official protocol for remote desktop on Windows ? It's fast. I say this as a unix dev that likes to RDP into a Windows box to test stuff.

<comment><USER3> Many people don't think of RDP because it isn't great for support-type jobs: you can't share the screen with the local user. But for administrative purposes where that is not required it is a good way to go.

<comment><USER4> That's what "Window Remote Assistance"[0] is for.

"By following a few steps, you can invite someone to connect to your computer. After he or she is connected, that person can view your computer screen and chat with you about what you both see. With your permission, your helper can even use his or her own mouse and keyboard to control your computer and show you how to fix a problem."

[0] - [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is- windows-r...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-windows- remote-assistance)

<comment><USER5> yeah cuz i want to spend half an hour explaining how to send an invite to the CEO who cant connect to his email 5 minutes before a critical meeting....

in other words, teamviewer requires 0 user interaction

<comment><USER6> If you can create scripts that do that for you....

If it's a domain computer you don't even need that.

<comment><USER5> scripts are fallible, especially when the user is in another country with no access to the DC

servers is one thing, user support is another animal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let me add to this that in addition to OP stating that it has been unreliable I think there are two other big reasons to move away:

1\. TeamViewer is used a lot for Microsoft scams and AFAIK they don't care very much.

2\. Dark patterns. TeamViewer upgrade their protocol all-the-time and once one part has updated the others have to as well, forcing the cost on everyone. (And the pricing is outrageous IMO. When you can get a full office suite for less than the subscription cost of the remote support solution then something odd is going on.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Chrome Remote Desktop is the best solution I have used. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote- desk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote- desktop/gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp?hl=en)

<comment><USER9> It's difficult to configure chrome remote desktop for persistent sharing and autostarting, at least in linux. THen it times out every few minutes asking the local user to continue approving access. It doesn't seem to compete with teamviewer by design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Guacamole?

Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11744430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11744430)

</comment><comment><USER11> (a bit of port forwarding or VPN) + (VNC or RDP) ?

What you get from TeamViewer/LogMeIn/etc. is the zeroconf aspect of the experience, which in turn is because they provide of a central rendezvous/discovery point. If you know where your peers are, you don't really need an assisted remote management service.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.nomachine.com/](https://www.nomachine.com/)

<comment><USER13> NoMachine works quite well on a headless Mac Mini. You'll need a display emulator dongle to prevent OSX rendering artifacts: [https://www.amazon.com/CompuLab-fit-Headless-Display- Emulato...](https://www.amazon.com/CompuLab-fit-Headless-Display- Emulator/dp/B00FLZXGJ6?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Can anyone recommend a better remote management solution?

What of teamviewer's features do you need? Screen sharing? Forget RDP. Zeroconf / NAT punching? Forget VNC. And so on…

If the machines already are in a VPN and you don't need screensharing, RDP is probably the most reliable solution.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe you're thinking about Windows (you didn't specify), but if you happen to be on OSX, then a lot of people don't realize that iMessage in Messages.app has screen sharing built in. "Buddies" menu -> "Ask To Share Screen".

</comment><comment><USER16> You should list more detailed requirements. Are the hosts you manage behind network firewalls and/or NAT? Do you expect to be able to initiate requests in, or does the client initiate requests out?

</comment><comment><USER17> The best alternative that I've used for end user support is Remote Utilities: [https://www.remoteutilities.com/](https://www.remoteutilities.com/) They have an executable that non-technical users can easily download + run in addition to a version for unattended access.

</comment><comment><USER18> Relevant: [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4m7ay6/teamview...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4m7ay6/teamviewer_has_been_hacked_they_are_denying/)

It looks like there are several reports of folks being hacked via TeamViewer.

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://www.splashtop.com/](http://www.splashtop.com/) works very well for me.

