First arrest captured on Google Glass points to a "Little Brother" future - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/07/first-arrest-captured-on-google-glass-points-to-a-little-brother-future/ <comment><USER2> This sort of reminds me of how Russia and its dash cams have sort of changed how people (such as myself) perceive the act of driving. In the past, dash cams were largely limited to police officers on patrol, but now anyone can put one in their car for $40 and have it set to record as soon as the ignition is turned.

Some dash cam videos that have made the news recently include the following:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_ufuY5W7K0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_ufuY5W7K0) (plane crash in Afghanistan)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHqFDsKq5DA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHqFDsKq5DA) (plane crash somewhere in Russia)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y66OHiB_p4I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y66OHiB_p4I) (meteor in Russia)

I think that Google Glass will lead to more videos like the one linked and the ones I included. Perhaps we'll eventually have just news dominated by reports by a single individual as opposed to a reporter and a camera man.

<comment><USER3> One part that's currently missing from Google Glass and that sets it apart from the dashcam example is the ability to continuously record on a circular buffer, mostly due to constraints in battery life. But once that's possible I would expect many interesting videos to start hitting the internet, as you could essentially save the last x minutes of video to file.

A good example of this is the video of the SFO crash landing. It was somewhat unlikely and miraculous that someone just happened to be filming at that time, but in the future there might be tens or hundreds of videos from all the eye witnesses. And not just for this event but any other.

It's interesting to think about other repercussions of such technology. From the innocent (such as a large increase in the amount of embarrassing videos on YouTube) to important (such as reconstructing a crime event (think boston bombing)) or scary (blackmail?).

<comment><USER4> Technologically it's really only a matter of time before storage gets to a point where keeping months of coninuous 1080p video isn't a big deal, it'll fit on a square cm and cost a pittance.

But that's not the scary part.

The scary part comes later, due to massive increases in computing power. Imagine a world where, say, computers with terabytes of RAM and thousands of high performance cores are run of the mill server systems. And then it's not just a matter of people storing data but _analyzing_ it, and collating it, deeper than we think is even remotely conceivable today.

Face recognition, voice recognition, biometrics, kinematics, writing style, and of course metadata will make public an astounding amount of information. A video of a random group of strangers will be trivial to index and identify every individual through the above techniques. A shockingly detailed account of everyone's lives, where they've been, who they've met, what they've purchased, and so on will be determinable using, eventually, relatively little cost in computing power.

Here's an example, let's say there are only a handful of pictures or videos from inside your apartment, imagine if every book on your shelf, every knick knack, every belonging was automatically identified and indexed. It's a world that rapidly spins away from any sort of world we're comfortable or familiar with but we probably won't figure out how to deal with it until well after we've been subjected to the worst abuses and invasions of privacy.

<comment><USER5> > Face recognition, voice recognition, biometrics, kinematics, writing style, > and of course metadata will make public an astounding amount of information. > A video of a random group of strangers will be trivial to index and identify > every individual through the above techniques. A shockingly detailed account > of everyone's lives, where they've been, who they've met, what they've > purchased, and so on will be determinable using, eventually, relatively > little cost in computing power.

Indeed. I can't imagine it will be many years before we see a similar video, except now with a Terminator-style overlay (that the wearer also sees in real time) indicating the name, age, occupation, marital status, etc. of every person. I've never been afraid of technology before, but this really doesn't seem to me like a future society I'd like to live in. "Oh look, that girl over there just got dumped according to Facebook." "Haha, that guy that dresses like a bigshot really flips burger for a living!" "That family over there is from France." ... and so forth.

Others in this thread have said that it's just a gradual line of change from everybody carrying cellphones with cameras and an Internet connection. I sort of disagree. Even after smartphones became ubiquitous, it's not socially acceptable to obviously point it at strangers. Pointing your glasses in their general direction is, though.

I wonder if I'm just going through the same line of thought my parents did when they realized the Internet was here to stay in every part of life.

On the other hand, there's always masks :-)

<comment><USER6> Technology was supposed to make our lives easier and allow us to work less. Instead it gave us new ways to judge people.

<comment><USER7> ... and made our lives easier and allowed us to work less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this counts as "Little Brother", then I would argue that we've already reached that point. A year or two ago, I recall seeing many stories of outrage that police were confiscating phones after people filmed arrests. Fights like this get filmed all the time in high schools.

Granted, people don't recognize Glass as a film device at the moment, but I'm sure there was a short time where people didn't recognize phones as filming devices either. Once they recognize Glass too, is there any difference?

I'm not trying to say that Glass doesn't raise privacy issues, but I think this is a poor/insignificant example.

<comment><USER9> Once it gets to the point where data is being uploaded live, it won't matter if the physical device gets confiscated.

<comment><USER10> This is already possible with phone cams. Apps like QIK and Livestream, even the ACLU has their own. May or may not be possible with the severely underpowered system that's in the dev edition of glass, but that'll only be refined over time :)

<comment><USER11> The only thing keeping me from using this is that video normally includes audio (and,indeed, it's somewhat important for context), but I'm not sure whether California's wiretapping laws (or some other?) would get me in hot water if I recorded someone else's conversation. I'm pretty sure this is a both-sides-must-consent state for audio recording, and I'd not want to have to go to court to claim that things said in public (e.g., when an officer of the law is detaining you, or someone else) aren't private.

<comment><USER12> If it's in a public place where there's no particular expectation of privacy - in particular, if you are not party to the conversation but can clearly hear it and are visible to the parties talking - it doesn't seem like it would run afoul of recording laws.

 _The statute applies to "confidential communications" \-- i.e., conversations in which one of the parties has an objectively reasonable expectation that no one is listening in or overhearing the conversation._

[http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-recording- law](http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-recording-law)

<comment><USER13> Note that this is the same justification the authorities use for actions like warrantless GPS tracking of cars or recording of phone call meta-data.

That you have no expectation of privacy about where your car moves because someone could just follow you around. When dashcam videos are all instantly uploaded to youtube, and you can run license-plate recognition on the entire database to track someones's car around, then we might start getting concerned. And while I care a little about the FBI's ability to constantly track my car for reasons of principle, my concerns get a lot more practical when my boss is tracking my car to make sure I'm really sick or not going on job interviews.

<comment><USER12> I don't disagree that it's potentially a problem, I'm just saying that as someone recording in a public place you're unlikely to be running afoul of wiretap laws.

We should be far less concerned about personal cameras (wearable and/or phones) than fixed security cameras, anyway. We're probably on a fixed CCTV 100X as often as we're being recorded by personally-carried cameras. Worry about Glass and other such devices is just a red herring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Widespread sousveillance ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance)) is the path to the right kind of future!

<comment><USER15> I don't want my snoopy neighbors to be photographing me at every time of the day. I am not doing anything to deserve that level of suspicion. Not even criminals deserve this level of surveillance, it is abhorrent nonsense out of 1984. And we accept it just because we change the 'sur' to 'sous' on the grounds that the government is not allowed to do it?

Believe me, if constant personal surveillance in every moment and place becomes generally socially acceptable, there will be nothing to stop 'surveillance'.

<comment><USER16> There won't even need to be any surveillance; the gov't can just review the sousveillance footage.

<comment><USER17> Sure, but we'll see 'em when they do, and then we'll see 'em again when they try to act on the info they've gathered, etc.

We'll vote them out of office if they abuse their knowledge, because we'll know they've abused it.

<comment><USER18> I think my sarcasmeter just pegged.

<comment><USER17> I choose to believe the US system of checks and balances isn't broken.

<comment><USER19> It may not be broken but it definitely has been co-opted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Everybody nowadays is walking around with high quality cameras in their pockets that can be switched on within a few seconds. Look on youtube for tons of smartphone video of fights, crimes, arrests, etc. I still fail to see how Google Glass changes anything.

<comment><USER10> The difference between:

        * Retrieve phone from pocket/purse/backpack
        * Unlock phone
        * Launch recording app
        * Start recording (ensuring phone is in the right orientation)
        * Hold phone out in front of you in an uncomfortable way so you
          can both record and see what you're doing.

and:

        * Tap on temple or say "OK glass, record a video"
        * Look at what you want to record

The passivity and ease of access of Glass is its greatest asset, and precisely the reason it's a game changer.. Replace recording with looking up something online, same thing.

One feels contrived and annoying (the tech being in the way of what we want to do), the other smooth and natural (the tech just simply doing what we want).

<comment><USER21> The first list is missing one bullet (at the bottom):

* Possibly get arrested

<comment><USER22> I don't think the significance of this can be understated. Two reasons:

One, I think the act of pulling something off of someone's face is a lot different from pulling something out of someone's hand. It's subtle on the surface, but crossing that kind of social boundary on a regular enough basis could be exactly the tipping point that turns public opinion against law enforcement on a broad scale.

