Earliest Known Draft of King James Bible Is Found, Scholar Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/books/earliest-known-draft-of-king-james-bible-is-found-scholar-says.html <comment><USER2> Regarding this discovery, I would argue that debates about the _quality_ of the KJV translation are beside the point. This is a tremendous historical discovery, especially for historians of the early English Reformation. The KJV formed the mind of British Christianity for centuries, which in turn formed the mind of the British Empire. In other words, the KJV translation is important not merely for early Reformation studies, but for world history more generally. Anything that could give historians greater insight into the process of the KJV translation, as well as the theology (theologies?) of its translators, is a great discovery.

(A side-note regarding the Empire and Christianization: in the early centuries of the Empire, the British were primarily interested in trade and conquest, but not so much in evangelization and conversion of native peoples. The East India Company (EIC) was a good example of this: as long as profits and goods flowed in from India, the leaders of the EIC were content not only to leave native religions alone, but even to intermarry with native Muslims and Hindus and allow each wife to raise her children in her own particular faith tradition. Hence the creation of a new ethnicity: the Anglo-Indian. However, in the 19th century, an evangelical revival effected a sea-change in British Christianity, and thus the Empire became a vast instrument of evangelization and conversion. At this point, I think, the KJV became important for world history, rather than British history in particular.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Former Seminary Student here. Not really that significant for religious reasons. This is purely a Historical and Literacy in the Middle Ages finding. King James version is not very important at all in academia for theology besides historical understandings (My main focus and where I was going to do my PhD). We have the original documents that the King James used and we also have MUCH better originals than the KJ.

<comment><USER4> It's such a poor translation, it's unfortunate so many people still hold it as _the one_. My feeling is that being exposed to the KJV turns away a lot of people who might otherwise be interested in reading the Bible. There are so many others that are more accurate, use modern modern language, and are more accessible at the same time.

<comment><USER5> I don't pretend to know or especially care about accuracy, but the semi- archaic language of the King James Version gives it a certain authoritative- sounding zing that others may lack.

"Thou shalt not kill" sounds a whole lot better than "Don't kill" even though the former has two words missing from modern English.

<comment><USER6> This is interesting to me mostly because my favorite translation is often criticized for being difficult to read because of archaic word choice. Though in this case, a lot of that may be the 'directness' of the translation from the source language (Latin).

I suppose there's a sweet spot between how authentic-sounding the translation is and how complex the diction is.

<comment><USER7> > This is interesting to me mostly because my favorite translation is often > criticized for being difficult to read because of archaic word choice. > Though in this case, a lot of that may be the 'directness' of the > translation from the source language (Latin).

The only English Bible translation that I've ever heard criticized for readability because of the directness of its translation from a Latin (intermediary, obviously, as its not the original language of any of the books of the Bible) source is the original (before the mid-18th Century revision) Douay-Rheims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> First paragraph of the article.

"The King James Bible is the most widely read work in English literature, a masterpiece of translation whose stately cadences and transcendent phrases have long been seen, even by secular readers, as having emerged from a kind of collective divine inspiration"

From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale) "In 1611 the 54 scholars who produced the King James Bible drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as from translations that descended from his. One estimate suggests the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's and the Old Testament 76%."

</comment><comment><USER9> Could someone explain how it is that someone discovers something that is already in a University archive? It seems people are discovering these kinds of things every few years.

<comment><USER10> In this case, the notebook was long known to be there, but the relevant section had been cataloged as a "verse-by-verse bible commentary". What was discovered was that the verses are part of a draft for a new bible, instead of just being verses copied from an existing bible.

<comment><USER11> I love skipping straight to comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amazing! Although the draft is actually of 1 Esdras and Wisdom of Solomon, part of the intertestamental Apochrypha and not found in many editions that have only the New and Old Testaments. What happened to the translation drafts of the other 66 books? Does this mean we have more information on J. R. R. Tolkien's work (12 volumes) than we do of the original translators of the KJV bible (a fact that probably would have astonished and annoyed Tolkien)?

<comment><USER6> Why would that have annoyed Tolkien? He was Roman Catholic, and KJV is a protestant translation.

<comment><USER12> I meant he would be dismayed more because of his love of language and ancient translation, and contrasted to the distaste of his fans' excesses. But I looked it up, and I was surprised to find that he did read the KJV. "The exact Bibles in Tolkien's library are not publicly known, but he probably used the Catholic Douay Version, as well as the Authorized (King James) Version" [1]. "Tolkien knew well the King James Bible of 1611" [2]. [1] ([https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA63&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=tolkien+kjv+bible&source=bl&ots=hiFE8CebWi&sig=iiI1VgQDYhhGDkDZ4Y669MUGbXw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAmoVChMI44Hus4TQyAIVTJINCh2gmgMq) [2] [https://books.google.com/books?id=O5WvohegkLcC&pg=PA76&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=O5WvohegkLcC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=tolkien+kjv+bible&source=bl&ots=L1EVV2Gg9C&sig=2F39Hlp- wSzriv3NORmxlR71IWk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBGoVChMI44Hus4TQyAIVTJINCh2gmgMq)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Whilst happily an atheist, this is still fascinating.

Now does the draft contain the famous "Thou shalt commit adultery"? I bet they just blamed the typesetter but really ... :-)

<comment><USER14> Whilst I'm happily a Christian, I've always believed the same about that KJV mishap, somebody somewhere did something wrong. They are mere men after all.

<comment><USER13> I was always under the impressionist was a publishers mistake. It would be fun to find out the translators slipped it in ...

I would of course be very surprised anyone meant to put it in maliciously.

<comment><USER14> I think it was one of those "typo" issues we see today that really screwed up the final output. Like a tired scribe (or translator I guess) who totally didn't write an entire word, and then when they copied it over to be printed (I'm not entirely sure the way they did it, but I imagine they handwrote it first) it totally missed a word, but that's just my own view, I never truly researched it. Would be tough to figure out how and why without some sort of journal(s) from the translators themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _" The King James Bible is the most widely read work in English literature"_

I've read this many times, but is it true? Are there real sources to support this claim?

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's the article mentioned that contains the details of what was found in the draft.

[http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1619318.ece](http://www.the- tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1619318.ece)

It's certainly interesting to get a view into a the processes behind a a four hundred year old, geographically distributed, 50 scholar collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool. So what are the notes around John 10:36 say? That's always been a pretty contentious adding of a, "the" in there.

</comment><comment><USER18> Url changed from [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/origins-of-the- king...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/origins-of-the-king-james- bible-180956949/?no-ist), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER19> I feel compelled to add the link to the hilarious King James Programming site: [http://kingjamesprogramming.tumblr.com/](http://kingjamesprogramming.tumblr.com/)</comment>


Send a letter without leaving your chair - £1 per page - <AUTHOR> https://letterbug.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> Love the potential for this. It'd be great for businesses if they brought out letterheads, great for startups if they could run it as an API and pretty much reduces the cost to write to anyone in the UK from anywhere else in the world.

Kudos for a great, simple idea and a well implemented MVP.</comment>


Everyone Needs to Hear Macklemore on White Privilege and Race in America - <AUTHOR> http://mic.com/articles/107482/everyone-needs-to-hear-macklemore-on-iggy-azalea-white-privilege-and-race-in-america

<comment><USER2> I am so sick, sick, sick -- down to my bone marrow -- of this modern, hip, insidiously balkanizing form of racism.

> stealing black musical sounds and styles

I don't find myself building walls like this, constructing a fortress based around my ethnicity. I don't think of myself as white, or black, or really, anything at all. My body's coordinates in the DNA hyperspace just aren't very important to me! Yours aren't very important to me, either.

But DNA hyperspace coordinates seem very important to some people. They seem to think we should care about them very much and think about them much more often, and treat people differently based on them.

They also seem very confident when they declare just where to draw the lines of ethnicity. "This person", they say, "is black, and this person is white, and this person is, well, it's hard to tell, but we can be sure they're a person of color," and so on. And, incredibly, they seem very sure what innovations and pieces of culture belong to which groups.

To me, it's an incomprehensibly fine spectrum, and an impossibly complex graph of social interactions, and I would be hard pressed to say anything about it with certainty, but this type of person seems to know, somehow. They visually scan a person and easily ascertain whether that person is authorized by ethnicity to do certain things. Iggy Azalea _stole_ musical sounds and styles that _belonged_ to black people -- unassailable fact -- and she should give them back, and apologize, and never do it again.

Well, I actually think it would be good if we cared about ethnicity and gender much _less_ than we do now. I think that's actually how to be less racist and sexist -- to not care very much about ethnicity or gender.

I also reject cultural appropriation. Culture is like an infinite number of blenders recursively blending an infinite number of machine guns that constantly shoot out more blenders. Get used to it. Nothing is special, nothing belongs to you. "Your" thing is going to be reinterpreted unpredictably in other peoples' minds, folded, spindled, mutilated. You have no control over it, and nor should you.

To me there is one type of human, ONE. We're all basically the same. We're in an awkward time right now because a very thin veneer of difference in the form of languages and culture makes it easy to believe we're a bunch of different tribes and need to fear and distrust each other. I want to tear down the walls between us -- but this weird, annoying, dangerous mind virus is all about building the walls back up. Well, could you please knock it off?

Or go ahead and continue building the walls. Barricade yourself in your special fortress because you're an X, and encourage others to barricade themselves in their own special fortresses because they're Ys or Zs or whatever else. That's your choice. But please, please, please, stop claiming to be against racism, when really you'd love it if everyone would just be racist in the way you'd prefer.</comment>


ForgeFed: Federation protocol for interoperability with version control services - <AUTHOR> https://forgefed.peers.community/ <comment><AUTHOR> ForgeFed recently received NLNET funding, and is looking for contributors to work on roadmap items (and receive funding for that).