</comment><comment><USER20> Some alternatives:

\- RDP

\- RealVNC (free for personal use): [https://www.realvnc.com/products/vnc/](https://www.realvnc.com/products/vnc/)

\- LogMeIn: [https://secure.logmein.com/home](https://secure.logmein.com/home)

<comment><USER21> Why is it downvoted, VNC based clients are very common and RDP (while not really optimal as replacement, has been upvoted a lot in another comment).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you are an Industrial Machine builder/Industrial OEM, you might be interested in our marketplace for remote diagnostic services. The remote screensharing tools are backed into the platform via WebRTC. We however don't offer remote control.

www.machiq.com

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been using join.me and HipChat's builtin screen sharing. Back in days, when I had to manage many Windows hosts, I've used Radmin ([https://www.radmin.com/](https://www.radmin.com/)).

</comment><comment><USER24> Check out Pertino [http://pertino.com](http://pertino.com) and Zerotier [https://www.zerotier.com](https://www.zerotier.com)

<comment><USER25> Team Viewer is about controlling a pc / Mac remotely. Like 'viewing' the screen...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It costs money, but there's always the BOMGAR box.

[https://www.bomgar.com/](https://www.bomgar.com/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been using SimpleHelp. Self-hosted. Not perfect but very good, reasonable cost. Install an agent or use a one-time app.

</comment><comment><USER28> I use nomachine, works on Linux and Windows. I have a VPN installed at all locations and the software runs behind that.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ammyy admin : [http://www.ammyy.com/](http://www.ammyy.com/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I have been using GoToAssist for around five years to connect to different client machines.

</comment><comment><USER31> there is FastViewer, don't know the cost and of course several free variants of VNC

</comment><comment><USER32> [http://anydesk.com](http://anydesk.com)

<comment><USER33> I've been meaning to test this - how is the video codec, they say it's much better than others?

I mainly use remote windows sessions for modeling/rendering with 3DS Max

<comment><USER34> Best alternative, but it's still in the making. Unstable on Windows XP and buggy sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there anything that uses h265 available for remote desktop?

<comment><USER35> Why would you want that? Pretty much no hardware natively support h265 and any bandwidth gains you might get are swamped by the CPU and latency cost with software encoding h265

<comment><USER33> New-ish desktop nvidia GPUs encode h265 natively, my gtx970 does anyway

<comment><USER35> Most people don't have newiwsh desktop-class GPUs. Particularly in the enterprise environment most remote desktop programs are born out of

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Alpemix very well for me. Small,fast,cheap.

</comment><comment><USER37> I like www.mikogo.com

</comment><comment><USER31> AnyDesk maybe

</comment><comment><USER38> Screenconnect.

<comment><USER39> After being both out by Connectwise, Screenconnect's new pricing model is horribly expensive now - I'm grandfathered but wouldn't touch it now. Simple Help is seems to at the point where Screenconnect was a few years ago - works, cheap, and good support.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Turn JS visualizations into data products anyone can use - <AUTHOR> https://www.blockspring.com/static_pages/launch

<comment><USER2> I think this is a cool idea, and the blog post made sense. This is a really nice way of making visualisations reusable.

Judging by how others have missed the point though, you might want to work on simplifying the pitch. How about starting the post with a simple diagram explaining the flow like:

(code your visualisation) -> (add the BlockSpring API) -> (we generate a web interface for your visualisation) -> (now anyone can use their data with your visualisation)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, mind me copying and pasting this until we have time to make a real diagram?

It's funny how much better other people can be at explaining your own product.

And thanks for your feedback. If you have any advice on the API itself or any other ideas, definitely let us know!

<comment><USER2> Feel free - all my comments are CC0 :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a JS visualization library. I don't see any special "anyone can use it" features. The demo sure seems to require the user to program in JS.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER4> Hmm, so maybe our blogpost was unclear about that.

The BlockSpring library just lets people post their own work onto the BlockSpring home page (www.blockspring.com).

Our library just lets you specify variables in your code that a user should be able to input. Then when you push it to BlockSpring, we generate a forms and other inputs so users can change these variables.