Two, as the technology and form factor mature, it'll simply be harder to tell whether something is/contains a camera or not.

<comment><USER23> Have they come out with the prescription lenses version of Google Glass yet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> David Brin has been predicting/talking about this for over a decade now. Sadly a lot of people are only familiar with his Sci-Fi work, his non-fiction work is equally interesting.

[http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html](http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> You know, seeing this video of google glass is a crowd... We thought iphone thefts were bad? Once people realize the value of google glass, whats to stop a criminal from snatching those off the user's face? An iphone at least has the protection of your pocket. Snatch and grabbing a pair of $1500 google glasses is going to become a major problem.

<comment><USER26> It'd be quite easy for Google to lock these down. For example, don't allow a new account to be used on the device until the previous account has been deactivated by the owner. If you don't have the owner's password, it's worthless.

In short: make a proper anti-theft system and publicize it loudly. Word will get around, and there will be few thefts.

<comment><USER27> You don't think there would be a way to "jailbreak" the Glass and get around a software lockdown?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What are the current laws regarding filming people without their consent in the US & other countries?

Thinking about:

\- public vs. private space

\- minors

We have some very specific laws on these things here in Japan, which would (should?) extend to cell phones & camcorders. Google Glass is just one more recording device

<comment><USER29> The bad thing about glass is that you can't tell if you are recording or not. You can't just go and challenge every person at the beach wearing glass, and when it becomes popular, it will be abused.

<comment><USER10> I thought there was a light on the outside of the view prism when recording was happening?

<comment><USER29> Come on, we're hackers! A pesky light is asking to be turned off all the time.

<comment><USER10> You think the average Glass user will disassemble the device (which teardowns would seem to indicate is a one way operation) just for the purposes of disabling the recording light so they could record on the sly?

Aye, we're hackers, who are a minority of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This reminds me clearly of "A Scanner Darkly." That is Phillip K. Dick's prophetic novel where a surveillance grid consisting of half of the population, the scanners, spies on everyone else.

"Whatever it is that's watching, it's not human, unlike little dark eyed Donna. It doesn't ever blink. What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too."

</comment><comment><USER31> I think it just a matter of time we see the first movie of a fist being planted on the face of a glass wearer. Agressive people who notice that the are being recorded often direct their anger to the person with the camera.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if the police will be more paranoid about witnesses videoing them doing their job in the future?

Well, how do you like nothing to hide, nothing to fear now?

</comment><comment><USER32> Actually, if Google Glass catches on, we would all become _knowing_ video subjects. I'm not sure what the author is complaining about. Right now I can buy a pinhole camera and start recording people and they would genuinely not know it's happening. If I had Glass, people would at least know.

</comment><comment><USER33> The battery on Glass works for about 1.4 hours, probably shorter if you were continuously recording.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yesterday I was watching helplessly innocent person getting beaten up by some goon. I could have easily recorded a video and uploaded some where. Is there any other alternatives like a tiny camera I could attach to my glasses(not Google glass)?.

</comment><comment><USER35> Oh yeah, this couldn't have possibly been captured with one of the millions of cell phones capable of recording in HD. We're all doomed now that they stuck it on a pair of glasses.

<comment><USER36> Sure, and the iPod won't change anything. People can already use their walkman to play tapes wherever they want. Why would they need an iPod?

People don't walk around with their phones out in the air recording everything because it isn't convenient. The more widespread this gets and the ease with which we are able to store every second of video has very obvious privacy implications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Little brother? What a farce. Let's be a bit more realistic here.

The hardware and software for truly synthesizing the vast quantity of video based data will not be either totally cheap or available to the general public for their benefit. More likely, it will be used to re-affirm and enforce the monopoly of power of the state (when outside) and/or corporations (when at work/school/play).

Surveillance breeds totalitarianism. Everpresent surveillance breeds total totalitarianism.

Noam Chomsky: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz1AImQ5jqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz1AImQ5jqA)

</comment><comment><USER38> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6005249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6005249) and nobody cared about it.

</comment><comment><USER39> If nothing else, this video confirms what other reality cop shows have long proven: The sure-fire way to avoid arrest is to never take off your shirt :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Little brother or big brother? If this data is captured by the NSA, then Google Glass is an erosion of civil liberty.

</comment><comment><USER41> I've never seen a clearer demonstration of why you shouldn't say a word to the police if you ever come in contact with them. Those kids unwittingly admitted to crimes when explaining to the police what happened, and were arrested on the basis of things they said. If they had just shut up and asked if they were under or arrest or if they could leave, they all would have walked away.

<comment><USER42> That's a very cynical view, isn't it ? That was a correct arrest.

Sure if you regularly commit crimes, never cooperate any more than the law requires with anyone, least of all the police or anyone in official function, as any criminal lawyer will tell you a million times. IANAL, but that's probably good advice.

<comment><USER43> Relevant : Don't Talk to Police (especially if you're innocent) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

<comment><USER44> Everybody in the United States needs to watch this video. Thank you for posting it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The publicity of Google Glass must be what is causing this uproar right? I am assuming this because video camera glasses have been around for 15-20 years.

There have been HD ones which look much less conspicuous than Google Glass ones for at least 5-6 years. They are currently under $200 (I don't own any, I just have seen them here and there and looked it up).

</comment><comment><USER31> I think it is just a matter of time before we see</comment>


12 year old hacks government websites in exchange for computer games - <AUTHOR> http://altering-perspectives.com/2013/10/12-year-old-anonymous-hacker-pleads-guilty-breaking-government-sites.html

<comment><USER2> The kid seems very bright. I hope he just gets a slap on the wrist and nothing more.</comment>


Heyzap Vies To Become A YouTube For Flash Games (YC W09) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/15/heyzap-vies-to-become-a-youtube-for-flash-games/#comment-2595084

<comment><USER3> Here are a few other links on us. Thanks for the coverage everyone!

<http://mashable.com/2009/01/15/heyzap/>

[http://tinycomb.com/2009/01/15/heyzap-the-longtail- competito...](http://tinycomb.com/2009/01/15/heyzap-the-longtail-competitor- to-oberon-media/)

[http://www.geek.com/articles/games/first-impressions- heyzapc...](http://www.geek.com/articles/games/first-impressions-heyzapcom- youtube-of-casual-gaming-20090115/)

[http://news.gotgame.com/heyzap-the-youtube-side-of- games/236...](http://news.gotgame.com/heyzap-the-youtube-side-of-games/23613/)

<comment><USER4> Okay, I know I ask a lot of questions (I already asked another one in this thread), but I'm curious: why name it HeyZap? What's the "zap" in reference to?

Congrats a ton on launching, and best of luck to you guys! :-)

<comment><USER3> Its a fun, cool, memorable, short, unique name. Zap is a small monkey we keep in the office :P

<comment><USER4> No way. You're pulling my leg. That would be too adorable.

<comment><USER5> A pygmy marmoset with a joystick would make an awesome mascot. [http://uartsjournals.com/2006_sara/wp- content/uploads/2007/0...](http://uartsjournals.com/2006_sara/wp- content/uploads/2007/04/pygmy%20marmoset.bmp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't usually say this about YC companies, but I'm not impressed - <USER2> traction to be flash game epicenters Kongregate, CrazyMonkeyGames, and most of all, Newgrounds, is not something I really envision. Do I really need ANOTHER flash game website? Do you REALLY offer something consumers need?

Why would I want to install a widget on my blog for games, honestly? All I want to do is play them, not embed them.

</comment><comment><USER7> This seems a lot more webmaster / publisher-oriented, while Kongregate seems more (new) developer- and community-oriented. Just compare the Kongregate "About Us" page with HeyZap's front page. Kongregate even has its "Shootorials" which honestly might be more about marketing the site as newcomer-friendly and less about seriously teaching people stuff.

To be honest, I much prefer Kongregate's slant, but that's because I'm much more interested in the developer end of things. However, HeyZap is just starting, so I'm not going to fault it for not having all the bells and whistles Kongregate does. There also might be serious value in the widget model (i.e. HeyZap is not a destination, like Kongregate is) that I'm completely blind to because I personally think that's dumb.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm sure we can get that search box in there. It's something we've been planning (we've actually half done that feature :>)

Thanks guys for the support.

<comment><USER4> Best of luck to you!

I'm curious to hear in your own words, however: what does embedding games do to help a site? As opposed to, say, doing what Kongregate does, and creating a centralized location for games? With video it's different, because videos tend to be shorter and last less time, so posting a video - especially one under 10 minutes in length - makes sense. (Even then, longer videos work better in centralized zones like Hulu or even Vimeo.) Aren't most games long enough that they thrive more from a feeling of centralization and unity of location?

<comment><USER8> Thanks for your comments unalone,

Embedding games on your site will keep users engaged for longer and give them deeper, more interesting and addictive content.