Check the detailed roadmap at: [https://notabug.org/peers/forgefed/issues/87](https://notabug.org/peers/forgefed/issues/87)</comment>


Why does Morocco love docker so much? - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0wkcjgj

<comment><USER2> it's related to sea port machine, not the linux container framework... look at the related topics [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Docker%2C%20containe...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Docker%2C%20container&geo=MA&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2)</comment>


How many kinds of USB-C to USB-C cables are there? - <AUTHOR> https://people.kernel.org/bleung/how-many-kinds-of-usb-c-to-usb-c-cables-are-there <comment><USER2> After buying a screen which has only a USB-C DP-Alt-Mode input, I was recently in the market for a matching cable. My only requirements were "it should be as long as possible, at least 2 meters" and "it needs to support DP-Alt-Mode".

Now I thought this would be easy, just ask Google what kind of cable I need, right...? Well... no. Not at all. I wasn't able to find any information whatsoever what kind of USB-C cable is needed for supporting Alt-DP-Mode. I guessed (really guessed, couldn't find information) a USB 2.0 USB-C cable wouldn't be good enough. But is a 5Gbps cable enough? Or is a 10Gbps cable needed? Or maybe neither and I need to buy one of those really expensive USB-C Thunderbolt 3 cables...?

In the end I just bought a 2 meter USB-C 3.2 5 Gbps and just hoped for the best. And indeed it works. Yay!

The thing is... I'm a technical person, and even I can't figure this out. How is a non-technical person supposed to navigate this?

And by the way: one piece of information I did find about USB-C and Alt-DP- Mode is that the current spec for Alt-DP-Mode doesn't allow use of active cables, so length is limited to 2 meters. That's another pitfall restriction.

<comment><USER3> The answer is supposed to be easy; it's "you need to buy one of those really expensive USB-C Thunderbolt 3 cables, because those cables—the ones that do everything—are supposed to be the _only_ type of USB-C cables."

USB-C cables are supposed to be universal, i.e. have all the features, all the time; and thus, USB-C cables _should_ (in 2019) be very expensive. Any USB-C cable that _isn 't_ very expensive (in 2019) isn't following the standard.

<comment><USER4> Note that Thunderbolt 3 is _not_ part of the USB 3.2 standard. It's the basis for USB 4, but right now to be fully standards compliant with everything USB-C itself can fully do you do _not_ need to be Thunderbolt 3 compatible, because thunderbolt 3 is not part of the spec at all.

And even if you wanted to be Maximum Compatibility even with Thunderbolt 3 you may not have that option as TB3 tops out at a cable length of 2 meters, and at that length you're dealing with half-rate bandwidth (just 20Gbps instead of the full 40Gpbs - which you only get up to 0.5m)

<comment><USER5> > _Note that Thunderbolt 3 is not part of the USB 3.2 standard._

It may be better to say that Thunderbolt 3 is a 'superset' of USB: TB is its own protocol, which allows for the carrying of USB over it (as well as PCIe and DisplayPort).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This only seems to be counting USB-C to USB-C _USB 3_ cables

The actual situation is much worse when you add in passive and active C-to-C Thunderbolt, MHL, DP, and HDMI cables, some but not all combinations of which may or may not optionally support some but not all combinations of other signals as well — eg) a passive TB3 C-to-C cable will support DP and USB3 (but not MHL or HDMI), but an _active_ TB3 C-to-C cable will be guaranteed to support only TB3, but may _optionally_ support DP.

Visually making a complex matrix of incompatible things look identical has resulted in an absolutely hopeless situation for consumers, who trained by decades of "connector shape == bus" think that USB-C is a monolithic bus that supports all of these different use cases and then don't understand why they can't "just", say, plug their USB-C Nintendo Switch (wired for USB 3.0 w/ a DP alt. mode signal) into a USB-C eGPU (wired for TB3) using whatever "USB-C cable" they have lying around, which could potentially support _none_ of the incompatible protocols either port can handle anyway.

<comment><USER7> It's a bloody goddamned nightmare. For example, a brief review of my devices:

>Phone A. Type-C port limited to USB 2 data speeds but supports HDMI out via DisplayLink.

>Phone B. Type-C port that supports USB 3.1 speeds but doesn't do video out.

>Tablet A. Type-C port that supports USB 3 speeds but only charges through a MicroUSB port.

>Tablet B. Type-C port that supports USB 3 speeds and charging, but only charges at 0.8 amps through the type-C port and relies on a pogo-pin dock for actual 15-watt charging.

That's not even mentioning all the devices that advertise one thing and then break the standard in a hundred different ways like the Switch.

<comment><USER3> I don't see your point. Devices are free to support or not support whatever capabilities they want. Having a specific port is no guarantee that the device will use this or that capability offered over that port; mostly it's a guarantee it'll use _at least one_ capability offered by that port.

The problem with USB-C is that many of the cables don't do everything. Nobody else is complaining that the _devices_ don't do everything. Devices have never done everything possible under the communications standards they support.

Would you expect a monitor that supports HDMI2.0, to be a 4K monitor, just because HDMI2.0 supports 4K monitors? I would think not.

<comment><USER8> If a device has an HDMI port I know I can use that to connect a display. I don't know details like the supported resolutions, but at least I know that's a supported use case.

If I notice that a device has a USB-C port all I really learned is that it has a USB-C port. Who knows what it does.

<comment><USER3> But that's _most_ port standards that have ever existed.

What can a device do with a parallel port? A serial port? A SCSI port? A Firewire port? Who knows? It's up to the device. It can certainly _send signals_ over that port, of some kind. But what kind of signals? Up to the device. The host can hopefully probe a device-class out of the client and stand up an appropriate driver to talk to it.

A CD player has a 3.5mm audio jack. Pop quiz: does it support SPDIF? In fact, is it line-level or phono-level output? (An important question to avoid blowing out your equipment!) Answer, in both cases: who knows?

You find a random CAT-6 drop in the wall. Does it contain Ethernet? Does it contain _Power-over-Ethernet_? Does it contain both? No way to know without asking someone or plugging it in.

Or, for a slightly more interesting example of a "port": what can a random peripheral board do with a motherboard's PCI-e (or PCI, or ISA, or any historical equivalent) port? Well, whatever it likes. Does anyone expect _every_ PCI card to be simultaneously a network card, graphics card, sound card, RAID card, etc., just because those are all things PCI can carry? Of course not. PCI-e is a single port, and a single protocol (sort of), but that doesn't mean it's a single set of exposed capabilities.

<comment><USER9> I think one of the things that makes USB-C particularly problematic here is that "plug it in and find out" can be harmful to devices since devices can draw 100W of power through the port.

<comment><USER10> > since devices can draw 100W of power through the port

Devices can only draw 100W of power, which is 5A at 20V, after negotiation; before negotiation (or if negotiation fails), only 5V is available, like in the older USB connector types.

<comment><USER11> Well that's the spec but I've personally had a Google Pixel melt its own charging port when plugged in with a cheap USBC cable off amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've had a USB-C capable device (MBP) for a few years now, and it originally was extremely annoying. Needing dongles for _everything_ was annoying, and getting rid of Magsafe meant a lot of my existing chargers that I'd accumulated no longer worked. My work laptop (at the time) didn't use USB-C, so I had to keep two chargers around, and I couldn't charge my iPhone from my laptop at all.

Fast forward a few years and I think it's great.

I have a dock at home that I can plug both my work and personal laptop in and have it work seamlessly with two 4k monitors, gigabit ethernet, mouse, keyboard, speakers, etc.

After biting the bullet and getting some USB C -> Lightning cables, I actually need to carry fewer chargers, fewer cables and everything sort of just works. The new iPad Pro helps a lot with that as well. USB PD means that everything charges faster, as well.

USB-C is sort of a nightmare until it's not, and that transition is basically an entire product cycle (or two) for people, which means a lot of time. At some point, I hope that issues like this become more identified in software (as mentioned), and cheap USB C cables that only have 2.0 support are less common.

Furthermore, while there was once a point where the physical layer matched up well enough with product support, actually connecting a display has always been a pain in the ass. Devices are still shipping with VGA ports because of it - USB-C is no panacea, but I think it's a huge improvement in aggregate.

<comment><USER6> With a MacBook Pro it's not so bad, because rather than try to save a few cents Apple wired every USB-C port for everything that it supports, so there's no real distinction between ports (but you still need to distinguish between very similar looking cables that handle, say USB 3.0 in one case and an active TB3 40 Gbps in another)

It's at the low end of the market that USB-C is an entire mess. _This_ port on your laptop can connect to the charger, but this one doesn't. All of them do 3.0, but this one does 3.1. This one does DisplayPort but not that one. None do Thunderbolt 3 but you had to read the specs twice and guess that from the fact it's just not mentioned. Hard for regular consumers to understand, and remember, when it all looks the same.

<comment><USER13> Except that even Apple forgot certain options in their 50$ USB-C charger and it is therefore non-compliant with specification. Apparently USB-C is hard.

source: [https://twitter.com/USBCGuy](https://twitter.com/USBCGuy)

<comment><USER6> Yeah that's a whole extra layer of fun. On top of the incompatible matrix of protocols you've got all of these devices (the Apple charger, the Nintendo Switch Dock, the Raspberry Pi 4, probably any number of cheap gadgets with bad USB-C ports) that don't even work with things they _should_ be compatible with.