Truth is the BlockSpring library works just as well with non-visualizations. We just figured it was more obvious to have people changing colors in a graph, then adjusting some other input in a js script.

Does that make sense? We're still working on how to phrase this idea :)

<comment><USER5> I'm on the same page as the parent comment. It literally looks like any other Javascript graph framework.

There seems to be no additional tools added to make it intuitive for non engineers. You want them to run web servers, save text documents and edit JSON markup. Not a single one of my non engineering coworkers would ever make it through this on their own. Further, if they make a mistake in the JSON syntax they're going to be _ruined_. Absolutely no chance that they figure out what's wrong. JSON syntax is pretty straightforward for engineers, but others aren't going to understand the requirement of quotes, escaping, etc. The JSON markup has a ton of parameters that aren't explained and aren't super obvious.

I understand what you're trying to provide by what you've just stated, but this product definitely isn't that, unfortunately.

<comment><USER2> You've completely missed the point. The site is for developers who make visualisations to be able to allow users to use the visualisations with their own data. It requires you to first create the vis code, then use the Blockspring API to wrap the data source, then the website auto-generates a data upload form that populates the plot.

<comment><USER5> As someone unfamiliar with the product entirely, this point was very non- obvious. Especially since nothing on the original page linked to the main ui.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a pity I can't edit sample data in-browser. It would be much easier to do it in-browser for simple data sets - shorter feedback loop.

<comment><USER7> Interesting - are you picturing editing sample data when you are previewing a graph?

For example, on this page [https://www.blockspring.com/graph_templates/60](https://www.blockspring.com/graph_templates/60) and the preview modals, you could toy with the sample data so you get a better understanding of how the graph works?

<comment><USER2> I also think this would be nice - allowing in-place data editing and copy/paste would be great. It lowers the barrier to trying out the product, which will ultimately engage more people. I actually browsed away from the plot page when I realised I had to upload data to use it (even if I could download the sample data and re-upload it).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great feedback! We will definitely implement this.

<comment><USER6> Have a look at datawrapper.de - as far as I remember, they use handsontable for data table editing. Datawrapper visualisations are used by many journalism-related sites around the world - seems to be a successful model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks very, very cool. It's basically exactly what I've been looking for to make data journalism easier.

Do you offer some sort of API for using the web interface? I'd love to bake BlockSpring right into our CMS. Feel free to contact email@example.com if you'd be interested in discussing.

<comment><USER7> Thanks morgante!

The API for consuming graphs is something we're working on this week.

I'll definitely send you an email. We'd love to hear more about your use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting. I like the dashboard look 'n feel. Are you using a pre- existing JS library for the dashboards or did you develop your own ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks frenchhacker. We made some modifications to gridster for the dashboards. It's a great library, check it out - [http://gridster.net/](http://gridster.net/).</comment></comment>


Proton Native – React Native for the Desktop - <AUTHOR> https://proton-native.js.org/#/ <comment><USER2> Is this ready for production? Beta? Alpha?

I'm not super familiar with packaging desktop apps but I believe Windows programs need a .dll file or few. Is there something on the roadmap for setting up an MSI?

What about icons for system trays, alt-tabbing, desktop, and other locations?

<comment><USER3> It's not totally ready for production because the GUI library that I'm using is not totally polished. My part I would say is Beta, and the GUI library is versioned as alpha. For most tasks it will work fine. For more complex stuff you will obviously want something more robust.

With Windows, the .dll is compiled on npm install, and that works perfectly. Currently I don't think libui supports icons.

I chose libui because it is the only GUI library for JS that I could find. It is nice and fits well with React, but it does have some holes. The author is going to continue development soon, so some of the problems should be fixed in the future.

A MSI can be generated using an installer such as NSIS.

<comment><USER2> How is the memory usage compared to Electron?