If the users want to spend longer on a piece of content, they wont opt out just because that piece of content has been embedded.

It's also great for the developers to get their games out to a larger audience.

In general, setting these games free can only be a good thing for game developers, game players and publishers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Same pitch I heard for Kongregate, so it seems like a good one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is Kongregate as focused on the widget aspect? I've always just gone straight to the site.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Already making money - gotta love it. I wonder if there's room in the widget to fit a small box for search.

</comment><comment><USER10> Immad I'm curious how you plan to compete with Kongregate, et al. What's the value add? One of the things I notice about Kongregate, as a level 16 user (sad, huh?) is that "badges" play a large role for me.

I don't have an infinite amount of time, and I've found that achieving badges has become essential for me to feel like I've "done something". A lot of the Flash games have a variety of levels of engagingness. Spending 20 minutes completing a badge gives me a warm glow even if the game was mediocre and keeps me going back to Kongregate again and again.

<comment><USER3> Hi sh1mmer,

Kongregate does a great job with concentrating on game developer tools and providing a deeper experience for its users. We don't plan to directly complete with that. We want to let other websites embed games to provide more content for there users.

So imagine if Youtube was massive as a destination website but didn't allow people to embed videos. The analogy is not perfect but fits well to describe the different.

Either way the world of casual gaming is a lot bigger than just what Kongregate does, I am sure we will find a space and hopefully when you want to install games on your websites you know where to come ;-),

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats on the press hit Jude and Immad.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd suggest adding a mute button to your widget. I like to listen to internet radio while I play flash games, and it annoys me when the game music starts to play. Also some authors seem to partially hide the mute button, so can be somewhat frustrating to mute the sounds in game.

</comment><comment><USER13> I thought that was what newgrounds.com was.

<comment><USER4> You can't embed things with Newgrounds. As a side note, I onder why Newgrounds faded out of popularity. Very fun web design, very neat systems for stuff, and yet it was completely ignored as a company.

<comment><USER13> They've been concentrating on other things, I think. I know Tom Fulp was focusing on first Alien Hominid and then Castle Crashers (which is a really fun game btw). Their PDA game is surprisingly fun as well.

I think they have other things in the works, but it seems like they're moving in the direction of console games, rather than online flash games. But all the same, I figured they still had a ton of traffic.

<comment><USER4> I figure they must, but I find it odd that I never hear the name pop up on sites like this and Reddit.

Have they made many console games? The only one I knew of was Alien Hominid.

<comment><USER13> I don't know. Tom bootstrapped newgrounds with his friends, and they're based out in Philly, so I think he never really plugged into the tech world. They've been doing well and profitable, so they might be plugged in elsewhere, perhaps the flash community.

They released "PDA Game" first as a minigame inside of Alient Hominid, and then the sequel as a stand-alone on Xbox Live. They just (i.e. a month or two) released Castle Crashers. I haven't heard of anything else coming from them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What about supporting the Unity Web Player? <http://unity3d.com/>

<comment><USER3> Hi, happy to consider it.

Doesn't that require a separate install? Can you link me to a web playable game?

<comment><USER14> It does require a separate download of about 3 MB.

Here's one of the Unity demos: <http://unity3d.com/gallery/live- demos/tropical-paradise>

Here's a game I made (it's a bit slow due to last-minute physics overkill): <http://www.tojam.ca/games_2008/office_smash.asp>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> and one in french!

[http://www.accessoweb.com/HeyZap-Le-Youtube-des-jeux-en- flas...](http://www.accessoweb.com/HeyZap-Le-Youtube-des-jeux-en- flash_a4669.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> the techcrunch comments are strangely positive, either you must be doing something good or techcrunch started moderating comments better :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Even a blind squirrel... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> i've been waiting for this. congrats on the launch, guys.

</comment><comment><USER17> Frankly, Kongregate seems better.</comment>


Ask HN: My Dog is About to Die... How Can I Preserve Her DNA?? - <AUTHOR>

My dog has cancer and probably won't make it through the week. I know just about everyone feels this way about their pets, but she really is an exceptional dog.
I would like to preserve her DNA in order to keep open the possibility of cloning her some day. The majority of cloning sample preservation services require anesthesia and a biopsy, which I simply won't do to her at this point. Also, for older dogs, my impression is that the skin cell samples that would be preserved might not be of a great quality.
To be clear, I would never dream of moving forward with existing cloning technologies. It would clearly be unethical at this stage.
However, I think there's a very good chance that in the coming decades the safety concerns will be resolved, and the technologies will advance to the point where a healthy clone could be created from just DNA samples, and not require a biopsied skin sample.
So far, I've used a couple of DNA banking services to keep some samples:
http://www.genetrackus.com/tests/dna-banking
http://www.vetdnacenter.com/canine-dna-banking.html
http://www.fluffy2.com
I'd like to get any knowledgeable opinions on how I might be able to preserve some viable samples on my own as a failsafe, because I'm not entirely comfortable relying on these services for a decade or more. I'm thinking some fur samples with follicles intact, sealed in airtight plastic, and maybe placed in the freezer?
Also, just to hopefully ease one concern I might hear about, I donate generously to the Humane Society and other animal focused charities, and plan on donating the equivalent of whatever I spend on cloning services in the future. Assuming the technology advances to where there wouldn't be any health concerns, I don't view this as anything worse than ordering a dog from a breeder. <comment><USER2> Life is not like a TV repeat. Whatever made your dog -- experiences, reactions, etc -- was unique. You would expect what your dog ultimately became to be in the clone too. And that's just unfair to the clone. It'd be like expecting identical twins to actually _be_ identical, beneath their appearance. Also, even if the clone did magically repeat your dog, _you_ wouldn't be the same. I've been through this many times. Know when to just let go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for replying. I've thought quite a bit about this, and I agree with you _somewhat_. I certainly don't have unrealistic expectations of the exact same dog being reborn. However, there is obviously a nature/nuture question here, and I think with a very similar upbringing/training, the dog could certainly be _very_ similar, but I'd feel very lucky just to have a similar dog, and certainly wouldn't put a ton of pressure towards her in her upbringing.

At any rate, I obviously haven't made the final decision to go forward with it - as I mentioned, not until things advance quite a bit - I just want to make sure I have the option.

<comment><USER2> But the world would not be the same. Let me give you a somewhat silly example. In the TV series UFO, a moon to earth shuttle crashed. Sabotage was suspected. A pilot said he'd fly the same route to see if anything was there to sabotage a flight. Well, that's just impossible. The earth is in a different position in relation the the sun, the moon is in a different spot in relation to both the earth and sun, and the entire solar system has moved in relation to the galaxy and the universe. To paraphrase a saying, it's never the same river twice. The entire environment the clone would be in would be drastically different than the one the original was in, so it'd really be impossible to get a truly identical experience. And a dog's senses are different than a human's. What you would never notice as a significant change the dog probably would -- and that too would have an effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The websites you have mentioned are "feel good" services targeted at grieving consumers, but are unlikely to produce viable samples down the road.

Regardless of the advancements in science down the road, a biopsy is required now to produce a sample that can be cryogenically preserved given current technology. Cryogenics is not something you can do at home, at comes with quite the price tag.

Three things to look for to help find a legitimate vendor: 1. Should not offer human/primate sampling, banking, or storage. 2. Should not accept deceased samples except by special case. 3. Should require a veterinary specialist, no do it yourself kits.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wittgenstein died on a Monday in February. Sunday morning he took me for his last walk - down the hill to the grassy place, he struggled exceptionally to make it back up. When we returned from the Soccer game that evening, he needed the Bottom's Up lead for the first time to make it to the dead end. Before we went inside he showed me he could no longer make it up the steep hill even with his butt in a sling. Then he came inside, and laid down. When he started struggling in pain, we gave him doggy valium. In the morning Dr. Pete gave him the injection slowly. He went peacefully. After his heart had stopped, he breathed three times, and moved his paw for me to hold. When I let it go, he was gone. Saying goodbye was his final gift to me.

At nearly fifteen years and 100 pounds, he had a long life - still walking me more than a mile most days into his last week. He wasn't supposed to enjoy life much past 8 - he had dysplasia. Then again, at six months he was given to the pound, too big to handle, or nixing the owner's lease.

I went because I had lost Bo. The pound is tough. That's where I had gotten Missy [ocasionally referred to as my first wife]. I knew I needed a sign and his standing at full 5'-6" stretch looking over the back of the kennel as I walked through the door, was it. He'd just had a bath.

In March 1968, we moved from an apartment to a house in the suburbs. In April we got Ringo. Ringo was my father's first dog as an adult. Knee-high, he could pull the suction cup ball off the ceiling - the dog not my father.

I have some of Bo's ashes still. All I have of Missy is the fur stuck in her collar. Witty's ashes are in my son's room. We will spread them at Cape San Blas.