USB-C is the wild godammned west.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Found this[0] some while ago on reddit. It shows the mess that is the USB-C cable market in a spreadsheet with every feature each cable supports.

It's crazy.

[0]:[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vnpEXfo2HCGADdd9G2x9...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vnpEXfo2HCGADdd9G2x9dMDWqENiY2kgBJUu29f_TX8/pubhtml#)

</comment><comment><USER15> So frustrating.

One would think that after nearly 2 decades of consumer confusion over USB cables that it would be possible to just mark the cables in a clear way with a non-confusing, easily looked up logo (or better, with a alphanumeric-code).

It makes me wonder if manufacturers are just doing this to increase the churn of cable sales, so consumers end up buying more cables because "some work and some don't".

<comment><USER16> That or it's a spectacular example of committee design failure.

I can't tell what runs deeper: evil or stupidity. :D

<comment><USER17> "Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

I don't have an attribution, but it's an apt quote.

<comment><USER18> > I don't have an attribution

This is called "Hanlon's razor" and, by the way, it is probably a silliest, baseless, most overused saying on the Internet...

<comment><USER19> No, the original razor is "never assume malice before having ruled out ignorance and stupidity". This is an ironic (and funny!) riff on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wish they would have also discussed how this relates to Thunderbolt 3, which I believe would add at least two cable types: "7 (TB3 passive)" and "8 (TB3 active)"... of course I'm probably completely misunderstanding this crazy labyrinth of lookalikes.

Here's a lovely statement regarding TB3 from an online FAQ:

Are all Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) cables created equal? No, in fact, there are two types of Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) cables, passive and active. Passive cables cost less and can reach up to 40 Gb/s data transfer if the length is 0.5m or less and 20 Gb/s if over 0.5m. Active cables can reach up to 40 Gb/s data transfer with a length of up to 2m.

<comment><USER21> Thunderbolt gets to be an entire extra dimension, thanks to cables that support thunderbolt but not USB 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I did NOT know about the Tree, SS Tree, and SS Tree 10 logos actually meaning something, but if that's what's required roughly a quarter of the problem solved.

Another quarter would be mandating clear markings for the Power Delivery capability: I suggest PD{amps}A OR PD{watts}W as text markings, and also the use of some color code; yes both.

The other 50% of this would be to REQUIRE that marketing use specific terms so that search engine results would be useful and to BAN re-use of those same terms if a feature is not supported.

Ideally that last step would include a suffix 'max' for indicating the highest supported tech protocol.

E.G. the current cable could claim (some lesser modes skipped) USB SuperSpeed, USB SuperSpeed 10 max, PD3A, PD5A max, PD15W, PD60W, PD100W max

While a lesser cable might drop bits from the enumeration of the specification. It would also allow searching by a wattage/amperage (in case it matters: E.G. some devices might support 5A but not the higher volts, others the reverse).

</comment><comment><USER23> There's always pain after a USB spec gets released. This has been pretty much par since USB 1.0 - switch chips were flaky back then, USB drives were quirky and getting them working on anything other than a specific version of Windows was a crapshoot, etc.

Eventually all-in-one chips get less buggy, cable manufacturing gets cheaper and we move on to the next spec level and repeat.

<comment><USER24> Yes, and I'm looking forward to USB-C ubiquity in the near future, but these are definitely signs that this rollout could have used some more thought put into it. I'm for "USB-C all the things" but I have sympathy for the gripes about knowing what to use when.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd prefer if articles like this tried to nudge the tech community towards using the (imho) clearer nomenclature recommended by USB-IF: "High Speed USB" for 480Mbps products, "SuperSpeed USB" for 5Gbps products, "SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps" for 10Gbps products and "SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps" for 20Gbps products, instead of USB X.Y Gen Z which is sort of ambiguous.

</comment><comment><USER26> This part at the end was intriguing...

> _Cables 2-6 are required by the USB specification to include an electronic > marker chip which contains vital information about the cable. The host > should be able to read that eMarker, and identify what its data and power > capabilities are. If the host sees that the user is attempting to use > DisplayPort Alternate Mode with the wrong cable, rather than a silent > failure (ie, the external display doesn 't light up), the OS should tell the > user via a notification they may be using the wrong cable, and educate the > user about cables with the right logo._

But how is the _host OS_ going to notify me that the cable is the wrong kind of cable to support display output, if it doesn't even know that I'm trying to connect a monitor on the other side? Can I fallback to legacy USB2 speed to identify the peripheral and then decide a higher speed cable is required?Would it have to be based on the user action of trying to toggle the primary display (i.e. Windows-P), triggering a prompt _assuming_ a monitor was connected and that the cable is the wrong type?

Perhaps rather than the _host_ trying to guess that, it would be better for the _peripheral_ to detect on its side that the cable is the wrong type, and then displaying a very helpful full-screen slide explaining the issue. In the case of a monitor, it could even include a QR code to scan with your phone to bring up further documentation, complete with Amazon affiliate links to buy a better cable, you know, because you know, _monetize_ all the things. </s>

</comment><comment><USER27> I recently bought a USB-C extension cable (so that I could have a USB-C port nearer at the front of a desktop computer instead of the back) and it came with this label stuck to it:

> USB 3.1/3.0 is supported on both side. USB 2.0 is only supported on one > side. If it doesn't work, please reverse it.

"Reverse" here meaning unplug one end and rotate the cable 180 degrees around the long axis. Or unplug both ends and rotate the whole cable around the long axis? Or try one end, then the other end, then both ends at once? Truly mystifying.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm particularly interested in the last paragraph. Is there anything out there that can read these emarkers and tell me the capabilities of a given cable? I have so many USB C cables that I honestly don't know which support what, so it'd be nice if I had a way to definitively determine their capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER29> USB has become an odd sort of universal standard where everyone's best bet is to stick with the cable that came with the device.

<comment><USER30> I follow with that result, we establish a causal $ reason for this mess - USBIF signatory manufacturers wanting to not compete with the aftermarket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is a complete and utter failure of standard setting bodies.

From a consumer perspective there is no discernible standard to speak of.

On the plus side the reddit spreadsheet (!!!) about these cables ffritz posted suggests most charge at either 60 or 100W which is fast enough so I'll just avoid USB C for data transfers entirely

</comment><comment> dfeojm-zlib USB-C needs a Nutritional Information-like label:

\- Speeds supported

\- Currents supported

\- etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> Does anybody know how USB4 will impact this? Will any cable that will be labeled as USB4 need to be full spec, or will there be a similar situation of cables with varying degrees of compatibility all labeled USB4?

<comment><USER33> If we assume that USB4 is basically Thunderbolt 3 that means full spec cables will be too expensive so they will definitely allow lower-spec cables. And if it keeps using the USB-C connector then all the bad old cables are still there.

<comment><USER34> IIRC USB4 is planned to be _exactly_ Thunderbolt 3.

What is needed is an easily identifiable branding, which I have some hope left USB4 will finally provide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Another really shocking thing I recently discovered was the maximum length on a USB cable. USB 2.0 supports a max of 5 meters (~16 feet). Meanwhile a USB 3.0 cable only offers a max length of 3 meters.

<comment><USER36> And since USB 4 will be Thunder Bolt, expect cable length to become even shorter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The standard absolutely needs to support the ability for computer and peripherals to detect what kind of cable is connected ... then we need consumer level implementation at the os to tell people when their cable is insufficient for the task they are trying to accomplish — with this, bring on all the cost saving measures for cables.

Without it — fucking idiot standards committees can go rot in hell for the blight they wrought upon the world ...

<comment><USER10> > The standard absolutely needs to support the ability for computer and > peripherals to detect what kind of cable is connected

The USB-C standard has always had that ability. There's a pair of pins on the connector dedicated to that.

On a basic USB-C to USB-C cable, the first pin of this pair is connected to the corresponding pin on the other end, and the second pin is left unconnected; on an USB-C to USB-B or USB-A cable, this first pin is connected through a resistor with a specific value to the VBUS or GND pin (which one depends on the connector type); and on a more advanced USB-C to USB-C cable, or on an adapter to something like DisplayPort, the second pin is also connected, to a chip which informs the computer about the cable's extra functionality (and also negotiates the alternate mode in case of an adapter).

The device on either end of the cable uses that pair of pins to: negotiate which end will initially be the "host" and which one will be the "peripheral"; detect when the cable is inverted; ask the cable about its capabilities; ask the other device to increase the power or change which device is supplying power; negotiate alternate modes like DisplayPort; and a few other functions. The only thing these pins aren't used to, as far as I know, is to distinguish between an USB 2.0 and a basic USB 3.0 cable; instead, the same method as the older USB-A or USB-B plug is used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> For anyone else who was confused by:

> A USB 3.0 capable USB-B plug was physically larger than a 2.0 plug and would > not fit into a USB 2.0-only receptacle.

recall that it's this USB-hubby one: [https://www.amazon.com/TNP-SuperSpeed- Connector-Bi-Direction...](https://www.amazon.com/TNP-SuperSpeed-Connector-Bi- Directional-Extender/dp/B0154MTY2S)

<comment><USER25> Oh, don't forget the sort of weirdo micro-USB 3 connector: [https://www.droid- life.com/2013/09/26/yes-the-galaxy-note-3-...](https://www.droid- life.com/2013/09/26/yes-the-galaxy-note-3-has-a-microusb-3-0-port/)

It is admirable to try to maintain backwards compatibility, but still it is pretty strange connector for mass consumer market.