<comment><USER3> Memory usage is a lot less. Electron has a full webbrowser running to display the page, which this uses Gtk on Linux or cocoa on Mac etc.

<comment><USER2> I'd love to see some benchmarks when you have a chance to update it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> How does this work in general, once one finishes writing a React Native app? As a developer, how would I get data from a server, same as a HTTP/AJAX call?

<comment><USER3> I don't really understand what you mean. To get data from a server, you can just use normal nodejs to send a http request. Usually you'll have it so that it works when a callback is triggered, such as a button press.

<comment><USER2> Looks like the answer is yes- I haven't done desktop developing, so I wasn't sure how it worked in these Javascript-wrapped-as-native apps.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: jmc – a new open-source macOS media organizer - <AUTHOR> https://jcm93.github.io/jmc/ <comment><USER2> I /really/ like Swinsain which looks quite similar, the only thing it's missing is Apple Music integration but I can't imagine any third party player will integrate with Apple Music properly. My music library is 1.3TB which is fine in iTunes until you enable Apple Music which loads a lot of metadata similar to genius etc...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, Apple Music integration is unlikely to ever happen here. If you're an Apple Music user, I would project that you're totally locked into iTunes for the foreseeable future.

I did use Swinsian for awhile. While, in broad terms, it satisfied a lot of my requirements in terms of pure functionality, I still found myself frustrated by certain parts of the interface. My criticisms of Swinsian would mostly boil down to small aspects of the design, usability and polish, which, taken collectively, made the experience of using it frustrating and subpar, at least for me. I wanted something that worked just as elegantly and looked just as nice as iTunes does (or used to).

The simple fact that Swinsian doesn't have an equalizer, for example, makes me really wonder whether the developer understands the needs and desires of the power users for whom Swinsian seems to be designed.

Also, an open-source media organizer run by a communicative/responsive developer is much better in the long term than a closed-source, totally proprietary application, in my view.

Postscript: If RAM and CPU use is of any concern, you might be pleased to find that jmc uses significantly less resources than iTunes, with generally superior performance. My personal library numbers around 30,000 tracks; memory use peaks around 200MB when scrolling through the entire library and generally hovers around 100MB.

<comment><USER2> Totally agree with all your points especially around the software being open source.

I got round to trying it out at home last night and at work today, it wouldn't add my music and just sat there with a scrolling pinwheel on both machines, I'll log a bug this week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks exactly like iTunes. Other than being "simpler" and only for music, how is it better than iTunes.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you've ever used iTunes to manage a large collection of music, then you've probably watched iTunes get progressively worse at managing that collection of music, while becoming progressively more bloated and full of cruft.

I thought about starting this project way back when Apple got rid of the album artwork view while in the songs view of your library. To me, that change was such an obvious mistake that demonstrated that Apple didn't really understand how people used iTunes. The Artist and Album Views that Apple provided to supplant the songs view were half-functional and incredibly buggy with large libraries, and often just played tracks and albums completely out of order.

Other examples include taking away the user's focus when skipping songs, not preserving selection when you leave and return to a playlist view, the track queue in general...I could go on. jmc tries to provide a smoother experience in all these areas. I would try it out!

But basically, continued fundamental missteps in iTunes' application design and engineering spurred me to write my own application to fix some of these glaring problems with the UI. I also wanted to fix problems that occur when you migrate your library to a new hard drive and provide better location management for media stored externally in general.

Even more broadly, I want to provide a fully featured hackable media manager along the lines of foobar2000, but for macOS, because macOS really doesn't have anything that's very good. jmc aims to do that, without the cruft and BS that iTunes is currently stuffed with. While it's not all the way there yet, it will be!

<comment><USER4> I hope you succeed because I really like Foobar2000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Our usecase is wanting a shared workplace playlist that everyone can contribute to, from their computers, with the host computer wired up to the sound system. Is jmc good for this? I got a sense it could be but wasn't completely sure.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks nice, I only wish it was for photos and videos as well.</comment>