I share your grief.

<http://brudgers.com/arefaq/arefaq-public-docs/WP_000108.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER5> I had a cat who got cancer and died within 9 months after surgery failed to remove the cancer.

As heartbreaking as it is to see your beloved pet die and leave you forever, remember that many more die each day just for occupying space in a pet shelter.

Not pressuring you to go and adopt ten dogs/cats after your dog dies, but keep in mind that cloning is a bit extreme and there are better alternatives out there for having a furry companion. I've done a ton of studies in microbiology, you don't even need a 101 in biology to see how random and unpredictable life can be. Genetics will not guarantee you are getting the same dog back. Even if you get an exact copy, the experiences the dog gets will change its outcomes, and will make it a different dog. There's also something called epigenetics (changes in genes throughout your life), it's another reason why twin develop differences after birth.

Losing a pet can be tragic, but don't let grief push you in the wrong direction. The death of my old cat eventually led me to the adoption of my current cat, who is grateful that I rescued him from off of the streets.

</comment><comment><USER6> There was a story on This American Life a while back about a Chance, the unusually tame bull. He died, they cloned him. The result: Pet Semetary. Your cloned dog probably won't stomp you to death, but it wouldn't be the same dog, it would be a sibling.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/291/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/291/transcript)

[http://animalinventory.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/did- chance-t...](http://animalinventory.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/did-chance-the- bull-get-a-second-chance/)

<comment><USER7> I remember when I first listened to that episode. It was fascinating to hear about the second bull having none of the same qualities.

Even with that caveat the futurist in me says do it so we have more data points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It will not be the same dog even if it has the same DNA. It may not even have the same physical appearance. What you miss is this particular individual. There is no way you can recreate this individual. Either get a dog from the same lineage, or adopt an unfortunate one from a shelter.

</comment><comment><USER9> Life is transient, and many times that's what makes it great.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is retarded get another dog</comment>


Backbone and Ember, two distinct philosophies - <AUTHOR> http://smus.com/backbone-and-ember/ <comment><USER2> IMHO Ember.js and Angular.js outsmart Backbone.js in every possible way.</comment>


Emergency Elisp - <AUTHOR> http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/emergency-elisp.html

<comment><USER2> Hrm... in the section "break/continue":

"The symbol 'break' is arbitrary, but is probably a nice choice for YOUR readers." (emphasis mine)

A typo, or evidence that perhaps Steve isn't writing all his own content? (Ok, I'm a pedant, but I don't care ;-)

<comment><USER3> I think by 'readers' he means whoever has to look at your Elisp code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Spooky. On the very day that I abandon Textmate and go back to emacs, SteveY gives me a handy cheat sheet.

This is an auspicious sign. :)

<comment><USER5> Keep drinking the Kool-Aid, I just started and it tastes wonderful...

For those interested, Steve Yegge has an old post on emacs productivity tips: <http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/effective-emacs></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with advisers when you disagree with their advice? - <AUTHOR>

Advisers can add a ton of value to a startup. But you don't always agree with their advice.  How do you handle the situation where you have a big strategic difference on how to take the company.  When should you listen to them and their experience, and when to your gut? <comment><USER2> Data. If you and someone else disagree look at the data, hell, even if you do agree, look at the data. Don't have any data? Get some data.

You can't make decisions, particularly big decisions without data.

Gather all the data you can, analyze it, talk about it, and come to a consensus. If after doing all that you still can't come to a consensus, you need more data. If after that you are still deadlocked, flip a coin.

(*By data I mean anything from market research, user feedback, the advisers experience, your experience etc. etc.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on the advice, depends on your experience. Vague answer for a vague question.</comment>


Nice errors in LARLPOP - <AUTHOR> http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2016/03/02/nice-errors-in-lalrpop/ <comment><USER2> My _god_ those are some great error messages. I hardly ever say that about error messages, but these are exactly what I want from a parser generator that aborts when it runs into ambiguity. It even has easy-to-understand diagrams!</comment>


Ask HN: How many hours do you sleep? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I have a two year old, so at night, I sleep between 0 and 8 hours. On days where I've slept 0, I usually take an afternoon nap with her so I pick up an extra hour or two of sleep during the day. Since April 5, I have averaged just under five hours of sleep in a 24 hour period.

Last year, I had a bout with extremely high blood pressure that lead to me spending some time in the hospital and getting an angiogram.

I'm pissed because I knew that high blood pressure was a huge problem for me, yet I let myself get out of shape. So, I built an app to record things like sleep, nutrition and exercise and see what gets me closer to my goal. Currently, my goal is low blood pressure but I'm about to switch over to a long distance running goal.

I mention this to tell you how I know my average sleep, but also because thus far, I've found two strong correlations to my blood pressure and athletic performance. Good sleep and lots of water have a dramatic impact upon both of those measures. And, unlike other things, their impact is immediate. Heck, I can exercise for 90 minutes a day for two weeks and barely move the needle. But, if I get nine hours of sleep, my blood pressure will be on the low side of normal!!

<comment><AUTHOR> I can understand and I can relate I am just sleeping for less than five hours only. I am not sure if this could let to any harm.

<comment><USER2> I'll be thinking of you and wishing you the best!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My body has 2 patterns:

6 hours - feeling awesome on the morning but quickly fade around 2-3pm

8 hours - feeling slow all day but I can last longer

<comment><AUTHOR> The second one is better.

<comment><USER4> Why do you say that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 6ish, my target is 7

<comment><AUTHOR> :D Awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 7.5

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 4-8, 6 on average.

</comment><comment><USER8> around 6 hours

<comment><AUTHOR> Lucky you

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 7 - 9 hrs</comment>


No boundaries: Exfiltration of personal data by session-replay scripts - <AUTHOR> https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/11/15/no-boundaries-exfiltration-of-personal-data-by-session-replay-scripts/ <comment><USER3> Home Depot does this in a way that consumes my whole upload bandwidth, dragging down the entire connection (moved and haven't gotten around to reintegrating the proper router with tc(8)). As a result, I've moved towards using Lowes to spec things out, even though it's a 45 minute drive and their products are of generally inferior quality. Good job, surveillance parasites - you're starting to kill your hosts!

(I'm sure Lowes is or will be doing something similar, as faux-competition duopolies tend to move in lockstep. But the outright callous boneheaded execution still amazes me).

</comment><comment><USER4> To be fair, FullStory spends a lot of time in their onboarding, UI and docs encouraging you to check and double check that anything sensitive is excluded. They broadcast this message so clearly that it's obvious that they take privacy seriously (or, about as seriously as any over-the-shoulder-peeking service could), and they strongly encourage their users to adopt the same stance.

This article makes it seem like their defaults are the only exclusion settings possible, which is very far from the truth.

I feel like FullStory is being blamed for trying to provide some minimal default exclusion settings at all. I assume the same holds for competing services.

I'm not saying that this means the core premise of this is wrong: there's many things to dislike about session recording services. But the article goes on and on about a few defaults, instead of focusing on the dangers of the core concept and loses the argument that way IMO.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the on boarding for FullStory is excellent and they go out of their way to help you try to get it right. Odds are you'll end up doing a better job at protecting privacy in FullStory than in your own log files, but YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know if ublock origin blocks this kind of stuff? Yet another reason to never disable it. I'm starting to realize it's a lot more than an ad blocker, but more like a firewall to protect the client against malicious sites with crypto miners, trackers and this stuff...

<comment><USER7> Hi, one of the authors here. We discuss this in the last section of the post. uBlock Origin uses lists to determine which requests to block. We tested the two largest, EasyList and EasyPrivacy, and both fail to block scripts from FullStory, Smartlook, and UserReplay.

<comment><USER8> I suggest uBO's medium mode, this blocks 3rd-party scripts by default.

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking- mode:-medium...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium- mode)

<comment><USER9> thank you for suggestion in this unexpected place. i wish i knew of this uBO feature before!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> +1 for highlighting the privacy concerns, but -1 for blaming the software for not having strong enough defaults.

As someone who has integrated FullStory into a production site, I spent several days doing a careful audit of our forms and redacting fields from being tracked. FullStory has an excellent, universal account setting to automatically redact fields based on any CSS selector, so it's very, very easy to tell it to remove any sensitive information - or even all form fields! - <USER2> that's what the website publisher desires. Out of the box I found that it correctly blocked credit card fields and passwords correctly, and we were able to add additional fields that are sensitive.

Again, rightly so that a website publisher may want more information than you desire, but they could also store your info in plaintext in the database, making it easy for hackers to exfiltrate as well. Yes, this is another vector, but hardly the easiest one.

<comment><USER10> It's still a broken process. Are you going to re-audit every future change to your web site? I doubt it.