<comment><USER39> The backwards compatibility of that connector on my S5 saved my ass numerous times. I really appreciate that design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Then there's also OnePlus Dash charge, which looks like a USB power brick with a USB-C cable. However the phone negotiates higher voltage with special circuitry in the adapter, so that kind of takes away from the 'Universal' in 'USB'. At least I now know that it might maybe work with a superspeed cable.

</comment><comment><USER41> I look forward to usb4, which will merge with thunderbolt and simultaneously add and remove complexity from this situation.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have never encountered a C-to-C cable with only USB 2 support. Are they are really a thing?

<comment><USER43> Most are in fact. When I searched for "USB C cable" on Amazon just now, I had to scroll to the 16th result to find a non-USB2 C-to-C cable.

<comment><USER42> When I search for "USB C cable" on Amazon UK, 90% of the results are A-to-C cables. The first C-to-C cable is an Amazon Basics 2.0 cable, so you are right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is one of the reasons why USB-C doesn't particularly interest me. USB-C doesn't provide any benefits that I value, but comes with an increase in complexity and potential for (sometimes physically damaging) error.

</comment><comment><USER45> > How many kinds of USB-C to USB-C cables are there?

Too many!

Any number greater than 1 is too many.

</comment><comment><USER46> Huh. This was unknown unknown for me–I didn't know didn't know. I knew how to check device ports for markings, but it did not occur to me that I must check the cables too.

</comment><comment><USER47> Nice! The list of six items is a more concise read than [https://blog.fosketts.net/2016/10/29/total-nightmare-usb- c-t...](https://blog.fosketts.net/2016/10/29/total-nightmare-usb-c- thunderbolt-3/) , which also raised some concerns about the profound differentness of many identical looking cables.

</comment><comment><USER48> In my oinion all USB-C cables should be identical and negotiation for power etc should be done inside the connected equipment, not inside a cable connecting the two pieces of equipment.

However it is an excellent opportunity to cheaply embed spyware chips inside USB cables with markings that cannot be distinguished from the genuine Electronic Marker chips.

</comment><comment><USER49> It is so sad how perfect USB C could of been, and then they had to make so many variants that aren't easy to tell apart from one another not immediately obvious. I hope they do some USB3 stuff where they start coloring cables on the end that conform entirely to a given standard.

</comment><comment><USER50> Here are the types, with names provide by me, what they would be called if USB-IF was sane and friendly:

USB-C v2a3: USB 2.0 rated at 3A

USB-C v2a5: USB 2.0 rated at 5A

USB-C v3a3 and v3g1a3: USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5gbps) rated at 3A

USB-C v3a5 and v3g1a5: USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5gbps) rated at 5A

USB-C v3g2a3 USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10gbps) rated at 3A

USB-C v3g2a5: USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10gpbs) rated at 5A

</comment><comment><USER51> It's so refreshing to read an article that starts out like a rant and ends with an actually pretty decent solution. I look forward to the day when all my devices can tell me if the cable I've plugged in is good enough or not

</comment><comment><USER52> What I want is for every display to have a USB-C port that can power an external thumbstick PC while transmitting video and audio in the other direction. eGPUs already work more or less the same way, so the technology is there.

</comment><comment><USER53> Much like TB3 ports that have a small lighting icon, all USB-C ports and cables should have an icon that explains what type of cable you are expected to plug.

It would not completely solve the problem, but I think it would reduce it considerably.

</comment><comment><USER54> It has become beyond ridiculous. We need to standardized around one cable. I get it, we can't have government doing this, but I'm at a complete loss for who else could? IEEE?

<comment><USER33> USB-IF already has certification but they aren't willing to kill off non- certified cables (which are 99% of the market).

<comment><USER55> I wonder if this puts them at risk of losing the "USB" trademark because they're not actively defending it.

<comment><USER56> Given the mess they've made is the certification/trademark actually worth anything? If what cable works with what devices is going to be a crap shoot anyway then it's not like it's a meaningful seal of quality to end users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Even if I have a good cable, what I find confusing is what to expect USB-C speeds to be between devices.

Say I mount my GH5 with my MBP. What can I expect the speeds to be?

</comment><comment><USER58> This fails to include Thunderbolt in the discussion, which is a major omission.

</comment><comment><USER59> So, if I always buy "USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10gpbs) rated at 5A", am I ok?

<comment><USER26> Apparently yes, unless you need Thunderbolt!

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Not to mention thunderbolt 3 even!

</comment><comment><USER61> At the risk of sounding like I'm making a parody of an XKCD comic -- [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/) \-- there does need to be a new standard physical connection that's compliant with TB3 and at least 100W PD. Then USB-C can be for backward compatibility and the new connection (USB-D? TD3PD?) can be future-looking only: no legacy support.

<comment><USER62> I don't honestly know why anyone would design a product that used 100W via USB. Even without the issue of dodgy cables, it just sounds like a bad idea and a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist. If I ever ran across such a product I would question their other engineering decisions and pass on the purchase.

<comment><USER33> This is used for charging laptops. Personally, I love having a single cable for power, USB, and DisplayPort.

<comment><USER63> You ever wonder what the purpose of keying connectors is? I'm curious, because it's one of those time-tested ways to ensure that things get plugged into the correct ports and avoid costly accidents. Really simple too.

Why on earth is a standard as ridiculously complicated as USB-C a better idea? What is the practical value of an "everything" connector when its spec is so complicated that it really doesn't support "everything" at all?

<comment><USER64> Unfortunately, using identical connectors for incompatible protocols — often hazardously incompatible (to equipment) protocols — is an equally time-tested industry tradition, and not only in more cost-conscious market segments.

High-voltage differential SCSI comes immediately to mind — one might imagine there'd have been enough margin and price inelasticity in the market for $200 cables used to connect rooms full of $20,000+ storage devices to support the development and manufacture of _slightly_ different connectors to prevent damage by connection to then-ubiquitous single-ended SCSI busses, but I suppose the projections for increased sales or reduced maintenance costs (for the vendors) due to redesigning the connector weren't high enough to justify a decision to standardize on different connectors for single-ended and differential SCSI.

Similarly, given that USB-C was essentially a _fait accompli_ on the drawing board, short of material risk of injury or death due to misuse of otherwise compliant cables, I'm not convinced any one player in the industry — or any group of players likely to collaborate on something such as this — has both the means and the motive to seriously suggest something better.

Why build a better mousetrap when the world can't afford to beat a path away from your door?

<comment><USER21> > identical connectors for incompatible protocols — often hazardously > incompatible (to equipment) protocols

The main actual hazard with USB-C is that somebody solders the low voltage power pins backwards. What that has happened, it could happen to absolutely any type of cable, so it's not exactly a problem with the standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Sounds like the Boeing 737 MAX problem (without the killing part).

</comment><comment><USER66> Really what were the USB guys thinking.

I had to 'fix' my inlaws computer today because some shovelware browser was autostarting, and had a banner across the top to change the autostart settings.

How am I supposed to communicate the finer points of USB-c USB 3 and all the various combinations to them, when I cant even keep track myself. USB was successful because it was plug and play, simple, easy to use. All the things USB3c isn't.</comment>


Best time of day to submit to HackerNews - <AUTHOR> http://blog.itlater.com/whats-the-best-time-to-post-to-hackernews/

<comment><USER2> Is that data only from the front page? In that case, it doesn't correct for the likelihood of making it to the front page.

<comment><USER3> Yep, it is: if you view the csv with the original scraped data, you will find the rank of submissions is at most 30. (Also, you would never get average point scores upwards of 20 and 30 if all submissions were considered. And you were probably posing a rhetorical question, but heck, I'll answer it :)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is possible that more interesting articles are posted in the afternoon due to the work habits of the people who actually create the content that is being linked, and posts linking these articles happening in a short time span.

It may be possible to correct for this by only including links that are for content that was already "old" at the time of posting?

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting that you didn't follow your own advice by picking a time in the afternoon.

<comment><AUTHOR> I made something that was of interest to me, so I thought to share it with like minded people..

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> While there's no doubt that some times are better than others to submit, I think it's best not to abuse this to get karma. It's nice having at least a couple hour window where self-submitted blog posts from members of the HN community have a chance to make the front page, but this goes away if people are spamming the system with random stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> I posted this chart in the other thread, based on the same data.

<http://tinyurl.com/hnrank>

Shows the fraction of #1 stories, by submission time.

</comment><comment><USER8> It seems HN never sleeps.

<comment><USER9> And that it's an international site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The title doesn't match the article.

The article is average points and comments based on submission time.

Appearance on the front page is a relative thing depending on the scores of the other articles. So if 20 articles all go through at "peak" submission time, nobody goes anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I would love to see is correspondence between points/page-rank and actual impressions the site gets.

I am assuming points have a better correlation with impressions (since readers are the ones who vote) than rank.

Anyone has any idea how to get better stats ?

<comment><USER11> Interesting idea.

Here's a small set of data:

[http://breckyunits.com/hackernews_data_visits_as_a_function_...](http://breckyunits.com/hackernews_data_visits_as_a_function_of_karma)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would be interested to see the data splitted out by day also. I can imagine, HN'ers are more active on fridays than on mondays.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is interesting. The thing that jumps out the most to me is that there's definitely not an order of magnitude difference. Thus, I don't think when you submit your story should be a concern. Quality and relevance have much, much bigger impacts.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can you do a days-of-the-week version of this? I bet Sunday doesn't look like Thursday.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added, and you are right. Fri to Sun is ~30% difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What time zone is this?