The default, as the article suggests, should be to redact all fields, then let the company opt-in the fields that they really mean to record.

<comment><USER5> If a company is serious about security and privacy, they have to do those audits for every feature, regardless of if they use these tools. PCI requires this if you handle money online.

Still, you're right that many companies have a surprising lack of security. This vector of unintentional exfiltration may pale in comparison to the intentional mismanagement and lack of security focus internally. Equifax, anyone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Read the article. Noob Q. Surely not ALL the browser tabs are vulnerable to the getting recorded? In other words only the tabs that are connected to websites that contain these recording JS scripts are vunerable, correct?

<comment><USER12> Correct. I think there's a caveat if the two different tabs render two different documents but on the same domain, interactions on each could be recorded by either tab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a browser extension that warns you about the various tracker scripts a website is utilizing?

<comment><USER14> The closest I know of would be use of umatrix and general knowledge of which sites do what activities

<comment><USER15> Umatrix is great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone know where I can find a list of the domain names used by these companies are? I want to block everything from all of their domains.

</comment><comment><USER17> DAMMIT. Once again the question that immediately come to mind is "Why the FUCK do browsers facilitate this shit?"

C'mon you stupid web devs on HN tell me again all your excuses to need these capabilities. Sorry to generalize to all those of you who don't do this, but many of you still want those capabilities that have opened the door. And those browser devs... It's like they compete to sell out the users by adding "features".

<comment><USER18> > but many of you still want those capabilities that have opened the door

Rest assured the majority of (web) developers does not like this crap a bit. Most of the pressure to add hundreds of analytics toolkits, trackers or these snoopers come from marketing - they (or worse, the C-level execs) get convinced that they need to integrate tool XYZ to "stay competitive" or "improve their customer retention" or whatever buzzword goes today, and the devs at the bottom of the chain are left to implement it.

<comment><USER19> Sometimes its just laziness.

I was forced to add GTM to a site because it meant marketing could just hand over the GTM login and a pile of money to another company which could then provide them with pretty reports on what the customers were doing. The analytics company promised to not do anything bad so it was OK.

And that was after an incident where the entire site was turned purple by another external JavaScript...

<comment><USER18> > And that was after an incident where the entire site was turned purple by > another external JavaScript...

lol, what was the root cause? Defacement/scriptkiddie attack or a "background covering" ad that did not recognize the content area and paint over the whole screen instead?

<comment><USER19> The script was for a yearly user survey run by a small company. It has an awards ceremony attached so I think thats why some marketing people like it. After the survey ended the script was not removed of course.

Around a year later the site changed color when their script started injecting a new stylesheet into our site. They never really said what happened only that they had restored the old version of the script. Maybe some developer pushed dev code to the old production url or maybe they were hacked.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google to Acquire Fitbit - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/products/hardware/agreement-with-fitbit <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21418232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21418232).

</comment><comment><USER3> Duplicate of: [https://investor.fitbit.com/press/press-releases/press- relea...](https://investor.fitbit.com/press/press-releases/press-release- details/2019/Fitbit-to-Be-Acquired-by-Google/default.aspx)

Propose that we don't allow either company's blog post on the front page.

<comment><USER4> There are company press releases here all the time. There's nothing wrong with this one, and it's informative enough.

I am glad this is up here. I think your proposal is inappropriate, everyone is perfectly capable of upvoting it or not themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> More commentary on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21418232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21418232) (mostly) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21418277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21418277)</comment>


Gallup: Consumer confidence lowest for the year, down 20% - <AUTHOR> http://www.gallup.com/poll/186029/economic-confidence-index-flat-september.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_content=morelink&utm_campaign=syndication <comment><USER2> My confidence in the economy was great until I read this...</comment>


Show HN: Augmented Reality Smart Kitchen - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ohm1LiapWs <comment><AUTHOR> Lead developer here! I enjoyed exploring how a projector-camera (pro-cam) system can create great hands-free augmented reality, and I wanted to share the project for any interest and feedback on the project.

Please reach out to my email if you want to learn more firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


1909 Russia... Photographed in Color - <AUTHOR> http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

<comment><USER2> Vivid, emotionally potent. Color breaks the barrier between what's history and what's current.</comment>


A Los Angeles Plan to Reshape the Streetscape Sets Off Fears of Gridlock - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/us/a-los-angeles-plan-to-reshape-the-streetscape-sets-off-fears-of-gridlock.html <comment><USER2> As someone who lived in LA for a decade, I couldn't be more in favor of this. Over the ten years I lived there, traffic got measurably worse and commutes that used to take thirty minutes would sometimes stretch to an hour and a half.

The negativity is predictable, compounded by the fact that people are just resistant to change no matter what. But this is a good step in the right direction.</comment>


Tech companies are fighting antitrust efforts with front groups - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/6/11/21286558/antitrust-astroturfing-facebook-google-amazon-american-edge <comment><USER2> I don't quite understand how these sorts of activities aren't fraud. The closest similarity seems to be hiring somebody to represent you (eg, lawyer president advertiser), but traditionally it has been clear that such representations were what they were</comment>


Ever watched your MacBook turn off because you forgot to plug it in? - <AUTHOR> http://shiftedfrequency.net/plug-in-now/

<comment><USER2> Good luck and everything, but I've never had this problem. And, if I ever did have that problem I still wouldn't enter my email address to get, well, what? What does giving you my email address provide?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, maybe I need to make the value prop better, but the page does say, "What if there was an app that made you stop what you were doing and plug your laptop in before you could continue working? There is, and it's nearly here.

Interested? Sign up to be notified of the launch below"

I don't know how I can be much clearer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How would that app be different from the popup? Both inform you that the laptop is about to run out of battery and that you should plug it in. It's your problem if you ignore it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will block you from doing anything else until you plug the laptop in, with a full screen overlay that doesn't dismiss until the laptop is plugged in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If your MacBook is properly configured, it should hibernate, so that you can easily resume your work, after you plugged in power supply. So I see no benefit from this app...

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one of the key points: Sometimes properly configured MacBooks don't come out of hibernation properly. Also, I'm also trying to get rid of the annoyance of seeing your laptop hibernate when you could have done something about it. Maybe that isn't a pain for you, but it's a pain for me.</comment></comment>


Exploring Kotlin, writing a simple spell checker - <AUTHOR> http://richardlog.com/post/21142113656/exploring-kotlin-writing-a-simple-spell-checker

<comment><USER2> The Scala code for the same task gets the job done in half as many lines: [http://capecoder.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/spellchecker-in- sc...](http://capecoder.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/spellchecker-in-scala-vs- kotlin/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I was thinking about writing a Scala version too.

Concerning verbosity I believe Scala to be a more compact language. The point of Kotlin though - according to JetBrains - is to make Java more safe and concise but simpler than Scala.

That said, I/O handling in the Kotlin example can probably be reduced by 2-3 lines using alternative functions from Kotlin stdlib.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice example. I like Scala, but its a huge leap from Java. Kotlin clearly tries to mitigate this while still having some nice terseness which Scala also fails at. Hopefully Kotlin will get some traction.

</comment><comment><USER4> on a somewhat unrelated note, you can write a noisy channel model spell checker with a lot more data and a bit more code: <http://norvig.com/spell- correct.html></comment>


Desktop Operating System Market Share - <AUTHOR> https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0 <comment><USER3> I thought it was weird that "other" had such a high percentage 4.98% - <USER2> then I clicked on the more broadly grouped chart ([https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share.aspx?qprid=8&qpcustomd=0)) and it dropped to 0% - "other" meant other versions than those listed.

<comment><USER4> It really seemed like Linux and Mac were much higher up these days. A more interesting statistic would be "OS usage times" i.e. what are people looking at for the most hours. Probably nigh possible to get. Wait, advertisers probably know.

<comment><USER5> I think what you are after is "silicon valley / developpers usage time".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Linux has about half of the market share of all OS X versions combined. Not too bad considering there's not exactly many systems that come with Linux preinstalled. Still minuscule compared to the Windows market share but I'd gladly announce that the year of the Linux desktop has finally arrived if it gets to OS X level...which isn't all that far to go.

<comment><USER7> I think the actual Linux market share is higher. I know a lot of enterprises that have switched to Linux (for reason completely unrelated to the os itself).

<comment><USER8> which should be reflected in these numbers, no?

<comment><USER7> Look at their sampling methods. They use analytics from certain sites (news, social media, gov, ...)

A lot of enterprises are beyond proxies and many places don't allow you to access internet outside a few select sites

<comment><USER9> A proxy won't mingle with the User-Agent header, or with the tracking JS that runs in the browser.

<comment><USER7> I guess there are different types of proxies. The ones we use definitely strip and modify headers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Something must be very wrong with their methodology. I don't believe the total installed base is so volatile that the Mac share jumps from 7% to 9.57% then down to 6% within a single year.

[https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpc...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpcustom=Mac&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=203&qpnp=13&qptimeframe=M)

<comment><USER11> [https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpc...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpcustom=Mac&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=2014&qpnp=4&qptimeframe=Y)

It's not that hard to believe. Their iPad + keyboard is cannibalizing their desktop.

I'd love to see iOS + Mac versus Windows + Mobile Windows

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a feeling this is skewed by massive enterprise purchasing of workstations - they will naturally gravitate towards a stable windows version, and tend not to get upgraded very often.

I'd like to see a chart of desktop computer market share that people purchase for themselves.

<comment><USER13> Depending on the industry, a lot of your tools might not just be Windows only but also tied to an old (and possibly unsupported in the case of XP) version. This is endemic to any industry involving capital equipment like machining centers or biotech lab equipment that have serviceable lifetimes measured in the decades. A decade ago this wasn't really a problem because this equipment was isolated but now with industrial IoT and modern IT networks they're becoming more and more vulnerable.

One mom and pop machine shop I ordered from got tired of using USB drives to haul CAD files and machining instructions between systems so they started using Google Apps with Drive as the sharing mechanism. In order to do that, they had to hook up several 10 year old Windows XP machines to the internet and within weeks they got hit by the blaster worm or some other pre-SP1 virus. That cost them weeks of machine time on their older CNCs and hundreds of man hours doing incident reports for their bigger clients like the defense contractors. The situation in the clinical biotech companies I worked at was never that bad because of HIPPA compliance and more focus on networked services like lab databases but still atrocious. So much of our industrial infrastructure is built on a house of cards.

<comment><USER14> > The situation in the clinical biotech companies I worked at was never that > bad because of HIPPA compliance and more focus on networked services like > lab databases but still atrocious.

I can attest that academic biotech labs are still pretty atrocious, for the reasons you mention.

Windows XP (or super old OS X installs, pre 10.5) are pretty common on non- networked machines that function as appliances. It's not uncommon to hear about a machine controlling a $X00,000 device being compromised by malware that road in on a USB drive, despite the air gapping.

Sometimes I feel that it would be better for vendors to use a super minimal Linux distribution for each of these workstations that basically function as an appliance. Not only could the vendor reduce the attack surface for any potential malware exposure, but the one-off nature of the distro and small overall number of workstations would provide a minimal incentive for malware authors to target.

<comment><USER15> Now try to get those hardware manufactures to provide anything else other than OCX or DLLs as device APIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting to see that there are more Windows XP users than there are Mac OS X users running all versions combined.

<comment><USER16> That's because there are still a lot of XP users in SE Asia, and particularly in China.

Netmarketshare doesn't divulge country numbers unless you are a paying customer.

Netmarketshare also "balances" its numbers, so the results could vary a lot according to how much weight it gives to China.

<comment><USER17> Interesting side note: ive only swen Windows 7 discs so far on markets in SEA. Even cambodia seems win7 dominated. But they also sell cheap laptops with mint on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With 88.67% of desktop OS being different flavors of microsoft OS, it seems a bit overwhelming that its still that high , especially after a massive acceptance of ubuntu. Its shocking that Apple has failed to make inroads in any other country outside the USA. One wonders why it never crossed their minds. This gives Microsoft a great opportunity to win back this big iPhone using crowd by making their Apps platform independent which they are doing already. I see Microsoft coming back big time like the windows 98 , 2000 and VB 6.0 kind of good times awaits them now :)

<comment><USER19> Two thoughts come to mind:

1) If Microsoft is already/still at ~90%, is there really room for a big time come back? Getting the rest of the market is small potatoes compared to what they already have.

2) How much of the market does desktop represent, anyway? Most people I know do not own a desktop. They may have a laptop, but they may also only have a tablet and/or phone.

Now, I believe you are actually suggesting that Microsoft can leverage their desktop market to get back into tablets and phones, but I don't know . . . so far, their efforts have been disappointing, and frankly, people are used to their Android devices, so Microsoft will actually be the weird phone even if it is the normal desktop.

<comment><USER15> Here in Germany most consumer store chains have replaced hybrid Android tablets and netbooks with Windows 10 versions.

Many of those devices do allow for a SIM card as well.

<comment><USER20> Eh? Are you saying they don't sell Android tablets anymore, but only Windows tablets?

<comment><USER17> Not sure what he said. But this is definitly not true. It is still a small minority of the devices that runs Windows

<comment><USER15> Then check online at Conrad, Saturn or Media Market, in Germany, what type of netbooks or hybrid tablets are being sold.

<comment><USER21> Not sure what you mean. The topsellers here for example, the top-5 are all Android, and the rest mostly Android:

[http://www.saturn.de/de/category/_tablets-252064.html?search...](http://www.saturn.de/de/category/_tablets-252064.html?searchParams=&sort=&view=&page=)

<comment><USER15> Well, this is the 2nd most sold device right after Apple's iPad.

        TREKSTOR SurfTab duo W1 Volks-Tablet WiFi, Convertible mit 10.1 Zoll, 32 GB Speicher, 2 GB RAM, Windows 10, Schwarz

<comment><USER21> Not sure what's going on, but when I opened the page, and set to topseller ranking, the first items were all android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are Hacker News reader stats public? It'd be interesting to see how skewed the desktop OSs are...

<comment><USER22> I don't know. Many sectors require windows and I assume most HN readers are bored at work. You'll probably see a similar situation although my guess is Mac and Linux will be slightly higher on the totempoll. Probably more like 3-5% for Linux I'd say. Maybe even higher.

I'd love to see the data like you say, would be interesting.

<comment><USER23> The Stack Overflow developer survey had both Mac and Linux at 20% in 2015. But Mac shot up to 26% in 2016.

I think Hacker News will likely have very similar stats. Maybe somewhat more Mac and Linux leaning, even.

[http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer- survey-2016#tech...](http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer- survey-2016#technology-desktop-operating-system)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Last months saw an example of a distributed database/api service scraping, using hundreds of thousands of IPs of around the world, and random user agents (I think that all started with Mozilla/5.0, but the rest were from random historical user agents), to avoid rate limits.

The OSs referenced in those user agents went back to early windows versions, OS/2 Warp and Maemo (to put 2 examples that hurt knowing that were fake).

If this site take as base sites/URLs that are somewhat hit by that kind of traffic the stats could be very misleading.

<comment><USER17> Yeah. Where is "vitaly rules" in this graph? I have medium sizes sites where that is 2-7% of the traffic right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> OS X Sierra (10.12) adoption chart

[https://www.gosquared.com/global/mac/sierra/#beta](https://www.gosquared.com/global/mac/sierra/#beta)

Looks like people are split 30/30/30 between the last three versions with many holdouts.

Things look way better in iOS land (76% on latest version):

[https://developer.apple.com/support/app- store/](https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Can OSX plus Linux combined really be below 7%? If so, I live in a freaky bubble.

<comment><USER27> If you are browsing HN, you likely live and work in a bubble with massive over-representation of the very rich (who buy Macs disproportionately) and the IT tinkerers (who use Linux disproportionately).

(This is the case even for the US, but even more so worldwide, where a Macbook costs a month's gross salary rather than a week's worth.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You have to love the big spike in Windows 98 usage in Feb '16 ([https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Windows+98&qpcustomb=0))

<comment><USER29> That big jump from 0.01% to 0.01%

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Notable: there are almost 3x more Windows NT devices online than Mac OS X 10.8

<comment><USER31> Is that really notable? They are both small numbers, and those NT machines are likely at companies with upgrade policies versus people who choose not to upgrade their personal macs for free.

<comment><USER30> I see this rather in favor for Mac OS X as their upgrade system definitely works, 10.8 is not old at all (2012), Windows NT is from the 90s mostly pre- internet. It's putting things into perspective.

<comment><USER32> Windows NT 4.0 - deploy and forget. Maintian only when some hardware breaks.

There are some nt machines chugging along doing specific tasks that will outlive us all.

<comment><USER33> Make sure to reboot every 2 billion seconds, otherwise weird stuff stops working... Maybe it's only UI, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> [https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=FreeBSD&qpcustomb=0)

They need more decimal points to explain it

</comment><comment><USER35> Where is Chrome OS? Part of Linux?

<comment><USER36> Probably others, since the User-Agent doesn't mention Linux and contains "CrOS" instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> ITT: "I'd like to see numbers that confirm my bias."

</comment><comment><USER38> OS X less than 5% ? That's really surprising!

<comment><USER16> According to Wikipedia: "As of November 2013, Apple's online store was available in 39 countries, with physical Apple Stores numbering 444 in sixteen countries (263 US/181 elsewhere).

The world has roughly 196 countries. I don't know how many of those you can buy Macs in, but I'd expect there are gaps.