<comment><USER15> It is shown on top of the bar chart (UTC)</comment></comment>


The More Senior Your Job Title, the More You Need to Keep a Journal - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2017/07/the-more-senior-your-job-title-the-more-you-need-to-keep-a-journal <comment><USER2> That was moderately interesting, and nudged me to go and update my own journal for the first time in a while. That said, the author didn't mention one of the first things that jumped to my mind (for better or for worse) and that is "legal proceedings". That is, FSM forbid you should be sued for something, a journal could prove invaluable. Whether the journal itself is admitted as evidence, or whether it simply serves to help you remember some key fact that would otherwise have been forgotten, I can see how a good journal could save your ass in certain situations.

Of course the flip-side is that your journal could presumably be subpoenaed by the other side, but all in all, assuming you're really not doing anything dodgy, I think you'd be better off having one than not.</comment>


Healtch Check Response Format for HTTP APIs - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-inadarei-api-health-check-00 <comment><USER2> This is nice to see... I know we have been having internal discussions about how to best implement a system health check for our APIs as we migrate into a services based architecture across several different technology groups. I hope that it gets the traction necessary and makes it into a full standard.</comment>


Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans - <AUTHOR> http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm <comment><USER2> I think his criticism is a bit overbearing, if not a bit curmudgeonly (in a high-brow sort of way).

Yes, without question most SF published today is tripe. Yes, without question, Dick is a visionary genius. But he is not the only one. There is still excellent literature to be found in the genre. The works of Mary Doria Russell, for example. I would also include Ray Bradbury. I would include Neal Stephenson, but that might be stretching it.

The landscape is changing. Though the pulp SF publishers are not willing to take risks on real intellectual talent, self publishing is beginning to bring excellent work to audiences.

<comment><USER3> It looks like this was written in 1975. It is amazing how well the critique of the genre holds up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A fascinating read. I'm no fan of Dick (I am a raving Lem apologist, however), but the case made here is really compelling. Too, it's a nice _long_ read.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I am a fan of Dick, but before now had never heard of Lem. I found this a moderately interesting read but nothing that would make me seek out Lem's other writings. I'm curious what he's done that could inspire such esteem. Is there anything in particular of his you'd recommend?

Edit: thanks for the recommendations, everyone.

<comment><USER6> Do you want to start at the heavy end or the light end? Solaris is heavy. The Cyberiad (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad> ) is light.

<comment><AUTHOR> I second the recommendation of The Cyberiad... especially for people interested in computers, robotics, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. It's really brilliant -- and a very easy, fun read.

<comment><USER7> In addition to this, I recommend _A Perfect Vacuum_ and _Imaginary Magnitude_ , which both fall into the category of "books of reviews of books that don't exist".

I've never been able to get into his novels, though. Mind you I'm not really a fan of science fiction per se.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a fan of science fiction, but haven't been able to get in to his novels either. I think they're boring. His best stories, by contrast, are hilarious and very fun and easy reads.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps the issue is that, like so many science fiction authors, his ideas are interesting but his actual writing, characters and dialogue have nothing in particular to recommend them. In short story form, the ideas come and go quickly enough that one doesn't have a chance to get too bored with them. In a novel like Solaris, on the other hand, there's really only _one_ idea and it takes a hell of a lot of words for it to actually get out there.

Asimov is similarly bad at _actual_ writing, but his ideas are sufficiently good and they come sufficiently thick and fast even in his novels that he's still pretty okay to read.

In contrast an author like Neal Stephenson manages to write a science fiction story with _proper_ characters who are interesting to read about even when they're not expounding on some science-fictional idea.

<comment><USER6> It's harder to tell how good an author's writing is when it's in translation. The Cyberiad's writing was absolutely fantastic IMHO. But I can't say if the Polish original was that good. Lem's longer, more serious novels don't sparkle like that, at least in the English translation.

<comment><USER7> True, though good writing isn't just about good prose and putting well-chosen words in an appropriate order, it's also about more macro-level structure and tension and pacing and characterization.

<comment><USER6> Good point. However, would you say that Dostoyevsky has tension and pacing? I raise him because Lem does, and to my mind, Lem reads more like Dostoyevsky than like Stephen King. How about Dickens or Victor Hugo?

I admit that I don't know enough (I fail at reading Dostoyevsky) but it is counted as great writing despite lacking in the pace that modern readers desire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about Neuromanc--oh. 1984. Drat, that's a good 9 years later. Well, I was/am still very fond of Neuromancer and can't wait to get around to reading more of Gibson's other work, along with Dick's work. Does Lem address Gibson at all at any point?

</comment><comment><USER9> This essay is even more relevant now than it was in 1975, and the same reasoning can (and should) be applied outside of science fiction books.</comment>


TensorFlow-World: Simple and ready-to-use tutorials for TensorFlow - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/astorfi/TensorFlow-World <comment><USER2> This is a great start, and I find your code extremely easy to read.

I might suggest some example code for more advanced methods of data ingestion. All the code I see uses feed_dict, which is certainly the most straightforward, but once you start to try to ingest larger out-of-core datasets or use distributed tf, things get exceptionally complicated (to me at least).

Some simple-ish code with queue runners and the new Dataset API would really be helpful.

<comment><USER3> Have you found some good tutorials on these parts of tensorflow?

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately not. The docs on the Dataset API are quite good though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This open source project is aimed to provide simple and ready-to-use tutorials for TensorFlow. The explanations are present in the wiki associated with this repository. Each tutorial has a source code and its documetation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also, the Udacity course is a really good.

However, the example code here is amongst the cleanest I've seen.

Try googling how to do simple regressions, and run some of that code. I think there is one other program out of the dozens out there that come anywhere close to this level of clarity.

In fact, I think you may have used that as a starting point, in which case extra kudos for going out and seeing the state of the art.

<comment><USER5> I'd also recommend the Kadenze course: [https://www.kadenze.com/courses/creative-applications-of- dee...](https://www.kadenze.com/courses/creative-applications-of-deep- learning-with-tensorflow/info)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree it is a great course but it is not free!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank you for sharing with the world. Amazing work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ... It is my pleasure!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Agreed, this code is very well commented and easy to read. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your compliment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> And none of this code will work in TensorFlow 1.3 /sarcasm

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully not! Lol!</comment></comment>


LessAccounting, the Startup That Challenged QuickBooks, Sold - <AUTHOR> https://mixergy.com/interviews/lessaccounting-allan-branch-steven-bristol/ <comment><USER2> I met Allan at a conference a couple of years ago, and after meeting him, I recall skipping most of the sessions just to pick his brain about all things business — marketing, structure, etc. He's still one of the nicest folks I've ever met.

Months later, was connected with him again on Skype, and he remembered just about everything about our interaction, and once again, was super nice and helpful with all of my questions.

I also met Steven quite briefly at the same conference this year. Although we didn't talk for hours on end, he was also very kind, and very approachable.

Anyway, really happy for both of them. It's great to read that nice guys don't always have to finish last.

</comment><comment><USER3> News Summary:

They used FE International to sell the LessAccounting assets to American SMB Services. Took about 6 months to close the deal all together. They declined to disclose any $ numbers, but it was an all cash up front deal.

The interview is actually a really interesting interview to read.

<comment><USER4> The Wayback Machine is your friend.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160127001734/http://feinternat...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160127001734/http://feinternational.com/buy- a-website/)

Third listing.

A really solid, profitable business.

<comment><USER5> Yearly revenue $432,000 Yearly net profit $289,000 Asking price $950,000

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We use Xero.com. Its considerably "less shitty" than QB was for us. But I still struggle to wrap my head around basic accounting concepts and therefore require a bookkeeper.

<comment><USER7> If you're a programmer/CS type, then this is an excellent explanation of accounting principles in terms of graphs:

[https://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for- compu...](https://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-computer- scientists.html)

<comment><USER6> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a long time QuickBooks online user it should be noted that about 2 years ago QuickBooks did one of the best online reboots I've ever seen. The new website is way simpler to use and understand.

<comment><USER9> Intuit must have gotten some good web people because I've seen massive improvements in Turbotax's online product over the past couple years as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've seen their prospectus on FE International, and was surprised by some numbers. Interesting to listen to the founder's reflection now.

</comment><comment><USER11> Congratulations to Steven and Allan! Was an honor for the FE International team to be part of the process!

</comment><comment><USER12> Man, this is great. When I lived in Florida, I had a chance to hang out and cowork with Steve a time or two (this was perhaps 7 years ago?). Incredibly nice, very talented. I'm super happy for them!

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting, I suspect this is why the interview posting went up last week but was presumably very quickly removed (before I looked at podcast episode listings and attempted to download it).

</comment><comment><USER14> For those wondering, they sold to American SMB Services.

<comment><USER15> Given that American SMD Services has 8 employees on Linkedin, I assume it was a low value deal.

<comment><USER16> According to: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160127001734/http://feinternat...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160127001734/http://feinternational.com/buy- a-website/)

Asking was $950k which I gather was the ceiling. Did they have any investors?

<comment><USER17> Somebody might correct me but I'm pretty sure they were bootstrapped

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Allan and Steven are fantastic guys. Great to see them finish a successful exit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can we change the URL to the actual mixergy link: [https://mixergy.com/interviews/lessaccounting-allan- branch-s...](https://mixergy.com/interviews/lessaccounting-allan-branch- steven-bristol/)

<comment><USER19> Sure. URL changed from [https://twitter.com/Mixergy/status/739866196246290432](https://twitter.com/Mixergy/status/739866196246290432).</comment></comment>


Amazon Wants People to Pay for Podcasts - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-07/amazon-wants-people-to-pay-for-podcasts <comment><USER2> It's an obvious progression.

Make most podcast episodes free, for access to all episodes, pay a subscription fee to the podcaster.

As Apple is dragged its feet in this area it is no surprise that Amazon is doing the obvious.

It'll be good for the podcasting industry to bring a real mechanism in for subscriber payment. Advertising is dead since everyone started using adblockers.

The only problem I see here is that I hate Audible with the passion of a thousand burning supernovas. Podcast subscriptions will be epically mismanaged if handled by that crowd of bozos. Some of the worst user experiences ever are to be had with Audible software and business processes.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone familiar with $1M+ enterprise contracts? - <AUTHOR> I've seen enterprise contracts worth $100k+ per year but am curious what additional value gets added for contracts that reach $1M+. <comment><USER2> I think you need to clarify your question. Are you asking what the scope of a USD1M+ / year software contract would be? Large internationals easily pay the SAP and Oracles USD1M+ / year in maintenance alone.</comment>


Africats to the Purr-ymids: DNA study reveals long tale of cat domestication - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/19/africats-to-the-purr-ymids-dna-study-reveals-long-tale-of-cat-domestication <comment><USER2> What would we do without cat videos</comment>


Comment Flagging on HN as of Late - <AUTHOR> Is it just me or is comment-flagging becoming the default means of disagreeing here? Isn't that feature supposed to be reserved for anti-socially ridiculously deliberately offensive materials that need to be removed etc?
I'm also less and less convinced about this "points voting system" in which a downvote costs the downvoting person nothing, nor is any justification necessary.
I would like to see a flag require a submitted textual reason, and downvotes require a comment postulating a coherent and logical motive, that obviously needn't be agreed-upon, but some input of some kind to raise the bar needed to damage someone. <comment><USER2> On a similar thread a few months ago someone commented that another discussion forum they use requires one of a handful of pre-defined reasons for a vote (both up- and downvotes). It's a simple dropdown so it doesn't add a lot of friction to voting. Different reasons have different impacts on the commenter's reputation score (for example "hate speech" has a greater penalty than "low quality" and stuff like that). I can't recall what the site was called though.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a pandemic on. The entire world has cabin fever and is cranky as all hell.

This is not a good time to make sweeping policy changes in reaction to people being cranky and mildly ill-behaved in their voting patterns.

Trying to make systemic changes to address this is how the world becomes more draconian. It doesn't become more civilized when you double down on "All y'all assholes better behave, damn it."

During crisis times in my life, when the kids were spazzing, my answer was usually "Go to bed and get some sleep. You're tired and cranky and we can discuss this tomorrow after you've slept."

Being more hard-line controlling instead of kind and compassionate and wise is the usual answer in situations like this. It's also the wrong answer and one of the reasons we've inherited so much crap from the past.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have personally recently seen things a number of things flagged I really would have liked to have seen discussed. It's definitely taken seen an uptick recently.

<comment><USER5> Would you mind linking some of them?

<comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24045615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24045615) is the most recent example and the only one I remember off the top of my head.

<comment><USER6> In the very first reply, dang explains that the account was banned for repeated violations, so it's not just the content of that particular comment that got it flagged, but rather the account itself was banned so the comment was marked dead.

Frankly, however, if the commenter had wanted to create a discussion rather than troll, they could have used a vastly different tone. Just because there might be some interesting topic buried under the layers of sarcasm doesn't necessarily redeem it. If you want to discuss it, maybe you could elaborate on what you found interesting and post a separate response to the parent, and do so more civilly than this comment.

<comment><USER4> I missed that, dang commented that after I saw the post yesterday and I didn't bother rereading the comments today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who has the ability to flag comments, like is it one of those unlockable features when you hit X karma? I see that I can flag posts, but I've never seen the flag comment button.

<comment><USER8> If you click the timestamp of a comment it takes you to a page with more options. This is also where you can find the [vouch] link for comments that you think have been unfairly killed.

I think there's a small karma threshold of maybe 50 or so?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > some input of some kind to raise the bar needed to damage someone.

"Damage someone?" You're taking this too seriously.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does flagging happen automatically (without moderation)? That is, if N users flag a post, does it get flagged? Or does it tell dang that N users have flagged it, and he makes a decision?

I myself flag posts for hostility to other users, or for blatant shilling (political or commercial). I don't think I do so for much beside those.

<comment><USER11> > _Does flagging happen automatically (without moderation)?_

Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To add to that: not all up/downvotes are equal.

Sometimes I upvote something that I find very informative and interesting and sometimes because I mildly like it.

I personally only downvote stuff I find very hostile and/or low effort "noise". It seems that most people do it this way. Except in cultural discussions (includes tech culture).

</comment><comment><USER13> FWIW, I haven't noticed a significant change in flagging or downvoting comments, for the conversations I follow. However, there does seem to be a an uptick in flagging _posts_.

> I would like to see a flag require a submitted textual reason

Thought experiment: how could that be abused? And what would we do about that?

<comment><AUTHOR> sql injection? escape all inputs, lol.

go on though, I'm curious.

I was thinking "this person repeated the same comment 10 times" works as well as "they mentioned pudding and i hate pudding"... The bar to click down-arrow instead of up-arrow is lower than limbo-ing under a park bench ATM, that's all...one could inadvertently do it. One could go on a spree just downvoting every comment ever. "Just you try to stop me!" etc.

<comment><USER13> What happens when the content of a downvote comment itself violates the rules?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps more nuance is called for, by having a sliding scale of rating -1 <\---> +1

<comment><AUTHOR> oooh, kudos for floating-point usage! I like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I largely agree. I wonder whether people should have to pay (in points?) to comment, this would demotivate people who have just have nothing of value to contribute and those who are simply trying to gain points because it would be an investment. Is that a bad idea?

</comment><comment><USER16> +1 Same feelings, outlook and perceived quality of discourse exactly.

Couldn't agree more with the proposed countermeasures. Kudos for stepping up and proposing them.

<comment><USER16> For fucks sake. And I get downvoted for this? Are we serious?

I've been articulating the problem for months now as have others. Obviously there's no intention from the benevolent dictators of HN to change anything. That's fine. Their house, their rules. But I for one refuse to put myself through the toxicity of a troll-gutter.

I'm done here.

Bye

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Agreed.

</comment><comment><USER18> More politics, more flagging. HN is at times overwhelmingly political recently, and I'm afraid this will not get better until the election.

</comment><comment><USER19> Has this site had any UX/UI updates in years? I've always assumed assumed it's "done" and we just have to deal with what it is. I come here less and less because of how feature-free and bad the UX is. Everything is a click to another page, then click back to what you were doing. Why do I need to go to another page to favorite an article? It causes me to hardly use the feature because it's such an interruption.

<comment><USER3> Yes, they do updates to the UI. They do them so quietly and carefully that there is a persistent delusion (or meme) that the "UI never changes."</comment></comment>


Side Project Mistakes Developers Make - <AUTHOR> http://briangilham.com/mistakes <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone

Side projects have played a huge role in my career, friendships, and quality of life. I've just launched a free email course titled, "5 Side Project Mistakes Developers Make." It's a week's worth of lessons, one per day, full of stories, tips, and advice for planning, executing, and shipping side projects.

I've managed to ship 10+ side projects over the last few years while working a full-time job. While an email course can only scratch the surface of the lessons I've learned along the way, I'm think it provides value for anyone struggling to ship their projects. I hope you check it out, and I'd love your feedback.</comment>


Passwords Reset (Wordpress Plugins Hacked) - <AUTHOR> http://wordpress.org/news/2011/06/passwords-reset/

<comment><USER2> This is the timeline I see from when it happened?

[http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/timeline?from=06%2F21%2F11...](http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/timeline?from=06%2F21%2F11&daysback=1&authors=&changeset=on&update=Update)

<http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=G06rbb5a>

Actually, maybe that is the reversion log, yeah it is.

Trying to find what they did:

[http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?old_path=%2Fw3-t...](http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?old_path=%2Fw3-total- cache&old=399592&new_path=%2Fw3-total-cache&new=390000)

<comment><USER3> The diff is at: [http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&ol...](http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&old=399310%40addthis&new=395689%40addthis)

PHP's assert function ridiculously runs eval() on the code too, so to use their backdoor they just include code as their HTTP_REFERER.

<comment><USER4> The backdoors in the two other plugins mentioned:

<http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/399276>

<http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/399286>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Maybe someone gained svn root? <http://svn.wp-plugins.org/>

The problem is while WordPress has evolved to a secure way of not storing passwords but instead the salted hash, new passwords (and resets) are still sent in the clear via very insecure, plain text email, and probably archived forever on some services like gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc.

<comment><USER5> I can't comment on how the accounts were compromised (As I'm not part of those investigating) however I'm pretty sure I can say it's the accounts that were compromised (As the commits came from the plugin owners accounts) and not the svn server or svn root.

It looks like certain accounts were compromised, how? I don't know, It could be anything from the users having weak passwords, or even MITM attack/sniffing (Unsecured Wireless anyone? - I bet most of these authors have been to a WordCamp or 2) - But like I said, I don't know how, that's pure speculation.

WordPress.org (and the WordPress Software itself) has not sent passwords in emails for awhile now, except in cases where it's absolutely required.

When a user forgets their password, a email with a single-use url is sent, that link allows them to change their password. Yes, If their email is compromised, their account can be compromised.