However, a lot poor countries have access to cheap PCs, or local cheap PC assemblers, or users can build their own machines.

<comment><USER39> There are countries where Apple cannot legally open a retail store. They go through tie ups and partnerships with local companies to setup stores and sell their products. For example, in India - every major city probably has at least 4-5 "Apple Stores" which are not fully owned by Apple and thus probably don't factor into these stats.

<comment><USER17> This. In thailand and cambodia apple seems widely available. None of those is a official store tho. I think i've seen more than those 400 stores in Thailand alone.

<comment><USER40> In Norway too, there is a large chain official partner, essentially an Apple Store operated by not-Apple, but the online store is official Apple, I think that is what OP was referring to. IN some countries there is no Apple Store online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Here are some other OS usage stats.

[http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp)

[http://cdn1b.static.pornhub.phncdn.com/insights- static//wp-c...](http://cdn1b.static.pornhub.phncdn.com/insights-static//wp- content/uploads/2016/12/4-pornhub-insights-2016-year-review-operating- system.png)

<comment><USER42> I would like to see the PornHub numbers for desktop and mobile combined. That would give a better sense of what's going on. My guess for the consumer market is that it looks like Windows is in solid shape, but the reality is that people are spending more time on mobile devices, even if they have a PC somewhere in the house.

<comment><USER42> My comment wasn't specific to pornography. I think its generally understood that home browsing is moving off desktops.

<comment><USER43> Do you mean more people are getting laptops or that people are moving off laptops/desktops to mobile devices?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well the year of the Linux desktop never came, it seems.

<comment><USER45> Yeah, but the year of the Linux handheld has been here for quite some time. When do we get LibreOffice and Blender for AOSP?

<comment><USER15> Good luck, this is the set of allowed native API on Android.

[https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html](https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html)

As of Android 7, if the application tries to link to system libraries not part of that list, it will just get killed.

[https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/improving-...](https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/improving-stability-with-private-cc.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Without some information on how this data is calculated it's pretty tough too take it seriously.

Not that I doubt Windows is the majority OS, it obviously is. But I didn't need a chart to know that. The chart may be inaccurate depending on the source of the data and how it was extrapolated.

<comment><USER16> See [https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology](https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology)

"The data is compiled from approximately 160 million unique visits per month. The information published on www.netmarketshare.com is an aggregation of the data from this network of hosted website traffic statistics. In addition, we classify 430+ referral sources identified as search engines. Aggregate traffic referrals from these engines are summarized and reported monthly. The statistics for search engines include both organic and sponsored referrals."

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Are there somewhere market share statistics available for desktop and mobile operating systems combined? The separation between desktop and mobile devices feels a bit outdated. How does Windows relate to Android or iOS, for example?

</comment><comment><USER48> "desktop" is a totally useless and nonsensical classification, when they do not (which is obvious from their numbers) count laptops plugged into a screen & keyboard for the duration of a workday as a "desktop".

<comment><USER21> Nonsensical?

Laptops/desktop are a form factor / product category, not a usage pattern.

The same way as 20kg desktop PC on boats are not "laptops".

Sometimes you do need to know how its used (e.g. if you sell peripherals that only make sense for "road warriors" you will want to know how many use their machines at a specific location all day, regardless of form factor), but most of the time, laptop/desktop distinction based on form, like the one we always been using, makes far more sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Hate to be pedantic but Linux is not an operating system.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is a duplicate from a couple days ago

</comment><comment><USER51> I am very happy to be in that 6% share that macOS has.

<comment><USER52> I am happy to be in the majority camp.

<comment><USER52> Why the downvotes? I just stated my opinion. I thought that this site was a little less childish than this.

<comment><USER53> Speculation, but members may not consider the comment substantive. Note that your parent, which is similar, was also downvoted.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wine-tasting: it's junk science - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis <comment><USER2> > Some of the judges were far worse, others better – with around one in 10 > varying their scores by just plus or minus two... A wine deemed to be a good > 90 would be rated as an acceptable 86 by the same judge minutes later and > then an excellent 94.

Plus or minus 5/100 isn't bad at all for anything requiring human judgement. Its certainly within what I'd expect ratings to swing for judged olympic competitions like figure skating.

<comment><USER3> Not really, when there is only 8 points between "acceptable" and "excellent". In this case, 5 points here and there makes a huge difference.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps that's a problem with how the scores are interpreted. Imo they should ideally not have that many grades, perhaps only 1-5 or 1-10. Or if they do, they should be a 92 +/\- 5

Like I mentioned, judged olympic competitions typically come out pretty close as well, and people argue all the time about the judge's decisions too. But its not as bad because the scale runs from 1-10.

Another example would be essay grading, though I don't know exactly how much that deviates. The SAT essay section even has guidelines on how to rate essays and what to do if the two human grader's ratings disagree too much.

Anything judged by humans is going to be subject to this kind of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprise surprise, taste is subjective.

The byline is misleading, wine experts most certainly can distinguish wines by grape, region, and even vintage with remarkable accuracy, they just don't grade them consistently.

Here's my tip for drinking good wine on the cheap. Buy the Trader Joe's label. Not two buck chuck, but the ones called "Trader Joe's Reserve", "VINTJS", and the like (they have several variations).

I buy a bottle when they have a new one (usually in the flyer they send out), usually for $8-15, and if I like it, buy a case or so. Better hit rate for me than Wine Spectator scores or whatever.

Not sure how they source the wines, but the consistency is pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's simply entertainment and business, just like the Oscars. Does anyone seriously think otherwise? And would they care? People seem to take the "oscars" seriously.

</comment><comment><USER6> For me, 'expert' wine recommendations are rarely useful. But, crowdsourced reviews have been remarkably consistent. A vintage with a mean score of 4.1 of 5 (over, say, 100 reviews) is almost always better than a wine with a mean score of 3.4. But, it's still subjective. For instance, I like Zinfandels and Petite Sirahs, so reviews of Pinot Noirs are less useful to me.

</comment><comment><USER7> hey don't knock it. sure its subjective. but a nice wine is a rare pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER8> (2013)</comment>


Doug Engelbart on Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Special Topics - Web 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBZXfCw7xIw <comment><USER2> _"I don't think you could find a physicist who has not gone back and tried to find out what Newton actually did. It's unimaginable. Yet the computing profession acts as if there isn't anything to learn from the past, so most people haven't gone back and referenced what Engelbart thought."_ (Alan Kay on Doug Engelbart)

Thank you jaquesm! I'm looking forward to watching this while supping.</comment>


Ask HN: How should I create a unique id for entries that aren't incremental? - <AUTHOR>

For example, right now when I'm creating boards (agile), it will create a new board and its id will be n + 1.
What is an efficient way of creating an ID where there won't be any collision even if there are 1 billion+ entries?
This ID will be used in a url..
Thanks, Tim <comment><USER2> _" where there won't be any collision even if there are 1 billion+ entries"_

This is a really complicated topic, and there are multiple ways to handle what you're doing. It really depends on your read/write ratios, typical volume, growth rate, and the underlying DB software you're using.

Because there are so many considerations that require knowing real-world use cases, it's a premature optimization. Are you going to have more than 1 billion records in the next few years? If not, don't worry about this.

However, there are other reasons to use non-incremental IDs (security, for one).

To answer your question as asked though, check this out: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/datatype- uuid.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/datatype-uuid.html)

<comment><USER3> > However, there are other reasons to use non-incremental IDs (security, for > one).

That's just security by obscurity, with proper authorization checking it doesn't matter.

<comment><USER2> Security doesn't always mean "seeing something you're not supposed to see". He's saying that the boards are public, so people are able to just change the number at the end of the URL to find them all.

You can have the same issue with scrapers. It's much easier for scrapers to get all your pages if you use sequential numbers for unique IDs.

Yes, a search engine could index the pages, but the big engines will obey your robots.txt, and the small engines will never know that you exist most likely.

So s/he's not trying to "secure" anything as much as just hide it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Incremental IDs work best, but if you want you can hash a UUID which will work for your use case:

% uuidgen

B14818B6-4219-43BD-82EF-8421EC1AFBCF

% echo "B14818B6-4219-43BD-82EF-8421EC1AFBCF" | shasum -a 256

00ea501d47789ac5eb559f10d631b3f6df8f82b5cba9c1f9d234b705d89f1704

<comment><AUTHOR> Those urls are kind of ugly. If this helps at all, maybe I could create a public url id based off the incremental PK id's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://hashids.org/](http://hashids.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> How about hashing the incremental? Now I wonder how ids like imgur or youtube work.

<comment><USER6> Base62 encoded incremental IDs

<comment><USER2> That's still incremental though. It just looks different.

<comment><USER6> bigint gives you 9.2 quintillion options before you run into a collision. Which is obviously not forever proofed, but certainly future proofed.