When a user changes their password, It is not sent via email to the account owner or site administrator.

When a New install is created, If the user enters a password during the installation process, their password will not be sent via email. If they leave it at the default randomly generated password, it WILL be emailed to them, and they'll be asked to change it upon next login, They're expected to change it when they login.

If a new user is added to a WordPress installation, and the admin sets a password, they can choose to send an email to the user with their details.

It's all weighing usability vs. security against each other, the cases where WordPress Core sends emails right now that includes a password, is very minimal (and only in cases where it's actually required).

Some people choose to disable the password reset process entirely on their installations, If you have server access, or a decent ammount of knowledge, often it's an undeeded component.

<comment><USER6> "It looks like certain accounts were compromised, how? I don't know, "

Maybe they all had Playstations?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems it is time to do away with password authentication and start thinking in terms of pubkeys. I recently disallowed all password logins via SSH for all the machines where I can do this. Next, I am looking into authenticating sudo via ssh-agent through PAM (seems the code to do this is not available in standard Ubuntu repos).

If only more places were OpenID enabled, there would be less passwords to protect for the web.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, so what happens when your OpenID password or provider gets hacked?

<comment><USER7> I currently run my own OpenID end point and once anything but HN and Stack Overflow starts supporting it I will probably add two form auth and use client-side certificates for authenticating with it. Also Google supports two factor auth now and they are an OpenID provider too.</comment></comment></comment>


Scaling to 1M active GraphQL subscriptions on Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine/blob/master/architecture/live-queries.md <comment><USER2> Just another little shout out for Hasura here. It's a really lovely system to use and the team behind it are awesome to deal with. Super friendly and helpful.

We evaluated a lot of stuff recently before settling on Hasura. Prisma, aws appsync, postgraphile, roll our own socketio backend etc. I had a few hesitations about Hasura. In particular I was hoping to lean on Postgres RLS for the authorisation, and to be able to customise the graphql endpoints a bit more. After hearing the rational from the guys about how their system is better than RLS and seeing the patterns they have for implementing the logic I'm really happy we made the leap.

We're still in early days, but it's been really solid and a real pleasure to use.

(No affiliation, but happily paying for their support licence)

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, what is the rationalle for abandoning RLS?

In a previous project, I used Postgraphile and enjoyed it. Sure, RLS and PLPGSQL were a bit awkward, but I knew they were well-tested and had lots of eyes on them, so I felt comfortable that if an RLS policy blocked access to a row, then that particular role wasn't getting access. I also enjoyed working with a text-based format that more clearly fit within my other workflows of, well, working with other text-based formats. :)

Another part of it is that I'm blind, and Hasura seems to make doing things outside of its web interface somewhat painful. Sure I can write a YAML migration by hand, but the YAML migration format seems more machine-friendly than user-friendly. Yesterday I needed to create a function, and the SQL web interface wasn't showing me the line number on which my function had an error. Ultimately I dropped to the psql command line, cut-and-pasted the function in manually, and right away got back the line number and fixed the issue.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to hate on Hasura. But the fact that I can't just drop to a non-YAML text-based format and throw down a few checks to secure my tables has been an endless source of frustration for me. So if there _is_ a non-NIH reason for abandoning RLS in favor of a separate security system, then maybe knowing that might help me be a bit less annoyed. :)

<comment><USER4> I can't speak for the author, but having used RLS for authentication I would not recommend it. It complicates nearly every EXPLAIN plain, and it can cause performance headaches in even the simplest of queries.

We had to mark many internal functions as LEAKPROOF in order to get them to perform. It was not possible to move our database into RDS, so in the end we had to abandon the RLS authentication layer.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this. Lots of developers fall into the trap of discarding concepts because they aren't Facebook/Google scale solutions. The app on which I used Postgraphile/RLS was likely to have only a handful of users, so I thought more about solving the problem effectively than about whether the solution would scale, so RLS seemed like an airtight system. Knowing that it kills performance puts things into perspective. It at least suggests which tool might be best for which job. :)

<comment><USER5> I suspect many of these concerns were with PostgreSQL 9.5 and 9.6 where RLS did indeed have many performance issues. PG 10 fixed a large number of these issues, and PG11 even more. I would recommend re-evaluating RLS performance on these latest PostgreSQL versions.

<comment><USER2> In Hasura's use case it's a little different. They're working on the assumption that you have loads of identical queries that you want to run that differ only in the session variables (and hence the rows they see). Because they're outside Postgres, they can collate it all and execute a single query for multiple users. Within Postgres you don't have that luxury. It's a trade off, but not using RLS suits some use cases better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was curious about the code so I went to check it, it's written in Haskell, never seen Haskell before, it's really hard to follow for someone not used to it: [https://github.com/hasura/graphql- engine/blob/master/server/...](https://github.com/hasura/graphql- engine/blob/master/server/src-lib/Hasura/Server/App.hs)

Not sure how people enjoy FP.

<comment><USER7> Haskell and ML languages look like symbol soup when you're used to mainstream/C style languages. Once you understand some of the basic syntax they become quite readable and easy to reason about as a series of transformations.

Step one, which applies to most functional languages, is knowing how to read a Hindley-Milner type signature [1].

Armed with that you can often gain a surface level understanding of what some function does - and what the program does in aggregate - just by reading type signatures and seeing what calls what.

Hoogle [2] is a good resource for figuring out Haskell syntax, like what's up with all of those $ signs.

Converting OCaml to ReasonML syntax with sketch or reason-tools [3] makes OCaml less foreign.

With basic knowledge of Haskell and ML syntax you'll find many FP languages readable.

[1] [https://drboolean.gitbooks.io/mostly-adequate-guide- old/cont...](https://drboolean.gitbooks.io/mostly-adequate-guide- old/content/ch7.html#tales-from-the-cryptic)

[2] [https://hoogle.haskell.org/](https://hoogle.haskell.org/)

[3] [https://reasonml.github.io/docs/en/extra- goodies](https://reasonml.github.io/docs/en/extra-goodies)

<comment><USER8> "Quite readable" is a stretch... I know of no other language that needs a hoogle equivalent.

That being said, my experience with Haskell is limited to working on some meta-meta-programming research in college, where every file used at minimum 3 different GHC extensions. So I may be biased.

<comment><USER9> >at minimum 3 different GHC extensions. So I may be biased.

are you kidding? most files i see have all of these

[http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/#the- benign](http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/#the-benign)

<comment><USER8> Again, I don't have a clue what I'm talking about. But I seem to remember seeing a lot of those "dangerous" ones. If that's just the state of Haskell, my bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > we've currently fallen back to interval based polling to refetch queries.

This fancy "subscribe to events when the results of this query change" system boils down to just polling the database...

<comment><USER11> Yep. I'd love to see an implementation of this in the wild built on top of logical decoding:

[https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/logicaldecoding- explanat...](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/logicaldecoding- explanation.html)

<comment><USER12> Me too. Here are my thoughts on the current state of "realtime databases": [https://hackernoon.com/why-eve-will-be-perfect-for- realtime-...](https://hackernoon.com/why-eve-will-be-perfect-for-realtime- apps-92b965b80ad)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Hasura for around 3 months now. It has changed the velocity and way I approach our projects. I have a small team that works as a startup inside of a larger organization and this was crucial to delivering some key projects... plus very little code. The event trigger really help reduce our costs as well, using the Serverless.com framework with Lambda Go has been a huge success in our organization!

Thank you to the Hasura team for all you do and in turn allow me and my team to do!

</comment><comment><USER14> When I first saw Hasura, it was AGPL licensed which makes it unusable in a lot of use cases so we passed on it. Looks like they converted it to Apache license two months ago. I suppose it is worth another look, I'm glad they made the change.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hasura is such a promising application platform. I tried it a few months ago and was really pleased. In a way it kind of felt like RethinkDB, except GraphQL and Postgres. Was very easy to turn on with Docker Compose and play around. Looking forward to 1.0!

<comment><USER16> I guessed it would use the pub/sub capabilities of postgres. But it seems from the readme that it use polling, although using the same query which allows cache optimizations. The naive implementation can often be surprisingly effective.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. We experimented around a lot with pub/sub (listen/notify, wal-lr). But it was getting hard to scale and heavy/spiky write loads needed careful thought. This seemed like the right way to get started esp. given that Hasura can get the entire sql query including authz, before moving to tackling that problem more effectively[1].

For folks that want to play around with wal and listen/notify:

[https://github.com/hasura/pgdeltastream](https://github.com/hasura/pgdeltastream) [https://github.com/hasura/skor](https://github.com/hasura/skor)

[1] [https://github.com/hasura/graphql- engine/blob/master/archite...](https://github.com/hasura/graphql- engine/blob/master/architecture/live-queries.md#when-do-we-refetch)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As an Indian engineer, Hasura is one the few indian startups that i really am proud of. They are innovative, distinct, product focused and super young. The only other company which made me feel like this was Notion Ink, but those guys seem to have faded away.

I wish Hasura the best and would be cheering for them from the sidelines

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm impressed by the numbers, but I'm having some doubts about the general idea of exposing your database via GraphQL.

It seems to expose your internal data structures, and any change to those will immediatly impact that public GraphQL API. Also it seems that this approach would only work well for applications without any business logic, or with business logic solely implemented in the database. At least the applications I've been working on wouldn't fall into this category.

But in any case, impressive work and demos!

<comment><USER19> You aren't limited to a single database though, so you could stream your main database to a public facing one with a more stable structure.

But you'd have to handle changes through another API, or at least route them differently, and then worry about consistency so probably not ideal for all business cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> True!

We've added event triggers to Hasura to kind of support this pattern via Hasura itself. So you can create "action" tables that basically have a log of request data (a mutation inserts an action). Hasura will then call an event handler which can run with the action data, user session information, related data in case there are any relationships etc. This handler can then go update the tables that can be queried from.

Ofcourse, if the eventing system is in-order / exactly once quite a few use- cases become feasible ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hasura is fantastic. I am using it for several projects atm. Coming from Prisma it's refreshingly easy to use and well thought out. The security/ACL model is esp. nice and easy to grok.

</comment><comment><USER21> We evaluated Hasura and the only problem we found is the integration with our own authorization system. Otherwise Hasura is quite frankly amazing.

Our auth system has many roles per user, then each role has its permissions, pretty common setup. The problem is that Hasura expects a single default role per request to then evaluate against its permissions. The Hasura team has been looking into accepting an array of roles and merging permissions and whatnot, but AFAIK this hasn't been solved.

If you start with Hasura from scratch this is not really a problem, it happened to us because we had to figure out how to integrate Hasura with our current permissions.

<comment><USER22> > the only problem we found is the integration with our own authorization > system

But integration with external authorization systems is an extremely basic requirement for every piece of software, certainly on the top 5 on the requirements list for every serious solution - I can not understand how did you forget about this?

<comment><USER23> I haven't found this ("integration with external authorization systems is an extremely basic requirement") to be the case at all; most solutions ship with tightly-coupled access control mechanisms, and it is an exercise for the user to figure out how to wield them effectively.

In Hasura's case, it looks like the flow of data to the authorization bits shows a simple/naive approach, although it also appears this is something Hasura are working to correct. Even as it stands, moderately complex authz logic could be implemented via x-hasura headers or in-database associations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious about the underlying push tech. Is Hasura using firebase to handle that? Then firebase relies on different push services depending on the client, like Apple's push service for iOS and http/2's push for web (which is supported by what percentage of browsers)?

<comment><USER21> Firebase? No, not at all. It's all Hasura and Postgres.

<comment><USER24> What I'm getting at is what is the underlying tech handling push to clients? Reading further I see that the graphql libraries handle subscriptions via websockets. But elsewhere in this github I was seeing firebase. So it's a little confusing. Websockets are pretty ubiquitous now but but from what I understand maintain a tcp connection to the server. That has scalability implications.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you were probably looking at docs/sample-code for a firebase auth integration.

Hasura GraphQL subscriptions are over websockets. This post is a benchmark that should address those scalability concerns. It's about getting to 1M concurrent active websocket connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice scaling numbers. Can you use Hasura without Kubernetes or Docker?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can compile the binary yourself, but otherwise docker is the way to go.

What're you looking at?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know there's an issue about this but it doesn't really indicate Hasura's intentions regarding it:

Is supporting CockroachDB something Hasura is actively working on?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's on the cards!

Don't want to spread ourselves too thin too early. Also working with the yugabyte folks closely to have Hasura supported with their 2.0 release.

[https://twitter.com/karthikr/status/1128003465370693636?s=21](https://twitter.com/karthikr/status/1128003465370693636?s=21)

<comment><USER26> > Don't want to spread ourselves too thin too early.

I certainly understand that, but I wonder since CockroachDB is essentially Postgres, if it wouldn't be easier to ensure compatibility from the start. It seems like it'd be easier to just avoid using special Postgres features that aren't in CockroachDB than to go back later and re-write all your code that relies on those features.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. That's why cockroach & yugabyte that speak Postgres but are black magic underneath are a great target. However, it's not fully compatible quite yet [https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues?q=is%3Aopen+...](https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AA- sql-pgcompat)

Citus / timescale / pipelinedb are much easier and we already support timescale and pipelinedb well. Citus with native support for their distribution columns is going to happen soon too! These are packaged as Postgres extensions which is definitely first priority for us before moving to databases that speak Postgres and eventually to other databases as well. :)

<comment><USER26> > it's not fully compatible quite yet > [https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues?q=is%3Aopen+...](https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues?q=is%3Aopen+..).

So you're waiting for CockroachDB to implement features before you suppoort it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Write Ahead Logs would have been amazing - hate that AWS RDS does not support WAL - could have saved so much time for some of the applications we build.

<comment><USER18> WDYM by "RDS does not support WAL"? I wouldn't know how Postgres works without them, and they are accessible using logical decoding. wal2json is supported on RDS and used by tools such as Debezium for streaming data changes into Apache Kafka (Disclaimer: I work on Debezium).

<comment><USER27> Thank you, had missed this announcement.. I did check Debezium a while back, found it appealing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does it handle transactions and locking? It seem to support multiple databases, does it handle distributed transactions?

</comment><comment><USER29> I can't wait to try this out!</comment>


Looking for career advice - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN, I am looking for some advice from you developers out there. I have been a hobbyist coder for about 10 years, and love it. Mostly I have written small stuff to solve a problem that I found challenging, or read about.
About 10 years ago, I was in school as a CS major and during the summer I somehow got side tracked into the film industry, and have been doing it ever since. I really hate it, and have been telling myself that I need to find something that I love doing. This isn't something that I've just come to relise, but have been thinking about for 2 years now.
So trying to keep this short, I am a 34y living in Los Angeles with about 1 year of CS schooling behind me. I have about 2-3 years of savings to live comfortably and am thinking about pursuing a career in development. I would like to think I have an intermediate understanding of C/C++ and PHP, and am working on Python.
Would anyone give me some advice on what the next step is? Do I go back to school and finish my degree, look for a junior dev position? I don't want to leave my current job with out some sort of plan and I figure here is the best place for advice.
Sorry for the long post, but thanks for reading! Any help is appreciated.
p.s - I really don't like HTML/CSS and reading some of the posts about interviews and the white board scare the  out of me. I'm not good interviewing and would probably fail miserably even though I could solve most of the problems. <comment><USER2> If you have 2-3 years of savings and are not risk adverse, I would find an issue, either in your current industry or out of it and develop a product for it. With that kind of runway you can develop several product therefore greatly increasing your chances of successes. I don't know what the demands are in your industry but development is not all glamorous, HN paints a rosy picture but that is because it is a certain segment of the industry. Just taking a job in the industry could place you in a job that is every bit as bad as your current one. There is a lot of ignorance of what developers do and a lot of that ignorance is willful. It can be a trial to put up with it at times. It is the reason you see a lot of freelancers on HN trying to make the transition to a product based company. If I had 2-3 years I personally would develop a product. There are plenty of good ideas floating around, pick one you like and start building it.

As for the whiteboard don't worry about them, I lock up on them too. There are good companies out there that know they filter out good candidates, so a lot of people are starting to look at what you have built, not biased trick questions on a while board. If you come across one, politely decline noting that it will not accurately reflect your capabilities and let them know if it is a necessity then they can conclude the interview and that you will not take offense. Interviews are a two way street, I get an uneasy feeling from organizations that rely on the whiteboard and feel that they build one dimensional development teams, as such I try to avoid them, and generally try to bring the interview to a close as quick as possible when I see that they rely on them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do not think college will help you. Put the effort into teaching yourself C/C++, PHP, and Python. You can get the books you would have to read while in school anyway.

Then, build a resume of products you have developed. If you have been able to make some cool ones on the side, go with those. If you have an idea for a bigger one, but do not have the time, then maybe live off those 2-3 years of savings for half a year and work on the project full-time. You will learn a ton working on the project, you might make a viable business, and you will add to your resume for getting a job.

Best of luck

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel for you. Let's say that I am on the same boat right now and on the same stage of life. I am also looking for answers on the same question.

That said, I cannot give a good advice per se. But let me say this. Keep at it. Get involved with the developer community.

In fact, there is the SoCal Code Camp on January 28-29, 2012 at Cal State Fullerton. Check it out <http://www.socalcodecamp.com/> . I will be there.

<comment><USER5> I'm interested in going to this - perhaps even giving a presentation. The website said it will be updated shortly. Do you have any information for this event?

<comment><USER4> Info is on the site: <http://www.socalcodecamp.com/sessions.aspx>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the replies. I have thought a lot about spending some time trying to develop something for the industry. It is really surprising how bad some of the software is in film, it would be great to make something that is useful instead of everyone having to put up with the crap that is out there.

MarlonPro - I will be attending the code camp, thanks for that

<comment><USER4> Make sure to sign up for the FREE Geek Dinner after event's first day. You have to register on the event front desk early on Saturday. I guess there's only 100 tickets available for the Geek Dinner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you have the savings to live comfortably I would suggest you avoid a job. In almost all cases the ratio of awesome learning to repitition and compromise is tiny and it sounds like you want to learn how to do this profession well.

So some of the best practitioners do this for free - in open source development. Find a couple of established projects (mYbe in a domain you understand like film blender3d comes to mind) and join in. Progress from just compiling and testing the code others write to fixing one or two bugs (the time you are ready to contribute a bug fix is the time you look at a bug and say I know where that is failing)

from there most non-poinsonous projects will take you on -find a mentor in the project- does not have to be very formal - do things their way, their setup their indentation style, until you know why you will do it differently.

On the side set up and administer a real live service that has real live people using it. Could be a start up. Could be a saas for a local charity. The main thing is to get a feel for the problems of running a live service.

Do this for 6 months - year. Also exercise and eat well, you may as well. Check back here every few months and after six months, go look for jobs. You will be amazed how much less daunting that whiteboard.

Free advice - worth every Penny</comment>