<comment><USER2> OP isn't asking for a data type that can hold more than a billion records.

OP needs a way to generate a random ID without checking that the ID has already been used -- s/he wants a UUID. Bigint is FAR too small to do that a billion times without a collision.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gmail Now Works With Addresses With Non-Latin Characters - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/05/gmail-now-works-with-addresses-with-non-latin-characters/

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8137857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8137857)

</comment><comment><USER3> One small step. Maybe in a few more years' time I'll be able to fill in my name (which contains an accented character) on web forms without insultingly being told "invalid name".</comment>


How Do You Make Remote Fingers More Efficient? - <AUTHOR>

There are some clients (usually government-related) where there is an absolute requirement to perform all deployments through "remote fingers". You literally have to tell a staff member of the client, "type this, click that", either in-person, over a phone, or over a chat.
Does anyone ever do this regularly, and if so, what tools and techniques have you used to make this more efficient?
What I have done to mitigate the absolute productivity-death this requirement imposes are:
* Work from my own office if feasible.
* Use a multiple monitor setup.
* Run 2-3 simultaneous web conference sessions, each session with a staffer from the client taking instructions from me over chat. Feed a steady stream of instructions to all sessions.
* When there are extensive GUI instructions to perform, jump to audio, then jump back to chat when done.
* Schedule out people's time available to work with me as far in advance as possible; this usually works out to be about a week.
* Determine who is the backup, and ensure management clears them to drop what they are doing and transfer to supporting me should the primary point of contact need to bow out.
* Do as much as possible via CLI.
* Set up a lab environment where you can mimic what you are about to deploy, as far as possible.
* Line up my meals for the day at my desk ahead of time.
* When the client staff break for a meal, have them SMS you as soon as they are ready to start again, so they never wait for you to join.
* Set up a private server on my side to let the staff members easily upload files and download files from you. Often these environments have extremely restrictive web site filters that make it all but impossible to ship out large trace logs, or to download a utility like PuTTY (seriously).
What have I missed? <comment><USER2> Why not setup a local lab that mimics the environment as closely as possible and abstract all work with Fabric, Salt or something similar?

Then you just ship the code you wrote and have then run through the command(s) you've prepared.

Configure an SFTP server on your end so they can drop log data if needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I stopped going down this path after the third client in a row who was so disorganized that "oh, sorry, didn't tell you about that GPO/NAT/firewall...". Usually after I run smack into it and start asking along the lines of "it's as if such-and-such is blocking thingamajig". They completely understand that when they spring these surprises on me, the contract price goes up; it doesn't faze them in the least, it is part of the landscape for them.

At the same time, they refuse to consider appliances or SaaS-oriented solutions; everything has to be on-premises and built from the ground up with them performing the remote fingers (and honestly, performing the steps without really understanding them).

This seems to be a widespread requirement in US Federal Government contracting circles, so I'm surprised there isn't some kind of telepresence solution that lets you type a command and passes it through after the staff member presses the "y" or Enter key to accept, and prompts in a similar fashion for each mouse click/drag. Maybe even record each approved step.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Commenting to myself after thinking some more about features I would be looking for, so I can come back to this in the future.

I do a lot of this by chat; faster and easier than phonetic-alphabet-spelling commands. So something that timestamps the chat entries.

The chat supports IRC-style /commands so I can enter something like /c to style the following text in some programmer font so if someone chooses to type in the command from the chat window they can easily distinguish between similar characters.

Every client I work with who does this uses only Windows. So create a special portable PuTTY client that supports some additional features.

Most recently-entered command in chat is placed into a clipboard that only communicates back and forth with between the chat and the special PuTTY. When the client pastes in the special PuTTY, the chat colorizes the command to indicate it has been relayed. There is a setting that lets the client select if the clipboard in the special PuTTY is automatically replicated to the system clipboard, or only copied from/to the system clipboard when an appropriate Edit menu item is explicitly selected. If the client highlights anything in the PuTTY, it can be retrieved via the chat without asking the client to paste it into chat.

The special PuTTY relays the output (but not keypresses) to this mythical application so there is a complete log. Not just that, but timing information is also preserved, so a real-time replay can be performed if necessary.

Something that scrapes the UI objects and organizes them in both alphabetical and closest-to-mouse lists.

The chat session has auto-complete, auto-suggest and history for previous entries. The auto-complete and auto-suggest are sensitive to the GUI items that can be located and will show a suggestion list depending upon a selected toggle when a GUI element marker is keyed into the chat. This makes it easy to enter "Radio button Foobar". A mirrored session with the GUI items that could be picked that are hot-linked would let you just click on an item and it would enter the text into the chat as well.</comment>


High Availability is not compatible with a MVP, because MVP is about iteration - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/high-availability-is-not-compatible-with-mvp <comment><USER2> I'm not sure why these are incompatible this day in age, with things like Kubernetes as a Service and serverless offerings</comment>


Ask HN: Making Front End Work Suck Less? - <AUTHOR>

Background: CS degree, roughly a decade of experience in a lot of different parts of information security. These days I've become a bit of a generalist with a lean towards networking, protocols and working on what I think of a data-centric development projects. A couple of years ago we were trying to find a frontend guy, and for whatever reason had no luck so I went back and taught myself a bit.
These days I end up doing a lot of solo projects, full stack. DB, actual code, front end, etc. Essentially everything but the visual design.
I've realized though, the frontend (html/js/css) take an inordinate amount of time compared to everything else. Outsourcing doesn't seem to help, as even with local people with good reputations I end up spending about as much time correcting and managing them to get the same results as I can produce.
Love ruby for my high level language so I'm using rails on most everything, and as friendly of a stack as I can find. Slim, Scss, Coffeescript, bootstrap or the bourbon ecosystem for my starting framework. It is a lot better than it could be, but honestly it still sucks. Everything about the web portion seems to be crud layered on top of crud.
I had some downtime recently and spent it with some procedural content generation, a couple thousand lines over the course of a few days. Implementing interesting algorithms and stitching them together instead of the repeatedly beating state onto a stateless medium that is the modern web.
So, realizing the power of the web and the tradeoffs being worth it, even with it being a time sink. I'm wondering if any of you with more of a background in non-web development have any tips that helped you become more comfortable on the web side and maybe even enjoy it? <comment><USER2> I come from a pretty strong web background (started out as a front end, now full stack), but I also struggle with properly managing time when it comes to my front end focused work. My advice is probably very simple, but it's proven to be most effective for me. Focusing on the smallest parts first and making them as loose and re-usable as possible has always made my front end work process go very smoothly.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this type of tedious work won't disappear until technologies like Web Components become mainstream (which may take a few years). Even with something like Bootstrap or Foundation you will spend quite some time sticking together huge amounts of markup.

</comment><comment><USER4> You don't seem to define exactly what type of frontend work is giving you grief.

For the layout/design thing, there now exists quite a few drag and drop tools to get a decent design. They also do code-generation, so you can modify the final thing.

As far as SPAs and frontend frameworks go, perhaps it requires a change of thinking. There's also a lot of opinions among the framework-makers as to what is "best practice", so for the frontend framework part, the only way I think you might "enjoy" it is to look for the "it's inspired by Rails/Django/x-server-side-framework" situation.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like front end work and find it satisfying and easy.

I remember not having javascript debuggers, hand rolling html/css myself and dealing with NN 4.0 and IE 5 back in 1999.

</comment><comment><USER6> The key to working on front end code is getting blacked out drunk.</comment>


Should TV Drug Ads Be Forced to Include a Price? Trump's Team Says Yes - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/10/15/657598281/should-tv-drug-ads-be-forced-to-include-a-price-trumps-team-says-yes <comment><USER2> I would go so far as to say that ads for prescription drugs should be prohibited, as they are not sold directly to the market they are targeting.

<comment><USER3> That's an excellent point I hadn't thought of before. On the other hand, if a consumer knows about a drug that the dr doesn't offer but they think they should have, that could be valuable too.

<comment><USER2> True, but that type of decision requires a level of expertise that most consumers do not have . . . and those consumers that do, will have done the research to obtain the requisite information on their own. That data will be far more useful in coming up with a treatment plan with their physician.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, but the consumer who does the research, does need to find out what options are available. Does that mean advertising on TV is not allowed but advertising on the internet is? I don't have an answer but it's an interesting question and probably one component of the reason why our drug and medical system is broken in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This could arguably be a good thing. Announcing drug prices would force people to pay closer attention to the typically crappy coverage by their insurance companies - where a generic alternative somehow costs more for the consumer than brand-name...

</comment><comment><USER3> At first glance, this sounds like a positive thing to me. However I disagree with most of the administrations actions. So I'm wondering what's the catch? Can anyone share some pros and cons with me?

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree with a lot of their actions but in this case I can't see a con.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am in favor of doing this. Great health care reform wake up call.</comment>